I don’t have a problem. I can quit any time I like. I only swipe recreationally. Every five minutes. Maybe I’m in denial. First stage, right?

update: Auto-correct and I are in a toxic relationship. Swiping just enables it. Tried quitting once. Worst 5 minutes of my life.

update: There’s this 12-step program… Step one was turning off predictive text. Didn’t make it to step two.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: May 19th, 2024

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  • Intelligence is such an elusive concept, but here goes anyway…

    Knowing stuff makes you knowledgeable. You’re either born intelligent, stupid or somewhere in between. No amount of studying will ever change that, unless studying also involves copious amounts of alcohol. In that case, you’ll only get dumber.

    Anyway, studying gives you information and tools, and what you’re talking about is a bit of both. If you go through a training system like that, you’ll be equipped to process and evaluate information, but none of that changes how intelligent you are. Sure, you can sound really smart to other people by using fancy terms and explaining complicated things. Those words alone don’t make you intelligent. Having the innate ability to understand that level of information does.

    I’m sure there are really smart people living in rural parts of India where they don’t learn to read or even count very far, but they can do really clever stuff when hunting birds or weaving baskets. Even though they didn’t receive much education beyond what they learned from the local villagers they can still be intelligent. If they were born in a wealthy family in UK, these people would probably go to Oxford and graduate with a PhD in no time.


  • Practice juggling. Buy 3 juggling balls (you know those bean bag types that don’t roll away), and keep them with you. Don’t use tennis balls, because they have a tendency to bounce and roll. When you have some downtime, start practicing. Watch a few video tutorials to get the hang of it.

    If you can have a backpack with you, consider bringing a tablet with you. If you have one with a pen, you can draw. Watch a few more tutorials, and learn to draw something you like. Landscapes, portraits, fantasy dragons, pokemons whatever.

    Tablets are also fine for reading ebooks. Check what your local library has to offer. Maybe you can borrow library books and read them on your tablet.



  • Some people have managed to diversify their income, but a hefty chunk still comes from ad money. That income is also wildly unpredictable, so it really makes economic sense to diversify. Being entirely dependent on a single source puts your business in a very precarious position. If your company fails as a result, it’s just bad strategy. On the other hand, you could also blame YT for being unpredictable, wild and turbulent.

    The way I see it, the core of the problem is economic. Making videos takes money. Storage and bandwidth cost something too, so doing this on a small scale won’t make much sense.

    There are a few medium scale platforms like Nebula, and they seem to be doing just fine. IMO those platforms are the way to go.








  • That’s a common theme in psychology. We’ve built this house of cards on opinions, subjective observations and beliefs. Neurobiology and statistics are gradually beginning to pull the rug under the mess we call psychology.

    It took us a few hundred years to go from medieval alchemy to modern biochemistry, and the same should apply to psychology as well. Check back in a hundred years or so to see if it’s any better. My guess is, it’s going to take 200 years to figure out what autism even is, how to classify it, how to test for it and so on.

    We have a very long way to go, so the current terms are only marginally useful. Don’t take them too seriously just yet.



  • I’ve been using DDG for many years, and I haven’t looked back. Recently, I also set up Qwant on my laptop. So far, it’s been pretty smooth sailing.

    Swapping Google Cancer to Apple Cancer is one way to reduce your dependence on Google, but I’m not entirely sure that really solves the underlying problem. Either way, there are a few Google services that I could replace with alternatives, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I guess, one day I just need to start paying for a NextCloud subscription or something.