Candide: The Liminal Space

[delay]

Now that I am done with the job, I am on an information
diet: no YouTube until the first weekend of the month.

Thanks for your journal!

A problem with the concept of "diet" is that it means applying mental force to restrain oneself. In this mindset, the addiction is a reward. Like, "no youtube limits on my birthday" or a "I've earned chocolate after a week of diet". Because mental force is a limited resource this approach works for nobody.

Part of a real solution must be changing one's mental concept of YouTube so that it is no longer a reward to strife for. This should be easy: associate opening YouTube with the consequences of opening YouTube. For some reason it's not. I wonder what ways there are to lift that fog.

[OutOfTheBlue]

Etymological note: the word diet comes from the Greek, and initially meant "way of life".

In light of this additional meaning, the word itself now offers the subtle perspective shift.

[candide]

@delay
I had considering using the word "protocol" instead of "diet", but I found that the connotations are more clinical and pretensions. But is also might have been more accurate, and as you are showing, "diet" has its own baggage as a term.

I should have pointed out that this was a refinement I had already done
viewtopic.php?p=272389#p272389

and to @OOTB's point I am now trying to make it a way of life, which I think I can as long as my lifestyle doesn't change for significantly worse again -- such as another bad job or some other debilitating illness.

During my last go, I was off all graphical browsers. And while this taught me important skills for how I want my relationship to information to be, it is slightly too restrictive. As it is, my every day carry computer is now light-weight and text/command line only, but if I want to do things that require a GUI browser, I can, just after going through the barrier of booting up another computer.

As for the Tube of Plenty, as my relationship with the company that is now too big to not be evil, I still find YouTube useful enough as a tool to search, so I have started a text file that I store at SDF, which I can ssh into from either computer, giving me all the cloud that I need. Also, there are some channels that I don't really want to lose contact with completely (they tend to post less than once a week, so I think it really works out).

I'll probably try out some of @OOTB's suggestions for my first YouTube weekend, the 6th-7th. Also, talking thinking aloud, I might try to use one of my extra chromebooks from the batch I bought to try to implement Pi-Hole on it... I also added the Burnham link to my text file to look at for YouTube weekend.

[delay]

to try to implement Pi-Hole on it...

Pi-hole is awesome! I used it until half a year ago and it blocked YouTube ads. Kind of surprising that a DNS blacklist keeps working.

Ad blockers like uBlock Origin also work. Surprisingly a different browser works too. YouTube does not serve adds on Brave or Orion or Huawei's native Browser app.

[candide]

Info Diet (way of life)
================

This information diet -- where I look at YouTube only two days a month -- is probably going to work for me indefinitely. By cutting back on the constant scrolling, I'm getting a seriously upgraded content experience. Also, I have a list that I keep on text file using SDF.org as my cloud. When I get on my multi-media enabled computer, I can pull from that list and immediately have some things to look for. I always say "a searchers internet is always better than a feeders."

Lastly, I haven't followed any suggestions yet for bypassing the YouTube homepage, certainly partly out of laziness, but also because I still remain curious about how that homepage improves when I take breaks. By giving YouTube a breather, you break the cycle of continuous data input. This pause enables the algorithm to recalibrate and give you content that aligns more accurately with your long-term interests, as opposed to short-term mental itch-scratching. It's as if the algorithm gets a chance to see the bigger picture of your tastes and preferences rather than reacting to every click and view in real-time. So, after a break, YouTube actually believes me that I am interested in tech, particularly at the lower and cheaper ends -- hence this beauty.

So, that's the improved YT side. This way of life also frees up the rest of my month to tackle other things with a computer set up that lets me get the information I want and get off. My little ChrUltrabook is more about gathering data than consuming it. For example, I wrote a little python script to make it really easy to enter data about birds with a menu and easy keyboard bindings. Which brings us to...

Bird watching
===========

Last winter, I thought I hit the jackpot with my bird feeding game. But it turns out, that was just beginner's luck. (That was a really magical thread, though, and I cherished looking back at it). I've come to realize that it's not just about throwing seeds out there and the birds will go for any old time of year. So, note to self: I can wait to start putting my seeds out around Christmas. This is, of course, a note that only applies to my local context -- YMMV. I can buy a small bag next year and just feed out from Christmas to ... some time in March or April.

But even feeding aside, winter is the best time for bird watching; the leafless branches make spotting those winged ones a breeze. Winter might be the only time to make bird watching the central focus of my outdoor time (again, limiting to my region, and context).

[candide]

This is the last update of this journal thread. In February I am starting a new one, as I realized "liminal" doesn't really describe the space I am in. I think I have picked a title for the next journal that will set a theme I will be comfortable sticking with for a while.

