> Talk openly about how much you hate your phone...
The idea of modelling the behaviour you're trying to teach your kids seems to be a key one as mentioned in this interview with Zak Stein [1]. Obviously the general tone might be a bit too much anti-tech for this forum, but he certainly seems to have some well reasoned points to make and obviously the genie isn't going back in the bottle so working with tech whilst being aware of it's dangers as mentioned in the original article might be the best compromise for now?
Much as I love Glastonbury festival, even though I stopped going a few years back, the amount of waste generated definitely seems problematic. I think the festival does a great job of trying to deal with this problem, from the large number of lovingly decorated bins, through to all the site clearup teams both during and after and all the messaging.
But as highlighted elsewhere, it's definitely more of a cultural problem than anything. It's always depressing just casually observing the amount of abandoned tents on the way out and the amount of litter either put in the wrong recycling bins or just discarded less than yards from them. And the problems isn't just the cost which could be spent on good causes - £750,000+ [0] but the accidental effect of say a cow eating a tent peg (it's a working farm).
As someone who litter picks and talks to litter picking groups it's definitely a big problem nationwide sadly.
Probably unsurprisngly this always seems to be much worse in the higher traffic areas with the main stages than it is in say the Green or Healing field areas though their might be demographic and contextual reasons for that also. I've not been to any of the other main UK festivals in a long time, e.g. Reading, V Festival etc. but I'm guessing they aren't going to be any better?
I use iNaturalist semi-regularly and was about to start using it for a rewilding project I'm involved in, so looked into that and some of the alternatives.
I really like how easy it is to use, the various views on the data (incl. geofenced projects and places), the fact you can export it all back out again, the volunteer and "AI" assist on IDing stuff etc.
But I guess the main other pro for me was that, in the UK at least, most of the data I've put into iNaturalist that's made Research Grade has also been imported into iRecord and NBNAtlas which wouldn't happen the other way round, so 3 for the price of 1. See
https://nbn.org.uk/inaturalistuk/inaturalistuk-and-its-place...
I know there's various grumblings about observation quality from iRecord users relating to iNaturalist records, but I'm assuming this is people just not following the published guidance???
I had the misfortunate of needing to hire a car in the UK last year. Ended up with an entry level 2025 Kia (Ceed Estate). Compared with the 2012 Audi A4 I'm used to driving it was a nightmare.
Similar experience, lots of flashing and beeping which is just distracting whilst also being wrong often enough to be really annoying (this is a known problem with speed limits).
Exceeding the speed limit, needing to change gear and by far the worst, active lane assist which pushes you back into your lane if you cross the white line without indicating (I only found this out afterwards as the hire place didn't mention it or leave a manual) and something which can happen frequently if you're driving down narrow country roads where indicating wouldn't have seemed appropriate and may just confuse others.
I spoke to one of the mechanics at my local garage who said you can't permanently turn these features off as they turn back on when you start the car.
I wonder if anyone has who's had an accident caused by being distracted by all these alarms has successfully sued?
Do you mean the Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton [1] (also a movie) and I seem to remember it being a good watch when I last watched though that might be a good 15 years ago. The idea was novel enough it's stuck with me since and I do often joke with people about it, especially given from what I gather that certain types of funghi can now digest certain types of plastic [2].
The idea of modelling the behaviour you're trying to teach your kids seems to be a key one as mentioned in this interview with Zak Stein [1]. Obviously the general tone might be a bit too much anti-tech for this forum, but he certainly seems to have some well reasoned points to make and obviously the genie isn't going back in the bottle so working with tech whilst being aware of it's dangers as mentioned in the original article might be the best compromise for now?
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpHuK4f7Mw4