@mariyadelano@hachyderm.io2025-10-20 20:41:14
I’ve worked over the past year to reduce the amount of noise in my consciousness on a daily basis.
By that I mean - information noise, not literal sounds “noise”. (That problem was solved long ago by some good earplugs and noise canceling earphones.)
I’ve gotten used to spending less time on social media, regularly blocking most apps on my devices (anything with a feed news, most work communication apps, etc.), putting my phone and other devices aside for extended periods of time. Often go to work places with my iPad explicitly having its WiFi turned off and selecting cafes that don’t offer WiFi at all.
Negotiated better boundaries at work and in personal life where I exchange messages with people less often but try to make those interactions more meaningful, and people rarely expect me to respond to requests in less than 24 hours. Spent a lot of time setting up custom notification settings on all apps that would allow it, so I get fewer pings. With software, choosing fewer cloud-based options and using tools that are simple and require as few interruptions as possible.
Accustomed myself to lower-tech versions of doing things I like to do: reading on paper, writing by hand, drawing in physical sketchbooks, got a typewriter for typing without a screen. Choosing to call people on audio more, trying to make more of an effort to see people in person. Going to museums to look at art instead of browsing Pinterest. Defaulting to the library when looking for information.
I’m commenting on this now for two reasons:
1. I am pretty proud of myself for how much I’ve actually managed to reduce the constant stream of modern life esp. as a remote worker in tech!
2. Now that I’ve reached a breaking point of reducing enough noise that it’s NOTICEABLE - I am struck by the silence. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to navigate it and fill it. I made this space to be able to read and write and think more deeply - for now I feel stuck in limbo where I’m just reacquainting myself with the concept of having any space in my mind at all.
@davej@dice.camp2025-11-24 05:09:02
From a selection of 2099 tracks, this is my week's #MondayRandom10:
1. The Smashing Pumpkins, “Lily (My One and Only)”
2. Goldie, "Inner City Life”
3. Qoiet, “cursedOBJECT”
4. Pop Will Eat Itself, “RSVP”
5. Rocky Leon, “Billionaire”
6. Ronnie James Dio, “Love is All”
7. Frankie Goes to Hollywood, “Relax”
8 Robert Palmer, “Simply Irresistible”
@rperezrosario@mastodon.social2025-12-23 02:05:10
Happy belated #WinterSolstice to us on the Northern Hemisphere, and also happy belated #SummerSolstice to those of you on the Southern Hemisphere!
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot2025-11-22 13:09:54
The way you make an axe haft is you take a straight grained piece of hickory or ash, you split it along the grain with a froe, and then you use a drawknife to do final shaping (including for the eye). The reason you do this is that the shape then follows the natural cellulose fibres of the wood, which are very much stronger along their length than at even at a very slight angle.
(Yes, I'm sub-tooting someone on YouTube).
>>>
@danyork@mastodon.social2025-12-21 11:03:47
Happy #Solstice ! For those of us in the northern hemisphere where I live, this is #WinterSolstice … the shortest day of the year and therefore the darkest in terms of light. We all know that the days only get longer from here on out… and we are excited!
For my friends in the southern …
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net2025-10-20 18:24:15
Series A, Episode 04 - Time Squad
BLAKE: [Laughs slightly] More interesting is where it was going and why. Let's see if Avon's got any ideas.
[Interior. Alien projectile]
BLAKE: [To Avon] What do you Think?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/104/227 B7B5
@paulbusch@mstdn.ca2025-11-18 14:50:02
Good Morning #Canada
In 1905, when Alberta joined Canada, a temporary provincial legislature resided in Edmonton and they were given the task of choosing the capital. Edmonton, by a vote of 16 to 8, was selected over their southern rival Calgary. This choice was despite Calgary's larger size and incorporation as a city a full decade before Edmonton. But the new capital had used their history as an important trading post established on the fur trade route and federal relationships to secure their status as the capital. In 1941, Edmonton was still a relatively small city, ranking 9th in population in Canada. Oil would transform the entire province, and Edmonton would rapidly grow as the gateway to the resource rich Alberta north.
#CanadaIsAwesome #CanadianCapitals
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/edmonton
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-20 04:53:02
Brian Greene has a new video out today, of himself talking to Edward Witten, mainly about string theory.
Pretty much the usual decades-old hype, with nothing even slightly different than what a similar conversation would have consisted of 20 years ago.
Of historical and psychological interest, Witten explains that when the anthropic landscape nonsense arrived, it made him uncomfortable and unhappy:
"I made my peace with it by accepting the fact that the universe wasn’t c…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-10-14 18:15:49
Spotify partners with Netflix to distribute a selection of video podcasts from Spotify Studios and The Ringer on Netflix starting in early 2026 in the US (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/14/spotifys-video-podcasts-are-coming-t…
@nohillside@smnn.ch2025-12-17 06:26:23
„EU makes it even easier for Chinese EV companies to dominate the European car market“ There, fixed it for you.
EU Moves To Ease 2035 Ban On Internal Combustion Cars - Slashdot https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/17/003222/eu-moves-to-…