What with a few snow days keeping wife and child home, and my mother's gambit to make my free time hers, it has taken a little longer than I would have thought to decompress fully from my horrible last job. But decompress I have, and I am burning bright, but not manic. Also, god, I love a mid-day nap.

I have been doing a lot of organizing, and now with my nervous system finally healed, a lot of learning.

Scripting
=======

One piece of organization I have done is to get my computer life right. I am still on the command line rather than these new-fangled graphical user interfaces (hot take: GUIs are just a fad), so through a combination of Bash and Python scripts I have it to where any operation I do regularly is cut down to very few keystrokes.

My favorite is a Python script that has a loop of options that I type a number for and then have bash script to call that Python script [1]. Thus the Python shortens the way to call Bash scripts, and the Bash script shortens the way to call the Python script to ./p

Deep Time
=========

A theme has emerged for the book learning I am going to do over this little breather I am taking: deep time. I read Andrew Knoll's A Brief History of Earth, which I thought was going to be a geology primer, but was really about the mutual interaction of life and geology. According to Knoll, going back through what we can find, we run out of in tact rocks before we run out of signs of life. Good book to extract knowledge from. At no point did I learn about what any of the experts were wearing or what their work space looked like.

I put some books on hold from my library system to learn more geology proper, but one book that I picked up because it was already available at my branch was Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane. This book is going to be more of a poetic, spiritual capstone. Just flipping through, the idea of "from the perspective of deep time, why should anything matter?" is addressed:

For to think in deep time can be a means not of escaping our troubled present, but rather of re-imagining it; countermanding its quick greeds and furies with older, slower stories of making and unmaking. At its best, a deep time awareness might help us see ourselves as part of a web of gift, inheritance and legacy stretching over millions of years past and millions to come...

==

[1] Do I have error handling in case I screw up and type a string instead of a number? No, fuck you. This ain't no corporate software. Besides, I didn't put in a "quit" option, so causing that ValueError is more often than not how I end the loop.

[avalok]

[1] Do I have error handling in case I screw up and type a string instead of a number? No, fuck you. This ain't no corporate software. Besides, I didn't put in a "quit" option, so causing that ValueError is more often than not how I end the loop.

So adjusted am I to enterprise software that I wondered exactly this before reading the footnote. The awful things I have seen end users do; I wouldn't trust myself with using my own scripts any longer

Looking forward to the start of the new journal, and good to hear you've had time to decompress. See you on the new one!

[grundomatic]

Welcome back to the land of the living. Glad you are feeling better. Can't wait to not talk about teaching in your next journal.

[candide]

So adjusted am I to enterprise software that I wondered exactly this before reading the footnote. The awful things I have seen end users do; I wouldn't trust myself with using my own scripts any longer

@avalok I would never intentionally single you out for such harsh language. I just thought someone would notice.

I don't know if you saw a few posts back, but it turned out my bird success of last year was a bit of beginner's luck based on the timing... In my part of the world, it seems like I can just start putting out birdseed around Christmas. Anything earlier is just squirrel food.

@gru. Yes, I too look forward to not talking teaching. Looking at what you recently wrote elsewhere:

The "party and prom" crowd doesn't understand the "garage engineer" crowd, and neither understands the "abstract model-loving bookworm" crowd. Some people are "well-rounded" and can connect with all the crowds, but others double down and focus on their own scene.

I think I always would have happiest in the garage engineer crowd, but spent my twenties and most of my thirties trying to do the abstract model-loving thing. Worst yet, I really tried to understand... people.

[avalok]

I don't know if you saw a few posts back, but it turned out my bird success of last year was a bit of beginner's luck based on the timing.

I missed it; what a shame. Have you tried any other food types, like fat balls, etc?

[candide]

I missed it; what a shame. Have you tried any other food types, like fat balls, etc?

No, but no worries. I just think Dec-March will form birding season.

That's really good enough for me, as there is plenty for me to do outside most of the other months.

[grundomatic]

I think I always would have happiest in the garage engineer crowd, but spent my twenties and most of my thirties trying to do the abstract model-loving thing. Worst yet, I really tried to understand... people.

It seems we may be something of opposites...of the given examples, I'm furthest from the garage engineer and very much a people person, though I often find myself being the "least like everyone else" no matter where I go.

[candide]

It seems we may be something of opposites...of the given examples, I'm furthest from the garage engineer and very much a people person, though I often find myself being the "least like everyone else" no matter where I go.

Well, I don't think I would fit in with the garage engineers; I'd just rather be in the garage doing garage stuff than thinking. So I must say ditto to "least like everyone else." But alas I have shown no ability to make it as a hermit. Human contact has a required dosage for me. Although I certainly can have problems going over the dosage as well.