chaosCruiser

Thanks for the reply. That really clarifies a few things. No wonder why they call it a suburban hell.

Anyway about the shopping thing. In walkable places, the largest shopping centers tend to be close metro/train/bus stations, so you can easily do your shopping on the way home. I guess that’s not the case in America, now is it?

It’s mostly about time and place. What the post actually contains matters far less. Post in a big community or at a time when most people are awake, and you’re guaranteed to get lots of upvotes and comments. Post in a niche community, and you’ll be lucky to get a handful of upvotes, and maybe even a single comment.

That's really interesting, because a surprising number of people here ignore the number or just mark all as read every month. It's like treating comment replies as spam. I guess that's what you have to do if you're a drive-by shooter and never wish to face any consequences, but I'm not that kind of a psychopath.

BTW that could be a great post for !unpopularopinion@lemmy.world. If you end up posting it there, I'm really curious to see why people disagree with that... or more importantly, how many actually agree. Based on the small sample here, I think the latter group is not a tiny minority.

I've spent some time in a few different environments in Europe. In the city, the walking rule applies, and public transport works well. You don't really need a car unless you buy ikea furniture frequently. The larger the city, the more you end up hating your car.

In small towns, the focus shifts towards walking, bicycling and driving your own car. Busses might exist, but just barely. Not something you would consider unless you're completely out of options. If you live close to the town center, you can walk or bike nearly everywhere, but you usually still need a car for certain things. That's not really a problem because parking is free and always available everywhere.

If you're in a more rural environment, walking is no longer an option, because everything is at least 5 km (about an hour walk) away, usually more like 20-50 km away. Bicycling is an option, but there are no bike lanes. That's usually not a huge problem since there's hardly any traffic to bother you. The locals seem to enjoy F1 and rally though, so bare that in mind. Oh, and the wildlife is actively looking for ways to commit suicide using your car, so keep your eyes open while driving.

So, how is it on the other side of the puddle? I've heard all sorts of wild things, and I get the feeling that it's really different from what I've experienced here.

You like to play it dangerous, it seems. Keep things spicy? In this thread I've bumped into more than a few people who do the same and ignore all notifications too. To them, it's just a huge meaningless number that grows all the time. These people are essentially the drive-by shooter of the online world.

We may be a minority. Turns out, lots of people don’t get that feeling.

If Android still follows the letter of the law, the courts can't order any fines.

Viewing it as an opportunity is clearly the way to go. Far healthier than worrying for nothing.

That's too much for walking. I would take a bike in that case.

Here's what I consider common:

1. Walk 10 minutes to the train station
2. Get to the city center while scrolling Lemmy on your phone.
3. Walk in the center to visit some fancy stores. Maybe like 15-20 minutes in one direction.
4. Buy some specialty coffee, fancy kitchen knives, Bialetti rubber rings or whatever.
5. Walk back to the station: 15-20 minutes.
6. Battery is nearly dead, and I forgot to bring a charger with me. I guess I'll just stare out the window.
7. Walk back home: 10 min.

In total, that's going to be like an hour, but it's divided into multiple parts. Walking that much in just one direction is something I would prefer to avoid. If the library is a 60 min walk away, that's the same as like 12 bus stops or 15 minutes while sitting in a bus. BTW that 15 minutes includes walking at both ends of the journey. I would definitely choose public transport over walking in that case.

If the destination is just 15 minutes walk away from your house, that's perfectly normal, and not a problem in any way. If it's like 20 minutes away, I would begin to consider using a bike or maybe even a bus.

It's true that the opinions and comments don't matter. At the end of the day, they're just meaningless internet points and text that will be lost when the disk of my instance eventually gets formatted or when bit rot gradually eats them away.

However, that's not how my social monkey brain feels about it. Some primitive part of me that ignores all logic and reason clings to the notion of social acceptance and shivers at the mere thought of rejection. Can't disable that sort of thinking. Seems to be a hard-coded part of a function or something.

So far, so good. We'll see how that works out when I wake up tomorrow and look at a mountain of unread notifications. People on the other side of the planet tend surprise me.

How about we just call it "The Standard Unit" and choose U its symbol. You know, just to mess around with all the other "units" we have for everything. I'm looking at you, Enzyme unit, in particular. Also, the "Astronomical Unit" was a pretty obnoxious name too, so points for that.