“I don’t know.”

If we were honest, it’s the thing we should all be saying and hearing all day long. But it’s not. Quite the opposite, it’s among the rarest. Instead, people are shooting their certainties at one another, relentlessly.

Not knowing something or not having an opinion on a question is not an issue. It’s to be expected, even if we were all geniuses (I’m certainly not one). Not doing the work to inform oneself could potentially be an issue but should not be as long we don’t pretend otherwise. It’s when one pretends to know, based on what one has heard someone else say, or because one wants to push a specific narrative that suits them, that shit starts hitting the fan. That’s when living together turn into the stinking shit hole it has turned into in which lies are fine (when they’re not adored) and facts have become suspicious if not dangerous.

Obviously, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I think I like the idea but shouldn’t we worry it would make it harder to use? I mean, people are lazy… if they are forced to hesitate each time they want to vote for a post or a comment, they’ll simply find a shortcut which probably means they’ll go for the biggest/first button they can click. Something like that.

Also, I’m not sure vote will really change any deep trend (which by the way is one of the reasons I steered away from other social media). If people really want to share memes and low effort content can we really prevent it?

Nice :)

I used to own an Olympia SG1 (my grandad’s) that I loved to type on. It was a joy to use. I gave it to a friend when I switched full time to computer full time, in the late 80s. At first I thought nothing about it (it had done its time) but, say, around the early 00s I started realizing I missed it and I’ve been regretting it since then. For portable (the sg1 was heavy like a tank), I used to use a Lettera 22. Still, my true love was that Olympus ;)

There are ways of keeping your data away from prying eyes

I’m worrying both about the corporate greed and at the same time of that relentless trend in our elected representatives (and even more so in our non-elected bureaucracies), all to vote laws reducing or forbidding the use of true digital privacy protecting tools. Here in France for example, I would not be surprised if in a not too distant future things like Tor or VPNS or even the use of full non-backdoored encryption were to suddenly become illegal for the average Joe (except for people like, say, journalists, bankers, lawyers and other sensitive professions like that) all in the name of hunting naughty terrorists and perverts, obviously—not at all as a way to better control a rapidly growing percentage of unsatisfied population.

Depends.

The main issue I have is that for decades I’ve had that habit of destroying my old journals (physically getting rid of them, shredding or burning them). Why? I started journaling as a little kid but thx to my inquisitorial mom I quickly learned to get rid of my old journals. And it then took my entire live for me to get rid of that sad habit which made it obviously harder to read old entries ;)

Nowadays, not only do I keep (and read, occasionally) my old journals but I also index them (at least teh part I consider interesting/useful enough) in my Zettelkasten note-taling system. But I’m also not obsessed by the idea of reading my journals and I can go for a very long times without looking at old entries. Up until I feel the need to check something, or just to browse a few pages.

Finally, I journal mostly to put some order into my head like I use to say. I will also journal to keep a record of a few events I want to be able to recall but for the most part it’s processing/brain dump. The same with the sketches I may add in that journal, btw: I don’t give a crap about looking at them later on when I’m drawing them (that’s certainly why I don’t care if they’re crappy either) and when I stumble upon them, later on, I will often be surprised myself by what I sketched ;)

I will journal out, usually on my laptop. Sometimes I find it convenient to dictate to my phone

I’ve seen quite a few people using that voice to text thing on their phone. I would not trust it, but that’s just me being paranoid ;)

I’m left handed and if I want to journal on the go, paper has never been something I find I can write on well.

Have you tried with a spiral notebook and/or turning the notebook upside down so the spiral are on the opposite side?

Sounds oddly like me, including the balcony ;)

I felt the need to journal and of course didn’t have my trusty typewriter with me.

May I ask what model?

So I gladly accepted it as an excuse to go to the stationery store and browse the journal options.

I would never do such a thing. Never 8)

I realized that I didn’t really care if people on public transit next to me were reading what I was writing.

