Big Table #7: A Healthy Internet 🍅 in 30 mins or less
Hi! This issue is a paradox. It's slow content made fast.
I keep finding myself in some version of the same conversation: "how do you find good things on the internet without filling your brain up with absolute garbage?" I don't think this problem has gotten easier to solve, and the last two times I had this conversation it was more about just logging off.
In the spirit of logging off, I'm putting this newsletter together in one tomato. That is, half an hour, the standard length of a pomodoro.
Pomodoro timers are good
We recently got a physical pomodoro timer at home and it has been embarrassingly effective at keeping a shred of context in our brains while we try to get work done. I threw together a little online timer that uses pictures of one of our cats. I got the AI to make most of it while I was doing three other things (because I didn't have a pomodoro timer with me to help me focus 🍅), so maybe if some of you use it I'll make it nicer.
Whoops running out of time!
Even if I'm not on the original task, I've found having the timer around makes me at least finish the things I start within an arbitrary chunk of time. Martha and I call this "drawing the whole figure" because of the well-known anxiety of being in a life drawing session and realizing you spent 9 of the 10 minutes on the foot. She's really good at just finishing the figure in the space and time she has. I'm really good at pointing out how the foot couldn't exist without the universe first and if you think of it...
Oh no I'm doing it right now
Ok! Here's what I came here do to. I don't necessarily have a practical answer to the question of how to have a more brain-healthy experience of reading the internet, but like with real diets, I've found incorporating some dense fiber into your internet snacking diet really soaks up some of the contextless-empty-calories-of-clicking.
So I thought, do I just have enough stuff like that on hand that's fresh that I could put together an issue chock full of Internet Fiber? And, lo, I do:
- On Being Dumb -- this is one of my favorite essays and it should be read before it vanishes from the internet.
- Brains Are Not Required When It Comes to Thinking is an incredible way to start an article and it just gooooes from there.
- I really really want us to bring back the American Chestnut, but I guess it's not that easy.
- An amazing biography of a man who lived in an iron lung
- Definitely read this history of the cardboard box
- I am enjoying this history of the term Octothorpe for the usual reasons but some specific and exciting ones that will become clear in later issues
- Print's Not Dead
- Clip Art Doesn't Come to Life
- Things are Complicated -- computer chip factory edition
- Maybe There are design styles other than minimalism?
- On Attention, in the New Yorker
Some healthier miscellaneys
If you need a good browse, these are sort of the organic fast casual versions of brain snack food
- https://www.metafilter.com/
-
kottke.org - home of fine hypertext products
home of fine hypertext products
- https://themorningnews.org/
-
The Public Domain Review – Online journal dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works available on the web
Online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.
- https://www.studiointernational.com/
- and my own somewhat-comprehensible https://bloggy.garden/
The internet is full of dark patterns trying to frack our brains but the thing is... we can choose how we use these dang computers if we really try.
That's it!
Ok, I mostly made it under the wire (part of the pomodoro technique is pretending the alarm didn't just go off for another couple of minutes).
I'm 5 minutes late to meet my lovely friend Evan now, so as penance I shall plug his new podcast.
Today's song: