Today has been wrecking my Piefed timer lol, it's a slow Friday.

Reading suggestions really depends on what you like reading. I love "hard" sci-fi. Recently I have been voraciously consuming Greg Egan's body of work. I just finished Permutation City yesterday, started Distress today. I originally found this author after finding his book Diaspora on a reading list, and I really REALLY liked it. His more recent "Orthogonal" trilogy is fascinating, the characters are somewhat more flat, but the physics of the universe the series is set in is so thoroughly fleshed out. That universe consists of 4 identical dimensions instead of the 3 spatial and 1 time of our own universe. Many of the characters are scientists and explorers trying to make sense of their world, and there are sometimes just pages of equations to explain one small thing, which... I just love it so much.

Before tackling Egan's work, I read Ra by Qntm. They did some writing for the SCP foundation, and that same vibe really comes through in their work. Ra has such an interesting premise, and there were many twists in the fundamental understanding of what was really going on, I couldn't put that book down. Qntm wrote some other short stories, which are on my list to read next once I finish Distress.

I've gone multiple days before when I am out camping (unless you count an e-ink e-reader, but I don't). Being out in the wilderness is really something that calms me and grounds me. I live and work in a medium sized city in a very densely populated area, so I am constantly surrounded by stimuli. There are a few places near my work where if I am having a bad day, I will head there after work and bring one of the hammocks I always keep in my trunk, and the e-reader I always keep on me, and read in the woods for a few hours.

De-smarting my phone made an IMMEDIATE improvement on my morning routine. No longer can I lay and scroll... I silence my alarm, check the weather for the day, see if any of the emails I got look important, then get up.

The home screen launcher I use on my phone (Olauncher) includes a screen-time counter prominently on the home-screen, so you can immediately see how long you've been on your phone that day. I've gotten down to less than 45 minutes a day, for the most part. Most days is less than 15 minutes, especially after I broke up with my girlfriend recently, she texted SO much...

The Piefed web interface also has a time counter. If you scroll to the bottom of any page, there is a time listed. That's the amount of time you've spent on Piefed on that specific device (It doesn't count between devices. Like I'm on my work laptop, which is where I have the hardest time avoiding scrolling). I've spent a hair under 14 hours this month... Which feels like a lot, but then looking at the date, it's only a little over an hour a day, which is WAY less than I used to browse Reddit at work. My laptop at home is under 2 hours, I don't have trouble keeping offline at home, I have so many hobbies and things to do.

I think I am down around the 2-hour screen-time for personal things every day, maybe closer to 3... but to me it still feels like too much, I think because I do a lot of WORK on a screen. Between 4 to 8 hours of my day (sometimes less depending on which machines broke) is spent behind a computer, and that's something that I can't control.

If you're interested in hiding scores, see here: https://piefed.social/post/853795, simply copy and paste that code into the "additional CSS" box on the settings page.

I've taken to simply just not talking about it in real life. I made friends with an Android phone app developer recently, and he was actually very interested in my phone situation (smart phone with all the smart intentionally disabled), and we had a very nice long conversation about it last weekend, but that's far from the norm.

What's your next personal goal for reducing the screentime in your life?

It is kind of ironic that I feel that the most accepted place to talk about this is, again, behind a screen.

Thanks for making this community, I'm on a digital minimalism journey, and I feel like not many people I know IRL really understand.

I've made a lot of progress over the last 2 or 3 years, but here I am browsing aimlessly... I will say that Piefed/Lemmy has been a lot better for me than Reddit, which was my previous addiction that I finally freed myself from (partially) a couple weeks back. I say partially because even though I no longer have an account, I still find myself sometimes going back to aimlessly browse r/all when there haven't been any interesting new posts here, like window shopping for things I can't buy.

I struggle the most with online communities, because I don't have many IRL friends (though this is changing!), and I yearn for social interaction. I also really struggle with being incorrect. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes I'll say something wrong or stupid, and in real life, I can kind of laugh it off, because people forget, it's not like that one random comment I said was the only thing my friend remembers about the whole day... I'll still feel bad about it, but then after a time, even I forget. Online, though, those posts stick around and constantly remind me of their presence. Hiding post scores here has been a huge improvement for me, because even a single -1 karma on Reddit would usually ruin my day (which is stupid, I know it shouldn't). I can still know that I was wrong, but not seeing the anonymous dissatisfaction is better.

I have not received any! I was bummed you never responded to my original one but I guess you did respond and I just didn't get it. I am guessing you got the one I sent recently... I'll dm ya my email or something, not sure what's going on...

Week is going good!
Having a random Tuesday off always screws up the vibe, though.
My brother recently convinced me to start playing WarThunder, so I've been spending a bit more time than I would want playing that... It is fun so far, though! I have another friend who has played for a long time and we're trying to find a time when all 3 of us can squad up. I've stayed up way past my bedtime every day this week, oops.

I got my flu shot yesterday, and it always makes me super drowsy and sore and lethargic the next couple days, so I'm dealing with that, too.

I recently made some caramel from scratch to make a warm caramel apple dip, and it wasn't quite as hard as I imagined, and was super tasty, so I'm thinking I might try and make some homemade candy this year.
My immediate family isn't big on gifts, but one of the things I do every year is find the most unhinged or weird mugs at thrift shops and give everyone a mug with some hot chocolate, candy canes, and other treats. Having some home-made treats in there for a change would be fun!

It's amazing how often this series is relevant even all these years later.

Maybe they have indeed been dead for several minutes and it's a sign they need to be brought back to life

Thank you! Yeah, I always love checking out new things, I was excited to take over these weekly posts. Music for me is like what movies or TV shows are to some others, I spend a lot of time listening and reflecting. If you haven't found it already, there's a user over at !obscuremusic@piefed.social who religiously posts things every single day. For the most part they tend to lean on the heavier side, which I very much appreciate as that's where my main interests lie, but there's a decent mix if you dig through. I've discovered quite a few things over there!

See that's the thing, I don't... In college I played the bass in a joke band, but I don't actually know "how" to play the bass (or the guitar), properly at least, don't know anything about music, production, etc. I'm really excited to just completely wing it. I have really good rhythm and was able to learn songs by ear on bass with basic trial-and-error and memorization in the past, interested to see how this translates. A big draw has been the thought of making my own homemade microphones out of random trash and sampling interesting sounds with them. I've got a few ideas to run with.

I was instantly intrigued by the name "Ancient Infinity Orchestra", and I really really like this. I'm a sucker for lots of wind instruments.

John Harvey Kellogg is that you?