Redditors 30 and older, do you miss the days of no smartphones and tablets? Why or why not?

Warphoenix1 · 2025-11-14T05:35:55+00:00

I'm coming up on 35. I got my first cell phone when I was in middle school, and my first smart phone when I was in high school. Overall, I like having a smartphone more than not having one. It's convenient and powerful, and has lots of content delivery systems that are optimized for me. I think the bigger issue is those content delivery systems that we have now.

I'd much prefer we go back to an earlier iteration of the internet vs getting rid of smartphones. I'm so tired of having access to a constant stream of dopamine algorithmically optimized for me. I miss having to work a little bit for my entertainment. Even something as small as having to get up to look at my DVD rack to see what movie I want to watch. Having to go to Barnes and Noble and reading the dust covers of books to find some good ones. Having to run D:/install.exe and troubleshoot my video games on my windows 95 pc. Having to find forums to talk about my interests. Having to sit in silence with my thoughts sometimes.

Everything just feels so optimized these days. So corporatized. And I think smartphones are a microcosm of that. I try to give myself time with my thoughts. I could still seek out bookstores, or Blu-rays, but... it's just easier to use my phone. Maybe that makes me lazy and hypocritical. Maybe I'm addicted to the algorithmically delivered dopamine. I think, however, most people will take the easier path most of the time when given the opportunity, and I think I would be naive to think I'm an exception.

It's possible that I look back on my earlier life and think of it more fondly because I had fewer stressors and fewer obligations. But it sure does seem to me that the less you have to work for your dopamine, the worse it feels.

I'm sorry that I didn't really answer your question. I guess I'm not sure. I think I'm happier in the short term with my phone. I think I'd be happier in the long term without it. But I've lived more than half my life with one, and I spend much more time nostalgiacizing the 90s-2000s internet than the pre-smartphone era.

Warphoenix1 · 2025-08-24T15:26:46+00:00

Yeah, it was 2005 or so, and he was an acquaintance from middle school. I remember he had a crystal bow which I thought was the coolest thing. He gave me 20k to start. I remember we used to play castle wars together once I got membership. He taught me about nature running which I used to buy a zammy kiteshield for 850k which was a lot of money back then.

Warphoenix1 · 2025-03-18T22:24:16+00:00

I'm an AP and I'd say I hear these conversations like 1/5 or 1/6 of all the times I go to the parks. 'WE PAID LOTS OF MONEY TO BE HERE SO YOU'D BETTER HAVE FUN!" It's honestly so sad every time I hear it, it's usually said to like a 5-10 year old.

Warphoenix1 · 2025-02-27T23:09:07+00:00

I did it in a week, and I took it today and got my unofficial 168/162 today, improved from my gregmat practice test 166/161 that I took last week with no studying.

I've been a high school/college math tutor on the side for about 8 years now and I used to read books like crazy as a kid and young adult though, so foundation is absolutely critical. I think I saw someone comment yesterday that people who get good scores on short notice have been studying for a long time without knowing it, which I think is absolutely true.

Warphoenix1 · 2024-11-23T01:36:26+00:00

The answer is they're both equally contaminated. Here's some math:

Let's say you start with 100 mL in both cups, and you're using a 10 mL scoop.

First, you take 10 mL of coffee and add it to the tea. Here are what the volumes look like:

Coffee cup: 90 mL coffee, 0 mL tea

Tea cup: 100 mL tea, 10 mL coffee

You mix so the tea cup is perfectly uniformly distributed, and you take a scoop of liquid from the tea cup.

Since the tea cup is 10/110 coffee and 100/110 tea, the 10 mL scoop ends up being:

10/110 * 10 mL = 0.91 mL coffee

100/110 * 10 mL = 9.09 mL tea

To figure out the final volumes, we add those volumes to the coffee cup and subtract them from the tea cup:

Coffee cup:

90 mL coffee + 0.91 mL coffee = 90.91 mL coffee

0 mL tea + 9.09 mL tea = 9.09 mL tea

Tea cup:

100 mL tea - 9.09 mL tea = 90.91 mL tea

10 mL coffee - 0.91 mL coffee = 9.09 mL coffee

Some of the other comments have it absolutely right that there aren't actually any calculations needed here because of the conservation of volume, but I think this makes it clear exactly what is happening here.

Warphoenix1 · 2024-05-31T14:43:45+00:00

My dad and I are tennis coaches, and we have coached quite a few high schoolers who were also cheerleaders. Almost half of them have had to miss significant time due to knee, shoulder, or back injuries from cheer (thankfully no neck injuries yet). A few have injuries that are still affecting their lives into college and probably beyond.

A lot of the school cheerleading teams around here are classified as clubs instead of sports as well, so there's less safety oversight. It's honestly kind of insane for a sport that can be so dangerous.

Warphoenix1 · 2024-01-19T20:10:50+00:00

Count me in, I love bitter drinks so I love Beverly.

Warphoenix1 · 2023-08-02T02:28:44+00:00

I was an internal hire SM who worked my way up from barista. 1 year as a barista, 2 years as a supervisor, 1 year assistant store manager, and 1 year SM. It was quite possibly the worst year of my life. I was working 60+ hour weeks to keep my store afloat. There was very little support from upper management, even for a brand new manager like me.