Neither do I (my handwriting is too poor) but I worry about corporation ‘mining’ whatever I trust them with.

I journal on my desk and everywhere I go.

My actual journal never leaves my desk (the old ones are lined up on a bookshelf not far away). So how do I journal on the go? I used to use my phone a lot, I had been using the DayOne app since it was first introduced (and I loved it) but I’ve switched back to analog full time and see little incentive for me to ever move back to digital as I want my privacy to be respected.

So, to journal on the go, like I used to do through the late 80s up to the early 00s (at which time I got my first Palm PDA which lust be the piece of tech I’ve liked the most), I now carry a small pocket notebook in which I quickly jot down thoughts, events, anything I want to add in my journal later on. Quickly is they key elements here as I don’t want to waste my time writing two times the same stuff so, I quickly learned to devise my very own shorthand system to take notes real quick and, in the evening that day or sometime later during the week I would be able to transfer them down into my real journal in plain Engl… French ;)

Without that shorthand system which is nothing complex (a few symbols, abbreviated words in a single letter and silly stuff like that), I’m not sure I would not use my pocket notebook as much as I do (which is all the time as I even use at home, when I’m not in front of my desk). It’s really quick and it really does save me a lot of time.

How long do the prints last? I’ve heard that they fade rather quickly

As far as I can tell, it depends the quality of the thermal paper (which contains the ‘ink’ so to speak). The cheap rolls I got with the printer faded in less than 5 months. Heck, two months in I noticed they were already fading. The quality ones I purchased from that closing shop (alas, they’re unboxed and unbranded) have not yet started to fade. They’re holding quite well. So, if I had to buy rolls, I would search what are some reputable brands and try those.

That is one thing I’d like to do for my journal, but I have to figure out a method first for printing it, that doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg :-D .

I use one of those cheap Chinese thermal printer that they sell for kids, one that print on B&W rolls of receipt paper and I glue it in my journal (that said, I prefer sketching). The printer was less than 20$ and each roll is a few $ and can print a lot of pictures. I purchased a pack from a closing business I probably have enough til the end of time ;)

For me personally, perfectionism is something that you lose as you get older.

Interesting, I never thought about it like that (nearing my 60s). I decided to get rid of that ‘perfectionist paralysis’ of mine, like I used to call it, in my early 30s and never looked back but to this day it has remained a constant fight. I mean, I could as easily today spend weeks rewriting a single paragraph exactly like, in my 20s I was endlessly rewriting the first few sentences of most stories I wanted to write but never finished writing. Switching back to analog helped me a lot in that regard: rewriting by hand is a slow and painful process compared to the constant temptation of instantly editing on a computer screen, so writing longhand I quickly stopped mindlessly editing… but I don’t think I’m smarter or wiser than I was back then. More aware of my laziness, maybe ;)

the only thing I worry is if I’m giving enough detail.

This bugged me for so long! I ended up with lengthy and, frankly speaking, unreadable blocks of text that would go on and on for pages. Nowadays, I only write a few noticeable details, if there is any deemed noteworthy, and joyfully ignore all other details.

For example, I was into that church a few days ago. I did not describe it in my journal despite having a lot to say about it. I only put down my impression of the quietness (damaged by the constant roaring noise of urban traffic, as the church is on a very busy street of Paris) and of its huge ceiling light plus the many light bulbs placed absolutely everywhere. I also wrote how, imho, electric light in old churches, that one at least, has ruined its mood by erasing any notion of deepness (very little shadows anywhere), uncertainty and stuff like that (like how those old churches were never built with electric lighting in mind, only candle and sun light which are so different and how electricity, by lighting everything equally, has made everything indifferent or too certain, merely a prop which churches like this one were not supposed to be). Anyone reading that passage of my journal would have no idea what the inside of that church looked like but would get a pretty accurate description of what I imagined the (non-electric) original light to be like, back then and how I think electricity has destroyed all of its magic. A couple or maybe three paragraphs, no more ;)

I will write down certain noticeable dreams in my journal but I don’t have a dedicated dream journal. More often I’ll write my impressions after a dream, what I think about it.

