There was a demo for a technology put out recently that circumvents this. I don’t remember the exact mechanisms, but it obscured DNS such that your ISP couldn’t see the DNS record you requested, and then used a proxy to route traffic before it hit the final endpoint eliminating exposing the IP to your ISP. It worked very similar to a VPN, but without the encrypted connection, and had some speed focused optimizations including the proxy being proximate to your ISP. It was pretty interesting.

I don’t necessarily agree. If a brand makes high quality stuff I’m not gonna avoid them just because they put their logo on their stuff. I have a kickass Adidas backpack from 2014 that is by far my favorite, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna get rid of it just because it has an Adidas logo on it.

I also have perfectly good clothes with various brands on them, and I’m not just gonna throw them away because that’s wasteful as hell. I don’t go out of my way to buy stuff with brands on them, but that won’t stop me from buying something I genuinely like and find to be high quality.

I often use that as a source of encouragement rather than defeat. My two favorite sports are snowboarding and muay thai which are filled with people who’ve been practicing before they formed memories. If a child is better than me then I’m almost certainly capable of becoming that good with continued practice. Even if it takes years it’s something to aspire to regardless of the relative age difference. I was one of those kids who was way better than a lot of people on a dirt bike. I was put on a dirt bike at the age of 4 and don’t even remember learning, so it’s not like it’s a fair comparison. Just run your own race and aspire to be like those around you.