A 50-something French dude that’s old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever. Also, I like to write and to sketch.
https://thefoolwithapen.com
I have stolen the idea of posting a weekly thread, as an encouragement for people to participate in the !journaling@sh.itjust.works
What surprises me is that the number of subscribers is constantly growing (330 last time I checked, so more than a hundred people more than when I started posting), but not many are willing to discuss much. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I don’t know what. You’re more than welcome to share your opinion and suggestions ;)
I did not sketch at all and barely wrote anything in my journal this last few days (not even my reading journal). But it could have been worse as I had written absolutely nothing up until I decided I should at least write a few lines to summarize those days. And I did, which is great no matter what as I now have a record of what happened no matter how not great that was ;)
As far as the reading journal is concerned, I have mixed feelings. I’ve taken a lot of notes while reading, like I always do but those are notes that will end in my Zettelkasten, not in my journal. What happened was that I could not be bothered with writing down any impression about those books (which is what I would like to put in the reading journal). I’m not sure if I should try write those impressions afterward, trying to remember whatever I felt and was thinking, or simply write about me not doing it?
Pour le dire poliment, je ne m’attends pas à grand-chose (comme pour la plupart des reboots, je veux dire ça n’a rien à avoir avec cette série en particulier ou sa réalisatrice), mais je jeterai avec plaisir un oeil sur les premiers épisodes (car j’avais bien aimé Buffy)… Du moin si la série est proposée autrement que par abonnement/streaming. Sinon, ben tant pis: il me reste les DVD de la Buffy originale ;)
I’ve not tasted many American beers so I could not tell if they all taste like crap, and I also do not drink at all anymore. But being French, I can say that our Belgian neighbors have some exceptionally good beers, as well as Germans do. I loved a few of those, back then. But then they may also be a tad too… tasty for an uninitiated palate ;)
I’m pretty confident there must some local breweries in a few US places that can make quality beer too, the issue would then mostly be to find enough customers willing to drink it because it’s no use to make the best beer ever if most your customers prefer Budweiser or stuff like that.
As of now my nephew never touched a phone. This isn’t anything bad but compared to his class mates I think this is weird.
He just turned six. What do you need a phone for at six? Call your kindergarten sweetheart?
Imagine when he is in school and his friends tell him to scroll and he has no idea how to even scroll? Isn’t that weird?
No. I would consider weird to think kids need to be using a phone as soon as they get out of their diapers in order to be considered ‘normal’ ;)
As a side-note, maybe you could offer that kid books, instead. He will learn a lot more reading them. A lot. And have a lot of fun too.
Plus, there is no in-app purchase in books, no tracking, no spying, no ads. And they won’t require updates either ;)
How many fiction books do you all read? E-book or paperback. But not interesting in audiobooks. I’m curious about physically-read books.
To answer your question, I read fiction (be it novel, short stories, poetry, plays) less than I read essays, history, science(s), philosophy, sociology, spirituality books, and stuff like that. But I will always be reading some fiction, at any time. I love fiction, I just have to prioritize other kind of books if I want to read them ;)
The number of books depends the type of book I’m reading and their author, and in what language. I’m French, but I read a lot more in English and can also manage my way through not too complex Spanish books and this year I hope I’ll be able to really start reading in German but obviously I will not read as fluently in any of those languages than I read in French, not even in English. And that’s true not just for fiction.
I mean, I’m reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau at this moment and I obviously do not read him as quickly as I will read a novel but I also read Rousseau much quicker than I have read, say, Kant (Kant’s style is not as easy going as Rousseau’s, and his thought process is not as straightforward either, even though they ideally both require a lot of thinking in order to get anything worth out of reading them).
Even only considering fiction, my speed does vary a lot depending the author and their style, the length of the book and the type of book as I have personal preferences that will help me read a lot more than with anything written by an author or even in a genre I may not appreciate as much. I’m also much more likely to quickly finish a volume of short stories or a short novel than say Anna Karenina (which is probably my all-time favorite novel, btw) because I can read it even when I have much shorter time available to read.
