Living in Seattle saved me. In the winter months I started waking up and sitting in front of a SAD light for half an hour. I almost immediately got bored so I started reading long-form books (with the occasional short story) in front of the light for an hour each morning.
I gave up on facebook in 2010 and twitter in 2020ish. I never developed the habit for other social media. I turn off slack and email for the first 45 minutes of each hour. If the server is on fire, call me. That's why I have a phone. Oh, and I have an old-school non-smart phone for phone calls and it often lives in a different room from where I work. I run a TOTP authenticator on a tablet that's not configured to receive any messages.
HN and an occasional YouTube video are my only online distractions. In my advanced age I've lost the desire to tell everyone how wrong they are, which seems to be the national sport of online comments sections. (Though, HN, you're much better than most places.) I've been getting into GMRS lately and it's hard to turn off the radio during work days, but I have been able to do it. Maybe I should write a similar article saying "the net doesn't distract me, but dang if I can't go 10 minutes without thinking about people I know via GMRS."
The author of this piece makes an observation about bullshit vs. attention that is probably worth looking into. My last several jobs have included less bullshit, but a lot more documentation. Which is to say, the docs I write seem to have actual applicability to a real business problem and it's solution. There's little busy work that only serves to prove that a remote VP has more people working for him.
I think what I'm trying to say is a) it is possible to strengthen your attention gland. I'm happy to see the author at least trying. And... b) maybe there's a correlation between perceived bullshit and ability to focus. This needs more research.
Somewhat apropos... I started re-learning cursive about two years ago. I'm old enough to have been taught cursive when I was young, but my dad preferred block letters (he was trained as an engineer) so I took after him when I entered college. My handwriting was never going to win any awards (either cursive or block) but with attentive practice, my cursive is up to about where it was in 9th grade.
I wonder what my brain would look like writing cursive instead of block two years ago vs. today? If you're comparing type-writing with cursive penmanship in a sample that doesn't control for how much experience individual test subjects have with cursive, I suspect you may not get the results you're looking for.
I don't have any data for this assertion, but was disappointed to see the research not control for this variable. Not to say the research wasn't useful... In fact, were I to have control of the research budget, I would give them more money for a larger study that controls for more variables including age, experience with cursive and (what the heck) socio-economic background.
So... I recommend trying to (re) learn cursive. It's sort of fun to watch the faces of people when they realize you've reverted to jr. high school penmanship.
Any indication when v2.9.0 will be released? I'd love to play with this, but the install instructions (at least for linux) don't seem to work. Is it working in Windowsland or on macOS?
lol. I remember seeing LLLSDL go by when I originally saw the movie. The funny but is I had just written the internet draft for LLSD, so I was wondering g if someone on the writing staff had been following our work at Linden Lab. More likely it was a coincidence and all the L's meant "Laser."
As I pointed out to the OP on Mastodon, I very much believe that it was a reference to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, where they filmed a big door, and the original laser sequence from the first TRON movie.
sure, but when I worked there, the only abbreviation I remember seeing was LLNL for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. But the T:L producers could easily have just used LLL as their own abbreviation.
As a long time emacs user, I appreciated the inclusion of EMACS as an error code. When I moved from TECO to gnu emacs in to 80s, elisp was an advance. Now I have a perpetual todo item... "rewrite emacs in fennel or janet or even minimalisp."
I upvoted this post because a) I love hearing people's memories of their first programming interactions and b) Susam's website is delightfully straight-forward: no ads, appeals to download AI apps and the videos are in support of the text. I love it!
This kind of misses the point. Or rather... it's necessary but not sufficient. If the goal is to get code you can trust, then you have to trust each package. Origin Integrity will help you with this if you have a list of trusted devs. But what do you do if a trusted dev imports code from an untrusted source?
All revolutionary fervour aside, I'm a fan of Kurz. My bread is buttered more on the David Harvey side, but Kurz is no fool. I'm not sure the headline "Capitalism has to become more humane" is the best distillation of his message.
Also... Money is Theft and The Economy is a Lie. Education inoculates you against new facts. Our meritocratic democracy ensures government by the mediocre.
As Paul Virillo once quipped, "the invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck." And we appear to have shot the ensign who was looking out for icebergs.
"They Live" was a documentary. "Idiocracy" is far too optimistic to be accurate. Reflexive modernity has made Ballard's "High Rise" into a love story.
I gave up on facebook in 2010 and twitter in 2020ish. I never developed the habit for other social media. I turn off slack and email for the first 45 minutes of each hour. If the server is on fire, call me. That's why I have a phone. Oh, and I have an old-school non-smart phone for phone calls and it often lives in a different room from where I work. I run a TOTP authenticator on a tablet that's not configured to receive any messages.
HN and an occasional YouTube video are my only online distractions. In my advanced age I've lost the desire to tell everyone how wrong they are, which seems to be the national sport of online comments sections. (Though, HN, you're much better than most places.) I've been getting into GMRS lately and it's hard to turn off the radio during work days, but I have been able to do it. Maybe I should write a similar article saying "the net doesn't distract me, but dang if I can't go 10 minutes without thinking about people I know via GMRS."
The author of this piece makes an observation about bullshit vs. attention that is probably worth looking into. My last several jobs have included less bullshit, but a lot more documentation. Which is to say, the docs I write seem to have actual applicability to a real business problem and it's solution. There's little busy work that only serves to prove that a remote VP has more people working for him.
I think what I'm trying to say is a) it is possible to strengthen your attention gland. I'm happy to see the author at least trying. And... b) maybe there's a correlation between perceived bullshit and ability to focus. This needs more research.
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