++++ 1/8/2023 ++++ Quick review: I am experimenting with only getting on YouTube two days a month-- the first weekend of the month, so I just got done with my time this month. Furthermore, my daily driver is a Chromebook which I have converted into a Linux which I have set up to work for my command line needs, and does not even have a normal graphical browser installed [1]. Just out of the inertia of the thing, this means that most days I do not leave the command line at all... It's probably time to point out I am blissfully unemployed right now, so this is an untainted experiment in information flow. Still, the rule is actually only limited to YouTube, not about a modern graphical browser, so for example when I rebalance investments, I can boot up the other computer and use the browser. This is not about making modern life impossible for me; it is about trying to waste less time. I felt a real sense of weirdness getting on Firefox on Saturday. And I both enjoy and wish to cultivate that feeling. It shows where possibilities are -- that things do not have to be this way. With that said, I did get some quality things out of YouTube. An interesting cooking technique, a video from the channel Clickspring that I now see as the paragon of what someone can do with hand tools, even just the amusement of King's Quest speed-running... Because the thing about the normie web is that it is still where the people are, and so there is much to find IF you can get past the mediating bullshit. But to be honest, it was probably only a half-days worth of content. The recommendation engine didn't present me with much after a very short time, and so I had to dig into my text file I keep here of possible things to search. SDF... it's my cloud. == [1] I do have links2 installed as a backup to lynx. If something I am reading seems to hinge on a picture, then I have used link2 in graphical mode to at least see the picture. From this, I have given thought to just switching to links2, but I have grown to like a lot about lynx (and let's not forget that it allows gopher to be my main computer home)... One odd thing I like is how in lynx I have to hit space several times if a site has a lot of cruft... Well, I want to be made aware that the website deals in cruft as a kind of meta-data for me the user. The way I look at it, it is still quicker than waiting for all the JavaScript to load. == This work is hereby in the public domain. Do what you want with it.