I’m almost purely digital for pretty much all of notifications that come my way - even my doctor.
I don’t live in the area code where my phone number is from, and haven’t in so long that there’s only a few people that would call me from that area code.
And - well spotted - The 38 call salvo from the day prior was actually a contractor trying to get ahold of me. Because it was a number from my current area code, I went ahead and called them back. The person who called me only tried to dial once, and the redials were all the computer automatically retrying.
Admittedly, it is less than optimal, but in the 5ish years I’ve gone without a voicemail, it’s the second time I haven’t picked up for a desired call.
Usually when I know I’m going to be receiving calls from new folks, I’ll first try to call their number or text them - even if the number isn’t in my contacts, if I’ve interacted with it in some fashion, it will ring through. Or I’ll disable the ‘straight to voicemail’ for a time.
It’s not too onerous, and I really hate spam calls, so the effort of remembering to enable/disable it a few times a year is worth it to me.
And, for what it’s worth, I do think it has an effect. Earlier this year I let calls through and forgot to block them again, and it was 3 weeks before I got a spam call. Before taking such extreme measures, I was getting about 5 a week.
I just had my carrier remove my voicemail.
I’m on iOS, and I have “silence unknown callers” turned on. I’m sure a similar Android option exists.
Basically - any number that calls me that is unknown (that isn’t in my contacts or I haven’t called/picked up before) goes right to my nonexistent voicemail, which means they’re immediately hung up on.
Auto-dialers are funny. Most are configured to redial on connection fail. Yesterday I received 38 calls in a 2 minute period. Never got a single notification about it
Not just land and water use, but there may be market reasons, as well as reasons relating to consistency and application specific variations, too.
A bad grow season means lowered supply, higher global cotton prices, etc. Natural farming means lots of supply at harvest, money spent on storage and dwindling supply during the off seasons. There’s often transport costs (usually), and there’s always cleaning and deseeding, too.
On the environment front, while polyester and other plastic-based fibers have their uses, they are often used instead of cotton due to cost. Consumers are becoming more aware of micro plastics, and may start changing buying habits as a result. It’s also possible that governments may start to regulate artificial fibers, too.
Technology-wise, it may be possible to tweak the fibers for specific use cases. It may even be possible to grow colored fibers, or fibers with enhanced strength.
A lab-grown option, especially if at scale, can mean a constant supply of fibers near looms that are customizable, need less post-processing, and are more appealing to consumers.
Back then the internet was a bunch of coffee shops. Not literally, of course - but for me it was about 30 people on messenger, my favorite chatroom, a random message board, a small but far flung group of people on LiveJournal, and sometimes even my Neopets guild.
Each was my own retreat. The weird and funny stuff we shared there was created and shared because people had a passion for whatever. It also was great in that you could learn about something, and share it with another group that had not seen it yet.
Today the internet is the infinite cul-de-sacs of meme pages, political messaging groups, and disinformation rings on Facebook, along with approximately 6 people that keep showing up from your friends list of hundreds. Or it’s the screaming gladiatorial stadium of Reddit, where the sheer volume of noise smothers any particular voice. Maybe it’s the infinite lawless Walmart of X or even the carefully manicured Target that is BlueSky.
From mining your attention, to hawking trinkets amidst the spectacle, or attempting to sell a little bit of everything to anyone, the new internet lacks third places. It’s all business, all the time, and you can feel it. Every meme is created to engage with that platform’s broadest audience. Everything is homogenized and lacks uniqueness. All the content has been aggregated and reshared, and in the endless and futile search for validation from the algorithm it’s lost something that makes it meaningful.
And that’s why I like Lemmy. It’s a digital third place.