#WHY ON PHONE APP QUALITY SUCKS SO MUCH??

[alacalledusually]

Enemies to lovers cliche

[achingly-shy]

THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY 2x04 | Free of Pointless Command

[emometalhead]

Hi! Not that anyone's like really wondering, but I wanted to check in. It has been a rough few days, and I am still not doing well mentally about any of it. I wanted to highlight and focus on some things that have helped me through.

• I am so beyond grateful for the lovely friends + community I have here. I've already said it, but thank you to everyone who has messaged reassurance or commented kind words. As much as this all sucks, it is nice to be reminded of the power of community.

• I've been pretty much avoiding social media. I muted several accounts I follow on Twitter and have almost entirely been off the app in the last couple days. I've checked up on some friends' Instagram stories, but I've been off there as well.

• I've really focused on spending time with my family. Quality time has always been an important thing for me, but it's been especially nice to have everyone off their phones together.

• Paramore's This Is Why has been a wonderful distraction. Being alone in my own head has been unproductive and anxiety inducing. I've had this album playing for a good chunk of the last two days, and I really forgot how incredible it is. True musical genius.

• I've also checked out some new music and revisited other older favorites. I finally listened to Halsey's The Great Impersonator. It was haunting, heartbreaking, and beautiful. It made me cry multiple times.

Anyway not that anyone asked, but I'm finding it more useful and cathartic to write out what/how I'm doing rather than thinkingthinkingthinking. I hope everyone is doing as well as possible under the circumstances, and I hope everyone is finding ways to cope that are beneficial. Sending lots of love. 🩷

[zoologicalcartoonvampire]

I basically went on the longest rant on why i hate short form content on discord this morning.. so eh

Ill just share it here

I GENUINELY, SO SO VERY DEEPLY

D E S P I S E

Youtube Shorts (as well as tiktoks, reels and the rest of them)

They are addictive. They are annoying. They are loud. They are obnoxious. They spread misinformation. Low quality content That i cannot run away from. They are worse than ads because at least there everyone agrees they suck and dont CHOOSE to watch that braindead shit.

I was very addicted to Instagram when Reels first started getting introduced. Ive always been anti tiktok, as i always saw right through its addctive and cheap cringe nature, but for Instagram that i was already addicted to, it wasnt so easy to simply not watch them. They are designed to GRAB at you. Pull you in. And KEEP you submerged for prolonged periods of time. Like some fucked up sea monster in a children's nightmare.

I hated it. I hated the content. I hated how overstimulating the videos were and how loud and colourful and random they are, how much information they give, it leaves one COMPLETELY DRAINED afterwards.

I HATED that. Life is for living not for getting addicted to trash on your phone and supporting abusive companies. So i deleted Instagram to save myself from wasting more if my life.

Ofc youtube then decided to implement them. Isnt that so so sweet! <3 /s

Ofc the problem then carried on, but having gone through already quitting insta, i kept trying to find ways of avoiding Youtube shorts.

I had tiktok for a month, simply to try promote my work, i was aware how risky it would be to do that, as i could sense myself letting go of my resistance to scroll mindlessly numerous times. I realized tiktok got me no traction so as quickly as i downloaded it, i deleted it. Out of my life. What a relief.

But Youtube shorts are still a pester. Since deleting youtube (the app) ive only been accessing yt for specific purposes: music or long form videos, which means that bumping into youtube shorts no longer catch me. Yay!

But now i have to dabble with the other ways these fucking god forsaked short form brainsucking 'content' bother me on a DAILYYY BASIS.

NOBODY FUCKING WATCHES THESE SHITS WITH HEADPHONES OR EAR PLUUGS! NO.

OFC NOT.

OUT LOUDDD FOR EVERYONE TO HEAR COMPLETELY RANDOM SOUNDS SWITCH EVERY TWO SECONDS AS IF THAT ISNT THE MOST ANNOYING COLLECTIONS OF SOUNDS ON THE PLANET.

its at home, on public transport, on a meet up with friends, on the street. NO FUCKING PEACE AND QUIET. people just playing the most annoying shit in existence out loud 24/7. TURN IT DOWN ALL OF YOU. YOU GUCKING MORONS. **OH MY GOD.** SHUT THE FUCK UP.