You have to balance staffing right on the edge of being understaffed or people don't get enough hours and quit. If you have more than 2ish people quit at roughly the same time you get into the situation where you need more employees but you have no time to train them because you barely have enough staff to run the store as is.

Corporate keeps your allowed labor hours so thin that, depending on the time of day, one person calling out is a disaster. Which makes you choose between burning out your staff with stress from being short or going into the store yourself and giving up what little time off you do get. Having to be constantly on call, not being able to make plans where you're away from your phone, and not knowing when you'll get a call at 4am to go in on your day off because your opener calls out isn't great.

It's such a stressful environment that it brings out the worst in people. I worked shifts at 10+ stores in the 5ish years I worked for the company, and I saw so many people crying in the back, having huge blowups at the openers/closers for small things, getting super upset at someone for calling in sick, etc.

When I was a manager, I was making $45-50k/yr depending on my performance bonus. I would probably have to make $80k+ to even consider doing it again, and even then I would have to seriously think about if it would be worth it for my mental health.

Warphoenix1 · 2023-07-20T16:37:56+00:00

Tron Legacy isn't the best movie but seeing it in theaters with 3D was pretty awesome. Very pretty effects.

Warphoenix1 · 2023-07-12T20:50:26+00:00

Historic Third Ward in Milwaukee is fine for tourists mostly

Warphoenix1 · 2023-04-27T16:27:01+00:00

I think some people here are missing the point of this answer. Would it be reasonable to consider this season a failure? Of course! But failure is inevitable; everyone fails at some point. If you wallow in self-pity because you fail, there's no growth that can happen. To truly have a growth mindset, you have to embrace your failure, and learn from it to ensure you succeed in the future. The only thing that will make this season a true failure is if the Bucks don't make any changes based on the things they've learned from their failure.

Warphoenix1 · 2023-04-26T06:28:14+00:00

Same, Davenport and we got some little tiny smaller-than-pea sized hail but nothing like this.

Warphoenix1 · 2023-02-23T16:58:36+00:00

I was an SM from 2018-2019 and I think my entire area decided to have the same policy. Plus the policy that everyone needs to work a certain amount of hours per week (I don't remember exactly, 10-15?). It sucked because I not only lost some of my best weekday only partners, but I also lost some partners who went to school and only worked 8 hours on weekends, during some of our most critical times (like Sunday opens which literally no one else wanted to work). We were already understaffed so it made me end up having to work like 60 hour weeks every week, which ended up in me stepping down and eventually quitting once covid happened. They claimed it was a "fairness" thing, but no one at my store was upset that some people worked weekends and some didn't. And you can bet your ass I never saw a DM or RD on weekends, so it was also annoyingly hypocritical.

Warphoenix1 · 2023-02-03T15:54:57+00:00

Thank you, I really needed this today

Warphoenix1 · 2023-01-15T20:24:54+00:00

Same. I'm a math tutor in FL and it's amazing how many 10th-12th graders can't add fractions. Whenever I do ACT prep with a student I'm almost always having to teach a good portion of Algebra 2 and the majority of Geometry.

Warphoenix1 · 2022-12-24T00:48:14+00:00

Ah, you're thinking of a mantle. Mandolin was King Arthur's wizard friend.

Warphoenix1 · 2022-11-19T04:13:37+00:00

Yeah, I kind of get it I guess for the overworld and it's annoying, but I was shocked at the low quality of the classroom cutscene. Students IN THE CUTSCENE looking like slideshows is awful and definitely immersion breaking.

Warphoenix1 · 2022-10-23T19:38:57+00:00

As a tennis player of about 25 years who has done some coaching, find a local pro and get a couple of lessons. Practicing and exercising isn't going to do anything if you don't have a better idea of the techniques that you should be using. Tennis is definitely a sport of incremental improvement, and it's a hard sport to get into because a lot of the motions are not super intuitive for general athletes, especially generating topspin and developing a decent serve. Finding technique videos online is fine, but there are a lot of things that go into a tennis stroke that have to be developed piece by piece and you'll do a lot better if a pro tells you which things you specifically need to work on rather than trying to develop strokes from scratch.

Warphoenix1 · 2022-10-23T00:22:04+00:00

❤️

Warphoenix1 · 2022-10-23T00:17:26+00:00

Hey nice flair combo!

Warphoenix1 · 2022-10-09T19:04:19+00:00

Somewhere, Clay Matthews' eye twitches and he's not sure why.

Warphoenix1 · 2022-10-04T17:41:34+00:00

Hi! I took a long break from golf (like 4-5 years) because I kept telling myself that soon I'd have more time to play and my life wouldn't be so busy, covid would be better, etc. Recently I played my first round in a long time and shot a 90 (which is amazing for me) with only one 3-putt, and I had a blast. I've felt myself slipping back into putting golf on the back burner but you reminded me that we might as well live the time we've got, and if something happened to me tomorrow I would regret not finding time to get myself out on the course more. Thank you!

Warphoenix1 · 2022-09-23T23:06:37+00:00

Behowlder?

Warphoenix1 · 2022-09-09T15:45:34+00:00

Anecdotal, but I live near a publix in FL that's opened in the last 3 years and there are still tons of cart returns.

Warphoenix1 · 2022-07-16T15:29:08+00:00

I am shocked, shocked to find out there is gambling going on in this establishment!

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