[alexpetralia]

"When I read an article or see a tweet that a distant friend might enjoy, I send it."

This is also a trick I commonly employ. I rekindle our common interests with things I'm learning or reading and it is serves as a great launch point for discussion when we reconnect. I've affectionately earned a reputation among my friends as a "spammer", but perhaps that is better than "absentee"!

[User23]

In general communications with your more distant friends have considerably higher Shannon entropy than communications with close friends, for obvious reasons. Which means that often it's a real treat to get messages like that.