[bckr]

I made the move from Facebook > Reddit > HackerNews for similar reasons.

I've been looking for the next step.

Is it

> magazines?

> books?

> phone calls?

> irl networking?

It’s all of these, yes, but I still open HN every time I get some down time. While it feels very useful to me, I feel that I would be better served with a more condensed version of what I’m after here.

I think I’m proposing a mailing list?

[dredmorbius]

It's ironic that whilst the Great Benefit of the Internet was supposed to be the elimination of gatekeepers ... I'm finding that the gatekeeping provided by traditional publishing is actually quite useful.

Much of what I read is books or magazine articles. Much of that published well before the Internet age.

I've been attempting to track most-salient items as well through what I call "BOTI", or best of the interval, a sort of round-robin file (think 43-folders, described in David Allen's Getting Things Done), where I keep track of the n best items I've encountered in the previous interval (day, week, month, year, etc.). The key is that the list is limited by both time period covered and slots on the list, and it rolls over when completed or filled.

My success in implementing that has been less than stellar, though I'm finding that making the system more flexible means I use it more consistently, even if it's far from the ideal description.

Another useful feature I've discovered is the Einkbro browser's "Save to EPub" feature. This can save not only an individual article to a file, but multiple articles to a file. I'm finding that my "BOTI-Jan-2023" is actually more of a "BOTI-2023" (or at least "BOTI-2023H1"), but it's becoming an impressive document.

It's also making clear just how much online content I'm attempting to read, as it's running (depending on formatting) about 400--500 pages of text. Which makes my lack of actually keeping up with my appetite somewhat less dispiriting.

(Though I'm still Far Too Easily Distracted by Teh Hawt New Shinay....)

Other discussions/descriptions of BOTI: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>

[yadingus]

As I mentioned in another comment, I took that next step. The replacement for me was articles from a website whose content I really appreciate, and reading a daily poem.

The problem with, for example books is that they might not fulfill that craving for something novel. The book is already there, and I already have a daily reading habit, it doesn't interfere with my brain going "I wonder what's new in X site".

At the end of the day it comes to quality before quantity. More curated content can lead to you engaging more fully with it, which means you pull away satisfied after a shorter amount of time.

[9witz]

The next step could be language learning via Duolingo (which is also highly addictive) or browsing memes on 9gag.

Maybe getting a small phone like the iPhone Mini is a solution, because while it does phone things (music playing, photos) great, the small screen discourages social media and web surfing. Add a book case to the phone so you only see the screen when you decide to see it. This may remove the need to constantly look at the phone.

[mildavw]

Depending on what else is going on in my life, I’ll consume HN just once a week via

https://hackernewsletter.com/

[baq]

A Usenet gateway to HN with a daily pull of the feed like we used to have in the 90s. It’s probably nostalgia speaking, but…

[Rediscover]

Reading the comments here (and the short article) /exactly/ reminded me of usenet and bitnet[feeds]. I am glad I kicked that habit in the late '80s/early '90s, it made it simple to avoid later social media.

(I still miss them, but not Eternal September)

[bckr]

Figured it out. I'm craving more Discord.