GO FOR A WALK AND LISTEN TO BIRDS OR SMTH. LISTEN TO A FULL SONG. TALK TO PEOPLE. STOP SWIPING ITS ANNOYING AS SHIT. PUT YOUR BRAINROT **AWAY.**

its especially bad with family or friends. Youre there, chilling, they decide to grab out their phone, open up youtube shorts and scroll like a zombie, loudly playing the bullshit on their screen. Thanks. What was a beautiful evening with friends, listening to the trees rustle and the fire crackle has now been overrun by the sounds of music clips, pathetic sound effects and annoying voices of people saying nonsensical statistics. You tell them its brainrot, and that they should put it away if with friends, they disagree arguing that "its not as bad as tiktok"

I. DONT. CARE. (and no its just as bad, you dimwit)

PUT YOUR DRUGS AWAY. I DON'T WANNA SEE IT.

Wake up early for once? Wanna enjoy a hot cup of coffee in silence and just relax?? HAHA. NO?? you cant have that! HERE! your sibling has to come and watch their YT shorts out loud next to you. No thanks!

These fucking shorts Get everyone negative once they get off of them. They promote racist, alt right propaganda. They are always so so negative.

I HATE IT.

I DESPISE IT.

I HATE THAT IT CANT JUST BE RESPECTED THAT I DONT WANT TO HEAR IT ALL THE FUCKING TIME??

I HATE HOW OVERWHELMING ALL THE SOUNDS ARE. I HATE RANDOMLY BEING PUT A PHONE TO MY FACE WITH SOMEONE SAYING "look at this vid"

I DONT CARE!!!!! IM GOING INSANE.

ITS A DRUG!!??!!???!

JUST CAUSE ITS ON A PHONE DOESN'T MAKE IT BETTER.

I DONT WANT TO SEE THIS EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME!!!

I HATE IT!

I hate that i cant even go for a walk to the woods to catch a break from the sounds of LIFE and on the way there, if any 'Younger than 30 year old' is about, ILL PROBABLY HEAR THAT SHIT.

I dont think i can express how much i destain it.

How much i hate it.

As someone who put in the effort to not be wayching them myself. I just wish my want of it NOT being forced on me and everyone around all the time could just be RESPECTED.

i dont care if all you people ruin your attention spans and brain capacities. Thats on you.

Just leave ME in peace.

For goodness sake.

[lifewithchronicpain]

Because of pain and nausea, I often struggle to sleep after 5-6 hours. It doesn't help that at a certain point in the morning other people in the house and neighborhood wake up and get noisy. Since I'm light sleeping at that point, it's impossible to sleep.

I have been using a white noise app for years to block out the sound from the living room TV. My dad is losing hearing but doesn't want to do anything about it, so everyone else suffers the loud fucking TV.

Now that I've moved from a room near the stairs to a room at the back, the noise bleed isn't so bad now. But I have grown accustomed to sleeping to pink noise on my app. In fact, I think it's why my phone is starting to give me issues with battery and freezing. It's not meant to be on all night, and I have to keep it plugged. I'm going to get a white noise machine, so I don't ruin the new phone I'm saving up for, but I have to make sure I find one that has pink noise (I think white noise is harsher on the ears) and an earphone jack.

Why? Because I have discovered cheap earbuds can help me sleep in the morning. I bought 4 sets of earbuds for $5 on amazon. Sound quality doesn't matter because I only use it for pink noise, I have nice wireless earbuds for music, but they suck for sleeping in because they're bulky from Bluetooth tech and can hurt my ear when sleeping on it. Earbuds don't have that issue.

Earbuds do have the wire, but I haven't found it to be too much of an issue. I unplug my phone and put it right next to my pillow. It's generally fine when I toss and turn.

Unfortunately, accidents happen and that's where multiple cheap ones come in handy. I just broke one set because I didn't put it away like I almost always do. So when I saw it on the bed, I pulled at it and then found I was sitting on some of it and it broke. Oh well, but it's fine because I got 3 more.

This simple thing has made it so I can generally sleep to 10 or 11, sometimes even noon, (I go to bed anywhere from 12 to 2am) as opposed to having to wake up due to noise from 7-9am. 7 am is usually when my parents get the dog from his kennel and he often barks after being out for a while.

