Some android phones have the ability to long press on a notification, click on settings, and alter what kinds of notifications you receive. I’ve had a few instances like you describe, but where I’ve been able to turn off “special deals” or whatever. I think implementation of this is done by the app developer though, because I’m sure I’ve had some apps that had no useful settings. Example screenshot of Gmail settings:

Now I’m thinking about an ex-programmer supervillain who does this as her big foray into supervillainy

Oh damn, I just lost the game too, and now I’m thinking about the game as if it were a virus - like, I reckon we really managed to flatten the curve for a few years there, but it continues to circulate so we haven’t been able to eradicate it

Finland is very good for people who hate smalltalk.

I love stories like this because it makes me reflect on random people I’ve seen who have stuck in my memory for years who probably never noticed me. Makes me wonder if anyone remembers me for something random like this

“vendored my library”

I’m unfamiliar with this phrase, are you able to explain what it means (or point me towards an explanation)? Is it relating to forking?

I agree, you’ve captured much of why I came away from the article feeling a bit ‘hmmm’.

Something I read somewhere that I found super interesting is that on Windows, when a process completes, the user often gets a notification or popup alerting them to this, whereas on Linux, it’s more normal for there to not be any confirmation messages when a process is finished. I hadn’t consciously realised this difference until I read this and reflected on how many times I’d have to double check things when I first started using Linux.

I was talking to a friend recently who was frustrated because they felt like tech support had been treating them like an idiot. They’re a reasonably techy person and had gone through all the troubleshooting steps in the documentation, but the person on the phone had them do it all again. I tried to explain the perspective of the tech support guy — the fact that people often refuse to restart their PC because it feels like too simple of a step and they feel patronised by the suggestion, to the extent that people lie about whether they’ve done a particular troubleshooting step.

I told them that it was valid to feel frustrated with how long the call took when it could’ve been much quicker and simpler, but that they should attribute their frustration at people who repeatedly refuse to read the docs, rather than the tech support guy. My friend wasn’t an idiot, but they were tarred with the same brush because of how many people seeking tech support are belligerent idiots.

I wonder what would facilitate people to make their own solutions in this way. Like, I have made a few apps or automation things myself, but if I look at my “normie” friends who don’t have the level of tech familiarity that I do, they struggle with whatever out of the box solutions they can find. Poor IT education is a big part of this, and I’ve been wondering a lot about what would need to change for the average “normie” to be empowered to tinker

That there is no silver bullet, no quick fix, no “Eureka” moments that happen without work. “Progress” is less an exciting event, more a rhythm made by the repeated struggling against entropy; when you’re doing it well, you’ll come to hardly notice its beat until one day you look around and everything’s different.

You’d think that recognising this progress might be motivating, but it’s often demoralising because it demonstrates how unglamorous the work of self-improvement is. You hardly get time to enjoy your achievements, because as you grow, you become aware of how much more there is to do; the burdens on one’s time and energy tend to expand as our personal capacities do, so even if one makes incredible progress it can feel like you haven’t moved at all — in both your “before” and “after” snapshots, it can feel like you’re still barely staying afloat in life, even if objectively, you have massively improved your coping skills.

And the worst part of it all is knowing that it’s okay to be feeling like this. You’re tired because it’s a lot of work, and you’re demoralised because the work doesn’t end. You’re not the only one who has the stake in your life and your wellbeing, and as you grow, this will be underscored by a greater sense of duty towards the systems and people that depend on you; When I was young and very depressed, I stayed alive for my family and I resented the fact that they cared about me because it bound me to life. (Un)fortunately(?), over the years, my attempts to stick around to avoid hurting the people I care about has led to a bunch more people being invested in my wellbeing and I ended up loving those people too. How privileged I am to have such wonderful people in my life, who give me hope for the world and embolden me to keep fighting. And yet, I resent these people too. I have to allow myself that, at least a little bit, otherwise I’d collapse under the pressure of a duty to a world so much larger than I am. The worst part of it all is that I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So here I am, still plodding along, despite everything, hoping to make my existence a tiny little monument to resistance, as I stubbornly push back against all-consuming entropic decay. I know that in the grand scheme of things, nothing I, as an individual, does will matter, nor will it last, but I don’t care. Well, I do care — the enormity of it threatens to swallow me whole — but I don’t care that I care, because what difference does it make? The hardest lesson I’ve learned is that everyone feels this way, to an extent, and I’m nothing special. In that truth is terror, but also the comfort of solidarity. I may be scared and exhausted, but I know I’m not alone in this. For better or for worse, my life isn’t just for me.

