What annoys me about using Apple products recently is the glitches.
When I scroll up to find very old messages on my iPhone, it randomly snaps back to the most recent message. Trying to edit text on a touchscreen is also still a nightmare in 2022.
My brand new MacBook randomly crashed and turned itself off the day I bought it.
It wouldn't bother me if the products weren't literally the most expensive things I own aside from my house.
This is why there is such “grade inflation” in reviews.
The way I read reviews is now:
- look at the reviews with lowest ratings. They have the most signal (the walls were paper thin and the bathroom was dirty) as opposed to positive reviews (beautiful room in a great location). You can usually tell if the reviewer is being unreasonable.
- search for specific negative keywords in the other reviews - “noisy”, “loud”, etc. Often people will leave a five star review but discreetly complain about something.
Be mindful of confirmation bias when searching reviews. Finding 10 reviews mentioning noise might be because it's noisy, or it might be that they have thousands of reviews and a small percentage experienced noise
This is an excellent point!
I suppose I could normalize by the number of total reviews.
It hasn’t been an issue so far as I am only filtering out cases when there are multiple reports of the same issue, and I care more about eliminating bad options than detecting all good options.
I had a non-masked Uber driver report me for not wearing a mask (I was wearing one). It was very strange, my guess is they didn’t like me for some reason and used the feature in a petty way…?
This one happened to me too - except it was after the Uber asked me for my destination, and then didn't like it (I was going south from San Francisco, he wanted to stay in SF.)
Instead of just cancelling the ride, he reported me for being maskless in order to get a free cancellation that didn't hurt his driver profile. When I wrote Uber Support to explain I was wearing a mask (and had completed a mask-photo before I could request my next ride), they lectured me on mask-wearing and essentially accused me of lying. Note that I have a 4.9 star rating over 5,000+ Uber rides, so it's not like I'm an infrequent customer or repeat trouble maker.
The driver might have got you confused with someone else.
When I get frustrated by inexplicable behavior of strangers, Hanlon's Razor helps a little distancing myself and limit the pain brooding about it would cause...
Almost certainly the driver was using an Uber feature to their advantage. They use Uber every single day and talk to each other - they know how to act so that they get what they want.
"Non masked rider" is probably a way of getting a fee back or invalidating a bad review or something.
Yes it could be that they got a bad review from someone else and retaliated on the wrong person.
Where is the fun in not getting peeved by these things though? ;)
Any time I’ve looked into passive income, I’ve come to the same conclusion: the simplest and most effective way to increase my income is to focus my energy on improving my main career.
If you can't find someone to review your stuff, is there someone you can raise this with who might be able to help? It sounds like a management/communication issue.
Moka pots make great coffee but I found it really hard to get the brewing right - the most important factor was the grind size. If I change it even slightly, I get much worse results and unlike Aeropress there are fewer other variables to adjust. So to answer your question I would say yes if you're also travelling with your own grinder.
"Directness" is an excuse that I sometimes hear to justify aggressive or rude behaviour, but it's possible to be direct in a polite manner.
"This new plan is stupid" is rude, whereas "I'm frustrated about this new plan, it won't work because X" is assertive without being rude.
I disagree that your alternative is assertive, and that the former is inherently rude. It's only rude depending on each person's social communication expectations. Otherwise, it's an assertive statement, and like any other, it could seem rude. I find it rude when people are passive aggressive, but they might feel like it's polite.
"The new plan is stupid" is rude because it's not actionable. It doesn't say what specifically is wrong, why it's wrong, or how it could be better. The older I get the less tolerant I am of people simply venting or breathing out generalised criticism that doesn't help us navigate to a better place.
I expect people to bring criticism, but I expect them to do so constructively if they want to be listened to. "This plan is unworkable because X but if we did Y instead that would lead to Z which would work much better," is actually helpful. "This plan is stupid," isn't.
I have started unsubscribing to any subreddit the moment I notice a post is generating a negative emotion. Nowadays my feed is mostly woodworking, cooking and photography.
The world is a messed up place. Sure, we shouldn't be bombarded by this fact day in and day out, but I personally think it's a good thing to remind yourself now and then how fucked up the world we live in can be - to maintain a sort of tether to the "reality" of the world's current messed up situation; it puts a lot into perspective.
Any thoughts? Am I wrong for thinking this way? (P.s. I have not yet read the OP's article)
The key part of your statement is “now and then”. Reading the news once a week to stay up on current events and be a good citizen is wise. I don’t need to check in on the shittiest parts of our society every few hours throughout the day.
I agree with you. Actually I watch news regularly since my childhood and I've also heard the sentence "I don't want to see this (people suffering), this is terrible" Basically this would be actively looking away.
The world is indeed a pretty messed up place and it's sad we need Corona to be reminded of a lot of long-standing issues as they affect also other groups now:
- lack of universal health insurance/insufficient social support systems
- lack of pandemic plans
- precarious living conditions are more prevalent than represented by social/news media
Actually very few news outlets even attempt to give global coverage, BBC is the only one I know of that somehow gets close to this.
Still, I try to consume news more responsibly. I stopped using Google News and instead subscribed to a handful of online papers/magazines that produce quality content.
>Actually very few news outlets even attempt to give global coverage, BBC is the only one I know of that somehow gets close to this.
Far fewer still, are news outlets covering child sex trafficking. But hey, "I don't want to see this, this is terrible, let's call it a conspiracy and move on".
I think social media might just be the wrong format for it. Something non-addictive, such as a book, or a long-form news article would be a much better way to know the evils of the world.
Definitely, one does still have to be aware of how bad things can get. The way I see it, that sort of information can filter through no matter what you do. Instead of compltely shutting out however, what I've read some say in regards to this digital minimalism is to keep just one or two news sources. For some that's HN, or a custom subreddit collection, or just opening your local news site once a day/week/whatever.
I think the glaring issue these days of being constantly connected, is simply balance. I notice that many who are getting too anxious/stressed/nervous/scared are doing way too much of just reading news and doom, and doing almost absolutely no other healthy activities of healthy family meals, exercise, walking, etc. In all things, find balance.
The world has it's priorities completely fucking backwards, is the problem. We've got a million dead every year in Africa because of AIDS. It's a completely preventable problem. No one seems to give a shit. Over 100k dead from covid-19 in a few shorts months. But, this weekend, I was bombarded with "news" about Trader Joe's "racist packaging." What the fuck?
Maybe I'm cynical but this most of the news that I come across lately looks like standard election cycle bullshit to me.
One great strategy is subscribing to a weekly or monthly newspaper/magazine. If it's not important enough to make it into the weekly news, it's not that important.
I did the same. Now I’ve stopped using reddit as a news source, I feel a lot more upbeat. Plus my news cycle is a lot more localised now, which is a win!
I also unsubscribed from subreddits who started allowing false, but entertaining posts (like a image with a fake caption for karma). That was a good choice.
I started doing that in general several years ago. I now regularly cull anything from my life that I identify as a source of negativity. For me it's mainly relationships with people that end up generating high levels of negativity and I suppose Reddit does count as that. It was one of the first things to go. I deleted my accounts and the app and went completely cold turkey. I have more recently reintroduced it but more carefully, sticking to a few choice subreddits.
