I stumbled on this article while hanging with my 94-year-old Grandparents today. It popped up on their new Amazon Echo Show and my Grandpa pointed at it, wondering what a "minister of loneliness" was all about while enjoying a 5-Guys burger and chocolate shake I picked up on the way to his house.
I've been studying at the problem of elderly loneliness and loneliness in general (I WFH). A little over a year ago when my Grandpa stopped driving at age 93 I started making more of an effort to hang with him. I noticed that in the beginning his memory wasn't as I remembering it being 10 years before that. But over the months as we started getting together more consistently it was as if we'd gone back in time. His memory is astonishing, better than most of my friends in their 30s. He remembers everything I tell him and is always checking in on whatever life problems I share with him. Ok, well maybe he's my Grandpa and just cares more about the little details of my life than most of my friends! :) Even so, getting together with him on a regular basis definitely had a profound impact on his mind and mobility. And on me too.
Tech can be useful for combatting loneliness. Nothing beats in-person interaction but products like Amazon Show can help fight loneliness. I blogged a bit more about my experience with it so far here: http://blog.nanagram.co/echo-show-unboxing. I've also been experimenting with a product in this space, https://nanagram.co, and it brings me a ton of joy to hear about how it brings families closer together. Reddit put forth an awesome idea to allow strangers to "adopt" grandparents (https://www.reddit.com/r/shutupandtakemymoney/comments/7fg6q...) which the product, which I love in theory and still need to figure out in practice.
Shameless plug: I'm building a platform for online (video +chat) support groups (campfire.care), to provide peer support for folks with any life challenge.
NYTimes, like the WAPost and WSJ, is a major publisher. It's not surprising that there would be a number of NYT submissions at a time.
There are clear guidelines on how to express which submissions you think are interesting (uprooting) and those you think aren't appropriate for HN (flagging). In addition, the guidelines ask
> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate."
9 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 28.8 ms ] threadI've been studying at the problem of elderly loneliness and loneliness in general (I WFH). A little over a year ago when my Grandpa stopped driving at age 93 I started making more of an effort to hang with him. I noticed that in the beginning his memory wasn't as I remembering it being 10 years before that. But over the months as we started getting together more consistently it was as if we'd gone back in time. His memory is astonishing, better than most of my friends in their 30s. He remembers everything I tell him and is always checking in on whatever life problems I share with him. Ok, well maybe he's my Grandpa and just cares more about the little details of my life than most of my friends! :) Even so, getting together with him on a regular basis definitely had a profound impact on his mind and mobility. And on me too.
Tech can be useful for combatting loneliness. Nothing beats in-person interaction but products like Amazon Show can help fight loneliness. I blogged a bit more about my experience with it so far here: http://blog.nanagram.co/echo-show-unboxing. I've also been experimenting with a product in this space, https://nanagram.co, and it brings me a ton of joy to hear about how it brings families closer together. Reddit put forth an awesome idea to allow strangers to "adopt" grandparents (https://www.reddit.com/r/shutupandtakemymoney/comments/7fg6q...) which the product, which I love in theory and still need to figure out in practice.
Any feedback welcome!
Who keeps bumping nytimes articles to the frontpage?
There are clear guidelines on how to express which submissions you think are interesting (uprooting) and those you think aren't appropriate for HN (flagging). In addition, the guidelines ask
> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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