Road networks in most cities in my country are like someone just dropped a pot of spaghetti. The oldest urban areas here are at most 150 years old too, so it's not like we can blame the Romans.

You should become a cabbie in London. They all have to memorise 320 routes, 25,000 streets and 20,000 places of interest, e.g. hotels, stations, tourist attractions and so on. It's called The Knowledge. There's some evidence that mastering The Knowledge actually alters the structure of the brain!

This only works in cities with naming schema that work that way. For my city, if I wanted to go to my old college, I'd drive to Columbia Parkway and have to take Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard all the way in, or divert through downtown to Victory Parkway otherwise. Some places in the city are named logically or you know where they are, but outside of downtown, you abandon the 5th/6th/7th sort of scheme in many cities in America that weren't initially Planned Cities.

Now, you can do this in a handful of American cities (Indianapolis, for instance), but not most of them.

I wonder if it took quite a bit longer for people to reach their destination. Because not everyone would be as good at reading maps (compared to simply following gps instructions) Maybe that made it more common for people to arrive at different times. or plan longer trips because the driving would take up a bigger part of it.

Oh it absolutely did. You would regularly have to stop (often after a turn or if you felt like you missed one) and reconsult the map. You just accounted for that additional time. Longer trips are often less of an issue, because its usually, you get to a big main highway and its cruise most of the rest of the way.

And plenty of times, you might get lost/ not be able to find yourself on the map. You'd have to pull over and ask for help/ directions. You might write the directions down on a piece of paper, but that doesn't do you much good if you missed a turn and didn't know it.

Depends on the area and how familiar it is and how hostile it is to navigation. I can beat the Google maps time 9 out if 10 times in Seattle because Google sends you through some seriously dumb intersections.

As someone who travelled for work before and after smartphones, absolutely. You couldn't just open Google Maps, search a business and go there, the problem wasn't going city to city, but finding a specific place in or outside a city. If you got a request to go to X business either you already knew how to get there, or it would take some planning.

Nowadays my company can receive a request from a customer in another country, and in 1 hour they can plan the trip, reserve the rental car, book a plane, book an hotel for the night. That just wasn't possible in the past.

The main maps I used for driving (back in the day, UK, 1986) were 'books' rather than large fold out maps. At local level, an A to Z. At national level, an AA road map, this has the format of a small newspaper, however in thicker paper.

Swede here, how would using a street directory help you navigate without a map?

Sure, I know that at least here in Stockholm and it's suburbs that when a new area is being developed, they name the streets after a similar theme.

But knowing that Sommarvägen in Täby is located within the district of Hägernäs doesn't get you very far.

"You wanna go down Three Oak lane, I forget what its 'proper' name is, but there used to be a farm there called Three Oak Farm, so that's what we all call the lane round here. 'Course the farm's gone. And so have the oaks. Anyway, go along there until you get to the field where the unexploded bomb was found back in '68, and turn right. Then left past the field where the cows got sick last year. If you reach shagger's hill, you've gone too far. Now there's a ford down that way, so you can't miss it. Except, I suppose, in this weather since it hasn't rained in a month and the ford's probably dried up. Most important thing though, you don't want to start from here."

Actually a much better way was to use a street directory if you know your way around the town even a bit.

You generally only had a street directory of your OWN town, outside of specific professional settings.

That reminds me that I never moved the map from old car to the new current one.

Basically, those people were not going with you. I wouldn't consider them your friends. Friends would at least tell you they are bailing so you don't go

Sometimes I'll be getting myself ready to do the thing, but if someone reaches out and gives me an out... Yeah I might just take them up on it. I'm big on canceling plans

Mmmm, interesting, can you list off that data along with your mother's maiden name? It's uh for a friend...

Same here. I even still remember my phone number from 40 years ago, living as a child in Tehran, Iran. Numbers just stick in my brain.

That's memorization in action

It was a fairly regular part of our public school education

Ah ha, that one I did not know. I guess slavery is also Americana, though a whole lot less quaint than the thought of industrious households making their own nails

Before adhesive pads were invented to stick to your underwear, you had to wear a climbing harness and use safety pins to keep your pad in place.

Good for you.

DIY filter change? $25 give or take depending on the filter. Service company doing it? $100 for the luxury of them arriving, $30 filter, $150 min labor rate to maybe do a service check, then whatever $ for issues they find.

FWIW think it’s good to have pros check stuff once in a while, they’ll see things I won’t know to check.

Not OP, but I believe there is a big difference between reading a book or longform article vs 3 paragraphs in a Fediverse thread. I certainly feel it when I sit down to read longform (but i still often read longform).

But what are they reading? Being a better reader or writer is only as good as the information exchanged. Is it memes? Clips? How about per capita?

Most shoes aren't really built to be resoled these days, they're out there and if they can be they usually make it a selling point of that shoe, they're usually a good bit pricier than other comparable shoes as well, probably gonna be about $250usd at the low end

Coincidentally I actually just sent my hiking boots out to be resoled. I have a pair of Danners, they cost probably around $450 new, and I'm getting their full recrafting service, so new heel counter, shank, resole, goretex lining, and if my shoe had any broken hardware that'd get replaced too, cost I think $260. Just a simple resole would be cheaper of course, and if you have a decent local cobbler they could probably beat that price.

I've had them about 4 years, and at this point the sole is pretty well-worn-out but the uppers are still in pretty good shape. They've been worn pretty close to daily, and have some hard miles on them.

I definitely feel that I've gotten my money's worth, before these I probably got new boots every 2 years or so and usually spent about $200 on a pair, so if these last me another 4 years (and I don't have any reason to think they won't, but there's no guarantee what misadventures my boots might go through in the next 4 years) I'll have even come out a bit ahead on them vs buying cheaper boots.

These are hiking boots, so I'm not exactly keeping them mirror-polished or anything, so care is pretty minimal, clean them with saddle soap once in a while, wipe them down with mink oil or whatever your preferred leather conditioner/waterproofing stuff is a couple times a year (I generally try to do at least twice a year, maybe a bit more frequently if they're getting a lot of hard use- getting really dirty, worn in the winter or near the ocean where they may be getting salty, etc.)

Also not shilling specifically for Danners, I've been very happy with them so far, but there's plenty of other brands out there that are as good or better, and of course everyone has their personal preference. My next pair may or may not be danners, I do have my eye on some boots from higher-end manufacturers if my budget allows.