It’s been a while. Here a sketch that looks unfinished. If I lay a couple of fingers over the light green and house, it looks like something. I’m letting it sit for a while before I decide.
Good news today, for me anyway! Still in remission! Yay! Three years and four months. My type of cancer has an 11% survival rate.
This year alone we’ll all spend the equivalent of 500 million years scrolling on social media.
(Collectively, the world spends 720 billion minutes a day using social media platforms. Over a full year, that adds up to more than 260 trillion minutes, or 500 million years of collective human time, according to a report from GWI, a consumer research company.)
This quote in a newsletter from Scott Pape, The Barefoot Investor.
Beggars belief, the numbers he quotes. see the whole article below.
 Hi Rita,There were two weeks in July 2012 that completely changed your life forever. However, at the time you were blissfully unaware of what was going on. (We all were.) What happened? Well, it all began when Facebook listed on the Stock Exchange, which was a total and utter disaster. Within a few months its shares had crashed by more than 54%. Why? At the time of its IPO (initial public offering), Facebook stated it had “no material revenue from mobile”. (Yes, in 2012 we were all checking our Facebook friend requests on our web browsers.) Zuckerberg could see the writing on the wall. They were dead meat unless they got on mobile. And so, as legend has it, he pivoted the entire company to building a killer app – fast. He famously refused to have a meeting with anyone until they had presented him with what he wanted. And in those few weeks the smartest behavioural psychologists and programmers in Silicon Valley created the very first social media app, something so powerful that it changed the course of history. Seriously. Let’s flip forward. This year alone we’ll all spend the equivalent of 500 million years scrolling on social media. (Collectively, the world spends 720 billion minutes a day using social media platforms. Over a full year, that adds up to more than 260 trillion minutes, or 500 million years of collective human time, according to a report from GWI, a consumer research company.) In short, you’re spending way too much time on your phone, right? Everyone is. The Digital Australia 2024 Report by consumer intelligence company Meltwater shows that the average time users spend on TikTok is 42 hours and 13 minutes per month. Second place is YouTube, with the average user spending 21 hours and 36 minutes per month. And Aussies are some of the biggest users of Snapchat, with 17 hours across 619 individual sessions (!) per month. Facebook users spend an average of 20 hours and 15 minutes per month, and for Instagram it’s 11 hours and 45 minutes per month (which I thought would be higher, to be honest). Is this a good use of your most precious asset? Well, if you ask Mark Zuckerberg the answer is “Hell, yeah!”. Facebook’s profits were $US32 million in 2012 … and last year they were $US39,000 million. Yet what about for the rest of us? Well, Facebook interviewed eMarketer’s Ezra Palmer about the dramatically increased use of mobile, which is up 627% in the last four years alone. She glowingly described it as our “connected consciousness” and brushed aside the naysayers: “If it were not a valuable way of interacting and being, we wouldn’t be doing it. Mobile is an extension of us … it’s a fundamental shift in our psychology … it’s one thing to look at the [daily usage] numbers, it’s another to think about the amazing ramifications of that”, she gushed. Uh-huh. Just like all those people at the casino wouldn’t be there if it weren’t a valuable way of being. And let’s look at those amazing ramifications. The rise of social media has coincided with an accelerating decline in teen mental health, and hospitalisations for self-harm have exploded, especially for young girls. Not only are today’s kids more anxious, depressed and suicidal than in previous generations, they’re also getting dumber. Australian students are among the world’s biggest users of digital devices at school, yet academic results released in December showed teens have fallen a full academic year behind those who went to school in 2000s, according to the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA). This all makes sense. Social media (which has done another ‘pivot’, this time to 45-second viral videos) is the equivalent of junk food. You wouldn’t spend upwards of 10 hours a day continuously gorging on highly processed junk food and expect to be healthy. It’s the same for our mental health. You are what you eat … and what you scroll (and Zuckerberg is your personal chef serving us up dopamine-soaked donuts all day long). Yet waving our fists at the tech giants is about as useful as blaming Macca’s for your kid eating Big Macs for breakfast. We’re the parents, and we’re in charge. And many of us have trained our children to see that a phone is the most important thing on earth. I’m ashamed to admit that at every milestone of my kids’ life – the day they were born, the day they took their first steps, the day they pedalled their first bike, and every birthday – they looked up and didn’t see my eyes … they saw the back of my phone as I yelled “Smile!”. They also see Mum and Dad mindlessly scrolling on our phones while the world passes us by. Again, what message do you think that sends them? So I’ve come to a couple of conclusions. First, if I want my kids to have a healthy relationship with technology, I need to model it myself. That means keeping my phone in a dish with my car keys and wallet at the front door – and leaving it there – so I can engage with my family without constant distraction. Second, it’s my job to give our kids experiences they can’t get from screens. Like what? Like encouraging them to have friends over to hang out IRL (which is what kids actually want most). Or going on a family hike, to the beach, or to a sporting event. Or encouraging them to start their own little Barefoot Business (perhaps with a mate). Now this sounds very aspirational, but how would you force yourself to actually do it? Well, the fastest way would be to implement Screen Free Sundays. And that’s what my wife and I havedecided to trial with our family – starting this week. Yes, we’re trying to put the internet back in the box, and live like it’s 2012! Tread Your Own Path! |
Plus, I overworked my shoulders today, can’t type.
