I have 2 kids in college and I'm trying to sell my house. So I've decluttered to make the house presentable and I'm waiting for my kids to graduate and get their own places so I can give them their crap back. Storage unit makes sense for me. But this is likely to last only 2-4 years and then I'll have downsized enough.
This must be a generational issue. My kids took “their” things with them when they became autonomous adults. As parents, we raised our children that they would move out and establish their own identities and futures. We never created any expectation that their childhood home would serve as a storage facility, extended stay facility or even exist. We of course offer help and support when needed.
I know this is in conflict with a lot of modern parenting for many reasons. Our primary goal was to create independent, autonomous, fully functional adults capable of funding their own lives and determining their own future.
Kind of hard to take my stuff when I was attending college and then working clear on the other side of the country.
Other than renting a U-Haul and driving 2,800 miles, there weren’t many options. Which I even suggested, to which my parents insisted they were happy to hang on to the stuff until it was easier to do the handover.
>never created any expectation that their childhood home would serve…facility, extended stay facility or even exist.
Sounds like a pretty sad mindset to me. Between me and your kids, I wonder which are happier to visit their parents?
I once, in a divorce, sent at least two carloads (about 25 average size boxes) of personal belongings across the country by UPS. It cost like $600. If you’re a grown-up and settling somewhere after college, I think it’s a cool move to take your crap off your parents’ hands by shipping it to yourself when you’re home and at least blessing the disposal of the rest.
I get that some people even at 25, think they haven’t got a so-called “permanent address” except Mom and Dad’s (and I’m not being derisive, I have dear friends who felt like that), but none of us have a permanent home and I think it’s best if we mentally think of ourselves as not being “only temporarily here” as early in life as practical.
Honestly telling your kid going off to college (or elsewhere) "you have to take everything from you care about, the rest is going to go away" seems like a good way to stunt their independence. The natural reaction would be to take as much as they can of their current life, which is then going to be a burden preventing them from growing into a new life.
When you put it this way, it is very anxiety inducing and I understand that. What this is helping me realize is that my childhood, and our lives of our children were different than many of the commenters, not necessarily better or worse.
As children, my siblings and I didn't have a lot of stuff, and our family didn't have a lot of stuff either. It certainly wasn't our intent to traumatize and stunt our children and this doesn't seem to be the case. I will certainly ask them.
I somewhat expected my post would generate this type of attack and then lead to my parenting style is better than years, my kids are more successful than yours, my kids are happier to visit us than you, ad nauseam.
Parenting is hard and there are multiple approaches that lead to successful outcomes. Your approach worked and I am happy for you. Congratulations on your successful approach.
>I know this is in conflict with a lot of modern parenting for many reasons. Our primary goal was to create independent, autonomous, fully functional adults capable of funding their own lives and determining their own future.
This heavily implies that the children of other "modern" parents are dysfunctional adults. As they say "to throw the stone and hide the hand". The funnier thing is that your parenting style is a modern post-WW2 phenomenon.
There is no implication here. It is clearly stated as "Our primary goal", not your primary goal. You are reading way too much into this.
I agree it is a modern post-WW2 phenomenon, but not sure what is funny about it. Societies and systems constantly change and evolve. This is part of progress, and yes, can also cause setbacks.
My use of the term "conflict" might be what is triggering. Maybe "bucks the trend" or "not in line with" would be better.
Many approaches to parenting are successful. I presented my approach. Others work.
Now you're characterizing what you've done as progress, to defend characterizing it as opposed to modern parenting, and you anticipated attacks from other people. I'll tell you why I think you anticipated attacks after I tell you a reason why I disagree.
I agree that it has been a generational thing. It was called the "Me Generation." Me, me, me. In the animal kingdom, parents abandoning their children to be completely independent is mostly common among insects, lizards, and amphibians, and is associated with large litters and a massive death rate among them. It's not modern, it's a feature of creatures that are lower than mammals.
What's triggering is the fact that you've decided to brag about your superior parenting in public, and claim the evidence of that is that you have told your children that you're done with them. Nobody asked you, and you're aware that normal people don't do that to people that they are close to (hence the need to lecture.) Everybody raises their children to have the ability to be completely independent and self-sufficient. You just think you're uniquely successful at that, and that it somehow would be the child's fault if you've failed.
