vis52

I would never say this in the Balkans but maybe take a look at Croatian/Bosnian resources as well.

Nobody wants to admit it but it is basically the same language, heck was called Serbo-Croatian a few decades ago.

Time was always a very biased news source so good riddance.

That's exactly what they did in Portugal and the results have been nothing short of amazing.

When did this start in Vancouver?

I am actually surprised that something like this happens in Canada, usually seems that news report these sorts of "epidemics" mostly from the US.

Parents are the bones upon which children sharpen their teeth

What Sean Parker says about the whole thing:

He explained that when Facebook was being developed the objective was: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” It was this mindset that led to the creation of features such as the “like” button that would give users “a little dopamine hit” to encourage them to upload more content.

“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

It's a mix I'd say but technology certainly plays its part.

I used to think that I'm the problem but it has been brought up in online studies and people I know more and more.

Social networks make me miserable. I didn't have Facebook or Instagram for almost 8 years and I started using Instagram recently. It's a strange mix of feelings but I loathe and look forward to opening the app every time.

Most people seem to experience something similar, no matter how hard they try they can't stop comparing themselves to others, hunting likes and other fake internet points.

Are we really forced into those interactions?

It is very rare that you really have to talk to someone, IME. Usually, it's more of a..."I don't really like or have a lot of common with this person but I've known them forever so what the heck"

Yup.

From what I could tell that's almost exactly what's happening in Europe as well. One difference though is that it takes even longer since each member state bans these individually.

From what I saw there are RC variants of many drugs I've never heard of but I saw RC-LSD, RC synthetic cannabis, RC-ecstasy, angel dust...

I can't blame ya ;)

TEST to see if it stopped happening

This goes beyond generations.

Technology, especially the widespread technologies like smartphones are something that just happened upon most people.

So most people haven't adapted on how to use them responsibly. Just look around the average cafe, you can usually find a group of people sitting together but not talking about anything, they just look at their phones.

This also seems to reveal an underlying issue, one which I also experienced. Before smartphones usually, you'd make up conversation, smalltalk, even if you didn't want to talk or had anything interesting to say. These days instead of doing that people just seem to ignore each other and do something that is interesting, using their phones.

I didn't actually know that.

I randomly browsed Reddit and wandered onto the 1P-LSD thread and saw that most of the stores mentioned were in Germany, Netherlands, Spain so I just assumed that it was more of a Europe thing.

EDIT: Any ideas why I get "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."?

I recently watched a documentary about Oppenheimer and I was pretty devastated how poorly he was treated after finishing the atom bomb.

Couldn't help but be immediately reminded of Turing.

In Europe there are a lot of these so-called "research chemicals". They are basically illegal drugs but chemically they are different enough that they aren't illegal.

I think the most well-known example is 1P-LSD.

Other than work, are you happy with your life?

From personal experience and that of close friends if work was fine before usually there is something bigger going on.

Additional Gmail Space and 1Password

Quite the coincidence...the comment I wrote actually had another part but I deleted it because I didn't want to appear as someone giving out advice that nobody requested.

Basically what it said is that if you want your kids to learn a foreign language you should put them in front of the TV at a young age because once they are a bit older and actually know that they have a choice they won't want to spend a lot of time looking at a screen where characters are going on about something that they can't understand. As you said it is "just annoying.

So if you want to do this for your kids you basically need to do it when they're clueless to the fact that they can actually change the channel. Once they know they have a choice and are actually bothered by not understanding the language they will surely change to an English channel, one that they can actually understand.

First time posting here at HN, long time reader though.

I am fluent in English and German with no accent and I never had any formal education in either. Well that's not completely true as I did have standard English classes in primary and high school but that doesn't count because that stuff was pretty useless.

I learned both languages by watching endless hours of English and German TV, first cartoons as a kid and then the rest later on. Actually for English it was pretty much Cartoon Network so in a sense Cartoon Network taught me English.

One thing that surprises most people is that all of this was completely without subtitles. I'm not sure how one goes from not knowing a word of a language to speaking it fluently by watching and listening to a foreign language with no reference points but that's how it went for me.