Cheers, all.
I was glad to see this tiny patch of native moss among the giant south American exotics. Even better the clue to another species of birds to discover …
A scribbled sculptural form …
One a a pair of twins …
Its mate. They guard a pebbled through-way
In Brazil, or wherever they originate, there would’ve been a froglet living in the little pool in the heart of the floret. More on them after I re-read Wings by Terry Pratchett (1990).
Part Two of Blog Usability
Having a good night’s sleep often helps me to ‘think’ things through, with that kind of thinking being done in the unconscious. So while sitting down for breakfast this morning and checking the weather and my mail, I also checked how my latest blog post appears to people reading it on the their mobiles/cell phones or tablets.
First there are the four lines below: Title, Author, Categories and Date & Reading Time
Then the BLOG CONTENT, arguably the meat of the meal. My stats page tells me 8/10ths of people read just the email and they have the opportunity to Comment and or Like. Eight tenths of the time I do the same. Most mornings I have time to read things, but not comment.
People who click through and read on the Reader interestingly get the Tags in a header at the top. Nobody else does. Clicking through and reading on the Blog gets you the following list of additional bits and pieces.
Share this and Likes, another important bit. Then, Related posts. Then Tags, I was surprised to see. Then, the Published by … and About Me paragraph, followed by Leave a Comment. Finally, one after the other, the three new widgets. First the Search Box, followed by the mashed up Categories list and, finally, Recent Posts.
A lot of superfluous stuff in that list that I doubt anyone will read. One thing I dislike about the internet in the last 3 or 5 years … the amount of bloat and padding a reader needs to negotiate their way through!
It’s as if since no one is accountable for the amount of web-space being used … like we have vast distances of free geography to fill up and never mind the amount of electricity needed for cooling towers … and 3000 words looks far more impressive then 1500 words … repetition and padding are the new normal.
I grew up when paper newspapers and magazines were the go, when every inch of print had to be paid for, and flab, repetition and padding were cut ruthlessly. It seems to me we need to renew that contract. To save on cooling towers and save readers.
So. This is what’s going to happen. Starting at the end of my list, Recent posts is gone, as they are more or less taken care of in the Related Posts item. The list of Categories is gone, as the categories pertaining to that post are covered in the third line of the title block, and they are more useful to me in their nested format in settings.
While the Search Box is useful, I don’t know how useful it’ll be where it is. Wait and see is the go with that item. Then there’s Leave a Comment. I’m leaving that where it is.
Then, Published by … and About Me is starting to look rather jaded. It’s up for a make-over. Tags are said to be important but I often suspect the post’s title and categories are doing the grunt work. I might be able streamline Tags … they are a work in progress. Related Posts, Share This and Likes are all to stay.
Blog appearance has changed and hopefully, as a result, usability has improved.
Not like these Lego stairs. This is Tim working on them, he needs to transform the treads from three-tiles-high to two-tiles-high to improve usability.
After studying all the themes available and making notes on just one possible, had another look at my present theme … Independent Publisher 2 by Raam Dev … and discovered that it allowed me to insert the three widgets I wanted. I thanked Raam Dev and my lucky stars.