Your kids didn't ask to be born, and if you don't rescue them from their failure (at least initially), it will be a reflection on you. If we are in the same social circles, and I know about this, I will judge you. Even hearing you explain it, and your feigned confusion (I guarantee you have this conversation all the time), would make me wary of hiring you into a management position.
I'm not a lizard. I want everybody I care about to be self-sufficient, and I also don't want them to try to be unless they actually have to be. They have resources available to them that are not always being fully utilized, and when those resources can give them an advantage in any context, I would be angry if they weren't used.
There are always limits to self-sufficiency, because there are massive advantages to abandoning it: that's what we call civilization.
Very good points. Thanks for the insight and critique. There is a reason I don't wade into social topics and usually only comment on technical things I have worked on and this is helping me understand why!
> I somewhat expected my post would generate this type of attack
It may not have been your intention but your post had a combination of a somewhat smug, lecturing tone and patting oneself on the back which is a bit off-putting. And implicitly made a lot of assumptions about other parents' intentions/lived experience raising their children based on a single factor that's pretty insignificant like # of sq ft of child's belongings kept in the family home.
Also, for all you knew at the time you replied, OP could've still had stuff in their parents' attic because they joined the Marines at 18 and was even more independent than your own kids. There was a lot of projection onto a trivial story.
Plus "must be a generational issue" just sounds like more of the same "my generation was responsible/good/normal unlike kids these days" meme that gets repeated by every generation as they age and is tiresome to hear as an explanation for everything.
What stuff do you have that is worth keeping that wouldn’t fit in one or two storage totes. I would think anything of sentimental value like pictures, art, trophies, books, paperwork etc would be quite small.
When I was moving into a dorm, a few totes would have been a lot of my available space. I'm pretty glad my parents would let me pick and choose before clearing stuff out. Saving my childhood stuffed animals or favorite books so I can share them with my own kids someday is pretty meaningful to me, same thing I remember my parents doing. I don't know if I would have had the correct perspective to make those choices as a university freshman. Unless you immediately downsize after becoming an empty nester you're going to have way more storage space than you need anyways.
As a father of 3 kids under 5, we bought our house 2.5 years ago and it has appreciated so much that had we saved every penny for the last 2.5 years we couldn't have afforded it today.
It doesn't matter how high performing your kids are if no good opportunities exist. So while we hope the world will allow our independent, high performance kids to succeed on their own, we're planning on having to provide unique opportunities via resources/connections ourselves to make that happen. Accordingly we're treating our house as something of a family estate, to be held in perpetuity and they can live in as long as it's good for them. It's not about keeping them as forever-children, it's about providing a base with a secure perimeter from which they can marshal their resources. For instance, we're right in the middle of two major metros. So if they land an unpaid/underpaid but prestigious internship in one of them, they won't have to worry about housing.
A very interesting and valid observation. You and your children are super fortunate and your approach seems like a very good hedge against some serious uncertainty coming up.
We weren’t quite in the same position until much later, and I am somewhat envious of your position. Best of luck!
Likewise, and I wasn't trying to invalidate your approach. Raising independent kids who understand the imperative of building their own lives is absolutely necessary regardless of economic conditions
Growing up, actual peak existence was visiting Grandma's house and playing with my mom's old toys. The seemingly unlimited, completely novel hoard from another time. My son feels similarly about visiting my parents' house and playing with my old toys. This may or may not be sustainable but it seems like it is well on its way with four generations involved- from where I stand, keeping a good pile of consumerism around to pay it forward in 20 years doesn't seem out of proportion with the joy I've received. It's definitely a culture thing- nobody in my family tree seems to move much, and has decent taste in throwing out the actual trash and keeping stuff stored nicely over the long time gaps, then not being fussy about the next generation being pretty hard on stuff (within reason, as appropriate for their age)
> My kids took “their” things with them when they became autonomous adults.
College students both are and are not autonomous adults. It's not really practical to bring all your stuff to college housing, and you don't always graduate into a good job market where you can go directly to the workforce and a nice place where all your stuff fits. Not everyone can afford to, and that's fine, but if you can give your kids an easier transition to full autonomy, it seems reasonable.
If moving while the kids are in college, it's nice to keep their stuff somewhere.
You're right that this is a generational thing, but the expectation for your kids to move out like this is also relatively recent: historically it was a lot more common for your children to continue to live with you, or if not, to live very nearby. Arguably one of the biggest reasons for the modern birthrate dropping is that lack of local family ties to help with childcare.
