Yes, but not visually. Which is to say, if I’m sitting in a room, looking at a wall, and then close my eyes, I still have a sense of where that wall is in relation to me, despite no longer being able to see it. I can navigate through a mental space “spatially” in the same way, with a sense of my own imaginary presence and its spatial relation to the memory of the place I’m moving through.

Interestingly, I can also do it with objects and animals. So despite not being able to visualise a horse, I can conjure up a mental spatial map with me and the horse in it that lets me “know” our relative sizes and locations. I can move it all around as well, and still feel “where” everything is, without seeing any of it

Because I don’t believe that kids (or people in generally) magically develop effective techniques for dealing with addiction and bullying when they reach a certain arbitrary age. They don’t suddenly know how to deal with complex social situations when they turn 16. They don’t know instantly gain knowledge of how to deal with the addictive nature of gamified social media platforms when they turn 16. So hiding them from that stuff, and then letting their first exposure to it be when they’re trying to learn to be independent and less likely to look for answers outside of their own experience solves nothing.

Social media can be addictive, screen time can be addictive, and navigating online scammers, bullies and fraudsters is something that takes experience to work recognise and work through.

So I approached it by talking to my kid about recognising what this stuff looks like, about the importance of not revealing personal information, of asking questions if they have doubts. I also let them have as much screen time as they wanted, and told them that the issue isn’t how much time they spend in front of the computer, the issue is whether the computer is the only thing they want to spend time with. If they always say no when someone asks if they want to do something else, if the devices start to get in the way of life, and they never want to leave their room, get resentful at having to do chores etc, then the balance is off. And that’s what I cared about. Teaching the kid how to fit this stuff in to their life whilst they were young enough to still take my advice onboard.

That’s why

Edit - Unrelated, but maybe not unrelated, I also told me kid I don’t care if they swear around the house, with their friends or whatever. However, I also told them that lots of people do care if they swear, and they need to be aware of the impact that their choice of words has on the people around them. Swearing at a teacher at school for example, is going to get them in trouble, and “I can swear at home” isn’t an excuse for that. I tried to teach my child that the issue isn’t the words, but rather, the way your words impact the people around you and your relationships with them.

Kids need to learn by doing and by trying. They don’t learn by being told by their parents “this is how it is”. And the more hard rules you put in front of them, the more things they have the need to rebel against and push back against when they try and find their independence. And every single kid that has ever lived explores and pushes at boundaries in some form or another. So don’t turn the shitty harmful things in to forms of finding independence.

You give kids independence by giving them agency in their own life, and the life experience to use that agency in an informed way.

I didn’t drink until I was in my 20s, and I’ve never driven a car, let alone crashed one.

I also let my kid use social media in their pre teens.

Most models don’t have any kind of display at all. The most recent model that isn’t widely available anywhere yet has a tiny notification window.

The vast majority of glasses out in the wild that people are using today do not have displays.

That will change, but right now, if you see someone wearing these glasses, you can be close to certain it doesn’t have a display.

They don’t have a display.

The glasses don’t have HUDs/screens. There are no real time visual clues.

I use vernissage rather than pixelfed, but yeah, it’s the only one I deliberately try and post to every day!

I got a new PC and was really upset at the idea of putting windows on it. The ad lack of ownership of my own hardware, I couldn’t do it, and so I installed Linux (again), but this time, it stuck.

Vernissage. It’s a federated photography sharing platform. In theory it’s similar to pixelfed, but more like flickr, and less like instagram

Interesting that he frames LLMs as both a tool that he needs to use to compete, whilst also framing their use as a scarlet letter that will tank sales if he uses them.

Our piefed instance (which hosts our remaining communities) should be back up soon!

Don’t worry, we’re back again :)

For what it’s worth, I absolutely want to see duplicate communities across multiple instances. Even if it’s a backup community, folks shouldn’t be left without a space if an instance goes offline, or if an admin goes rogue. I want to see more communities for vulnerable folk across more instances.

I wish there were more queer first instances too, and hopefully, this incident pushes someone in to spinning one up!

Unrelated to the larger topic, but how do you find Endurain? I want to dump Strava, but last time I looked at self hosted Strava alternatives (maybe a year ago?), none of them really came close to parity in features.

I’m in this picture, and I’m ok with that :P

Two party politics

They positioned themselves as the ethical choice, financially supported a bigot, and advertised his distro, then made excuses for it when called out.

Kinda like you’re doing

I’m not going to dance around words because you want to protect the sensibilities of a bigot.

I’m not “meh” about denouncing bigots. If you’ve supported a bigot and you don’t actively and vocally walk it back, that’s not “meh”. That’s a refusal to acknowledge the issue and the harm done in normalising the voices and visibility of bigots

I’m not in the habit of assuming companies that knowingly supported bigots, the benefit of the doubt. If there isn’t a clear, loud and non ambiguous walking back of their clear, loud and unambiguous support, then why would you, I or anyone else assume they have done so?