I was negotiating with my 6 year old kid about how much screen time / television he could watch the other day and asked him how long he wanted. His answer: “The whole bar”. Because he meant the progress bar. Because that’s how we measure time now. In progress bars. He is not entirely wrong. Dan Hon
Updates from January, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Doug Belshaw
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Doug Belshaw
However we may be reproached for our vanity we sometimes need to be assured of our merits and to have our most obvious advantages pointed out to us.
Vauvenargues -
Doug Belshaw
Try to arrange your life in such a way that you can afford to be disinterested. It is the most expensive of all luxuries, and the one best worth having.
W.R. Inge -
Doug Belshaw
Staring at the wall
This just in from Warren Ellis in the what-does-knowledge-work-even-look-like dept.
It does, of course, look to everyone else like you’re not doing a damn thing. And, often, you don’t have anything to physically present for the hours you’ve burned staring at the wall or whatever.
Thinking for a living is difficult when you’re being observed.
Find what gives you pleasure. Just do that. Turn everything else off. Live with the stress. Learn to love figuring the shit out.
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Adam Procter
YES!
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Doug Belshaw
One of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabelled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control. T.H. Huxley
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Doug Belshaw
Becoming accustomed to certain sounds has a profound effect on character; soon one acquires the words and phrases and eventually also the ideas that go with those sounds.
Nietzsche -
Doug Belshaw
We have qualities and inclinations so much our own, and so incorporate in is, that we have not the means to feel and recognize them: and of such natural inclinations the body will retain a certain bent, without our knowledge or consent.
Michel de Montaigne -
Doug Belshaw
Notifications
[I]f someone in 1820 had lived at the pace we live in December 2019, she would probably have dropped dead from exhaustion.
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Two things are true: The world is faster and crazier than it has ever been before. And the world is as slow and predictable as it will ever be again.
For me, 2010 was the decade of notification creep. That’s why, as we enter 2020, ensuring that I’m not bombarded by notifications on a constant basis is my top priority.
I was using Telegram as an alternative to (the Facebook-owned) WhatsApp before joining Moodle two years ago. For better or worse, a lot of what happens at Moodle takes place in Telegram channels.
Despite muting channels and other workarounds, that’s meant two years of my smartwatch buzzing to tell me someone’s trying to get in touch. Is it my wife asking me to pick up the kids? Or is it a colleague sending me a cat gif? The only way to know is to check.
So, after deleting Telegram off my phone during the festive period, I’ve convinced my family to switch to Signal. That means I’m now only using Telegram for work and, as such, there’s no need to have it on my phone.
Here’s to some deep thinking and a less anxious 2020!
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