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Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

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Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#131

Post by rootusrootus »

panaffa wrote: post #72

I'm part of the new generation and I think the opposite. I am obsessed with my phone and the Internet. And I don't think it's bad. It's extremely stimulating in a way real life is orders of magnitude worse at. Point of reference, born around 2000. There's no going back for me. I want my phone at all times to have access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally a god like power.

You sound serious.

> have access to billions of ... memes

But this is where I think maybe I'm getting trolled.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#132

Post by nijave »

Telemakhos wrote: post #22
CommanderData wrote: post #5

Being forced to pay for council parking in the UK using a mobile app is completely astonishing to me, and leaving home without your mobile, or no data or a broken phone can cause you a world of difficulties. I didn't agree to wanting to normalise the removal of parking meters and mandatory app usage just to park your car in a park or highsteet. I'm not sure where this motivation started.

If you have to have a phone to pay for things like parking or for proof of vaccination status, then you have to carry a locator beacon that can be tracked, and your movements can be recorded. Who records them (Google, Apple, someone else) is irrelevant; the record can be requisitioned by your government or a Five Eyes partner at the touch of a few buttons. Your locator beacon comes with handy built-in cameras and mic…

You can carry a phone and leave it turned off most of the time. Unless you're paying only in cash, your electronic payments can be traced anyway

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#133

Post by xen2xen1 »

benbristow wrote: post #25

I was on holiday once with my friends in Amsterdam. After a few too many drinks and committing a sin and having a wee in the canal (sorry! When a man's gotta go he's gotta go - as an aside what's it with bars, clubs & fast food chains there etc. charging to use the toilet?!) a guy came up to me and started talking to me, can't really remember what he said to me, all I remember is checking my pocket and my new OnePlus…

I've taken to trying to have a spare blank SIM and old phone with me. The last time I activated a phone I was dumb and left the old one at home on an hour trip. I went through all my accounts and just barely got my stuff to activate on my new phone without my old one. Also pointed out flaws in my 2fa setup, but hey.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#134

Post by CrazyStat »

rootusrootus wrote: post #127
mechanical_bear wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a health fad for most. People with actual diagnosed celiac's disease are rare. Self diagnosed… that is another deal…

I work with a guy who is a real, fully diagnosed celiac sufferer. The gluten-free fad has had serious consequences for him. Some restaurants don't take him seriously, claim gluten-free food when it isn't, and he gets seriously ill when that happens. He doesn't eat out so much any more because it's not worth the risk.

On the other hand, it has greatly increased the availability of pre-packaged gluten-free food options. The consequences aren't all bad.

(I have a sibling with celiac disease).

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#136

Post by kennywinker »

mechanical_bear wrote: post #81
carom wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gluten free isn't a health fad. Please learn about celiacs.

It is a health fad for most. People with actual diagnosed celiac's disease are rare. Self diagnosed… that is another deal…

In addition to celiac disease, which is not actually so rare - only about 3 times as rare as red hair - there is also Wheat Allergy, which is very real and detectable by measuring immune responses - and Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS).

Most of the "health fad" people you're talking about would probably self-categorize themselves as NCGS, but that doesn't mean that everybody who is NCGS is part of a health fad. Double-blind "challenge" studies where people are unaware if what they are eating contains wheat/gluten have confirmed that for some people this is definitely real and not a made up fad.

I'm not denying the existence of people going gluten free for fad or orthorexia reasons, but be careful when you lump everyone who is gluten free for non-celiac reasons into that category.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#137

Post by gruez »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #20
sysadm1n wrote: post #11

Well not that I live in a bad neighborhood or anything like that, but you really don't know what could happen at any given moment, and need to phone emergency services. This is not paranoia (well maybe it is), but paranoia doesn't work retroactively, you have to be proactively paranoid. If you're concerned about privacy buy one of those cheap Nokia dumbphones that old people use. Keep your smartphone at home, and swa…

There's places where a phone won't help you at all. On the other hand, just screaming will. Screaming, like not yelling, screaming. Helped me out exactly three weeks ago today, when I was getting coercively shepherded by supermarket guards, into the supermarket, because the cashier accused me of not paying. But they weren't interested in seeing my receipt. Just in harassing me. Fortunately Jessica at the Farmacias Ma…

This story is baffling.

> Fortunately Jessica at the Farmacias Manríquez (near Merced and José Miguel de la Barra in downtown Santiago) across the street heard me scream "I want you to call the real cops! You have no right to do this! Look at my receipt!" (in Spanish of course) and called my people

Maybe social circles in south america are orders of magnitude bigger than the ones I have, but in an urban area it seems unlikely that there's going to be a random passer by that would know you well enough that they can "call your people"

> And I couldn't use a phone because my hands were full, I was carrying glass bottles home that way because I didn't want to pay for a plastic bag. If I dropped them, they would say since they accused me of stealing them that I destroyed the merchandise and was a thief for sure.

Why was slowly putting the bottles down and then getting out your phone not an option?

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#138

Post by steelframe »

I've never put anything work-related on my personal devices[1]. If anyone sends me a Slack message or an email on Friday night, I won't see it until Monday morning. If you need to reach me outside of work hours, you can give me a phone call and talk to me personally about what's so urgent that you feel the need to impinge on my personal time.

[1] Well okay, except 2FA, because I couldn't make it through new hire orientation without doing that. But now all the auth uses security elements integrated into or attached to the laptop itself, so maybe it's time to uninstall the work 2FA stuff.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#139

Post by webmaven »

I held off getting a smartphone until 2011. But I certainly experienced this sort of discomfort without my dumb phone and various other bits of paraphernalia like a bus route map, bus schedules, a Thomas Guide map book (or AAA map once I moved to NM), lists of emergency and nonemergency contacts, medical info, todo and shopping lists, and probably a few things I'm forgetting. Most of this has been subsumed by the smartphone, in a smaller, more convenient package with better ergonomics. Battery life has improved to the point that I no longer bother with an external battery pack, unless there is overnight travel involved.

I'm pretty draconian about controlling notifications, and try to use the smartphone as a tool rather than a content consumption device (an eink ebook reader has replaced my habitual paperback book, both at home and on the go).

But as a tool, an occasion for the smartphone's absence is definitely cause for discomfort. OTOH, there are physical tools I don't bother to carry anymore (eg. a swiss army knife) that haven't been replaced with anything.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#140

Post by xen2xen1 »

dnndev wrote: post #90

After reading the title to my wife she quickly said most likely a man wrote this article, possibly an older gentleman. As a female having a phone at all times makes her feel more comfortable for emergency use.

My wife has, off and on for decades, called me and said she was waking somewhere she didn't feel safe or was being watched and wanted to be on the phone. All you said sounded familiar. However, the "phone for safety" trope is a sad thing.
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