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The best $4 ever spent

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Re: The best $4 ever spent

#131

Post by canucker2016 »

lisper wrote: post #125
criddell wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was 1975ish, so a bit more than 30 years ago but Hudson’s Bay sounds right to me. That store was a much bigger deal in the 1970’s. My family always had their blankets kicking around.

I have some bad news for you: 1975 was almost 50 years ago.

Before 1991, the Queen St store was actually part of the Simpson's department store chain.

The Simpson's Christmas window displays were much more extensive as well.

Back then, the family could have gone down into the basement of the Simpson's department store and dined on hot dogs and an orange-Tang-like drink (there may have been other flavours, but I always chose orange). The drinks came in paper cones (similar to those used for water coolers) placed in metal holders.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsons_(department_store)

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#132

Post by hakfoo »

imp0cat wrote: post #90
culebron21 wrote: post #77

We live in a walkable part of city. In a park 1 block from our apartment, there are "baby trains" (small electric trains, on rubber wheels). They cost ~$2 for 5 minutes, plus 10 minutes of your kid screaming "want more". Subway in Almaty is $0.2 (for adult), unlimited time. So when my son was almost 2 y.o. and walked well, I decided to take him to the real subway instead of enduring that vulgarity (granted the statio…

I have a tip for you, if you ever visit Vienna, get a 24(48,72)hr unlimited ticket and spend some time on the subway (U-Bahn) with your kids, riding the various lines. The entire subway system has different trains (some more like street cars, some more like urban rail) and tracks run in underground tunnels, shallow trenches and over open ground.

Honestly, one of my favourite aspects of traveling is simply using the local mass transit.

Coming from a city where it's a particularly bad joke, it's still a novelty, and it provides such a different perspective on the city than "where can I park within orbit of $specific_destination"

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#133

Post by ben_w »

aantix wrote: post #128
ambientenv wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. "My kids light up the most when I am fully engaged with them, fully present, entertaining their ideas, and asking questions." Things a screen and all the gadgets and fancy engineering in the world can never replace.

Ummm.. Have you played with ChatGPT's new voice mode? ;)

More pertinently, have the kids played with it?

As per the examples in this thread, what kids do and don't like has very little in common with adults' expectations of what they'll like.

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#135

Post by dzhiurgis »

aantix wrote: post #16

We took our kids to Disney World once. When asked what their favorite part of the trip was, they responded.. The hot tub. At the hotel. My kids light up the most when I am fully engaged with them, fully present, entertaining their ideas, and asking questions. Their favorite family trip so far? When we traveled to Arkansas to mine for crystals. AKA, dig in the dirt all day. They saw it on a YouTube video. They asked t…

Friends did around the world trip from Europe, via Australia, drive for days in outback, etc etc with 2 kids and 1 newborn.

I asked kids (7 or so yo) what was the favourite part?

He answered Singapore, because it was cold (aka air conditioning everywhere)

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#136

Post by jiggawatts »

Jeremy1026 wrote: post #72
abeppu wrote: post #23

Certainly it's true that kids can get a lot of joy out of something that to an adult seems really small or boring. But the flip side is kids can get totally emotionally distraught or enraged over tiny things. Are these two sides of the same coin, and come from having just a smaller world, where small things can feel very big to a developing brain? Or as an adult with a fully-formed brain and access to the larger worl…

An analogy I've heard in the past is that emotions are like a button fixed in a box with a ball in it. When you're younger the box is smaller so the ball hits the buttons more often as there is less free space. As you grow, your box grows too, so your ball has more space in the box and more empty space on the walls for the ball the bounce off of, making the buttons less likely to be pushed.

That analogy seems a bit contrived, but the "button pushing" reminds me of something.

At a recent dentist visit the Lidocaine local anaesthetic was accidentally injected into a (small) artery. That's when I discovered that it's a mixture that includes adrenaline, which contracts peripheral blood vessels, preventing it from dispersing too fast. Unless.. it goes directly into an artery, sending it straight into circulation.

To this day I can't come up for a better explanation of what happened, other than it felt like someone had simply pressed a button in my brain labelled "panic".

The dentist explained what had happened, I fully understood everything, I'm not at all afraid of dentistry, and I'm not easily frightened. None of that mattered. The button had been pressed, and now I was panicking for no discernible cause. Just... naked panic. Panic, panic, panic.

I had to cancel the appointment and walk home, slowly, listening to calming music the whole way and trying not to sprint down the sidewalk to escape whatever I felt like was chasing after me.

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#137

Post by cyberpunk »

junar wrote: post #120
black_puppydog wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The planes are okay... But the airports... omg they suck so hard. Trains and train stations on the other hand, even though I use them so regularly, are still super nice. I wouldn't say "exciting" but very nice. That's why I'm so angry that the French government and railway company keep making trains and stations more and more like airports and airplanes.

It's interesting to compare a European perspective with an American one. In the US, the train stations I've seen range from unremarkable to downright filthy. The one station I found interesting was New York Penn Station, which I would favorably rate as on par with an average airport.

European airports have gone massively downhill in the last decade.

Try getting a sit down meal with table service anywhere. Nope, you’re queuing for a shit, dry/soggy brötchen.

The lounges aren’t even worth it anymore either.

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#139

Post by culebron21 »

stephen_cagle wrote: post #42

This sort of content feels good in the immediacy but ultimately lessens the quality of hn. I'm not concerned about this post specifically, but I feel that we should be more critical of things like this making it onto hn. I come to hn to mostly hear about tech, tech advances, startups, etc. I don't come here to read feel good (and admittedly, very cute) stories. They have their place, but I feel that place is not hn.

You may check out the mess of LinkedIn. Fully professional, almost no "off-topic" posts. People always write they're happy, proud, excited. Future tech vids. Productivity porn vids. "Check out our next feature." Successful success 24/7.

Another collective blog I read turned into a flood of corporate "why work with us" or "how to patch KDE under FreeBSD", or "Zuckerberg just said X. This news was translated by XYZ personal brand consulting co.".

Tech blogs that I read, turned into either stream of USB gadgets, or into big tech geopolitics. "Google wants to flank Facebook with X, Nvidia won't let AMD do Y, Altman thinks Z, waters changed."

This post about kids and normal life is what makes HN different.

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#140

Post by jtbayly »

syncsynchalt wrote: post #115
atoav wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My little brother once got a bicycle for christmas. He played the whole evening with the cardboard box it was in.

I should think a combination transmogrifier/duplicator would be more fun than a boring bicycle, sure.

I once made a cardboard box (from an oven) into a real-life duplicator as a mad scientist at a talent show using a couple of twins as part of the show. Had some people blown away. lol.
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