Yesterday I was trolled by three people on Threads because of a comment on dating culture on Strava. I said that for me Strava is about networking rather than dating and for it one person said she friendzoned me, and two others were hostile rather than commenting in a friendly reason. For these three incidents of trolling I deactivated my Threads account and I am considering deactivating my Strava account.
This week I learned that mobile phones use mobile telephony for the emergency call system. This surprises me because I would expect them to use a fixed line rather than a mobile phone signal but also because when Swisscom or another telecom provider stop broadcasting on a frequency range like 3g, then all devices need to be updated to a newer standard. This means that all lifts need to be equipped with new mobile telephony devices.
A few minutes ago I looked at my Apple Watch and it said that I had not stood for the last two hours so I got up and walked around until it said that I had stood this hour. The irony is not lost on me that a watch would tell me that I am not active enough.
The Apple Watch wants you to stand for a minute an hour for six to 18 hours per day. In theory this sounds like it goes without saying that the goal would be reached. In reality it’s not that simple.
Normally I like to go for a run in the afternoon, after I have had a productive morning. This morning I went for a run first. This afternoon I have to go to an indoor meeting, which doesn’t fill me with euphoria. I feel an e-mail would achieve the same thing within a few minutes. Having said this I have skipped that meeting for three or four years so I feel obligated to go this afternoon.
For a while Whatsapp was a fantastic cross platform messaging tool for friends, families, groups and more. It was cross platform, fast and convenient. Eventually rather than rely on Facebook Messenger and Facebook, Facebook bought Whatsapp to consolidate its monopolistic grasp on the social web. As a result of this I tried to dump Whatsapp but it is hard to do so.
The reason for this is simple. Most people have not read Mindf*ck by Chris Whiley so for them it doesn’t matter that Facebook owns Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, Oculus Quest and more.
I have often had the temptation to dump Audible.com since it was bought by Amazon but I haven’t. It used to be that I had so many books that I didn’t want to lose them. Now that I have my own self-hosting solution, Audiobookshelf, for my own listening of my own books I can toy the idea of sliding to another provider. The first option is Kobo.
Kobo offers a plan for about 12 CHF per month for access to unlimited books to be read at once on its own catalgue but the catalogue is a quarter as big as that of Amazon/Audible so it would seriously limit what I can read and listen to. On the flipside part of my money would remain in the EU and the rest would go to Japan rather than the US. In the current climate it would be nice to remind the US of the cultural monopoly they currently hold, without showing gratitude. By dumping Audible for a US or Japanese solution for three years, or more we would remind the US that it exports to the world.
How many computers do you have at hand. Years ago I used to have two computers. A Mac Book Air and a Mac Book Pro. Eventually I sold the Mac Book Air and just used the Pro. I went to an event with the Pro and it was stolen so for a few days I was without any computer.
I then bought a much cheaper Mac Book Pro and since then my collection of computers has grown. My work horse from 2016 onwards was a Mac Book Pro, but during the pandemic I got an HP machine running windows. Now it’s running Ubuntu. I also have a chrome book as a spare.
In the golden age of chatrooms and instant messaging there was a rule. Do not post more than two or three messages before waiting for an answer. I regularly broke this rule until at least two or three times I was told off for the deluge. From then on I posted two or three messages and waited for an answer before writing another post.
Alongside the habit of waiting for an answer after a post or two I also got into the habit of writing longer posts rather than short ones- If I have a more detailed thing to write I write a paragraph, maybe more. I prefer to send one long message than a dozen short ones.
Last night I watched the first episode of a documentary series on the Vietnam war, made by Apple TV. It’s eighteen hours of documentaries covering different aspects of the conflict.
In the first episode they speak about boots on the ground and tunnel rats. Through the exploration of this topic we see some footage of traps being prepared and some footage from within the underground tunnels.
In the footage we see an operating theatre in an undergorund room. I have watched just one episode so far but I hope that it offers visual context to what I have read about in various books on the Vietnam war over the years.
One of the reasons for which I keep using Facebook has to do with peoples’ sharing of old photos, paintings, sketches and more. I love to see photos of Nyon, Morges, Neuchatel Lausanne and other places through time.
Recently I saw a photo of La Dole with a group of children skiing before the Doppler radar “boule” was installed as well as old photos of the Little Red Train as locals call it. I saw a photo of the steam train that connected Divonne to Nyon before it was removed to make way for the motorway. Part of that line is still used by Landi for farm produce. The rest of it is used as a voie verte for cyclists and walkers to enjoy a path away from cars and other traffic.