Yeah, it’s a hard balance to find, trying to maintain your own mental wellbeing, career, social relations like friends and family, household, money with all that comes with it, and then also try and bring up a small human in as healthy and as encouraging an environment as possible.

Sometimes you just have too much going on, especially in today’s world, so I also do get the occasional breaks given by some screen time.

But it can also be productive, it doesn’t have to be mindless and meaningless content. But it’s sort of understandable to default to anything at all that can give them something to do for a moment, if you need to.

But I’m not much of a parent either, in the way that I don’t really know what I am doing. I can’t imagine most do either.

4-5 books a night?

Jesus

I mean good for you and them, but that is wild

Everyone’s different, though, as you said, so for sure work with what you have and try and be the best you can for them, so that they may be the best they can

I feel surprisingly insecure in my own parenting style and capabilities, if it is normal for such a young kid to even think about some of that stuff. When I was 5yo, I was eating pebbles outside and climbing on trees thinking I’d surely get to clouds this way.

Actually, the mobile/touch screen client side has gotten more love lately! I would recommend Luanti, especially with the mineclonia game, since Minecraft is so common they’ll have more to talk about with friends who play Minecraft, and not feel left out. The redstone stuff just recently got redone to the point it feels very similar to Minecraft, and I’ve found it’s actually a fun way for them to learn about programming, although mine, at 6, still struggles with the concepts and I’d be very surprised if a 5yo got a grasp on them properly. But then again it is entirely possible they are less logically inclined than their peers, and maybe they come more naturally to most other kids. But even so, it’s productive fun. It promotes imagination and sticking to a project in longer term. Building up things is fun for all kids I bet, but add to it the need to go gather, search and produce the tools and materials to build, it teaches some important life lessons too, that would not be so easy to convey otherwise. And with all this, it’s still just fun. If they get frustrated, they can just instead go sail across the seas and spelunk in some caves.

Screen time has to be enforced a lot more though, since it’s so easily addictive. If one doesn’t put boundaries on it from the start, it’ll get unhealthy and hard to shake. A lot of grumpiness is bound to follow, unless really carefully keeping limits from the get-go.

Well, the amount of comments just going with the premise of a 5yo kid actually understanding logical operators or circuits is a little bit concerning, seeing as mine can barely do the car puzzles with the arrow commands, and they are 6.

Uh oh.

Yeah, did the whole dance too, and tried multiple providers, but no dice. Some got through to others and some to others, but none was even good enough getting through to most.

This was just a few years ago.

I don’t think these safety/security signatures or protocols or whatever, work, as they are supposed to. If the IP space you get has bad reputation, nothing matters, you’re sol.

If you mean self-hosting email, then good luck.

It’s a lottery with the IP and even the IP space you get, whether anyone will actually receive your emails.

I hosted my own for a few years, but god fed up telling everyone to dig through their junk folder for my emails, and not being responded to very often, probably because of just that.

Maybe some providers have it better, but I tried a few and each was just not good. I really think Microsoft, Amazon, Google and other big players have intentionally separated the good, trusted IPs, ones they use for email services specifically, and made the other worse

Big +1 here!

Everything being inherently meaningless doesn’t mean we can’t just imagine and make up meanings ourselves! The universe doesn’t care, but you can choose to! 🕺✨

But you can do your darnest. Drown all that existential dread and other stuff in either of these:

• Stuff. Just things to do. Start hobbies and projects and get carried away enough to forget these, at least momentarily
• Drugs! Alcohol included. It’s not healthy but you can choose to. You’ll probably forget a lot about all this, if you indulge enough. Not a recommendation, just noting this is something you can already choose to do, and for most with access to internet and lenny, probably readily available

Have fun!

This is probably just to point out the bias in the original question and our incapability to actually answer it or similar questions, but I actually think this is probably the one thing that separates hell and paradise here on earth.

Well, not the only thing, but once all the basic needs are covered, most of how this feels, probably comes down to what you focus on. Intentionally or not. We’re not very in control of our focus or our minds, after all.

Personally, I think it’s because life is beautiful, the world is beautiful, people are for the most part beautiful. In a hell, I don’t think we should have so much beauty and majority of our time spent in awe of this all, enjoying our time, the nature and each other.

I think this might very well be a hell, though, if one focuses on the bad stuff. Which is way too easy these days with our phones and constant cycle of news and updates and whatnot.

But to be a hell, overall, I would think there wouldn’t be so much niceness, so much endearing stuff, so much love and joy. I know not everyone gets nearly enough of those, but there are people, like me, who are just way too lucky I guess, or maybe it’s a little bit about attitude or perspective gained by having been at the lowest lows, but also able to escape those pits of suicidal despair. And, again, in a hell, I can’t imagine they’d let you escape and lead a joyous, happy life, in a beautiful, breathtaking world

Edit: Also, like one commenter put it so well: What does it matter?

If this is all a hell, then I’m okay with that. It’s nice. It doesn’t matter what this “actually” is. It’s just nice, warts and all.

Okay, consider my interest entirely piqued. How does it feel watching something like that? You seem like the kind of guy to go have a beer with. That’s a total mad lad move, I would watch something like that in a heartbeat, drop work and all, just go enjoy this absurd result of a gem the universe has bestowed upon us. Even better if it was me in there, not some internet genius I don’t know, but I kind of need to see Empire Strikes back but everyone’s the same guy and sounds the same now