It used to be easy to look at the night sky and see stars.

Being comfortable away from civilization.

I mean, very few people go off into the woods anymore without some way to communicate in case of emergency.

In the mid-80s I’d go off backpacking with friends for a week or ten days, and the only hope we had if we something went terribly wrong was the occasional park ranger, or other hikers. We might run across four or five other people on the trail per day, but some days no one at all. We’d set up camp by a pond and be the only ones there, and probably for miles in any direction. We never thought about it, because there wasn’t the option of taking a GPS, or phone, and we didn’t bother with a radio because we never needed one before, so we just never thought to take one.

It was fine. We had skills, we were prepared, we had each other. We had experience. That’s all we needed.

I suspect that is very rare now. It would be considered foolish. Fewer and fewer people have the experience of being that disconnected anymore.

Just doing a simple transaction. I need new tires for my car. Do you know how annoying it is that places will REFUSE to simply… take cash and put new tires on? They want my email, my name, my address, etc. Stop fucking datamining me and provide me a service!

Postal chess, killed by computers. Regular over-the-board chess at high levels has turned into a police state with metal detectors and stuff, but at least it’s still doable. Online chess, lol.