Proxmox is what I’ve been farting around with. Finally cleared off enough old hard drives to play with truenas. That action forced me to move the router and modem into my office, which involved figuring out which coax outside my house went to this room. Just last night I figured out, or more honestly, found the right YouTube video, that held my hand through the process of giving truenas a static IP. Earned dopamine is nice.
I’ve been feeling the same way the last couple of weeks. I finally got so fed up with the toxicity of Instagram that I uninstalled it from my phone. And since finding Lemmy, I’ve disengaged and deleted my Reddit account. So I’m trying to figure out what to do on this Internet now. And it really feels like how I used to use it. I’m finding niche blogs and sites that people post on Lemmy. I’ll add them to my bookmarks so that I can remember to visit them again. I’m actually reading the articles and not just jumping straight into the comments. It’s like going back in time 12 years. And I don’t know if this is just in my head, but I feel like I’m regaining some of my ability to focus and increasing my attention span that’s been atrophied over the last decade. I just spent most of my weekend building and playing around with a new homelab server… Something I would have done years ago but would have been nearly impossible to do if I was stuck scrolling through the dopamine machine that is Instagram and Reddit.
If you’re dissatisfied with the results you get on Google or you’re looking for websites that might not be in Google’s search results, I recently came across this site: https://www.marginalia.nu/. The search engine touts itself as focusing on non-commercial content. It really makes me nostalgic for the old Internet… Back when you could find some random person’s blog about something really specific. They weren’t trying to get monetized or fit into some SEO algorithm. They just wanted to spread their passion for growing different varieties of butter beans, free of charge and subscription.
In case anyone hits a paywall, https://12ft.io can get around it. I also just learned that the Calibre software for ebooks has a news function that can download ebook versions of different publications. The New Yorker is available for download.
Articles like this make me sad because they tend to show the futility of what individuals can do. I try to reduce single-use containers and recycle where I can. But like the lady who tries to eliminate her family’s trash for a year, she was demoralized to learn that her plastics probably weren’t being recycled. And the ones that were, likely wasn’t having much good in the grand scheme of things. So what can individuals realistically? I try to use reuse-able grocery bags. The end of this article references a study done that claims reusable bags can have greater environmental impacts. I suspect there’s some nuance to that that’s being left out. This article talks about that same study and says (I’m paraphrasing here), “that the results table given by the study only draws attention to the worst environmental indicator for each material, rather than providing the whole story of how the bag performs in all categories. Ozone depletion was the biggest environmental impact for cotton bags. Taking into account just that factor, a cotton bag would need to be re-used 20,000 times to equal a regular plastic bag. But in many other categories, cotton was the preferable option.” I think this kind of science reporting happens a lot. Nuance can get left out.
I think all individuals can do is use common sense. Reduce the single-use things. Reuse things when they can.
Yup… when the only rule in the engine is “maximize profits”, this is what we get. We need a version 2 that includes some kind of rule that also incentivizes “do good for the world” or something to that effect… however you quantify that. I’m not hopeful that iteration will happen though. It’s hard, if not impossible, for a system to change itself. It’d be like changing the rules of Monopoly while playing it where the current winner has the most leverage and influence on how the rules change. If you’re already winning, you don’t want to change anything unless it makes you win more. You certainly wouldn’t want to change it in a way that made it harder for you. So the only way to change the rules in a way that benefits the current “losers” is if all those losers unite to overrule the leverage of the winner, which is why the winner puts in so much effort to keep the losers divided and arguing amongst themselves about what the problem is and what rules to implement or change.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
This is awesome. I bought a 100 pack of razors and a safety razor very similar to yours near the beginning of 2014 and I’m probably only about 25% through the razors. I hated the idea of spending so much on the big name multi blade razors.
I’ve bought at least two bags from ebags.com that I’ve been very happy with. The first bag was for a large 17 inch laptop I used in college. It was one of the only places I could find that carried laptop backpacks that could fit a thick 17 inch laptop. That bag is still getting use when I travel with very little signs of wear. I was so happy with it that when I needed a new carryon bag, I went back to ebags and got their Mother Lode Travel Backpack. It looks like they have a lifetime warranty for their ebags brand products.
A mechanical keyboard. I have the CM Storm QuickFire XT with Cherry MX brown switches. I got it from Amazon. It doesn’t look like it’s available anymore. But there’s a whole world of mechanical keyboards out there. I haven’t researched them in a long time since I love the one I have and don’t need a new one – and probably won’t need a new one for a long time.
I really like the size and aesthetic of the Field Notes notebooks. Small and thin enough to fit in a pocket. Maybe not as durable as some might be looking for. I kind of like the weathered look they get after some use though.
For something larger and more durable, I’ve liked these Miliko brand notebooks. The paper is nice to write on and doesn’t bleed through.
I got a French press and used it for awhile. I’m extremely lazy though and got tired of having to clean the coffee grounds out of the screen. That’s something I didn’t consider before buying it. I switched to a chemex that I like much better. Yeah, there are disposable filters but it works better for me. If I were starting over, I’d probably just get some kind of pour over thing that fits over my mug. That would take up less space than the chemex.