Funny, because the Celts, who came up with the idea of thin spaces long before it was cool, did see coastlines as a kind of border between worlds (in a supernatural way, not just the mundane border between land and sea).
Yeah as I was making my shitpost I realized that a coastline entirely meets the actual definition of "liminal" (as opposed to the common usage, "teens pretending to be scared by an empty office break room")
I was struck by something similar when I visited the county fair in rural Grant County, Washington in 2023. We were walking around, checking out the 4-H/FFA barns and the exhibit halls, and there were teenagers everywhere, and almost none of them had their phones out. They were in little groups, talking and seeing the sights. Nobody was, I dunno, harassing goats for TikTok videos. Even the kids on "barn duty" (maintaining a presence in the barn with your animals in case somebody has questions or there's a problem) were reading books and playing cards, not scrolling.
I don't know if it was the local culture (I grew up around there, I don't think there's anything so special about the local culture) or just that the kids aren't as fucked up as we think, but it was nice!
Works great until your kid's the one that can't join their friends on, say, grabbing dinner after band practice, because they have no way of telling you "hey, change of plans".
If your kid can only participate in things that are planned well in advance, your kid is going to be missing out on ~80% of gatherings. Because everyone else is in the habit of making spontaneous plans, made possible by interconnectivity.
Are we talking about 8 year olds, or 15 year olds?
I think it's fine to give your 8th grader a flip phone. A third grader isn't "grabbing dinner after band practice".
For sports practice, I'd just take the sports bus home; the 30-60 minutes between the end of practice and the time the bus left was perfect for a little quiet reading or homework.
For band practice, I'd call my parents from the office phone, or plan to get a ride home from an older student who lived nearby, or just accept that I might miss out on something when mom picked me up at 6:30 and that's ok.
There's something you'll start to notice in Stephenson's books, where a passage will be almost entirely standalone and you think, he wrote this some other time and just barely massaged it to fit into this text. See also "Part 3" of *Fall; or, Dodge in Hell* which is pretty much entirely disconnected from the rest of the story but god damn it Trump just got elected (for the first time) and I've gotta write this.
I experience this as me being a ridealong on my friend's random diatribe. Oftentimes it feels like something he just learned and needs to tell someone about.
I believe REAMDE included an entire page dedicated to the virtues of lashing tires to fishing craft.
Yes, that's a concern for me too, I'd like to retire early but healthcare has me wondering about getting a job as a teacher or something just to make sure I can afford it if I get cancer at 55.
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