Today I spotted another clear sign that modern social media are toxic and unhealthy. I see this through the boy sober movement.
A new trend is sweeping TikTok: #boysober. Its rules? No dating apps, no dates, no exes, no hookups. Thousands of women are uploading videos describing why they have gone boy sober and extolling its benefits.
In my opinion this is a clear demonstration of why algorithms are so awful on social media.
This morning I noticedd that a wine Cave is having an event where they will make noise but it will stop at 22:00 because the law requires them to stop at that time. In the 21st century anyone can buy a loud sound system that could fill a village with noise pollution, and that’s one of the problems with modern life.
For the last four nights I have been unable to sleep before two to three in the morning because the local music festival, the Caribana had their speakers on so loud that I could hear them despite having two fans on full power, laptop speakers at full volume and even airport hearing protection.
Yesterday I picked up a 2017 mac book pro that I had been given and the first thing that struck me is that it looked brand new. the keys were not worn. It was clean.
Mine on the other hand is dusty, but more than that. Some of the keys are so worn from use that they have become transarent on a 2007 machine, and glowing on a second. It’s the asd keys that are the most messed up.
One of the greatest problems with music festivals is that they can be noisy until three or four am for days in a row. This means that sleep is affected. It is because sleep patterns are altered that it is the perfect excuse to watch several hours of television a night for several days in a row.
Usually I try to be disciplined. I try to watch one or two episodes of two or three shows, and then head to sleep.
When I got the electric scooter I was curious about whether it could be used when looking after children while they ride their bikes and the answer is “yes”. You can stop reading now.
Yesterday I was near the Lac de Divonne and since the children wanted to race it was a good opportunity to see whether I was faster than them on their bikes.
Due to the electric scooter being limited to 20 kilometres per hour I thought that it might be too slow.
In the good old days noisy music festivals made sense, because technology was not what it is today. There was no choice but to build huge speaker stacks with huge amounts of power, to deafen an entire crowd of festival goers. It was also a different age, where attitudes to noise pollution were different.
In the 21st century, as people are crammed closer and closer together in villages, towns and cities, so the need to control noise pollution should increase.
Recently I decided to re-explore Casio watches like the ones I had as a child. In the process I found that they’re minimalist, but great. They tell you the time. They beep every hour if you want them to. They wake you up if you set the alarm at the desired time. Some of them last for ten years, or more.
I experimented with several models including the F 91 and the A168 series.
Yesterday I defederated my blog from the fediverse, and I removed the plugin from my blog this morning. I will probably never return to the Fediverse, whether Mastodon or other, for the forseeable future.
The Hostile Response The reason for this is the following. A person asked a question. I gave two links to resources that could be useful. Instead of saying thanks and ignoring it the person chose to insult me indirectly so I wasn’t as diplomatic as usual.
Almost every day, whether on Facebook open groups, or Fediverse instances I post something, and someone feels the urge to say “You’re wrong” and if I answer a stream of trolls and flamers will pile in.
Yesterday someone asked “How do I do A on site B” and I gave two links to articles speaking about how to do A on site B. I was then told that it was not helpful, and then when I answered back a flame war started.
Today I read from Techcrunch and The Verge that there are new tools to limit things so that people can only get comments from friends and family. The irony isn’t lost on me.
The irony I’m thinking about is that we have built a social media landscape where the content from strangers floods our timelines without us wanting to see it. Rather than just give us chronological timelines with posts from our friends, they add mitigation factors for slowing down and stopping harrasment.