I’m reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. It’s my first Sanderson and I’m a little over 300 pages in. It’s been on my TBR for a few months and finally decided to take it on.

This is awesome. Did you build it? Where are you going to put it? Do you have more pictures of the complete library box?

Chim Chim chiminy, Chim Chim chiminy, Chim Chim chiree

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.

I can’t dispute that. I hear people claim that in my country too. But I just wonder how they can know that for a fact. Like okay, maybe they’ve seen a service provided by a private entity for X amount and a comparable service provided by the government for Y amount more. But how can we know what’s going on behind the scenes? Is the company being subsidized by the government? Is the government charging more for this service to offset and lower the price of some other service? Or is the government charging us more for the overhead of having thousands or millions of customers where on the other hand, it can charge a company to lease the infrastructure for less for the reduced overhead of only having that company as a “customer”? I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud. I just question where the motive comes into play for private companies. Their motive is to make money. Do they have us in their best interests? They can cut costs and have huge failures like what happened in Texas with their power grid. But then there can be huge government failure too providing these services like with what happened to the water system in Flint, MI. I’m not really educated on either of these so it’s possible I’m totally misrepresenting these. And I’m not claiming that there isn’t waste, abuse and corruption in government either. At the end of the day, public and private entities are run by people. But anyway, thanks for indulging my stream of consciousness.

I’m not the person you replied to and this isn’t well thought out. Just trying to think this through myself.

How would something like an electric company offer competitive cost or quality? There’d have to be at least two options serving an area in order for there to be some kind of competition. So do each of those companies build their own infrastructure, power stations, power lines, etc? So a neighborhood would have two sets of power lines? That seems wasteful and would get pretty ugly as more competitors came in. So maybe instead the government builds the infrastructure and the competing companies lease the usage of the infrastructure. But then what are the companies going to offer as a competitive advantage? I don’t know. They need to make some kind of profit in order to justify their existence. And they have to pay for the usage of the infrastructure. And they don’t want to lose money. And let’s assume the government doesn’t pick favorites and charges each of them the same. So we end up paying them more than what it costs them to lease the infrastructure. So why can’t we just cut them out, i.e. cut out the middle man, and pay the government directly. I guess this all just assumes that there’s nothing extra an electric company can offer on top of the electricity being supplied.

I’d pick being able to time travel, but maybe that’s too powerful. So then let’s say the ability to time travel but not be able to change anything. I just want to experience other time periods - past and future.

I feel that. I’m finding myself gravitate back to going directly to individual blogs. Just in the past couple of weeks, I’ve been introduced to new blogs on these smaller, more slower-paced niche communities. So it feels reminiscent of how I used to use the Internet 10-15 years ago before Reddit and monetization of everything. I had a handful of places I’d rotate through. It was just enough that there was usually something new everyday, but not an infinite sea of content. And I’m finding now that I’m actually reading the links being posted instead of just reading the comments. It kind of makes me think of how people used to watch TV. A show would release one episode a week and you had to wait for next week’s show. And there was a limited number of shows. Now with all the content on all the streaming platforms plus YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc. there’s an endless amount of content to consume and no built-in breaks so you can literally binge non-stop.

With Reddit or other fill-in-the-blank service where your attention is the end goal to sell ads, the incentive is to get you to never pause, never take a break, never leave. It was exhausting. Here, it feels more relaxed.

Ooo interesting. I bought some for a recipe that I ended up never making. I’ve heard it tastes kind of like cheese. Is that right?

Flavacol and butter flavored coconut oil. Tastes just like the movie theaters. No story… Just learned about Flavacol at work one day when we were talking about the best way to make popcorn. It’s basically just powdered salt.

• LOTR trilogy
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• A Midnight in Paris
• The Matrix
• Howl’s Moving Castle