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Also insanely unhealthy to consume stuff like this on a day-to-day basis

IMO Lemmy's a new version of old-school web forums and link aggregators (which have been around since the beginning- kind of like Fark, Slashdot, etc). Using this site feels the same as using those sites.

Think social media's a very specific thing that started off in the early-to-mid 00s- i.e., a site / app where you keep a profile that's tied to your real-life identity and real-life social circles (myspace, friendster, linkedin, facebook). And that's where the harm kicks in, since suddenly you have to worry about having some kind of curated digital persona, which has some kind of real-life impact. So if we can't talk about the harms of social media in a specific way (i.e., the harm of constantly comparing your life to these idealized representations of other people's lives), then 'social media' isn't a meaningful term anymore.

I'm almost exactly the same age as you. If I've learned anything up to this point, it's that people would start to have better and richer lives as soon as they cancel their cable TV subscriptions, delete all social media accounts*, and delete all news apps from their mobile devices. I really believe smartphones are a huge culprit in making people miserable, and it's because we've let these things get totally out of hand instead of consciously making them as boring and utilitarian as possible.

The issue of being 'informed' or not can be covered by reading Wikipedia's current events page for a few minutes each week. That should also free up plenty of time for people to focus more on what really matters day-to-day, which is their local community, friends, family and neighbors. Useful information is actionable, and actionable information can be found when you're laser-focused on your local area and the ways you can help improve it.

• Lemmy / kbin isn't social media, IMO. ; )

Kanye West. Maybe he was never 'all there' mentally to begin with, but the guy was clearly a role model to a lot of young people and utterly destroyed his own legacy.

Tom Otterness, the sculptor. He might not be a shitty person anymore, though (it's really up to you).

Not knowing what I want out of life. Including whether to break off the nine-year, kind of dysfunctional relationship I've been in (neither option feels good).

The US has a pretty severe urban / rural divide in most of its states, but I don't think it's enough. You'd usually need a pretty clean split along territorial lines for that.

Bald. Being bald looks cool, no shame in it whatsoever.

Long walks, swimming and playing drums

You could argue that China has devolved into a totalitarian state under Xi. There's a lot of corruption surrounding the party's Ministry of Railways, which has led to some perverse incentives to invest (possibly way too much) in HSR and urban metro networks across all of the country. And thanks to the extremely centralized power structure, you have a lot of standardized components used to roll out those networks, making construction cheaper and faster due to economies of scale.

Tldr; China's rail infra is pretty great, especially when so many of its cities are very rough around the edges otherwise. That said, East Asia's democracies (Taiwan, S. Korea and Japan) also have excellent transportation networks, so who knows.

Will try that out, thanks! I've enjoyed the Libby app a lot on an old ipad mini, bet they have a similar infinite scroll feature somewhere

Haven't listened to any, but think I'd have a hard time hearing someone talk for that long. Really enjoy the silence of books