So, I just wanted to share this in case anyone needed a way to block noise so they can sleep.

[scarletanpan]

…

That remote-connection-required GitHub program for my school work had me tweaking so hard i. Impulse bought a laptop yesterday. I have been trying to get one for a few years for school bc my tower is so old and struggles and it’d be nice to be able to take my computer anywhere else so I’m not at home 24/7 bc that’s been killing me for years so like. Had to dig into my savings but it’s still a cheap laptop I just needed it to have decent functionality and after being completely unable to get into it without connecting my Microsoft account I then spent hours uninstalling useless programs and turning off all the dumb sponsors and notifications and random ui features that look atrocious bc I forgot windows 11 existed I was still on 10.

This shit fucking sucks so bad every ten seconds Microsoft is begging u to give them every ounce of your information like it’s not even funny. It’s v easy to click into connecting everything u own to ur computer and like i really don’t care if it’s useful go ahead, but like I’m not tryna do all that. Like can I not just. Use the computer?? Maybe without the system constantly saying how much worse my experience is without one. Like no offense I doubt there’s regulations bc no one would think to fucking do it but it should not be legal to require users to sign up to a service to access their own fucking computer they bought. It literally says if u want to use a local account u can, but after u sign in. So now even tho I’ve tried to delete every trace of my email and removed the original account microsoft edge prompts me with it for sign-in when I open it and no option to delete. So they still have my info even tho I didn’t want to give it to them

And ofc they’re a tech company they need data from users to function but if u don’t glance in the settings there’s a lot of extra ones, to the point that I had to take a break from reading them. Like there’s that fucking many and the ui does way too much back and forth that makes it genuinely exhausting to navigate which is. Interesting

The part that frustrates me the most is that there are now so many random buttons and links on the sidebar every single program in order to redirect to some other microsoft-related features that I can barely tell what I’m navigating sometimes. Everything looks the fucking same, I’m trapped in a fucking soft-edge minimalist window nightmare and it makes me nauseous i think

Might be the only one who feels this way but spending a few hundreds dollars on a brand new computer and then logging in to see the desktop covered with every single possible program (or phone app) u might ever want or need transmuted into this bare, technically functional microsoft void that’s still somehow missing most basic features any active user would need and also can’t be uninstalled w/o settings windows 10 and 11 intentionally removed makes me want to crumble into a ball and die maybe. It’s not hard to add it back but. Just baffling how manipulative the design of the entire system is like. This computer hates my fucking guts for not using its features

Oh and the github shit didn’t work either. Just got to watch it rebuild faster. One of the tech guys on my support case told me the move to github was a v sudden deployment they were rushed into and has lead to tons of issues like this. Which of course, I assumed bc it was Not like this last semester but wow. Love to see tech companies fucking over their workers and the quality of their platform for a deal. Like why is tech annoying and depressing and fucking me in so many ways this isn’t good for my future which I hoped would be tech-centered. It will be anyway I just know I’m gonna be mad abt the stupid fucking ways ppl run their businesses the whole time

[gracielbas]

It's 2024 and who doesn't succumb most of their days scrolling in their phones, typing away in fb messenger, making tiktoks or just laughing at cat memes. Of course, as a Gen-Z-er, I'm part of the digital native population or basically you can call me—chronically online because let's be real here I basically grew up with the internet. That is why I cannot imagine a life without technology, I feel like life would be 100x harder than it is today.

If you were to ask me how deeply integrated technology is to my daily life then I would tell you I am living in a "Cybereal world" and what is that you ask? It's a word I just made up to describe an interconnected world of technology and real life. Now, to get you a look in my daily life in the Cybereal world, let me show you how my day usually goes.

First, in the morning I consider my phone as my lifeline. Why? because as a student who's always tired and sleep deprived I find it hard to always wake up on time so I set up countless (and when I say countless I really mean infinite number) of alarms with 10 to 20 minute intervals. Sometimes, my friends also call me via Messenger or through my phone number to wake me up which I really appreciate so much 'cuz nothing beats starting your morning with some good vibes from your friends right?

