Now I just watch Festival of Science or Royal Institution lectures on YouTube and some anime on wakanim :)
There are also a lot of real in-class lectures filmed on various topic on YouTube that I find very nice.
I don't miss regular TV at all.
I quit facebook around 2012 (deleted and purged the accont by waiting 6 months) and I don't miss that either. I still have contact with the friends that I care about via phone, I just don't look at their fake lives on facebook anymore.
And now I'm living the irony, driving a truck and hauling all that stuff that the TV is waving in front of us. Just as some of you are living the irony, spending your hard earned educations building the infrastructure that implements the waving.
"Now:" I'm pulling a trailer from Illinois to Ohio, filled with "cereal, dry," from a maker to a big box chain's distribution center. Eat up! Eat!
Third'd. I cut the cord years back mostly as a consequence of doing the digital nomad thing. I agree with the shocking vicious part. It reminds me of getting crab cakes on the east coast -- in the 90s it was mostly lumps of tasty crab with a little bread, and now it's mostly bread with a little crumb of crab. TV feels the same -- mostly BS with a few shrinking nuggets of entertainment. No wonder Netflix and other streaming services are going strong.
I'm in the business of lending money to the people who buy all the things you haul.
I rage-quit my last SWQA job, then discovered that a 60+ year old B player ought not to have done that. And so I drive.
What do I do with all the time in the truck? Drive, watch the road, watch out for you all (you all are cray, and are probably gonna die, I'm just sayin'). Watch my time from various perspectives: time/miles to pickup, time/miles to delivery, time left on my allowed driving time, gallons of diesel remaining, will I make it on time, do I have to warn of late arrival, should I pull off and shut down for wind, rain, snow, ice, fatigue, when will the local troopers open the highway to trucks again, am I speeding or following too close, am I holding people up behind me, are you f'ing tailgating me, are my brakes on fire, what's going on way up there (I can see pretty far with my head ten feet off the ground) ...
I don't care what you're doing in your car, and I virtually never look, except once in awhile I'll look at your head (or search my spider sense) to see if you're paying attention. To the road. Not to your phone.
When I'm not doing that stuff: I don't have a CB radio. Sometimes I don't play any audio and just think, or enjoy the scenery. It's an incredibly beautiful and interesting country. Sometimes I chase NPR across the radio. Wyoming is a pretty good state for NPR, because they have translators all over. Once in awhile I'll drive through a college or tribal radio station that really does just play what they feel like, those are good.
Sometimes Pandora. I've been trying to listen to podcasts, but it's not a great experience. I can't seem to manage podcasts via Pandora or Spotify very well. I don't like pre-downloading, I'd like to just listen via a stream (most recently VLC on Android, bluetooth to my radio, but the casts often just end in the middle (lost cell signal?) and go to the next one).
My thoughts on the industry as a whole are, I can only see a tiny sliver of the industry. There seems to be an infinite number of ways to get stuff from here to there, and all I really know is working as a "solo" (not part of a two person team), "company driver" (not an owner-operator) for one of the large truck companies.
When I started two years ago there was a huge trucker shortage. Now some companies have gone out of business, but "they" say that it'll pick up again soon. I believe large companies are still hiring, because industry turnover is huge. Lots of people decide they don't like it. I like it a lot.
It's a really good job for me, as I'm not very sociable. I'll go months without going home (divorced, one grown son). Most long distance drivers take 3 or 4 days a month in "home time." Some drivers are regional or local and they're naturally home more often and more regularly.
I drive a 2017 Kenworth T-680, 15 liter straight-six Cummins engine, 10 speed Eton automatic. I mostly pull "dry vans," the 53 foot closed rectangular trailers that you mostly see. Sometimes I'll pull a "reefer," refrigerated trailer, basically the same as a dry van but you also have to pay attention to the reefer operation and temperatures (multiple compartments inside the trailer).
I typically have about an hour of time at the end of the day, and an hour in the morning. Sometimes a little more. Rarely a lot more, when the company hasn't found any freight for me to haul. The longest I've spent without freight has been a weekend, and that's rare. I only get paid for miles driven in service of an assigned trip.
During my typical two +/- hours/day I eat, clean, read, communicate with the fam. I've written hundreds of emails home, with pictures, and I'm trying to clean some of those up to get them posted at a location to be named later. In my free time.
* Deleted Facebook. Don't miss it one bit.
* Deleted Reddit. I open the app every once in a while, scan what's popular. But not a lot.
* Pruned twitter. I don't follow anyone on Twitter anymore, save my partner. I deleted all my posts, going back to the beginning. I don't read it anymore, but I've preserved my username.
* Kept Instagram. I like following certain people in places around the world I have a travel connection too. And certain athletes in sports I follow.
And so... If there's no benefit to posting -- there's very little inclination to consume. No arguing, no triggering, no pavlov-ian itch.
