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Sure you could use remote work to do things, but in practice most people don't. Forcing everyone back into the office without a good reason isn't a good solution, but I think that the option to work in person is an ideal situation to those who like to socialize with others. Personally, I have that flexibility and have started to take advantage of it by working while traveling. But I've observed of my WFH coworkers don't seem to, which goes back to the original point- the alienation is not a function of not going into the office. It's a separate issue that giving that option to people can mitigate.

> their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person

This sort of self-alienation seems to be a pretty widespread problem larger than the in-person/remote debate. That said, it's probably better for those experiencing it to have some in-person socialization in the office than none.

I think there's a lot of people who live in these areas who don't take full advantage of them. Jobs funnel these people into the cities when they could have a higher standard of living elsewhere.

That said, I hate the cities vs. towns debate because it dismisses the fact that people are different, and value different experiences. Cities offer a lot of things that smaller communities don't. There's much more vibrant arts scenes, a greater variety of amenities (bars, restaurants, concert venues, museums, etc.) and much greater diversity. Traffic isn't a problem if you don't own a car, and city neighborhoods (outside downtown) can provide more a sense of community than you might think. The tradeoff is, of course, space and affordability. For some people, that tradeoff is worth it, and for others it isn't.

It's frustrating how tough it is to stick to topics you're interested in seeing on Twitter. Even after trying to actively disengage with a lot of the news-based stuff on the site to stop myself from doomscrolling, I still get shown a ton of news and politics on my feed because some of my friends on Twitter like and retweet that kind of stuff.

I think it's also kind of strange how much variance there is in the content on the site. Something about the fact that stupid jokes take up the same space and appear in the same way as very serious news feels harmful to me.

Makes me curious about the idea of a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to manage a platform that gives as much money as possible to artists. Perhaps that's a naïve vision, but I feel like a lot of artists would hop onboard if the interface worked, and that could overcome the network effect.

I quite liked this article. I would be interested in more analysis on the environmental effects of endocrine disruptors as a result of plastic seepage and hormonal birth control, but it seems like it's not super easy to find without venturing into crazy conspiracy land. I don't want to sound like General Jack Ripper but at the end of the day we're just animals. If the environmental impact of these pollutants is pervasive enough I would imagine it would have large aggregate effects on human behavior.

> The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web

This point especially rings true for me, but it also concerns me a bit. Reddit has killed a lot of other forums over the years. If something happens to Reddit, we run the risk of losing a large corpus of information.

Great points. I'd even go a step further and suggest that "discovery" is not really a problem that can or should be solved in the manner that tech companies would like. I ran a radio show in college on my college's station, and from my experience most of that crowd is uninterested in further tech penetration of music.

I'd certainly call JP dense- it's got more than twice the population density of Houston, and it's slightly more dense than LA.

I suspect that JP's density is actually a bit higher than that today, given that it was 8500/sq mile based on 2010 population. Regardless, it's important to consider that JP is miles outside the city center. It isn't so much a model of super dense housing as it is a good way to up the density of neighborhoods that might otherwise only support 3500/sq mile. JP represents a good middle ground between the car-centric deep suburbs and the extremely dense city center.

Not to the same extent because the rise in your own home's value mirrors the rise in value of the bigger place.

Right, that's why San Fransisco consists entirely of single story buildings.

Great example.

JP isn't quite a suburb but I look to it as a fantastic example of how suburban development could be condensed without losing its character. With proper upzoning, suburbs could have denser cores of multi-family housing without impacting those that want less dense housing outside the core. These towns would be more walkable and prettier places to live.