After waking up, I start preparing for school. My school schedule is divided between online and offline setup. So on days where I have to go to school, I get ready with music playing in the background. I stream music from youtube 'cuz ya know I have to support my fave kpop group by streaming their music video or I use spotify as I have a subscription (thank god for student discounts it's like the only best thing I have received for being a student) ehem, anyways I usually just play music in my phone or my laptop (mp3 and CD players are so out of trend) . Then after getting ready, I chat my schoolmates and my beloved friends that I'm on my way to school and we decide on where to meet up for breakfast. Once I arrive school, the most important feature in our entire university campus is the elevator. I would not climb up 9 floors of stairs just to get to our room everyday. My weak body cannot tolerate that so praise whoever made elevators.

Online classes are like the best example of how internet and technology has changed this world like can you believe you can get proper education in the comfort of your homes? I really cannot grasp that idea at first but due to the pandemic that happened and the rise of digital world, it just became normal for me. Therefore, my online classes are just me (staring) listening attentively to my professor and taking down notes in Google Docs (PRO TIP! its easier this way).

After classes, I usually go out with my friends to go eat or visit some recreational spots just for leisure and enjoyment 'cuz we always go by the saying "You're never this young, so enjoy your life to the fullest." Of course, we cannot go anywhere without our phones 'cuz how are we going to navigate our way there without google maps? Or how can I go home without the use of transportation booking apps? As someone who sucks at directions google maps and online transportation booking apps are my holy grail.

Everytime I hang out with my friends, I always and I say ALWAAAYS end up with a hurting stomach because of excessive laughing and of course these moments are the moments we want to cherish and keep for the longest time. There's no better way to capture such wonderful moments than with your very high quality phone camera.

After spending a healing moment with friends, I'm back to being a fulltime student as I open my laptop and slave away to finishing school works. During exam seasons, I spend the rest of my week cooped up in my room in front of my computer reading transes for my exams. I also search more information on our topics and lessons in the internet. I also want to give a very special shoutout to Nurse Sarah and her youtube channel for carrying me throughout my college years.

Sometimes, I hop on discord call with my friends and we study together and teach each other concepts and lessons. I appreciate the rise of online calls through various platforms as it really makes it easy to communicate with people even without leaving my home.

A little bit about me is that I am diabetic so I have to take note of my blood glucose. There's this device called glucometer which lets me take my blood glucose level at home—which saves me lots of money as I don't have to go to the clinic and pay for professional fee just to get my blood glucose checked. Aside from that, I have to be active to stay healthy or else I'll have complications with my health. Therefore, I keep track of my exercise activity which I do using my phone and this app called health tracker.

I agree with what Ms. Ariana Grande said in her song 7 rings "whoever said money can't solve your problems must not have hadenough money to solve them" and so, I tend to reward myself by spoiling myself with my favorite things like buying kpop photocards and merchandises. I usually buy them online through applications or platforms like Shopee, Lazada or through twitter, which is now known as X. Whenever I buy online, I use this mobile money transferring app called GCash to pay for my items. I do agree that this form of e-wallet made purchasing items faster and more convenient as I don't have to frequently withdraw money from my bank account. If ever I do need to transfer money from my bank I can do it online through money transfer from bank to e-wallet. I would like to say that this also made me more impulsive in my buying decisions though. Luckily though this easier method of buying and paying is now applied in offline stores as I can pay my items through any e-wallet. All of this leads us to the equation of more things bought + more items gained = happier me

After doing all of these mentioned above, I move on to completing other house chores like washing my clothes like my uniform and then cooking food using our electric stove or the microwave if I'm feeling lazy. Being done all that, I end my day by listening to music again or watching k-dramas to put me to sleep. (i often forget to set my alarm again but I wanna thank whoever made scheduled alarm setups). All in all my cybereal world is full of living life with technology to accompany me in every step I take. Starting from waking up to ending my day, I need technology to back me up. Yes, I agree that I can do these things without my phone, laptops, etc but aren't traditional alarm clocks, cars, and even our doors are form of technology too? I believe that technology came to fruition to be a support for our everyday world. It's just up to us to control the way we let technology control our every day life. That ends this post, if you want to share your application of technology in your daily life then feel free to comment below your own version of your CYBEReal world! Thank you for reading~

[papirouge]

why are people still buying iphones? its well known at this point they use slave labor and that they also engage in planned obsolence, not to mention all their updates and changes theyve made to their products that are user unfriendly and done to charge people more. like at this point theres truly something wrong with iphone users, but oh im sure the superior camera is worth it 🙄

All phone companies use slave labor, let's get real. But iphone planned obsolescence is more visible bc the release of their new phone seem more quick than those of other brands.