What your thoughs on this?

My thoughts? I would change ‘society’, move to some other one.

No idea if it’s barbaric but it certainly is not as clean as it should be. At least, I think so.

Have you checked with a doctor?

And people do wonder why my spouse and I refuse to own a tv…

I understand. Hopefully someone will be able to suggest something more useful ;)

When I go some place I tell my spouse I’ll be there. Are you looking for something more specific in ‘sharing you location’?

Given the volume of writing I do, I don’t think hand-writing is feasible.

I write everything longhand. Many people have been writing entire books longhand, and have been doing it for centuries. And a few of us still do ;)

The last few years average out to about 2000 words a day, and most of it is done on computers where I can comfortably type for long periods, and much faster than I could write by hand.

Depends what you want to write, but speed may not be the key elements. Obviously, with tight deadlines from your publisher it may be a valid point but (I’m 50+) along the years I realized I would save more time by writing slowly but then spend less time rewriting/editing (less, as editing is still an essential part).

All of that to say: sure, digital technology may be a great help but it is not a necessity (unlike what big tech want us to believe). Tolstoy did not use a computer, neither did Flaubert, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, nor did Nietzsche or Plato (to name just a few authors that have written a lot). It’s mostly a question of habits, aka developing the hand, arm and shoulder muscles used to write, and of endurance: the more you will write by hand, the longer you will be able to write without feeling too much fatigue. And of organization—aka, how you take your notes and maybe how your organize them. When I draft a text or take notes on the go, something I do every single day of the year, I use my own shorthand which helps me saves a lot of time. I also organize all my notes (research and personal alike) in an analog system that has been formalized many years ago: Zettelkasten. It works wonders and, in its way, it’s easily ‘searchable’.

One last suggestion: using the right writing tool may help a lot in reducing fatigue too. Have you tried using a decent fountain pen (with good quality paper)? But enough about handwriting :p

If you’re using iCloud, have you activated the optional Apple’s Advanced Data Protection? It ensures that no one, supposedly not even Apple can read your files on iCloud.

For anything digital (I draft longhand but I still need to type the final version), the moment I became privacy-conscious, my solution was to switch from Mac to a Linux PC, with full disk encryption. With This Linux PC there is no tracking and no telemetry (I was horrified to realize the volume of data that was send back to Apple by my Mac, it’s easy to test it: install LittleSnitch and tell it to not let apple’s services connect to the web. Sure most of it is probably fine. But probably was not enough for me) and I can use VSCodium (a Microsoft-free version of VSCode) for Markdown and LibreOffice Writer for word processing. For cloud storage, I would suggest Filen.io a small German company that offers zero knowledge end-to-end encryption.

I think many dedicated journaling apps (like DayOne on iOS/Mac) do offer password-protection but I have no idea how reliable it is. I would rather trust some Free/Libre software and the community to tell me what is safe.

BTW, feel free to come say hi to our small [email protected] community (I’m the admin). As an analog user myself, I would love to have more digital users participating. Well, to be perfectly honest I would love to have more people participating, digital or not ;)

(Going to talk about arabs here, for example.) Since most arabs on reddit complain about how all pro-palestine content is heavily censored and how it’s consistently enshittifying. But i mean this might be diminishing returns, but at the same time i find it insane that there are only 6 (afaik) arabs meanwhile there are whole instances for french/german/chilean/italian/etc

Maybe all what’s needed is for someone to start?

I [think] i get along okay with everyone else,

I certainly don’t, but I’m old(ish) and grumpy :p

i do miss having other arabs to talk to on lemmy. This isn’t too big of a problem, but would be nice to solve :-)

I would not blame you for trying ;)