Book bundles make things messy, yeah.

Something that I’ve really struggled with is that I wish it were easier to make notes of where you’ve gotten a recommendation from. Like let’s say I’m learning Python and there’s a dizzying amount of books available for that. Someone I personally know and respect gives a glowing recommendation of a book, so I download it and process it’s metadata in calibre or similar. Then a Reddit thread has a dump of free books. I download and import those. Then a blogger I really like recommends a few books, so I retrieve any of those I haven’t got yet and import them. Time passes, and I go looking in my library for a book to learn Python with, and I get overwhelmed by choices and I can’t remember which of them were good and for what reasons.

I have a similar problem with bookmarks, because sure you can add tags, but tags are best when you’ve got a limited vocabulary, to maximise reusability. What if I just want to write a brief note about why I deem this worthy of saving, so that I’m not confused when I’m skimming over bookmarks months or years later.

Something that I’ve found useful is finding ways of leveraging inertia^[1]. A big part of this is using separate devices for different things. Some people find it useful to have a clear divide between work devices and personal, but that’s never worked for me, I tend to separate contexts. I’m getting too abstract, so I’ll bring it back with a few concrete examples:

• If I decide to take a break and do something fun on my laptop, I might sit somewhere out of reach of my charger, which limits me to around 2 hours of battery life. If I have to get up to put my laptop on charge, I find it easier to change task back to working if I’m already up.

• If I am gaming on my PC and want to wrap that up but am at risk of a “just 10 more minutes”, I might order takeout (if I remember to eat), because that’s another forced stop to my task and when I’m up, it’s much easier to honestly ask “is gaming what I want/need to be doing right now” than it is when I’m mid-game

• If a friend I want to reply to has messaged me when I need to work, I may make myself reply to them from my main computer at my desk, because I’m less likely to get stuck doomscrolling on my phone in bed in that world.

Inertia definition below, in case you or anyone else reading this are unfamiliar with it in this context: [1]: a term borrowed from physics, which means basically the same in the neurodivergent context as it does in physics: an object in rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion, UNLESS acted on by an outside force. In an ADHD sense, this captures some aspects of task switching; procrastination and task activation; hyper focusing and cycles where you do lots and then crash.

I think the “Moved from Jekyll to Hugo” dot has an implicit catchment area around it, which includes people who don’t technically fit that description, but they’re close. I’ve used neither Jekyll nor Hugo, but the fact I understood that archetype meant I felt pulled in by the gravity of that point.

Is that really what you want, to be a part of perpetuating hostility? I legitimately don’t understand why the tone escalated so much: You said use screens less, someone replied to you with a few reasons why that might not be possible for some people, and in your reply to that, you just sort of blew up?

The reality is that most people are less patient than I am and will just downvote and move along. Maybe I should have too, but I thought that your original comment had the potential to seed an interesting discussion. I could say more here, but it’s not my job to convince you of the merits of not being an asshole in a world where that niche is already more than fulfilled. And who am I to talk, maybe negating discussion and getting downvotes are the results you want

I remember a few years back, after I finished my university exams (which were online), I was desperate for a break from a screen, but all of the things I would do to chill out from exams (namely, spending time with friends) was mediated by a screen.

This seems unnecessarily hostile. I think your original comment makes a good point, as does the person replying to you. If you don’t want to be a part of a discussion, then fair enough, but this is an oddly judgemental comment to be making.

I need to try audiobooks. I generally struggle with auditory input, but that’s mostly if I’m trying to dedicate all my focus to it. Games + audiobooks might be my jam

I really love calibre, but agree it can be a bit quirky. Like many ADHD people, I’m my own worst enemy sometimes, when I attempt to do a big import of books and then it’s too much work and my library gets messy. Something I did that helped was I had different tags for different levels of processed. Newly imported books would be auto-tagged “new”. Then I’d batch process them and remove the tag if I fully completed it. Often I’d burn out when I’d discover a book that still had DRM, or was missing OCR (ability to select text within pdf), so I’d add “DRM” or “NoOCR” tags. My workflow works pretty well for me now, because I’ve made it easier to do half a job

I enjoyed reading this rant, I found it very relatable, even though it sounds like we have quite different academic backgrounds. Nowadays, I read a decent amount of non fiction for fun, but I still struggle with reader’s block if I don’t feel like I have a reason to read, like a sort of self-given assignment to be studying for. That’s probably school’s fault too

For me, this might mean studying with the knowledge that when I get antsy and need to task switch, I can do the dishes instead. It feels like a weird form of circuit training