(And yeah, for college this just isn't practical: college accommodation is temporary, tiny, and students have practically no money. Taking all your stuff with you to college is a lot of effort for very little gain).
I suspect this is highly variable between people. I can imagine kids who would be deeply attached to their stuff, deeply apathetic and want nearly none of it, and a few who would think they wanted a lot of it and yet would realize it wasn’t a big deal to them.
Only tough part is determining which one they’ll be!
If it were me as the college student though, I would find it fair if a summer were declared the Summer Of Claiming Your Crap, and all stuff that I actually wanted had to be in designated storage bins that I’d commit to come retrieve after college, and the rest would be donated.
Donating it without consulting me would have seemed like a betrayal, no matter whether I actually needed it.
Yeah. My mom hung onto my old school stuff and finally wanted to get rid of it when she moved. I took it graciously with thanks, and then tossed it in the trash when I got home.
Probably not - but it isn't his decision, and the kids are not yet in a place in life where they can make the decision.
Until the kids figure out where their life will take them they can't know. I have some heirlooms that I'm really glad to have now, but when I was in college living in dorms I wouldn't have had space for them.
You have no clue what somebody else finds important and will throw the wrong things.
Going to college should not be considered moving out. They have moved out only after they have been done with college for at least a year. Until then they are trying to figure out life. Home is still your house, they are just not living there.
Once they are out of college and on their own though they need to figure out what to do about their stuff.
This is a difference in parenting approaches. For our kids, going to college, or in one case the military and another no college, was moving out. You have your approach, we had ours. They were perfectly capable and successful in figuring out their lives without flying back to the nest every summer.
Great that you and your kids had this privilege. A lot of college grads these days struggle to get a job, let alone one that pays enough to rent their own place not one shared with roommates. Honestly, your replies sound very condescending and tone-deaf.
I agree and understand part of what you are saying. I am not exactly sure what the privilege was, but I do understand your observation about the tone-deafness. It is for certain that current job outlook seems bleak and this is extremely difficult. In general, I admit I am very privileged in that I was able to live in a time when certain types of jobs were plentiful and there seemed to be limitless opportunities available to me.
My mom kept most of my books but threw out a rare box of Creative Computing magazines that all the world’s libraries wrongly decided were ephemeral crap.
The OP mentions he switched to a Google FitBit Air which seems like an elastic cloth band which is all I want too, except I want it to operate like an Apple Watch in terms of integration with Apple Health. Anyone know if the FitBit Air and Apple Watch are similar in features?
> if anything Apple is catching up
That's been Apple MO for a long time. They may not be the first to market on a new tech, but when they do deliver, it's more advanced and higher quality than the competitors. It's a good strategy IMO.
You only need electricity if you want heated water, I’d guess that a bidet comes with a tee fitting with a valve on the T side that goes in between the supply valve and toilet supply line, allowing the supply valve to provide water to both the toilet and bidet.
Which is more important for AI/LLM stuff, the number of GPU cores or the amount of unified memory? I can choose from a Mini with the M5 Pro 18CPU/30GPU and 64GB RAM or a Studio with a M5 Max 18CPU/40GPU and 48GB RAM for roughly the same price
Memory bandwidth is one of the most important factors. The Max machines typically have higher bandwidth than Pro (you should look up these exact models to verify though). Having said that, you could run bigger models with 64GB.
I went with a 64GB M2 Max a few years back even though it stretched my budget and I'm glad I did. I'm not sure what I'd pick in this case. Tough call.
M5 Pro in a Mac Mini with 64GB RAM and 10Gbit Ethernet seems like the perfect Jellyfin server and Ollama test server. All for just over $3K (I specced with only 1TB local nvme).
This may depend on the size of your library. I tried installing Jellyfin on a Synology NAS, which runs Plex just fine, and it ran so poorly it was basically unusable. It “worked”, but it was painful.
not sure which cpu that Synology has, but I run jellyfin on ugreen nasync dxp8800 plus which has intel with QSV and it breaks no sweat in both transcoding (if needed) and serving over 10GBE.
It's a Synology DS720+ with a Celeron J4125, 2GHz, 4 cores, 2GB of RAM.
I thought it would be fine, because Plex has no issues, but it was painful. Every client I tried on the AppleTV was equally painful, and I didn't even try using a client until making sure all the metadata was downloaded and setup via the web UI. I was very deliberate and did one thing at a time, spending a whole day on it (mostly waiting and browsing to different screens to force metadata to get downloaded and cached).
