I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…
'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
211–220 of 305 posts
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…
The incentives on the web are skewed, and I believe the same is true for print. Nobody will be happy to pay the same price for a 50 page book as they would for a 200 page book, even if the information is the same, so if you have a 50 page book, you have every reason in the world to add fluff and stretch it to 200 pages. For many articles on the web I believe it's an issue because of Google. Google does punish short p…
Unix man pages are amazing. Every technical help resource should be like that.
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are gaslighting me by telling me resurgent Marxism isn’t a real thing, and yet here I am having people quote Marx at me to define capitalism.
No one is gaslighting [1] you. People are arguing that your interpretation of current events is in error. By calling that "gaslighting", you implicitly claim that disagreement with you is in itself an abusive act. Calling anyone who disagrees with you abusive seems like a pretty wild flex. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
Do you mean that Marxist ideas aren’t finding renewed currency? Nobody seems to deny that efforts to equate slavery with capitalism are critiques pioneered by Marx. Instead they seem to be arguing that Marx was correct. So the ideas do seem to be having renewed currency, in which case denying that fact is gaslighting.
If you’re arguing that it’s not a problem that Marxist ideas are being incorporated into schoolbooks, then in that case we just disagree.
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read a really charming and escapist novel. Worst case, you end up staying up too late because the book is so good, but I haven't found anything more reliable for making me disconnect from the world and its churning. Substituting a book for Twitter for the hour before bed has markedly improved the overall quality of my life. To get yourself into the habit, don't read anything on your "to read someday list of important…
Any good book recommendations? I just finished Red Notice by Bill Browder which was fantastic.
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#215Yeah reading hacker news since 4 hours and didn't even planned to open it. Now the world is more dangerous and don't know if people are commenting or GPT-3 bots. Any solutions to find sleep?
I listen to a Sci-fi/futurism Podcast. Dude has a very calm voice, content is interesting, but not too complicated to keep you awake. Works great.
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#216There are a lot of suggestions for "long form" and "books" here. Are none of you keeping up with this pandemic and what your country/state/city recommended behaviours, laws and bylaws are?
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#217I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…
The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…
Maybe try poetry? Though, same applies. Anything that’s not popular, recent fiction aimed at a grade 8 reading level is going to take some effort and practice to learn to appreciate and fully understand. Literacy is a very wide spectrum.
[edit] incidentally, for whatever reason, I find drawing book recommendations from strangers online nearly useless. This goes double for genre fic and non-fic. For other media it works fine. Dunno why but I think part of it may be that people read more differently, and for more reasons, than they watch movies or listen to music play games. I also find it’s easier in other media to quickly spot people with tastes that are very contrary to mine, and so ignore them.
One thing that seems to help is that more people are able to say “this is trash, but it’s my kind of trash, but hey, here’s this other thing like it that’s actually good” with film than with books. Something about books seems to make people use a much broader and less-differentiated or less-well-tuned definition of “good” and then just apply that same label to everything they read and don’t hate.
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#218I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…
The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…
I assume you’re referring to fiction ... there’s actually a whole field of study around this rooted in psychology, they’re called Jungian Archetypes. There’s a really fantastic book by Joseph Campbell called The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
I’m not sure what the current state of study is, its been a few years since I personally studied the concepts. It might be a nice change from the mundanity you seem to be describing
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#219There are a lot of suggestions for "long form" and "books" here. Are none of you keeping up with this pandemic and what your country/state/city recommended behaviours, laws and bylaws are?
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
The term “capitalist” was not coined by critics of capitalism. For example, David Ricardo used the term decades before Marx. Criticizing capitalism by linking it to slavery was pioneered by Marx, and accepting that point of view is Marxist rhetoric. It is, of course, logically invalid to claim that because slavery was practiced in countries that happened to be capitalist, that slavery is capitalist. By that logic, sl…
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