Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • If reality isn't fiction, then stop renewing your driver's license

    There's some things I really like talking about, that I have a really hard time talking about. This is especially the case for a topic like religion and spirituality. A lot of the people I surround myself with have been hurt by people trying to sell them on a vision of something greater than the natural world. And that's really unfortunate for a lot of reasons; one of them, I believe, being the fact that Western society offers basically one option for those who've been screwed over by traditional Western religious institutions: secularism.

    Obviously, I don't begrudge anyone for being secular; most of the people in my life are secular—most of the people in my country are secular, too. I do, however, have an issue with people who think that secularism is the right or natural way to be, and that others are wrong, dumb or at least being tricked into thinking there's something more to the world than what we can directly observe. Often it comes from a place of hurt, which I totally get, but it's still unfortunate.

  • The medium is the message

    The pace of modern life is definitely disproportionate to the human tempo. It is worth striving for balance in this regard. To limit information noise, online presence, to seek moments of calm and regeneration.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Use Notifications To Check Your Phone Less [Ed: No, this would mean even more distraction and mental interruption]

    I think my goal of spending less time on distracting technology was worthwhile, but that keeping one's phone always on silent with no vibration is not a practical way to achieve that for most people. Since writing that entry, I've started using a smartphone again and I've had to change the way I handle notifications as well since having it always on silent is no longer practical for me either.

    I have notifications turned on now because I noticed that when I had them off, I was constantly checking my phone every few minutes to make sure I didn't miss anything important. With notifications turned on, I don't need to poll my phone, because I'll hear a ding if something important happens. If I haven't heard a ding, I know I don't need to check it. So if I only use my phone either when I receive a notification or when there's something important I need to do on it, I know that I'm making good use of it. Otherwise, I know I'm probably wasting my time.

    If you're interested in replicating my notification strategy, you must curate your notification settings first on a per-app basis as I do. If you stick with the default notification settings for every app you have installed, you'll get pinged for many unimportant things and it won't help as much with checking your phone less. This isn't hard to remedy, and you don't have to fix it all at once. Each time you receive an unwanted notification, just go into settings and disable it. Eventually, all unwanted notifications will be gone. Repeat the process as you download new apps. The goal is to disable as many notifications as you can without falling back to constantly checking your phone.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • My Message to all Geminaut & GopherHoles via Martin Rue Station

      My Message to all Geminaut & GopherHoles via Martin Rue Station, and also for Cyberwalker (surfer user www Cyberspace), Spartacus, Nexian , Fingera & Fedizens