Over the years and on the various different blogs I’ve been involved in, I have tried quite a few themes. This one is my favorite and so I was glad I could hang on to it.
I’ve tried to do things a little like Tim is doing to his staircase, in the example above, to make this blog more user-friendly. For instance, by adding a search box to help find installments of the novels, and for me being able to find quickly if I have already posted up such-and-such story. I looked for Amble and did not find him other than a mention in another story. But that’s all right, he’ll keep.
I’ve cleaned up Categories. And oh boy, the list was endless. It needed me seeing the list in total to realize how unwieldy it had become. But what I’ve just noticed is that the new list of categories has mixed and matched subcategories as though they all have the same value. I’ll rejig that sometime, maybe tomorrow. I’ll also need to clean up the list of tags. I have 34! pages of tags. Tomorrow is a better day for that job, too.
Last is the widget for the five last posts. I don’t know how useful that is. Let me what you think? maybe I’ll replace it with a tag cloud.
Walter Taylor Bridge, one of the many bridges across the Brisbane River. This one joining Chelmer on the southwest side to Indooroopilly on the northwest side.
I travelled 18 kilometres to Indooroopilly to finally have my hearing aid fixed. Eighteen kilometres that costs $55 and about forty minutes in a cab.
18 kilometres back again for an unknown amount on my senior’s Go-Card, but not more than about ten dollars, and two and a half to three hours by train, shank’s pony and bus.
I paid the cab fare on the way out there because I wanted to see how far along the roadworks had got. These the works relating to the new underground railway station and new railway tunnel under the river. It’s astounding how much of that work has to be done top-side. Made up for the cab fare by not spending anything on lunch.
On the way home, walked to the railway station—saw that nice piece of vintage infrastructure above—and waited at the station. Twenty minutes gone.
Roma Street Station still—by now it’s probably been five years of mess—at sixes and sevens due to the changes being made. But managed to find a human ticketing dispenser and was able to exchange my blue Go-Card for a brown seniors’ card. Forty five minutes at Roma Street.
Roma Street so frustrating in the end, I thought I might as well shank’s pony again (ie walk) to King George Bus Station and catch my ride home from there.
Sat down for a lunch snack and drink at 12 noon, just in time for this …
Post Office tower and how tiny it now looks! A short carrilion in keeping with the hour.
The bus 222 home to Carindale, a total of 4005 steps as well as all the other mileages. Left home at 10.00 am, got back at 1.30ish pm. Worth it?
Oh yeah! I can hear again. Missed listening to music, hearing phonecalls properly, not being surprised by squealing laughter, and birds … I can hear birds again!
Some people keep their piles at their bedside. I don’t sleep when I read in bed. This pile —
is beside me, on my couch. Plenty of paperwork under them as well, as you can probably see. My tax return for 2022-2023, for instance. Late already, it’s very forgettable.
Three of the books relate to Interpreting Dreams, the online course I’ve been studying. I’m halfway through but seem to be marking time, like I’m stuck on learning about shadows, and getting side-tracked on a bunch of other interesting stuff.
Ursula K LeGuin’s Tao Te Ching is a wonderful interpretation that I wouldn’t like to do without now. I have three bookmarks in it but most often I “make my daily march with the heavy baggage wagon”. From 26, Power of the Heavy.
Second from the bottom is my health journal wherein I keep track of what my Low Dose Naltrexone regime is doing to me. Good things, so far. Much less inflammation.
Then Sapiens: A brief history of mankind by Yuval Noah Harrari. Have to admit I’m past what’s most interesting to me which is humankind’s early history. I’m struggling through Roman times and the age of the empires.
Next up, is The Three Body Problem by Cixin Lui, famous Chinese SF author. Translated by Ken Liu. Unfortunately I started watching the TV series of the same name before the book arrived via snail mail. While the TV series is an easy and engrossing watch, the book is every bit as cryptic as has been said. Reading it, I keep trying to match events in the TV series.
Last in the pile, there’s Revenger by Alistair Reynolds. It’s just as rich and baroque as the first and second times I read it. It’s meaty with a thick silky gravy, excellent food for my SF hunger. And in addition I’m on the watch-out for the pirate captain’s magnificent orrery that influenced me to purchase the much paler Lego version. My next purchase will probably be the third installment of this trilogy.
Rita de Heer 