escapedmoose

You can argue the semantics all you want, but “highly processed foods”, despite the difficulty/ambiguity in defining them, tend to have both a higher calorie density and are proven to nudge people to consume more, vs. “whole foods” (i.e. minimally modified fruits, veggies, cooked whole meats, etc.). When you treat the “highly processed” label as a rule of thumb allowing for some ambiguity in the definition, and you compare people who eat processed vs. whole foods, you find that the whole foods group is overwhelmingly fitter.

I’m not going to pretend AI isn’t useful, but I’m begging you to look deeper into the arts! That this tech has “given you much more joy than any artist have come close to” is a pretty devastating statement. Connecting deeply with an artist/artwork is imo one of the great experiences of being human.

AI would do a horrendous job of summarizing it; the tone/impact wouldn’t hit without the visuals and timing/pacing.

Loneliness sucks man, I’m sorry. :(

It’s really interesting that lack of connection is what you jump to immediately as the cause of your sense of meaninglessness. I wonder what “thriving in society” looks like to you?

And you may have tried this already, but personally I’ve found group hobbies to improve my sense of connectedness. I’m part of a group that meets regularly to sketch on street corners and in coffee shops. I’m not best friends with anyone there, but it’s very fulfilling just to sit with people in the same space for a couple hours, listen to them talk, and share our sketches. There might be drawing, hiking, photography, dance, etc. groups near you…?

You’re certainly not alone in feeling lonely these days though. Modern society is so isolating, connecting feels like such a challenge.

Did it work? Did the company fare well?

I’ve been journaling regularly all my life; I consider myself a journaling expert!

I’ve gone through dozens of hardcover Moleskines and a couple Hobonichis, and countless other random notebooks. Because I write so much and don’t want to create waste, I use fountain pens which I fill with my favorite waterproof, UV-resistant, archival inks.

These days I typically use 3 physical journals daily:

- a pocket-sized softcover sketchbook which I keep in my wallet for thoughts/drawings about town

- a larger softcover Leuchtturm for more longform writing, which I bring along when I’m feeling thoughtful

- a Hobonichi “5 year journal” which I keep at home, every morning briefly logging the main events of the previous day

3 books is probably overkill for most people. I don’t set journaling goals/expectations for myself, rather I just write when I feel the need to work something out (which is pretty well all the time). My journals get filled with random doodles, writing in all directions, ticket stubs, etc. I’m quite informal about it but I’m never without some type of notebook. I follow the maxim “an artist is a person with a sketchbook attached,” believing that the same applies to writers and journals. I’m more consistent about carrying my notebooks than I am with carrying my phone.

I also use Obsidian heavily for general PKM, and sometimes journal-type essays wind up in there if my hand is tired.

I highly recommend the nonfiction book ‘The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper’ for those interested in the technology of notebooks/sketchbooks, how they have evolved over time, and how people use them for various applications that most people never think of.

Did you always feel this way? If not, how far can you trace it back? I don’t have any particular expertise in the subject, just curious and willing to listen if you’d like to talk it out.

One alternative is blurring the face of anyone who hasn’t given you permission to broadcast. This has been the accepted standard in Japan for a while.

Same. If I have breakfast it seems to kickstart my metabolism or something idk. The result is, if I have breakfast, I’m distracted by hunger all morning. If I skip breakfast I can focus all morning and I don’t get hungry until lunchtime. Bodies are weird.

Same. 9 months into quitting socials I feel like I got a new brain. I’m appreciating my surroundings and noticing the cadence of the day more than I have in years. I’ve been killing it at work and got a promotion. Just last year I had been thinking to myself that my mind had lost its sharpness since college. Now I feel like it’s noticeably expanding!

I will never ever ever ever go back. The perks of online connection were never worth the sacrifices.

I often fail to finish projects simply because I forget about them. I start reading a book, but I don’t write it down anywhere (say, in Goodreads) that “I’m reading this book” is something I have committed to.

I don’t have a history of ADHD symptoms. But I’ve been happier and arguably more productive since I abandoned the idea that I must complete projects just because I committed to them at the start. Sometimes you learn, halfway through a book, that it doesn’t contain the info you thought it would; then it’s best abandoned. The same applies to many commitments, I think. We learn more about them as we undertake them. Something might stop being engaging because deep down we’ve realized that it won’t serve us as we expected.

But maybe I’m able to discern productive vs nonproductive commitments because I don’t have ADHD? I just hate to see people beating themselves up about not following through with ideas which really don’t deserve follow-through.

Obsidian, along with my notes on everything else in life. I made an Apple Shortcut that saves the contents of a webpage along with its links to my Obsidian as markdown text and as a pdf, so I use that to save blog posts etc that I enjoyed.

