++++
12/18/2023
  ++++


I have recently ended a job that was so bad that I used
YouTube as a way to self-medicate. I'm not proud of that,
but I am even less proud of the fact that I took the job.
At least, I didn't do anything silly like join X, Facebook,
or even go back to Reddit. I also stayed away from news
other than sportsball... They're not going to get keep me
engaged through getting me enraged about what I have no
control over any more.

Now that I am done with the job, I am on an information
diet: no YouTube until the first weekend of the month. I
find that the YouTube algorithm tends to serve me up more
interesting things after I take a break, which allows for
the alternate possibility that there are only so many hours
of interesting (to me) content produced in a given period,
but I think there is also an effect of YT just giving me
more of the same as long I am scrolling, scrolling, but
showing some real diversity in the feed after a break. 
But I hope that it is clear that it is more important to
not be on YT all the time than it is to improve the YT
experience when I am on it. In that spirit, I have made a
Chromebook that I have recently broken out of chrome OS
jail as my new daily driver. In true noob fashion, the
distro I installed is Mint, but to show some real gumption
I have taken the following steps: 1) uninstalled Firefox 2)
instead of a graphical browser, installed lynx 3) changed
the configuration file on lynx so it will ignore all cookie
requests -- changing his first .cfg file... our little noob
is growing up!

When I start up my device, I just open up the GNOME
terminal that ships with Mint (color theme changed to green
and black, if that helps anything) and I just stay with the
command line. It helps me to pay attention to what I really
want to in life. I have keep notes on the books I read,
nature around me, and the journal of my life and thoughts
in text files organized away in their appropriate place.
When I need information, I just jump over to Lynx, get what
I need, and move on. Here's my bookmarks in Lynx: 

<LI><a href="gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/7/groundhog/us
  /zipcode">Weather</a>
<LI><a href="gopher://gopher.club/1/phlogs/">SDF
   PHLOGOSPHERE</a>
<LI><a href="http://www.ranprieur.com/">Ran Prieur</a>
<LI><a href="gopher://hngopher.com/">Hacker News</a>
<LI><a href="http://wiby.me/">wiby</a>
<LI><a href="https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/warmedal.se
  /~antenna/">Antenna</a>
<LI><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/">The
  Conversation</a>
<LI><a href="gopher://gopherpedia.com">gopherpedia</a>
<LI><a href="https://www.duckduckgo.com/">Duckduckgo</a>
<LI><a href="http://www.frogfind.com/">FrogFind!!</a>

Some notes on the list: 
Lynx supports gopher, which is how I got into it in the
first place. It does not support Gemini, but I still follow
along that community using the portal.mozz web-proxy to 
Antenna. 

Now that I don't have easy access to a graphical browser,
gopher really is how I check the weather. As to when I have
questions, I try to use FrogFind often, but it is sometimes
down, so it is useful to have a link to Duckduckgo as
well... The rest are there for more general surfing, which
I am trying to avoid, but still find better than than 
scrolling through the feeds produced by the recommendation 
engines, with their aforementioned enrage to engage model.

--

This work is hereby in the public domain.
Do what you want with it.