Adore the darktable gang.

I’m in my early/mid forties and still feel lost occasionally.

I think it’s a thing about being an adult. It’s not to be feared but embraced. Besides, it means you are thinking and not just doing.

The wilderness gives you time to find your own direction.

Still, it is a little disquieting. You’ll make it through, I promise, but you’ll end up back there too.

Love how this has gone from “researcher at x university” to “tip from a friend of mine” in less than 48 hours.

Yes, do this if you want your work to have the same feel as every other writer who runs their work through an llm.

Seconded. I keep trying others. I tried feedly for a while. I also tried readyou (which I still keep on my phone)… But nothing comes as close to inoreader for doing what I want.

Also, I’ve learnt how to aggregate other feeds into a single feed to pass them into it to get around the 150 limit. Not ideal, but I’m cheap.

Right you are. They started in 2003 a full two years before YouTube and a solid four years after the 90s.

I’m betting they weren’t around in the early 90s. I mean… If we are talking any real sort of publicly available machinima, we must be talking about the start of YouTube.

Unless watching your mate, Gary, do that thing where he voiced over Zangief as if we was a WWF wrester counts.

It is a great step forward, but the barrier to entry is relatively high. You can sign up to substack for free and they take a cut of your profits (that most writers don’t draw enough attention to earn.

Meanwhile ghost charges $9 a month, billed annually.

That’s a significant barrier to anyone that can’t afford to see if their writing will be popular and as long as that remains it will struggle to gain traction in the same way.

And yeah, I know you could host your own too, but again a price point and a technical barrier.

I like ghost, the interface and the ecology, but the truth is that it isn’t going to attract the sort of vibrant, young community it needs if you have to stump up $108 just to see.

I think one of the great things about 2000s/early 2010s internet was the proliferation of free to use platforms like livejournal, blogger and WordPress. Sure there was a lot or jank, but I found some of my favourite writers back when they were scratching their name into the internet.

Get a point for being bold enough to nominate yourself too.

I mean it, that was a cool thing to do and I’m glad you recognise it.

Would you say that someone reading printed out lyrics is listening to music?

Maybe if they were looking at a musical score? Is that listening to music?

I’d suggest it is a way of experience it. But it certainly isn’t listening to it.

I think reading is the same.

Audio books are not worse, not lesser, but they are different and that’s why I’d say they are not reading.

Yeah, you miaunderstand me.

You can still enjoy the content, but the process isn’t reading that’s all.

I enjoy them too. Audio books are great. Several members of my family are blind and it is a form we can enjoy.

Interestingly the fact that several people can enjoy an audiobook at once supports my argument that it is not reading… A somewhat solo pursuit unless someone reads aloud.

So, respectfully, I think you’ve got the wrong end of this stick.

But I do want to say that it gives me genuine pleasure that you’ve found a way to enjoy those stories.

I adore real life books, but I read at night whilst my partner sleeps. The backlit ereader is an absolute delight.

I also disagree with calling audio books “reading”.

I’m not saying is is a worse way to experience the content of the book, and I enjoy it myself, but it is a fundamentally different experience based on different senses and different mechanisms.

Lovely stuff. The democratisation of objects, the very idea that you can conceive and create under your own hand, is the true technical revolution.

Out there, all the chat is about AI. The truth is, 3D printing has done more for technology, and human activity.

Ach, I’ll get off my soapbox. Well done, you’ve made something cool.

Yup that’s a nostalgia.

It’s part of growing old, it’s part of coming to terms with mortality.

Soon, you’ll say the words, “but music really was better back then, it really meant something, now it’s just manufactured trash”. You’ll really mean it too.

You’ll convince yourself that the crime rate was lower and that people were friendlier, no matter what statistics you are shown.

“We really respected our elders”.

Next up, friend, the mid-life crisis where you think you can get it all back.

But not the cyclist as the cycle right through it.

I second a lot of opinions about that you might have depression.

I’d like to prefer a slightly harder edged one.

You could just be the sort of privileged asshole that thinks they know everything and they’ve seen everything just because it hasn’t been delivered to their door.

First world problem stuff. Serious case of the wahs.

The reason I bring this up is that you don’t just talk about your own ennui here. You go on to assert that there are a billion other people with similarly excitementless lives. How do you know that? Who are you to make that judgement on their lives and how they feel about it?

You say you have 60 years left… That puts you in your twenties (and in the rather privileged and surprisingly rare position of living somewhere with a life expectancy of 80). Do you think that, maybe, you just don’t know that much about what is actually our there?

Egotistical and helpless is not a good look.

Consider this the tough love approach. It sounds like you are scared to find out. You are happy in your steady, safe rut and use the presumption that there is nothing else just to avoid going and finding out.

This is all in good nature… I mean, there is a reason why quite a few of us are here. Myself included.

…and yeah, I’d like to see healthy engagement here and if that means a little smugness just to convince people to get involved, I’ll take it.

Did you just reframe smugness as not only justified but helpful actually, and really it makes a place more popular?

That’s some 4D smugness.

There’s also that weird “we’re better than people on Reddit” smugness.

It’s rare, but it is a unique brand of fuckery you don’t have to deal with over there.

I just want to add some context as a person that’s going grey.

You are still incredibly young in your 20s. There’s still so much time left for you.

It’s the ideal time to drop out. Think things over and find some purpose or direction.

Or not.

So much is made about knowing your course in life, when often learning to drift the right way can be far more enjoyable.

So yeah, not exactly a call to hedonism, but try to find what you enjoy and where your ambition lies then make positive steps to get there.