Does anyone else find the constant AI-generated images in blogs these days extremely frustrating? They never seem to add anything of value to the article. Just more distractingly colorful garbage to scroll past. :(

I have the same experience. Until 30 I was one of those people who schedules every hour of their life, used habit trackers religiously, set SMART goals and recorded metrics of how I spent time. I got settled financially/professionally/personally and over the past few years have dropped the old productivity methods. This year I decided to drop the last of them entirely, with great results. Focusing on the moment at hand and following my instincts has made me a lot happier so far, and is still leading to great opportunities.

Maybe it works because we kept our heads down until we were settled, and loosened up after gaining enough experience to develop good instincts? Interesting to hear someone else has taken a similar path with similar results!

You’ve captured an elusive sentiment so well! AI is (often, not always) good at generating the “Platonic ideal” of something. It falls apart ime when you’re confronting a specific problem that requires more nuance.

Character/personality in a creative work imo comes largely from an element of surprise. If there’s nothing counterintuitive about a work, it’s not very memorable/enticing. Maybe that’s why AI art/text feels so bland. The Platonic ideal is bland. But also, if you’re looking for function rather than art, AI can dish it out.

Yes, while the author’s site is made for humans, it seems like a majority of the web is not. So we get what was coming to us, with AI condensing the content that was intentionally bloated for SEO and ad revenue.

I’ve recently had a couple people try to help me fix code issues by handing me the results of their AI prompting. 100% slop; it made absolutely no sense in the context of the problem.

I figured the issue out the old-fashioned way, but it was a little annoying that I had to waste extra time deciphering the hallucinations, and then explaining why they were hallucinations.

Pen on paper is so inefficient that it both forces you to be selective about your records, and to paraphrase and condense thoughts in a way that I suspect prompts deeper thought. This is exactly what the author complained about—-that their PKM system led them to defer processing thoughts. I imagine it also collected much more noise vs signal simply because it was highly automated and easy to do so.

I.e., I think your notebooks were likely more valuable/useful toward the “ introspective archeological” purpose that you mentioned, because your notebook contained true, original thought in a more curated manner. It sounds like the author’s archive didn’t contain much of that.

Sorry you regret your decision :/

Nowhere in the article did this seem to equate to a “mental breakdown” in my view either. Your perspective on this might be flavored by your own non-universal values/experiences.

Personal blogs are also a fun place to discover things. They often recommend other interesting, hidden sites. I have luck with WordPress, Tumblr and Substack.

It’s so difficult to tell the quality of things online, I’ve returned to buying almost exclusively from brick-and-mortar stores. If they don’t have it, I just don’t buy it. It’s less frustrating to live without than to own something that’s not right.

My fiance developed an intolerance to alliums (onion, garlic) and mushrooms around the start of COVID, though he had never tested positive for the virus. Low-Fodmap diet helped us to find the culprit as well.

I’m intrigued: Is your wife able to eat onions?

Seconded. I was extremely impressed when in response to one of my emailed questions, they directly contacted a manufacturer to ask about the acid content of a particular paper. But that’s not all! They then updated the specs on their listing to include the info I’d asked about on their site. It’s so refreshing to frequent a business that’s so serious about their work!

This sounds a lot like Existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s concept of living/acting “in bad faith.” You might be interested to read more about it: https://philosophybreak.com/articles/sartre-waiter-bad-faith...

In contrast to this, there’s something really special about finding your little niche of fans. There are about 6 or 7 people on Tumblr for whom I make a lot of my art (though it’s all open to view for the public and generally has 50-100 repeat followers). We’ll often riff off of each others’ art as well; I find that making art for that small community inspires me, makes the work more enjoyable, and pushes me to produce much better work than I would for just myself.

But apart from finding a close community like this (who just happen to be online), I agree that engagement-driven or profit-driven creativity is generally an inspiration killer. It’s one of the main reasons why I chose to keep art as a hobby rather than a career. If I lost the passion for it, I wouldn’t know what to do with my life.

How so? I’ve previously thought that gray areas were an AI weakness, so I’m interested to hear the opposite perspective.

You’re what I hope to be in 10 years! Glad to hear it’s working out for you

I once got a call from HR because I had updated my LinkedIn profile and they wanted to know if I was considering leaving.

Your dating standards are high if weight automatically makes someone a sub-5 in your eyes. I’m not saying that’s morally wrong—you like what you like. But recognize that it’s a high standard and will make dating more difficult.

Being stopped is a huge benefit of Pomodoro for me. It gives the brain a cooldown period to back out of stupid decisions/patterns, and to connect pieces that it wasn’t necessarily focusing on. It’s amazing the silly mistakes I’ll catch myself in, or the sudden revelations I’ll have, after coming back from tinkering with a LEGO set for 10 min.