FinishingDutch

Statistically, rural users always lag behind in pretty much every metric.

For example, globally, 83 percent of urban people have access to the internet, 49 percent rural. In the US, 83 percent of urban people have a smartphone. 65 percent rural. Urban people also use their phone more. And that's not even taking into account cultural differences between urban and rural settings. They simply aren’t as plugged in as you and I.

Farmer Bob isn’t going on tech forums to read up on new phone releases. But his TV will show him that phone exists and entice him to buy it.

Point isn’t about the phones as such, it’s about some things simply not reaching that rural bubble.

I’m definitely in favor of a ban of advertising in public spaces. Spaces that are owned by the collective ‘us’ should remain free of it. Like public squares, roadways, public transit, etc. Those should be commercial free.

A total ban would be wildly difficult and impractical. It would also widen certain gaps like the rural-urban divide. How would someone in a rural area know an iPhone exists, if the nearest store is a hundred miles away? Or other products that might be beneficial to them?

I live in a city of 160.000 people. And even here, we simply don’t have every store or every product available. Advertising broadens that horizon considerably.

Only one that I haven’t done is paper checks. Those weren’t really a thing here.

Of course, a few of those have come back around to be used by younger generations. There’s teens who rediscovered Polaroid and other film cameras in recent years. Ten years ago, cassettes saw a resurgence and vinyl was also selling well.

They need to seriously quit this bullshit. It serves no practical purpose in our modern society, while also having tangible negative effects. So why keep doing it?

I enthusiastically support getting rid of this nonsense.

You don’t invite foreign invaders, you shoot them between the eyes. See Ukraine.

Glad they got the hint.

I miss the 1996 internet, when it was just us nerds arguing about Star Trek versus Star Wars. We never should’ve invited the rest into our space. That was the beginning of the end.

That’s just living in Europe in general though. Everyone makes fun of everyone. Dutch and Belgians and Germans have jokes about each other since we share borders. There’s also stereotypes about the Spanish and Greeks being lazy, the French being rude, that sort of thing.

People book vacations like that well in advance. So there’s a time delay between the bookings and drop. Yesterday I read an article about Dutch travel agencies seeing far less bookings for US holidays. In january they saw a 20 percent drop, but they didn’t have February figures yet.

So by the end of this year, the tourism decrease will likely be much higher.

And the absolute insane part about it is: most actual religions are not opposed to vaccination!

The pope doesn’t mind vaccination, and indeed encourages it:

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/10/1071785531/on-covid-vaccinations-pope-says-health-care-is-a-moral-obligation#%3A%7E%3Atext=Francis%2C+85%2C+has+generally+shied%2Cget+inoculated+was+%22suicidal.%22

Mormons encourage vaccination. Hindus and Buddhists have no issues with it. Most of Islam and Judaism are OK with it as well…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_and_religion

So if most of your mainstream religions agree that vaccination is a good thing - one of the few things they agree on, I’d imagine -it doesn’t make sense to oppose it on religious grounds.

Some people just want to difficult. And kids are dying because of it.

Reddit has turned into a complete shithole the past two years. The sooner it gets taken out back and bludgeoned to death, the better.

Personally, I don’t trust anyone who hasn’t been banned at least once from that place.

Harassment ‘of’ 10-17 year olds ‘by’ the game? My brother in Christ, 10-17 year olds ARE the harassment. As a 40+ gamer, I’m confident that we can drop harassment levels by 90 percent if those kids weren’t on it. Little sweaty shitheads are why I stopped playing multiplayer games.

There’s also simply way too many people on earth as it is. My country - one of the smallest on earth- had 15 million people back in 1995. Right now, 30 years later, we’re at 18 million. And in 2037, they’re expecting 19 million.

Small numbers on a global scale, but definitely a lot of growth that’s causing issues. There’s a housing shortage, rising prices, healthcare and pensions are under threat, etc etc.

And there’s places that are much, much worse. For example, even India is encouraging population growth. When the country is still very poor. That’s going to help their economy in the short run, but it’s going to be a much larger problem down the line.

We need a controlled population decline, sooner rather than later.