A Pi isn't a NAS with an old CPU and minimal RAM which is running a bunch of other things as well. I have run Plex on my Synology, and it's fine, but I also have 8gb ram and honestly always have a better experience running Jellyfin on a small PC. Easier that way, and you can run other services. Before the rampocalypse you could find mini-PCs with 32gb ram and 1tb SSD for like $350, and have great transcoding ability when you are on the go or have multiple streams going.
I really wish someone would come out with a $25 "box" that sits on top of my bookshelf speaker that allows me to Airplay to it and power said speaker with a ~50w class-D amp. Then if I have multiple ones, it would allow them to pair and setup stereo or surround sound. I might even pay $50 for it. Kinda like a Sonos Amp but not at that price point.
Everything Sonos is already expensive. It's got the lifestyle-product tax built in.
Anything involving Sonos with wires increases support cost. Simply involving wires produces new ways for people to screw things up (as if supporting their wireless-only customers wasn't expensive enough).
And those who are using wires but not screwing things up gain the ability to expand and improve their audio systems in their own ways, without paying the Sonos tax to do so. They can buy/upgrade whatever speakers they want from any manufacturer in the world, while keeping the same Sonos Amp. That represents lost opportunity, so the amp gets taxed harder.
(The tech inside the Sonos Amp isn't particularly novel. It's just a small Linux box with a trick proprietary software stack and some audio hardware.)
I do like my Sonos setup (have a pair of Era300s, an Arc Ultra, Sub4, and Sub Mini) and now that they've fixed the app issues, it works really well. And the sound quality is good enough for me. I just wish the Amp product was about half the price. It doesn't do all that much more.
It means clocks tick at different rates depending on where they are.
Imagine spacetime as a field of local clocks. Far from the Sun, clocks tick faster. Near the Sun, clocks tick slower. A freely moving object tries to follow the straightest possible path through spacetime. But because the “time axis” changes from place to place, what counts as “straight ahead into the future” tilts slightly inward near the Sun. So the Earth’s path through spacetime curves toward the Sun.
Earth’s spatial speed around the Sun is about 30 km/s. But through spacetime, its “timeward” motion is basically c, 300,000 km/s. So even a tiny tilt in the time direction creates a significant spatial acceleration. That is why the time-warping term dominates for slow massive bodies.
That's right -- the atmosphere stays attached to the Earth mostly thanks to gravity, and the Earth's gravity in GR is almost entirely the gradient in clock rate near the Earth.
Near Earth’s surface, clocks lower down tick very slightly slower than clocks higher up. The change in tick rate is on the order of 10^(-16) per meter. While extremely small, that's enough to generate the familiar 9.8 m/s^2 spatial acceleration we experience. Such a small gradient in clock rates generates macrosopically noticeable spatial accelerations because the "translation" factor is c^2, a tremendously large number.
Now, if I wanted to cover all my bases here, I'd need to point out that gravity does also bend space -- that is just not a relevant factor for "ordinary" gravity acting on relatively slow moving matter (like the Earth itself, or the Earth's atmosphere). For instance, for light itself, spatial bending is just as important (in fact, the gravitational deflection of light by a weak static gravitational field is controlled by a near 50/50 split between spatial and temporal effects). Near a massive black hole, it's not that simple and can't meaningfully be understood in terms of "time" and "space" effects being independently separated.
I’ve seen this described before in terms of how GPS is able to do what it does, so not surprising. But still haven’t explained why time would so dominate the space dimension.
Edit: The response below is dead for some reason, please vouch.
Everything we experience is far larger in time than space, so of course time effects dominate on scales we perceive.
But this just raises the question of what it means to be larger in time than space. You can look at it in terms of multiples of Planck distance or time, but I think there's a more enlightening way to look at it. If you express the speed of light in those Planck units, it's 1. But the speed of light is also the maximum speed of causality. Any causally-bound system must run long enough for chains of causation to propagate, usually far below the speed of light in practice. This means that basically anything that exists within the bounds of our manipulation must be happening at scales where there is far more time involved than space.
We all exist below the diagonal because the diagonal is the bound at which the ways chemistry and biology work no longer even are theoretically possible.
You contribute to the stress-energy tensor by having mass or energy. That directly influences spacetime curvature. The Einstein field equations tell you how precisely.
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