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Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

kenklippenstein.com

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Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#41

Post by mslt »

hypeatei wrote: post #39
ryandrake wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP's point is that if your life is so blessed that "90% of the news is unimportant to you" then that itself is a great, fortunate privilege. For example, I can tell you that if you are an immigrant in the USA from one of the (now many) targeted countries, even one with legal residency, news about ICE's actions is very relevant and very important to you.

> ICE's actions is very relevant and very important to you. Maybe the first few stories are, but what past masked goons throwing up Nazi salutes and sending people to foreign labor camps do you need to keep up on? If you're into politics, then sure, but your average Joe probably doesn't need to know that they're, yet again, terrorizing people and acting like a secret police force.

Apparently more people need to see more information about those things because they’re still happening

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#42

Post by tombert »

I've been trying to migrate back to command-line-only applications to get a facsimile of this.

I don't think that command-line tools are better in any kind of "objective" sense, but I find that if you live primarily within tmux + neovim (and maybe Codex/Claude if you want to be super cool), then it's much easier to not be distracted by the rest of the world.

Nowadays, when I do work I will have a full screen terminal window open. I have an utterly gigantic 85" 8K TV as my "monitor" and I will have an ungodly number of tmux splits, but importantly I don't think those splits are distracting from actually doing work. At some point I will figure out how to get the dbt Cloud `preview` functionality working locally and I think I can avoid the vast majority of any of my work requiring a browser.

Sometimes it does kind of feel like I'm just being a hipster by using a lot of tools that have existed since antiquity, but I think they do a good job at not being distracting.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#43

Post by aneeqdhk »

zhivota wrote: post #28

Ignoring the obvious contradictory nature of the post (a trip to a place that is generally so expensive and time consuming that only the wealthy leisure class can access it yields polite people), what is the alternative to the fast news cycle? I've been toying with different solutions over the years but haven't found anything great. Magazine subscription to something like the Economist? Weekly Sunday paper subscripti…

I switched to a weekly subscription of Economist (print) and it has been great. I haven't seen then news in a year (on phone, or TV). If there's something really important happening, then people around me generally tell me. At that point I check what's happening online, but that doesn't last more than a day or 2.

It has allowed me to escape the news cycle. I am yet to find an equivalent of the Economist for India (where I'm residing right now). As a result, I'm currently quite oblivious to the day-to-day in India, but honestly that hasn't been of much consequence.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#44

Post by josephg »

resize2996 wrote: post #15
lapcat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Privilege isn't just about wealth. Which poor people exactly do you consider privileged, and why? > The point is that although anyone can ignore the news, the news won't necessarily ignore them! What can they do about the news, though? I specifically said, "they may feel powerless to change anything".

> Which poor people exactly do you consider privileged, and why? those with insulation from genocide and displacement despite poverty. their point is that, say, a german peasant in 17th century couldn't avoid the Thirty Years War.

German peasants in the 17th century seemed to manage just fine without 24/7 news coverage.

Almost all news that's actually important - that might actually affect your life - will find you one way or another. Most news isn't important (eg sports drama). Or it isn't urgent (eg tariff news). Or both, like celebrity gossip.

Only a vanishingly small percentage of news is both urgent and important. And there's plenty of people in my life who would tell me if - for example - we needed to evacuate the city due to a fire.

Really. You can switch off. It'll be ok. Try it, and you'll see.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#45

Post by barbs »

tombert wrote: post #42

I've been trying to migrate back to command-line-only applications to get a facsimile of this. I don't think that command-line tools are better in any kind of "objective" sense, but I find that if you live primarily within tmux + neovim (and maybe Codex/Claude if you want to be super cool), then it's much easier to not be distracted by the rest of the world. Nowadays, when I do work I will have a full screen terminal…

I'd love to see a photo of this 85" TV setup, if you're willing to share :)

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#46

Post by ryandrake »

bruceb wrote: post #40
ryandrake wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP's point is that if your life is so blessed that "90% of the news is unimportant to you" then that itself is a great, fortunate privilege. For example, I can tell you that if you are an immigrant in the USA from one of the (now many) targeted countries, even one with legal residency, news about ICE's actions is very relevant and very important to you.

[flagged]

Categorically false. You might need to brush up on current events regarding ICE actions being taken against legal permanent residents and even US Citizens.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#47

Post by Moomoomoo309 »

bruceb wrote: post #40
ryandrake wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP's point is that if your life is so blessed that "90% of the news is unimportant to you" then that itself is a great, fortunate privilege. For example, I can tell you that if you are an immigrant in the USA from one of the (now many) targeted countries, even one with legal residency, news about ICE's actions is very relevant and very important to you.

[flagged]

If you were right, it wouldn't be so egregious. Unfortunately, due to lower hiring standards, expedited processes, and a general nonchalance towards the law, plenty of legal immigrants, green card holders, and even natural-born citizens have been wrongfully arrested by ICE because they fit the profile of who they're looking for. Just look up "ICE deports legal immigrant", and you'll find dozens and dozens of stories about various cases involving it.

And regardless of if it's intentional, if it's negligence, if it's just an acceptable margin of error, either way, if you're a legal immigrant, you very much do still have to worry about ICE.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#48

Post by [deleted] »

Eisenstein wrote: post #29
ropetin wrote: post #17

> Contrary to the national security threat machine’s picture of a country at war with itself, we all got along so swimmingly that the idea of a civil war or anything like it struck me as laughable, as did the notion that the statistically insignificant number of politically-motivated killings, though real, said anything at all about the vast majority of real-world Americans. This line of thinking drives me crazy, esp…

I think what he is trying to say is that if we all sit down with each other and stop requiring that people agree with our worldview before engaging in good faith, we would find that we actually get along peacefully. He is saying that it isn't as bad as he thought it was before he experienced a situation where that happened.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#49

Post by MangoToupe »

sallveburrpi wrote: post #3

Escaping the internet on a luxury trip doesn’t disprove political conflict… it just shows how privilege can opt out of reality and sell the experience as clickbaity insight.

"The news" is hardly reality either, and nor does it record most of the political conflict in the world.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#50

Post by almostgotcaught »

bruceb wrote: post #40
ryandrake wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP's point is that if your life is so blessed that "90% of the news is unimportant to you" then that itself is a great, fortunate privilege. For example, I can tell you that if you are an immigrant in the USA from one of the (now many) targeted countries, even one with legal residency, news about ICE's actions is very relevant and very important to you.

[flagged]

How do people get away with this kind of dishonesty today? It's shameful.
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