undopamine

Just started Quantum Break: Zero State

Highly recommend the game for anyone who liked Dark or Primer (or any other fiction that features stable time loops).

'For Lisa' - If we're not in pain, we're not alive (Blindsight, Peter Watts)

small talk with your neighbour

I've started 'The One Thing' by Gary Keller and it's serving as a helpful reminder to keep my focus undiluted.

You have to trick your mind into believing it's not a drastic change, otherwise the fomo will step in and you'll eventually get doubled down relapse episodes.

1. I uninstalled the mobile apps and turned on 'desktop site' view on my phone browser. That way I never really "quit", but the experience of scrolling comes with so much friction that I don't feel like opening it unless absolutely necessary. The added battery life is a bonus.

2. I reduced my feed with extreme prejudice. My fomo wasn't letting me unfollow pages, so I moved them to alt account/custom feeds/bookmarks. Muted the remaining ones except the handful friends I wanted to see updates from.

Finally, don't be hard on yourself. You're going against meticulously engineered data streams that have been perfected over the years with the assistance of top behavioral scientists.

Given the current public opinion on AI adoption, especially around art, it's too early.

I'm personally not a fan but for different reasons. AI-voiced (story-critical) characters would diminish the concept of copmletion-ism, as LLMs can talk to no end. Similar to how procedural generation can discourage exploration (but I'm just one data point and No Man's Sky sales numbers indicate otherwise).

Minor NPC personality is s a gap I'd be happy to see LLMs close. After crossing 70 hours on Cyberpunk 2077, I'm catching NPCs repeating themselves.

I do three categories in my gmail:

- Primary: mail from knowns, important starred mail

- Updates: OTP/accounts related, good newsletters that post less frequently

- Promotions: everything else

I always see Merchant of Record payment processors get recommended in every thread like this on twitter, while it's bad for beginners.

MoR processors, since their per-state thresholds have been crossed, charge sales tax starting from your very first sale, which you'd otherwise not have to pay, since YOUR sales volume are far from reaching anywhere near thresholds.

I found the last chapter of Griffiths Electrodynamics a good beginner resource for special relativity.

Playing Mass Effect: Legendary Edition

'Build in public' communities on twitter have good volume of discussions like these.

Did you try the UnTrap extension for Youtube? It can block shorts, infinite feed, related videos, even comments if you wanna go extreme.

The 3-body problem trilogy (Rememberance of the Earth's past). My first sci-fi novels ever - the Netflix show sold me and these novels compelled me on a whole new hard sci-fi rabbit hole.

Presumed Innocent (preceeded by the Apple TV show of same name). Murder mystery. Loved it.

Tie-in novels from videogame franchise:

- Deus Ex: Black Light

- Devil May Cry: before the nightmare

I've also started Marvel Comics in anticipation of Fantastic Four and the whole Secret Wars storyline it will build up.

Couldn't finish a single non-fiction this year, but enjoyable so far:

- Zero to One

- When I say no, I feel guilty

- Designing data-intensive applications

- Reading on mobile: ReadEra, Document Viewer (by SufficientlySecure, no longer maintained)

- Music: Windows Media Player, Spotify

- File Management: Syncthing, TreeSize

- Code: Vscode, Github Desktop

The Prestige