I never own an iphone (and never will cause these wireless earphones look absolutely stupid lmao) and I have no doubt they are extremely performant (especially photo quality - I heard iphone photi quality was better). This whole apple apps/cloud synch makes them very handy to share files which is why it's its the phone of choice for influencers, but that's it.

When I was taking my marketing classes, my teacher was pushing me to own an iphone for those reasons. She didn't seem to know Android that well, and when she was trying to explain to me some stuff she was like "i don't know if you can do it on Android" and I could. It's just that it was a bit different do to it. I think the "superiority complex" some iphone havers have comes from the lack of knowledge of how android work and they think they do less. My teacher on twitter occasionally reblogged a post clowning Android users with someone being like "my hair is a mess, my nails aren't done, I feel like an Android 😭" which is very interesting bc she also retweeted post saying that androids users were obsessed dunking on iphone unprovoked 🥴

I really liked her bc she came off like the typical iphone user projecting their own defensiveness over apple for android lol

Android business model is entirely different than apple. Android opts for accessibility and customization (same for Windows). Apple is more exclusive and need a dedicated app system. These are different need for different type of demographics, so it's stupid to pit them against each other.

Interestingly you won't see apple users be that much defensive about Mac computer against Windows like that (which would be understandable bc unlike android, windows legitimately sucks). Why? Because it's the influencers/cool/rich people's phone - Mac don't have that much of a cool image (it's more the computer of tech/industrious people). They are so defensive of iphone because they want to defend their status of belonging to that club.

Android users don't have this worry of defending an image bc this system is shared by multiple phone brands with different brandings.

[paperw0rmz]

wut's a trend from the 90s/early 2000s u wanna see make a comeback? :0

THANK YOU FOR ASKING

For those who don’t know Hi I’m Grave and I am obsessed with 90’s-2012 things and have archives and logs of media, specifically web, of things from those eras

1:Radio shack

As someone who is getting into ham radio and also just misses being able to get funky little add ons to computers and shit, I think we should all as a collective demand a radio shack. “Oh bUt yOu hAvE bEst bUy” I will literally slit your throat if you are dumb enough to think that that ugly wanna be ikea shit is anything remotely similar to big daddy Radio Shack

2:Chatrooms

Was I way too young to be on them back when they were popular? Yes. Did that result into trauma? Yes. But I’ve learned my lesson and now I want this shit back so bad. I LOVE chat rooms. “YeAh wE hAvE dIscOrd aNd DMS” ITS NOT THE SAME FUCKING THING AND YOU KNOW IT.

Bring back chatzy, bring back IRC (I’m active on a few), I’m even on Wireclub if anyone wants to join my chat rooms there!!! And pesterchum

3: physical copies of media

I hate streaming services. I hate it. There is nothing but zombie glossy eyed, let’s market to the brain dead, shit on there. Like yes, I love some of the shows, but we have lost so much shit from moving to streaming services. Remember on a VHS or DVD where you could watch behind the scenes, bloopers, play movie/show related games all on a tape/disk???? It’s the same with any physical music media too. I think it makes you more so focused on what entertainment you actually like. Too many people just like things because it’s popular or trending, which is fine, but when it comes down to it do you actively want to OWN something physical from the media? If not then is it something you’re willing to put time into then? Why not do something else?

4:Arcades

I’m not talking about that Dave and buster shit. I’m talking not scam (at least not as bad as it is now) arcades that was on every Main Street, in every mall, like in a mall now of days is a small as shit arcade if it’s NOT Dave and busters. I hate Dave and busters mainly bc they ruined a genre. It was marketed as a arcade for adults but then they added kid I pad games and now it’s just an awkward overpriced place to be where you can see a seven year old play cross road or angry birds on a glorified I pad and also see grown men get shit faced drunk.

5:MAGAZINES

Literally so hard to find good magazines now of days. Especially for a cost that won’t fucking kill you. I managed to get most of mine second hand, but it’s so hard to find anyplace that sells magazines especially ones that are to kids without being too babyish. I go to a grocery store and if I look for a young girls/boys magazine it’s about very YOUNG things to the point I don’t think the market audience can even read??? That or it’s just guns or gardening. Which is cool, but there isn’t anything for teenagers really anymore. Like yes there are, but you have to sign up online for it which is fine, but I miss being excited to go to the corner store to see if there is any latest addition of the magazine I loved there.

6:social interactions

You would jus stay outside or inside right next to your phone/computer waiting for someone to come by and tell you where everyone else is at. Like having to go walk to every gas station and corner store to see if your friends are there and getting excited when they are actually there. I am thankful for being able to easily like meet up with people, but like the feeling you get when you run into people and then go fuck off is so fun

7:The video games

Video game quality has gone down hill. I’m not talking about highly detailed story based games, no. I’m talking about app games, free to play games, all that shit. It is now a click bait, league clone, or clash clone. And it’s BORING. It’s all ad based and trying to suck as much money from you as possible and it’s all so ugly in that ugly 3D art style.

8:intelligence

*insert the tweet about how if you say you like waffles people will just assume it means you hate pancakes* people today do not have common sense anymore.

9: sense of community

#coquette #grassfromthegardencore #corefromcore

Like yes, back then was also elitist, but not as bad and forced as it is now. So many people today are so focused on aesthetic labels instead of just focusing on what they just like. Like yes, labels are comforting, but to the point you’re desperately asking what aesthetic this is so you can then throw out and change your aesthetic to match it and then repeat over and over? Gross.

10: early web memes

Memes arnt long lasting today as it was back then. There aren’t even memes today. Just a tiktok video that was posted on Twitter. I hate it.

[heavenknowsffs]

I never thought myself a faithful person, not as a quality or anything, just more of a "you should be faithful to friends and family OF COURSE, that's just a given natural thing every human should have" but nothing else, like not to brands or whatever. But..

After having 3 pairs of the same exact earphones and 1 pair of a slightly better and more expensive ones (bc i got it wrong).... like i already knew i was FAITHFUL to this specific product because it never failed me. The reason i had 4 pairs since 2014? (FOUR IN TEN YEARS ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? I USED TO BUY NEW CHEAP EARPHONES EVERY 2 DAYS) is not even because they stopped working on their own, i literally stepped on my first pair, the 2nd one i also stepped on one of the buds, the 3rd one i lost them and got the other better ones by mistake (they're quite better actually but i didn't want to pay extra 10€ but i got them bc they look the same 🥲) nd now i have them both bc i found pair no 3.

Anyway where i'm going with this... sorry if anyone is actually reading all this i just want to get it off my head. But like with phones, i've had a samsung in like? Idek like 2015 and it was great and i've had the same brand since because again, it never really failed me (everytime i changed was either for updates, bc it was stolen or because it went through too much beer on the screen - i.e. the last one and mind you it still works! Just not the screen and i guess it was cheaper to buy a new phone) but i got this new phone which i didn't really want anyway. But i needed for work and etc wtv and it doesn't have an earphone jack which is annoying. But now comes back my faithfulness bc i bought an adapter for my perfectly great earphones and now it DOESN'T WORK bc this phone apparently sucks (i could make an entire essay about them doing this on purpose so you have to buy wireless ones and only use their own brand etc) and i'm just like "ok i'll hang out with my last samsung that works and usa that little one just for music..... BRO THAT IS SO INCONVENIENT???? BUT I AM WILLING TO JUST SO I DON'T BUY WIRELESS ONES

And now you ask "why don't you just use your old phone anyway and why did you get a new one" that is indeed a good question and even though my life would suck immensely using that old thing i kinda wish to go back. But alas i am a photographer and in case ya didn't know that takes up a shit load of memory, as well as needing some apps that that phone cannot support / have space and RAM for 🫠 idk why i chose such an expensive hobby either lmao

[strangecloud]

I've been feeling very disillusioned with technology for a while now, and I'd like to explore why.

Believe it or not, I've always been kind of a Luddite. That might sound weird coming from a computer nerd, but I'm a computer guy first and foremost. I've been using them as long as I can remember and I even got pretty good at operating computers, going as far as tinkering and assembling some myself (which admittedly isn't that hard, but it is an uncommon skill)

Regardless of how much of a nerd I am, the level of tech in my life has always been significantly behind the curve. My components are a few generations old at best. I've been using the same phone for half a decade. I grew up gaming on a PlayStation 2 when most of the world had moved to the 7th gen. I'm about as far from cutting edge as you can be without just not caring about tech at all.

What disappoints me about technology is that it doesn't look like it's meant to make life easier for people. It's meant to exploit them.

There's not really any good reason why everything should have glitchy, unresponsive and poorly put together apps nowadays. "Smart" tech has always been smoke and mirrors driven by marketers trying to sell things nobody really needs. All these home gadgets are just as reliable and useful as the goddamn Juicero, the difference is the marketing on a lot of them is successful.

An over engineered lock on your front door isn't going to stop burglars. No lock ever will. The point of locking your things isn't to make them secure, it's to make the effort of breaking in not really worth it. That smart lock, however, might lock YOU out of your house, as already has happened to one dude from the USA if I'm not mistaken.

We've seen tech bros trying to sell people "phygital" stuff that is just augmented reality DLC powered entirely by marketing. It's not useful and does nothing, the only purpose of it being a vector to suck money out of people who are susceptible to advertising tricks. That's the same thing that drove NFTs, by the way. People being told they were inadequate for not owning a pointless product and deciding to buy it based on the optics and the zeitgeist instead of any practical function. And don't get me wrong, the people buying these things aren't necessarily the problem. I think we as a society have been conditioned to see marketing and conspicuous consumption as such an integral part of life that we have trouble even recognizing we're participating in these toxic behaviors and industries.

I think therein lies the problem. Tech isn't meant to be useful to people. It's meant to be desirable by people and useful to money. This problem manifests itself in many ways, from the theft machines we see in the AI industry, to massive amounts of toxic byproducts released by functional-yet-obsolete e-waste, to the mountain of human suffering that content moderators in big platforms have to endure just so we get pretty cat pictures on our dashboards.

I'm sure this sounds overly pessimistic but I don't think tech can come back from the capitalist event horizon that it has probably already crossed. I think eventually the quality of services and goods on the internet is going to be so bad that it'll not even be worth having it around.

While I have you, STORE YOUR THINGS LOCALLY. Don't trust cloud servers and platforms to keep your things safe for you. If you cannot hold the hard drive containing your videos and images and art and files IN YOUR HAND, it's not safe. Keep at least two separate drives with more than one copy of everything you care about each. Take it from someone who's been on the internet since 2006 and has never lost one byte of data to system formats and hard drive crashes.

[koko-online]

Routine, routine, routine.

I have alarms. An alarm for my workout, an alarm to start studying, an alarm to practice drawing, an alarm to practice music. And a set amount of "stuff" or time I do for each one. My workout routine, for example, or a chapter, or studying flashcards, or whatever.

Eventually, it'll just become second nature. I keep the alarms because I'm bad at time, but they're not strictly needed anymore.

Start with just one thing you want to add. Change incrementally.

ALSO you get a lot more good feelings from doing something practical than learning fundamentals, so do a mix of both. Learning a new alphabet but knowing no new words sucks. Learning a bunch of new words is a lot of fun with or without the writing system. It's why I'm enjoying guitar (tabs) much more than playing my 27th arrangement of fucking Mary had a little lamb on piano. So do a mix of both kinds of tasks.

Eating well is also routine. I have a meal replacement shake for breakfast, a salad for lunch, random snacks for dinner. Carrots and hummus, pistachios, watermelon, strawberries, mango, etc. Pick "healthy" things you can enjoy eating and just graze casually. Delete delivery apps from your phone. You'll start craving the healthy shit after like two weeks.

Budget is hard...but I've really started adopting the attitude that I can't "buy" my way into improving my quality of life. The baseline of a studio apartment, a set of weights, cheap food, public library, piracy, thrift shopping is more than I need. Old things are both better than new things (survivorship bias) and cheaper. Also stop paying for subscriptions. Cut every fucking subscription to everything you don't use DAILY.

My main problem is a lack of discipline. It's the reason I'm not progressing in my language studies or changing my diet or keeping to my budget. I need to start working on that. I think what might help is creating a low stakes challenge that helps build up discipline and that I can reward myself for.

Suggestions welcome.