To be fair, as someone who lives in rural Scotland, New York City sounds amazing. It’s one of the biggest in the world and understand it’s packed with variety and culture.

Some of it might depend on where you’re from. I live on a Scottish island, but have travelled extensively and can’t recommend it highly enough.

Me and a young guy I worked with, here in my hometown, were once out on a tech support job. We passed an old quarry and the kid said “man, that’s so cool and massive”. He’d literally never been anywhere, so from his perspective this shitty (and actually rather small) quarry was impressive.

Travel gives you perspective. Dismissing travel for me is like dismissing art, or learning. You’re willingly limiting your lived experience and that’s not, to my mind, anything to be celebrating.

As for the kid, he’s currently in Vietnam on a career break. Keen to hear how the sites he’s seen compare to that quarry when he gets back.

Some of the best times of my life in my 20s were enabled through alcohol. I traveled the world using my own money, met countless interesting people in pubs and at festivals.

As I sit, fully sober at my workstation in the office some 20 years later, I can think back to those times and can only smile when someone claims it has zero net benefits.

Totally. There’s old duffers at work that struggle to open a word doc, but are strangely adept at Navigating Facebook…

Of all time, it would have to be Nirvana. No other band has impacted me as emotionally. Nevermind came out when I was 13 and it was the first CD I ever owned. I was deep in the teenage angst stage when In Utero landed, which was rather apt. Then I had a cassette I tapped off of MTV with unplugged on one side and Live and Loud on the other which I played all the time until he died. It was hard to listen toto after that, but then they released unplugged on CD which is still a favourite.

Of course there’s countless other bands I love, bands that are way more technically proficient, bands that use electronics and stage craft. I’ve an eclectic taste and Nirvana are certainly more mainstream and successful than most of what I listen to these days, but if I could go back in time and watch any band live it would be them.

Saw them recently in Glasgow. Absolutely fantastic.

That’s the tack I’m taking. My eldest goes to high school next year and most of his peers are automatically getting a smartphone at that point. He’ll be 13. He can forget it. A dumb phone at a push, for safety. That’s it.

Of course there are. I’m far from perfect and fall dramatically short when compared to competent professionals.

However, you’re missing the point. I’m talking about people I actually deal with in my life. People, through virtue of the position they hold, that I fully expected to be a cut above the rest of us.

These people have jobs that I personally (and I suspect many others) assumed would demand a level of expertise and dedication that puts them beyond the reach of most ordinary people.

Turns out I was wrong. These positions are teaming with unremarkable folk who seem to have decided that that’s what they’re going to do and have got there.

Perhaps the real issue is a lack of self-belief on my part, but I don’t think so. I’m aware of my limitations, so therefore I’d never seek to become, say, a doctor.

Having dealt with countless inept professionals I can only conclude that they were not deterred by their own shortcomings the way many of us are.

I’m a happy enough guy, and I’ve been lucky with family in my life, so this comment, while it may sound negative , hopefully won’t bring you down - it’s just a general observation from 48 years on the planet.

Basically, I’ve noticed that most ‘professional’ folk - ie Doctors, lawyers etc these days are surprisingly mediocre people.

I always assumed, as a kid, that these people in lofty positions would be intelligent, eloquent, wise and charismatic.

Perhaps it’s because I was raised on TV and have unrealistic expectations, but the lawyers and doctors I’ve dealt with myself through work and in my personal life seem entirely unremarkable. I could forgive that if they were steadfast and competent, but instead I’ve found them to be mostly dull and poor at their jobs.

My superiors at work seem to be barely able to string a sentence together without ChatGPT, and our kids teachers are little better.

Anyway, rant over. Just generally fed up with how many, franky, inept people are in jobs that I once assumed were for exceptional individuals.

Wasn’t meant to be insulting. It never occurred to me until the smoking ban in my country. As this is a global platform, I didn’t know if smoking was legal or not in yours. Smoking inside was normal for me growing up, but I’m nearly in my 50s.

I think the trope of ‘OK boomer’ etc is largely bullshit. I know plenty of old folks who are largely supportive of young people and are getting a rough deal from 20 somethings who assume they’re dicks because they don’t get really interact with them. The folks who first marched against racism and homophobia are well into their twilight years.

Been Samsung for about 5 years. It just works, although that wasn’t always the case. I was Apple once upon a time, as their OS was rock solid, albeit insanely locked down. Everything else just seemed jankey and unreliable. S25 ultra is my current phone. It’s decent, but I haven’t been excited about a new phone in over a decade.

Fair play, man. Like I say, I used to smoke indoors and it’s weird that, once society in my country changed, it started to feel really strange to smoke inside.

I wouldn’t be feeling insulted. Your life, your choice bud.

Lol! Super-fast and boots in a few seconds. No need to faf around with a workbench disk!

Not to jump on the smoking hate train - I get it, smoking is very pleasurable and insanely addictive - but have you thought about just smoking outside?

I would never smoke in a room I spend any time in. It’s a funny mindset, as I used to smoke inside in my 20s, but when the ban in bars came along it just sort of became second nature.

These days I rarely smoke, but vape more than I should. The vaping is starting to give me a dry tongue that feels like a fading pizza burn. I plan to stop… Soon…

Going to have to go with TOS v1.64