Libb

I am not a US-citizen nor am I a woman (if I was, I would probably be a little too old to need that kind of help) but, very naively I’ll admit it, this is really not the kind of guide I would have imagined would become so urgently needed.

It seems a very well made guide, with a lot of very useful suggestions.

Which makes me feel even more sad to realize this is indeed useful and very much needed.

• MullvadVPN, and a free and privacy respecting OS is another good idea.
• So is using privacy respecting apps: LibreOffice instead of MS Office, Codium instead of VSCode. And so on, with many FLOSS alternatives to the usual proprietary ones.
• Services also matter, imho: I’m using ProtonMail for my email (Tuta would be another clever choice, imho, and there are probably others). I’ve very recently switched from iCloud to filen.io for my cloud storage needs.
• Using one’s phone as little as possible. I’ve almost nothing on mine, I mean only stuff I’m required to have (banking and IDs, stuff like that), no email, no social, not even music or games (the game I enjoy the most play I also I enjoy it the most when I play it offline: chess ;))

And then… I also started using analog tools much more in the last two years. This helps a lot maintaining one’s privacy. Amazon can’t track my reading habits when I read a printed book (even less if I do not buy it from them), Goofle cant’" track my writings when I use pen and paper instead of their apps, Apple (or Google or Microsoft) can’t track my paper agenda or my paper notebook. And the NSA or whomever is playing that role in my country can’t ask any corporation to install backdoors in my IRL encounters with people so they could spy on me. At least, they cannot do that for now ;)

That’s not a bad idea, thx!

What are ways to minimize that besides not using Google?

1. Do less online, and more offline?

My journal is paper-based and so are most of the stuff I write, my agenda is paper-based (ok, they still can track the agenda of the people I have appointments with :p), my sketches are seldom shared online, the few photos I value are printed and not stored online. Most people I interact with, I meet them IRL.

2. And what you do online, do it using less or even better none of the gafam products and services?

I mean, they want our data. Why make it easy for them to get that while also giving them money to do it?

After 35+ years being their customer, I’m slowly but definitely switching from Apple to Linux. Not because Apple sells bad products (they’re great working tools, I used to earn a decent living working with Mac and iOS) but because I don’t want anything to do with them and their greed (making unfixable/unrepairable device on purpose) and their overarching ability and self-entitlement to destroy every ounce of privacy we once took for granted, as citizens of free and democratic countries.

Even GNU/Linux, I’m starting to wonder if it’s not just a stopgap for me as I really do not agree with the ‘moralization’ of everything that I see happening in FLOSS. Freedom as I define it means people should be allowed to think and speak freely, no matter how much I disagree with them, their ideas and even their fundamental values.

Edit: That may not be much but here is a few of the things I have changed (beside re-using analog a lot more)

• My main computer is now running GNU/Linux. I keep a Mac for a few specifc tasks and because I don’t wnat to throw it away.
• I do not use iCloud anymore (and certainly not Google Drive), and I switched to a small German cloud company (Filen.io). It offers less features, but it’s fully encrypted and secure and don’t track me (check my last blog post if you want to read my reasoning for picking them and not some of the many alternatives),
• I use Proton Mail (I keep my Gmail activa as a trash email, though and only for as long as I will need to transfer all my accounts elsewhere).
• I use LibreOffice instead of MS Office.
• Also, I quit most subscriptions services. Instead, I will donate to FLOSS alternatives even though I often get less features in exchange for my money… I get way more privacy (and freedom).
• The only one I have a hard time leaving is YT: most creators I enjoy are there, not elsewhere.
• Also, I started reading printed books instead of ebooks (here again, feel free to check my blog to see why and how it’s going ;)

edit: clarifications and some details.

Intolerance.

Aka, the lack of willingness to understand one another — I mean, the ability to discuss and work together toward a common goal, even with people we (deeply) disagree with — and the hostility towards whatever dares being/liking/talking/thinking different.

This is a not only a sad dead-end, imho this is also the very end of any society and of any civilization when the only other persons we can tolerate around us are exact copies of ourselves. People behaving, dressing, talking and thinking exactly like we do — or like we want them to.

This frightens me way much than anything else because I see no way to escape it and, even more terrifying to me, I see no place anywhere where one could escape it. Intolerance is growing everywhere, and it’s growing fast.

Would also require seller to fill many tax and vat forms (one per country they sell products into). And it may very well not be worth the effort.

It’s all about choice. And choice, aka diversity, is great.

It’s like not having to eat a banana if you don’t like them and having the ability to grow the fruit you would love the most instead. That’s also why I’ve now (in the last 5 or 6 years) mostly switched from Mac to GNU/Linux. This Mac Mac Studio I’m writing on right now is the last Mac I own and I see very little chance for it to be replaced by a newer Mac when time comes to replace it. I like the freedom of choice and to do what the funk I fancy on my computer. Not just what some designer at Cupertino (or some wannabe designer, at Redmond) decided I should be permitted to do.

Also, where is the standard between incompatible different macOS versions or different versions of Windows? Or between incompatible versions of the same apps running on those systems? I’m not saying it’s wrong, nor that it’s great, just that we should not neglect all those ‘standardization issues’ that exist in every single system. Marketing should not be blindly trusted — Imho, marketing should never be trusted, and not even listened to but that’s just me deeply allergic to bullshit ;)

I was still a kid when my dad brought home a brand new Apple II. Before that computer appeared in his home office (and in my live, as I used that Apple so much more than he ever did ;)), I learned to type on my granddad’s typewriter.