I post to Instagram, I post a little bit here on YC. This leveling keeps the "push for pellet", or "pull down for more content" habits very minimal.
Similarly with Facebook; I use it but I don't follow friends particularly - I follow pages, mainly a useful local neighbourhood page that mainly seems to concentrate on who has lost a cat and who can recomnend a plumbe. Similarly with Reddit, just select a few decent subs that you are interested in.
I look at Fscebook every couple of weeks. Reddit - too frequently.
For all its faults - Youtube has a lot of factual content produced by people who want to share their cool hobbies with the world.
The thing I really want to give up next is Twitter. Or at least my 3,000-follower public account. It started out with finding like-minded friends, but quickly turned into a place where I can't even say "I find WD40 often works better than cutting fluid when machining aluminium" without being jumped on.
By "RI Lectures" do you mean the channel with the actual youtube name of "The Royal Institution"? If so, I think the across the pond competitor is "MIT OpenCourseWare" although I find it far easier to download MIT OCW videos from archive.org than trying to find and stream them and keep track of which I've seen.
I've had the interesting experience of learning Linear Algebra from Strang's textbooks a long time ago, then watching his lectures to refresh my memory. You can do something similar with Automata Theory and Ullman via a MOOC, or at least you could a couple years ago.
Applied Science (Ben Krasnow) is one of my favourites. Cody's fantastic too, for the backyard-science angle. I find Hydraulic Press a bit too "let's break stuff and laugh", but it's fun to watch and switch off for a few spare minutes. Same for Backyard Scientist ;)
Post-Apocalyptic Inventor is good for my scrapyard-challenge-but-real fix.
My real hook at the moment is How To Make Everything. He starts with Stone-age technology and shows the progression from there. It's fascinating to see how we got from "there" to "here" with a series of successive discoveries and refinements.
BosnianBill's Locklab, Locknoob and Lockpicking Lawyer are other favourites (but then, I've always found security tech interesting).
I've got an interest in retrocomputing so LGR, Modern Vintage Gamer, Adrian's Digital Basement and CuriousMarc are on there too.
I do mean the Royal Institution's official Youtube channel, yes. I started watching for Andrew Szydlo's chemistry demos and stayed for the other content!
I've heard of MIT OCW (since the original announcement popping up on Slashdot), but never really looked into what was available. Perhaps I should!
Yes the Hydraulic Press guys have a lot of "boom ha ha" content but they sometimes have more intellectual content such as "We're going to make homemade particle board out of sawdust" and I'm like, no, you're not, I know its way to complicated, but its fun to watch them try and be partially successful.
If you like retrocomputing, then "Moshix" channel will provide a couple hundred hours of mainframe content. The editing is slightly off, moves too slow during non-interactive content such as watching scripts run, and too fast during interactive content while hand editing JCL and typing sysprog tasks in general. Just because you CAN type 100+ wpm doesn't mean its a good idea during a screencast. The content is very compelling, regardless of editing decisions.
Something I don't like about retrocomputing is stuff I started out doing is now considered retro. Or even worse, stuff that was futuristic when I had a couple years in, is also considered retro. I guess getting old beats the alternative.
The thing about YouTube vs regular TV is that _I_ chose what to watch not someone else. I also chose the time to watch it.
Slightly OT, but the host of the original Scrapheap Challenge show is now hosting an EV YouTube channel called "Fully Charged Show" :)
Ms Rogers was very interesting to watch as she is near prototypical "maker culture" in the sense of artist-trying-to-do-STEM (IIRC she's a successful musician) but technically predates popular "maker culture" by about a decade. Sometimes seems old fashioned or retro in 2020, but was extremely futuristic around the turn of the century.
However if you find yourself addicted ie you want to do other things but you keep getting “sucked in” then by all means stop - it will have a noticeably positive impact.
(Not in any way criticising you - just the community here often appears obsessed with maximising personal output and I think jeez just relax sometimes guys!!)
Reading, conversation with friends/family, poetry, painting, sitting and enjoying a good meal/cigar etc... all have the quality of chill and recharge without the negative effects of TV.
Modern television isn't just The Big Bang Theory anymore. The line between cinema and television is quickly blurring, with television shows like Chernobyl that are essentially very long films. Even "regular television" can be incredibly enlightening, with shows like Planet Earth exposing us to parts of our own world we might never see otherwise and our imagination might not even do justice!
And much like cinema, sure the experience itself is somewhat isolating in that you're trying to pay attention to it and not converse with those around you. But what's beneficial about some television shows are the emotions they inspire, the conversation they generate after, the fantastical thoughts that come later while you process what you saw.
Sure, garbage exists on television in the same way that pulp fiction (i.e. low-quality literature) never really died out. But I don't think it's fair to dismiss the medium any more than it's fair to dismiss film or literature.
