We got the shutdown during COVID and I think it scared people because nobody enjoyed that. Accidentally did more to keep people invested in keeping the shitshow going than anything else.

I love it when a ship comes together.

He just wanted to try it.

While a relationship can be an absolutely amazing, fulfilling connection between two people, most people, especially young people, don’t start a relationship on that basis - they’re driven by biological drive and hormones. However, when you’re old enough where your hormones stop driving the car, the prospect of dying alone can become a blessing. Either commit to a relationship as something you want and be willing to put in the time and effort it’s going to take, or wait out the worst of it until your mind calms itself down in your 40s. Think of everything from your mid-teens to your mid-40s as a Pon Farr, with the exact same possible treatments.

Don’t need a phone if you never leave your house.

Galaxy brain

Appreciate the perspective. I’ll keep it in mind, but I generally use extremely cheap headphones with no controls because they don’t last long for me anyway. Between the sweat and the rough use, they only last a few months, and the extra cost for controls is an ongoing loss for me.

If it comes down to it though, I’ll keep your suggestions in mind.

I’m sure a tight belt is a good solution for most people, but I’m going to run right into the same problem I have with armbands - tight elastic is going to trigger my eczema as soon as I start sweating.

And then even if a phone weighed absolutely nothing, I’ve still got to look at the screen to control it, which means either stopping motion or taking my attention off where I’m going, it’s still got to be set to the highest brightness to see anything on the display, and as soon as I’m sweating, the touchscreen becomes almost useless anyway.

Do what works for you, but at the end of the day, I will never be satisfied trying to square peg a general purpose smartphone into the round hole of a run. Devices that were made specifically for this purpose and did it brilliantly used to exist, and don’t now.

Oh, the bouncing is even worse there. I don’t want a phone slamming into my hip repeatedly in the exact same place with every single step for over an hour. When you are running EVERYTHING that isn’t locked down immediately resonates with your run, and if the weight isn’t trivial it throws off your entire stride.

I do like this form factor, and have had some offbrand ones, but the color LCD with backlight drains the battery incredibly fast. The monochrome LCD on a Creative basically uses no energy and is perfectly visible out in the bright sun, even when fast forwarding through podcasts or audiobooks. Still, I’ll take the physical buttons over a touchscreen that can barely work once I start sweating. Also the physical buttons let me actually CONTROL it while I’m running while still paying attention to where I’m going - no need to take my eyes off anything.

Viable if I don’t mind being locked into an ecosystem, and spending 6-7 times as much for something that is more or less guaranteed to lose software support long before it breaks.

They do, but they are INCREDIBLY uncomfortable. Running 10km with an unbalanced extra weight on one of my arms is torturous to me, to say nothing for the skin issues that I get from one of those bands holding the sweat against me the entire run.

Then, on top of that: slipping down the arm, tan lines, the bouncing of it, snagging it on things, how filthy and disgusting they quickly become, how they’re still damp the next day getting ready for a second run…

Might work better for you.

In my experience, once I’m dripping with sweat, a touchscreen is completely useless and non-functional.

I feel like Jamie Hyneman would shrug this off.

Yesssssss?

It’s the K-shaped economy.

25% stopped buying. 50% are buying and dealing with things as best they can. And the last 25% are rolling in it and paying exorbitant prices to show off and balancing out the losses.

“Look, we don’t need to use Photoshop for our shop. There’s an open source option that matches our use case perfectly.”

“What’s it called?”

“Gnu Image Manipulation Program.”

“That’s an awfully long name. They should have a shorter one that’s less of a mouthful to say.”

“…they do not.”

It was the next obvious place.

Glorious.

Wonder what will happen if we run this in a loop

Out of memory error, probably.

So it creates a world where normal people no longer use tech, and the vast majority of tech is used by businesses for productivity purposes in the office while everyone else makes due with real life?

Like in the 90s?

Sounds like paradise to me. Starve out these cash-grab. psychologically manipulative disposable code subscription services.