I was sort of with you on the ocean stuff, swimming there isn’t really a substitute for a lifejacket, but swimming being for the privileged is a weird take.
If you don’t have access to a body of water for free, then public pools are usually cheaper than a movie ticket. You don’t need any equipment, all you need is one person that kinda half way knows how to swim and is willing to point you in the right direction.
My kid bought me a Back to the Future DeLorean for my birthday, about 2000 pieces.
Initially I thought it was kind of a mis-gift, something they would enjoy more than me since I hadn’t built a set since they were small and needed my help, but I made it a point to crack it open instead of letting it sit and it turned out to be quite enjoyable.
I wouldn’t do a mailing list these days, but as someone who spent the early part of my career interacting with devs that preferred this method, it’s actually pretty ergonomic by a 2005 standard. A message thread aware, text based email client that can turn messages into patches in a keystroke makes it actually pretty comparable to modern code review…
I think it’s hard for younger devs to get this because they’re used to email being stuck in a crappy, unthreaded browser interface or Outlook etc. (which are terrible for mailing lists) and most collaboration taking place in code review and chat platforms like Teams/Slack but for decades before these were feasible, email was the way…
In my experience that’s a very appropriate boner.