Right now, I’m reading Proust In Search of Lost Time (I read it in French) and I know I will probably spend the whole year reading it. So, that’s one book a year? Not really, since I will read other fictions (and already have read others) during that time but still, it’s a whole year spent on a novel, or not?
Also, should I count the books I start and don’t finish for whatever reason, or not?
And then, even more so with fiction than with essays, I always have multiple books started at once. I don’t care much about finishing one book before starting another as I’ve pretty good memory and can instantly get back into the story where I left of and get back in the mood/atmosphere when I’m switching book), like when I’m watching a movie or a series. Even years after, I just have this odd memory.
So, it’s kind of a difficult question to answer but I would say: a lot ;)
Very interesting thoughts! Definitely agree that people do not seem to prefer personal contact, but to be honest, even on old forums and on IRC I don’t recall messaging people 1-on-1 that much. I think another issue which relates to this community is the fact that people do not tend to read personal websites or blogs that much anymore.
Thx and yes, I think this is an issue. Not for the well-being of those blogs but as a signal of users unwillingness to find content they can relate to by themselves or more accurately I should say outside of a few main places where everyone is expecting to fond them be they privately owned or even Free/Libre/Federated.
The small web just feels “cozier”, anyone agree?
I don’t know about it being cozier (maintaining your own domain/host or even just your own blog requires regular work and some efforts), but my personal blog as well as the blogs or the websites of other persons I regularly read feel a lot more personal and humane to me. And that’s what I’m looking for :)
I could almost say the same for Lemmy and for the Fediverse even though, like you mentioned, there are a lot of morons and assholes around here, once you setup decent filtering rules and stick to well-established personal do’s and don’t it’s quite a nice place with some nice people.
But what old-me think is really odd and sad on the Fediverse in general is to realize how few people and how little they are interested in meeting/discussing with other people outside of those ‘social networks’. That’s how it feels to me, here on Lemmy like on most social networks. It feels a bit like all our interactions should be happening in some public place and should not really be personal.
I’ve linked my blog in my Lemmy profile and, in the year or so I’ve been using Lemmy, I’ve been contacted once through my blog by someone coming from Lemmy. To be honest, I should say it’s impressive considering I was contacted three times total the year before that while I was using Reddit. But still it’s not much. Sure, maybe it’s just my blog that sucks but even a few years ago, I don’t know about you but I received and sent a lot more emails and personal messages. Like a lot more.
To me, it feels like people don’t want ‘personal contact’ anymore, in the sense of a direct person-to-person contact. Instead, they’re focusing on something more akin to a public meeting or something that should happen/be performed in front of an audience.
I have no idea why, nor do I know if I’m right or if it’s just me that lost touch with the rest of the world but that’s how it feels to me. And, to get back to Lemmy, that’s also one of the reasons I like using it: even though discussions will often be performative (we seldom just chat, we say things in front of an audience) it’s still small enough to feel personal, which is great :)
Here in France it’s probably the norm the moment it’s some other person you vaguely know. Or if there is no ‘power’ or authority relation involved.
That said, things may be different for younger people (I’m in my 50s) as I’ve noticed they don’t talk that much in person.
Edit: typos. Cooking at the same time I’m trying to post a comment is not the best idea ;)
Indeed. That’s kind of what Tuta, Proton and others are trying to do alas without worrying much about being compatible with one another.
I don’t, I rely an ready made sentences that require no effort on my part are that are not lies at all. Depending who’s asking when someone is asking me how well I’m I will answer (it’s in French)
I don’t lie (I may even hint that I may not be doing that well, in the first type of answers) but I also shamelessly use the fact that most people don’t give the slightest crap how well I really am when they’re asking. That’s small-talk 101. Like saying ‘the weather is nice today, isn’t it?’
The less interactions I have with the kind of persons who rely on small-talk, the happier I’m. So, it never bothers me to be ‘polite’ as I know how efficient it is to shorten the time and energy I waste with them.
