We had a defining realisation last year when we found a Youtube channel where a guy cleans carpets. I found it more nutritionally satisfying than 99% of programming on the TV. It was and is totally eye-opening. I have a similar draw to nature. I can watch wild animals doing their thing. And get some entertainment with curtain twitching. I think it's just that inherent human thing - watching.

I do like reading. The minutes I do this are ever dwindling through competition for my idle brain.

I have yet to install Facebook or Whatsapp or similar. I think it would be the death of me. I spend way too much time on my phone/computer.

I was in a care giving role and felt it couldn't leave my side. Since losing that person, I now rejoice in being able to leave my phone. Heck I didn't turn it on yesterday. And it has been sitting in the kitchen all day today.

The telephone does fill me with existential dread as most communication with me is asking me for something or alerting me to something negative. Perhaps that's an age thing. Whereas the Internet is still pleasurable but a complete and utter time suck.

I don't know, I think communication can provide a fertile ground for good exchanges as well as bad. It's just somewhat stifled in the current forms.

I think I had a flagged post on Bluesky, early on that just referenced something elsewhere - it was pretty harmless. And I remember a few X users trying the platform saying something vaguely controversial and getting a suspension. Or some such. I don't want to get into the ins and outs of censorship and free speech but you can get booted out the pub for saying something disagreeable in front of the bar hands or patrons. And I would be quite livid if I had invested in a platform and then got shut down.

The AT protocol gives you the ability to produce feeds. But it's actually the consumption aggregation and discover-ability that seems to the difficult bit. I feel we need a lightweight RSS style reader in browser to really get past this. There are weird hacks on Bluesky to subscribe to feeds. But it is messy. The feeds are where the magic potentially happens.

Twitter had become unpalatable before Musk bought it. And there were various crisis of confidence and herd threatening migrations, but people just couldn't be bothered. In its latest ungodly form people are still sticking around, or moving to silos and bubbles on other platforms, it's just a complete and utter mess at this point.

Platforms inevitably win out with convenience. Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp succeeded as people just couldn't share or publish photos or files easily. Combined with some magic discover-ability.

Twitter's collapse has been painful. But weirdly it was incredibly influential though low in membership.

My personal consumption of social feeds has been obliterated to nearly zero. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I published for myself rather than an audience and had used Twitter just because it was easy. I have a broken computer at the moment and my entire dev stack / environment is in chaos. And although I think the barriers to publishing and self hosting are low there are still inherent obstacles.

Looking in my stock cupboard, the raw fats I do get are probably the best bang for the buck nutritionally.

We have put off having kids and now have probably missed the fertility window, because we have never been financially in a position to support some. And it's a horrible pain for the pair of us.

I've been in debt for over a decade. For some that money would be chicken feed, but for me it has ensured I'm in perpetual debt. I never have spending money. Wear clothes until they totally fall apart. Found a pair of shoes that I have repurposed. And sometimes have barely anything to eat for weeks. If I'm lucky I get to the pub once a year. Can't afford Christmas presents etc.

Then I read that Boris Johnson will struggle for a place to live when he retreats from being a prime minister where he struggles to live on his 200k salary. And in the following months earns 5 million for doing a a few speeches.

Some of us indeed can have nothing but never have to worry.

A bit off puffed grain draped in sugar with a sprinkle of vitamins, in a headache inducing substance doesn't sound like the best start for any kid.

But agree that it was a go to for me when getting back from school. But then again we starved ourselves to keep our dinner money when we were kids. And barely ate well at all. Pretty envious of those kids that had parents that cooked for them.

My second school had good food. If I had spent the money on a dinner I would have done much better than eating at home. My third school had crap food.

Envious looking back on those that had free school meals. This is in the UK. But this is years back, and I wouldn't be surprised if the quality of lunches has dwindled to nothing, or even if schools have canteens.

I visited a hospital a decade or so back, and it had a KFC on the concourse.