jadero

Heh. I agree. My only experience with Xplornet was in trying to support people who had it. No internet is far preferable.

We bought a cabin at the lake with an eye to retirement. Dysfunctional workplaces led us to move there nearly 15 years early. We figured that if we were going to work anyway, we might as well do it in a restorative environment.

There is no cell service, landline service is noisy enough that my very nice modem is lucky to hit 20 kbps, and I knew too much about ExploreNet to tolerate their “service”. I’m no fan of Musk or the concept of Starlink, but the price/performance is stellar (sorry) and it’s nice to be able to get stuff done without having to drive in to the library, especially given that it’s only open 15 hours a week.

I spent a decade without internet. I never did figure out how to get Chromecast to work. Even for plain screen casting it insisted on needing an internet connection. Most of my stuff at the time was YouTube rentals that allowed downloads, so I got the hardware that let me use HDMI to connect my phone to the TV.

I’m glad I’m old enough to not have to consider living at the population density you suggest. I find the population density of Saskatchewan to be quite enough. I lived in a small city (Saskatoon) for 40 years and the last 10 were flat out miserable. The first 30 were tolerable only because we escaped to nature every weekend.

Tundras aren’t going to be all that liveable just because the temperature is a bit nicer. They’ll still get very dark in the winter. Like 24-hour darkness, in some of it. Some people thrive, some people cope, some people go batshit crazy when daylight hours drop below about 4 hours a day.

That’s actually the easy part. Most tundra is sitting on top of permafrost. I worked on low latitude tundra for one summer and if my experience there is representative, melting permafrost is going to turn a lot of tundra into swampland for a long time.

Even if I’m wrong about the tundra turning into swampland, there isn’t really all that much room. Good luck cramming a few billion people above 55 or 60 degrees latitude.