I was reading a book, The Victorian Internet, which talked about how connected the Victorian era was, with wires stretching everywhere above the roads. It’s probably exaggerated,
Why do you think that would be exaggerated? Just curious to know.
Suppose you had a civilization. Maybe it’s on a planet whose environment interferes with the capabilities of a classic internet,
Don’t mix the Internet (which is the willingness to interconnect people through some communication means) and the technology by which it’s achieved.
I mean, if people on that planet can even think of ‘an Internet’ like ours they
If they can’t imagine anything like our computers, then they probably can’t imagine ‘an Internet’ anymore than say a pre-Bell human being could wish to use a smartphone with 5G connectivity. They may be dreaming of some sort of ‘portable means of communication’, sure, and many scifi writers did back then, but it would not be something as specific as the Internet and that would be, well, scifi.
So, considering they have some kind of computing machine already and that they can devise the idea of connecting them together, they should be able to develop their existing technologies (and the protocols to use them) to communicate farther and farther away (how long was the first ever phone line?).
If they don’t have that, they probably don’t need global means of communications yet.
Keep in mind it was not that long ago that most news people would read in their lifetime was local only—beside wars, major crisis news were local. There was no constant need to share cat pictures with people living on the other side of the planet either, or to cry out loud in front of one’s phone camera about whatever personal drama one’s going through. Drama were already a thing back then, as well as sharing cat pictures (and porn, btw) but we did it with our friends or our family (maybe not porn) or at best within some community members who, back when traveling the world was not obvious nor cheap to do, were all local to us. So why would one need a planetary Internet to begin with?
What you call the Internet is very recent tech—first email ever sent is 1971 (54 years old), TikTok is around 2016 (9 years old), Facebook was created in 2004 (21 years old), Apple in 1976 (49 years old) and Google is 27 years old (1998), the first ‘smartphone’ (iPhone 1, is from 2007. There were mobile phones before that but it was the iPhone that changed the deal), and so on. I’m older than all of them and I had been communicating with people all over the world before they appeared. And I’m not even that old. In fact, our entire species have been communicating for a few thousands years already.
The desire to communicate, to create a network of connections between people has not changed much, the tools (and the cost of using them) changed dramatically, obviously.
As well as the type of content we consider worth exchanging (which would be an interesting discussion in itself).
I never sent much cat pictures through snail mail back in the days, nor talked much about my outrage regarding anything because snail mail was slow (and outrage never lasts much) and was costly when done overseas and so were phone calls (and so was taking film pictures, btw) and I’d rather focus that time and money on things I considered worth it—ie, useful/interesting to both my correspondent and I.
Thinking about it, maybe your hypothetical internet-less alien civilization is much happier (and healthier) than we are today with our constant dramas and low, low effort contents that make up the essential of our Internet? Just wondering, obviously.
edit: typos
It’s a different app, made by the same company.
Not sure to understand? It’s a separated app just made by the same company ;)
Which is why you you and your recipient (which makes it a lot more difficult) should learn to set up PGP
You’re welcome.
BTW, it’s also clear that it can be difficult to not react when facing an asshole of some sort, but I think that’s one of the main thing that make us different from them: our ability to not let our emotions dictate our (re)actions. That doesn’t mean we should like them, not even a little bit ;)
I feel it’s odd to ban people I don’t like for their behavior outside the community.
My 2 cents is that one moderates what happens in a community, not what happens in the world outside it.
I also don’t want the community to have a bad reputation of banning people I don’t like but this guys a known racist.
I don’t know yours, but I would quit a community where mods would decide it’s their duty to police the world.
There are many people I do not like, even a few I despise, but that’s just my feelings and emotions and my feelings don’t grant me any right to punish them in any way. Edit: unless they do something in the community I moderate that does not respect the community rules, obviously. But the key idea here is they must do it in the community, what they do elsewhere is none of my business.
Something Like that, indeed.
Also, it could be because many of the longtime subscribers are not there anymore. I mean, the community was completely inactive for a year or so (and even its creator doesn’t seem to be available anymore). So maybe we’re much less than 330 and more like 100. I can’t tell but I would think so.