Silly #Poll: where are you along the #neckbeard pipeline?

(Note: the neckbeard is metaphorical. No actual facial hair required)

Also, please remember #DanesLaw: no matter how carefully someone attempts to construct a poll, the very first comment will usually expose a glaring oversight. That's just how it goes.

Why Americans Don't Walk To School - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lShDhGn5e5s

this neighborhood he filmed looks so much like America-as-I-know-her that it hurts. When I was a child, I lived in a housing development, a separate loop from the main road, nothing but houses on both sides for the whole loop. Sounds safe for kids, right? I was utterly forbidden from crossing the street ever, for any reason. In the three years I lived there, two children I knew were flattened by cars. One was in a wheelchair for years, the other had permanent brain damage. And we were lucky to have a sidewalk the whole length of the loop - which would quickly disappear beyond its edge; walking anywhere else was impossible, it was an island in a sea of high-speed roads.

The next development we lived in, the school had a street-by-street map of who was and wasn't allowed to walk to school. It was in theory a 15 minute walk, but we were forbidden because 10 of that would be on a highway with absolutely no accommodations for walking alongside it. There was a secret path through the woods that some kids used. There was a shopping center about as far in the other direction with, again, absolutely no way to walk there (and no busses). I grew up trapped in lonely fortresses in a sea of concrete, and I am still not used to the freedom I have in Europe to just... go places and do things.

How it started / how it’s going

#dog #dogs #dogsofmastodon

@neil I feel like I'm being chased around the Internet by a slimy AI slop monster that's insidiously engulfing everything I use. It used to be I could just ignore the rubbish bits of the net I didn't like, but no longer.

I hate being forced to move just to avoid all this, not to mention the time involved in learning new tools. And who's to say the services/products I move to won't also succumb?

It's exhausting.

And it takes a huge chunk of enjoyment out of being a fan of tech and computers.