Personally I find decent TV shows a great way to unwind after a busy day, but of course YMMV.
(I myself do not watch tv but I also have no desire to presume anything of people who do. I at least personally acutely feel a loss of culture because TV and movie watching is very common in socialization rituals and I am unable to engage in them.)
I am not saying you are wrong, or he is, but the ancientness of the claim is not an argument in favor or against it
The neural mechanisms have a lot in common. Video games, I would note, also share that mechanism.
Right, that was the question. What do you use to stay informed?
I don't do that anymore.
But the long term benefit of TV/Video isn't a diet that's good for you. Consider all the things you could do (not "achieve") if you'd use it for reading books, travel, learning a language or art. What this medium robs you of is boredom, which maybe feels great in the short run, but is hugely damaging to your creativity, focus and (probably even) mental health.
When I deleted facebook I noticed a huge improvement, but also I shifted my attention to other things which are equally addictive (HN, and my "personal information pipeline"). So like when I stopped smoking and moved to caffeine and sugar I substituted my FB addiction with other forms of unhealthy consumption. Getting rid of FB is therefore easy but getting rid of the underlying addiction is _really_ hard.
Sitting alone in a room with your thoughts is almost impossible (for most). Try it for a couple of days! Do nothing - not even reading a book you'll feel like you're going insane!
What works though is taking really long walks, or going out to nature for a few weeks (or months) and being on your own. You won't feel bored for long I'll promise! The most awesome memories I personally have are from things that made zero sense (and often in the most terrible circumstances).
I am not sure this sentence is universally true. I'd like to remind you about the experiment with mice that got a button to trigger their own happiness center... They end up pressing that button, until they die from lack of food.
It's the behavior, not the medium, that gives this uneasy feeling all of your time is going to a thing that you didn't mean to spend it on.
On the other hand, if you find yourself sucked into a book for a weekend, odds are it's because you can't put it down and will regret nothing. Nobody binge-reads bad books.
It becomes even more damaging when the screen is your only window into the world. e.g. we work in front of a screen all day, then on the way home metro/train or whatever hold a phone to check up on social-media, then after dinner switch on the TV. No wonder so many (young!) people are isolated. (young is especially shocking. I'm old and it's normal for me to be alone. Guess men are terribly at socializing. But seeing so many kids end up lonely and isolated is pretty sad)
Citation needed
All reading is not inherently valuable, in the same way all television is not. I don't get any more socialisation from reading a book, and indeed unlike e.g. watching TV with housemates/family it's an entirely isolated non-social activity.
Now, if we're talking solely about _children_ then i will give the act of reading additional value due to reading comprehension being a key skill that they need to improve! But mine isn't getting any better at this point, certainly not by reading the same old trash I always do.
"TV bad, Books good" is just a weird generalisation that sticks in my craw and I've never seen a believable piece of evidence for it
Personally what he's doing would be hopelessly exhausting to me - I'm quite introvert and the level of social interaction he's engaging in is way above my tolerance level in terms of intensity.
On the other hand, books are usually written by one person so they have a much stronger and more focused voice, and that strong voice usually has an interesting axe to grind. Or rephrased, if its not interesting or is overly bland, no one reads the book. Admittedly being the most successful at appealing to the groupthink of a sub-population willing to pay for a book is not a Utopian civilization level result, but it is still better than peddling consumerism, and most authors seem to want to get their story out more than they want wealth. Book authors much like pro athletes are a power law distribution where most starve but a microscopic minority get very famous and very rich, so if money were a primary goal they would have gone into finance or software development instead of writing books.
One exists to addict you into consuming ever more bland megacorporate products, the other exists to sell the best ideas, either inherently best, or at least best at meeting existing groupthink demands.
The voice of the product is like the difference between the billionth corporate marketed mcdonalds burger vs a (celebrity?) chef multi course meal.
An excellent analogy would be watching TV would be like following the Walmart twitter account, whereas reading a book would be like reading Paul Graham's blog posts.
There was a time in the past when you could find true educational content.
Imagine randomly channel surfing and running into this.
But I agree with your point. You can watch PBS mindlessly. I used to geek out on the obscure, ephemeral nature of all the educational films they used to show. It was a guilty pleasure.
The big corporate channels like "Analog Devices Inc" have too many premade for facebook 90 second snaps, and not enough relax in the living room recliner long format content.
The more niche the content the better the odds of "big corporate" producing quality content. "Analog Devices Inc" is mostly 90 second commercials, but "Arm Mbed" and its office hours series, despite also being "big corporate", has lots of enjoyable long format content, assuming you're into embedded FOSS RTOS for ARM or STM32.
I feel like, while the criticism of FaceBook, Twitter, Reddit and co is pretty much warranted, we managed to push aside the biggest time sink we already have since the 60s. TV, and Netflix, for that matter, is wasting our time since many many years.