Potential, Downfall, What's the Meaning of it All?
This week
Yes, the title is sort of dramatic. There are so many ideas bouncing around my brain and I'm struggling to hold on to any specific one in particular. Negativity bias is attempting to convince me that the world is terrible while I sit in my privileged home, accessing the internet and exercising the privilege of uploading my thoughts.
Societal norms and how they can serve to drive consumption, collective responsibility, the place of individual action in a world that's largely set up for specific ways of doing things. Simpler living, a cap on material goods per person, and wondering what kind of society realistically could be built with today's capabilities.
Feeling like a void walker, existing on several planes at once. Facets of identity clashing and refusing to mesh into one coherent entity.
Misc thoughts
Space-saving coding hijinks from the past are so creative. Of course, making things small was a necessity at the time. I still think many modern programmers could stand to have more respect for people's potentially limited disk size.
I can't help wonder what the difference in energy usage would be if when clicking a Youtube video there was a choice to read it as a script on a nicely formatted page or watch it as a video (I know transcripts are a thing but the video is already loading at that point).
Reflections
The lure of Youtube is greater than I realized. Falling back on the site for comfort, entertainment, or a source of new (and not very often useful) ideas is a well ingrained habit at this point. Working to break it will require patience and vigilance.
There's only so much time in a day to listen to music, look at pictures, or read articles or books. Adapting a "obtaining less than I let go of (delete)" approach for digital files makes sense.