100%.

The same reason I care about a working democracy. You can’t have one without the other.

Less people using public libraries (and reading books to learn stuff) around me because 'who needs to read books when there is everything on the Internet and I can Google anything’?

And, at least as saddening and frightening to me, seeing more and more people willing to censor whatever book, author, or idea, they hate or even they just don’t agree with (most often, without even reading it). It’s even worse when I see librarians supporting that — it doesn’t matter how ‘good’ their motivation is, censorship’s only success is in the promotion of stupid ideas (if not of sheer ignorance), hate and fear.

Masking tape and a pen

imagine people can’t afford to watch all the movies produced in a year — crazy supposition I know, but let’s say a ticket has become so expensive people need to pick the film they will watch — would you rather have them pay to see a movie featuring living actors (and while doing so giving those new actors an opportunity to start their career and become the next stars?) or have them pay to watch a product made out of dead actors (and greed) that will only enrich the studios?

Dying is part of the life cycle. Once you’re dead, you’ve become a legit part of the past. And you’re supposed to stay gone, so the younger people have their chance too. Sure, those young will not be a clone of Bogart or Bacall but they could become… themselves. That is, as long as Studios don’t focus their attention (and greed) on dead actors (and AI-powered scenarios, while we’re at it).

Plus, as a 50+ dude myself, imagining an instant I was an actor, I would not want anyone getting the idea that they can inherit my ‘image’ once I’m dead and use it however they fancy. Money and stuff, help yourself but let my image — my effing face — let it disappear with the body it belongs too. I’m not a product, I’m someone — even if I was an actor.

Also, it makes me wonder is their face what people really miss from dead actors? Are Bacall and Bogart just their face?

And then, I imagine neither Bogart and Bacall would smoke in their new movie? Smoking is such a bad habit, we certainly would not want to give kids such a poor example, right? So what the remastered version of Bacall and Bogart would do, instead? I know, stare at their phone screen (and rage on X or share images of their last meal on Instagram), so modern viewers can identify with them even more easily. That sure would be a much better example for kids.

Not the OP, but that’s a great idea.

Like the OP, my spouse and I have become quite tired of those (overpriced) full-plastic pseudo brands that are worth shit, and we’re also not that interested in connected robotic battery-powered vacuums either. I will check around if I can find some good old school wired vacuum, and also ask my local thrift store owner if they have any idea where I could find some around here.

I am going to quote myself here:

Allow me to quote myself too, then:

That’s not the point.

I do not disagree with your remarks (I do not use Telegram), I simply consider it’s not the point or that it should not be.

Obviously, laws should be enforced. What those laws are and how they are used to erode some stuff that were considered fundamental rights not so long ago is the sole issue, once again, im(v)ho ;)

Well, except Telegram isn’t a good tool for privacy.

That’s not the point. The hunting down on tools and their creators (and on our right to privacy) is the issue here. At least, imho.

Do you mind if I send you a DM? I have more questions

Not the slightest, I can’t promise I’ll answer them all but, at worst, you only risk receiving a ‘Sorry, I don’t know’ ;)
The best way would be to send me an email, though. Check the bottom of the About page, on my blog.

To keep YT under control: Firefox is my web browser, with the uBlock Origin extension installed. So, all Shorts/Suggestions, ‘News’ and ‘Related content’ are now automatically removed from YT '(easy to achieve with uBlock Origin when using Firefox).

😍🥰 Firefox + uBlockOrigin

And whenever Google/YT suggests me some turd content, I dislike it and ask it to not suggest the channel/content anymore.

In the end, my feed is mostly made of stuff I enjoy watching, with so little noise that it can not be considered an issue.

Although I must admit I would feel a bit embarrassed asking them as well 😂.

You, or someone else is paying for that prescription. There is nothing to be ashamed of in asking them to provide something readable.

My eye doctor is a very strange person as she uses that very novel piece of high tech called a computer and a printer, and never writes a prescription by hand. Oddly enough, nobody has difficulty reading what she writes :p

when you put them back in the boxes, how do you do it? Do you put them in chronological or alphabetical order?

Each card as a unique ID (it can take any form you fancy but it has to be unique) and I simply put each card back at its place following that ID, no matter the content of the card. What matters is the info you associate to each card, using its ID as a reference, in your index.

The index is a pile of cards alphabetically ordered that contain a list of keywords. Each keyword will then a have list of pointers to cards IDs and to other index entries to find any related content.

(For example in the D section of my index I will have a ‘Dinosaur’ entry and in my T section I will have a ‘T-rex’ entry. The Dinosaur index may points me to, say, the 222.1.1.10B card (in which I’ve written stuff about the latest attempts in recreating living dinosaurs) and to the 421.1 card (in which I have a few notes on my last visit at the natural history museum, where there are those great dinosaur fossils). It will also have refs telling me to go check the ‘T-rex’ and the ‘Diplodocus’ and so on index entries for more related cards, as well as say the ‘Meteor’ and ‘Species (extinction)’ entries.)

Using the index is akin to using Cmd/Ctrl+F to do a search on text: fast and almost instantaneous. This index is really the key to my Zettel.

Each of the card the index would have suggested I read may itself contain refs to other cards. Like you would have internal links between cards, using Obsidian.

Finally, I have my bibliographical references, an alphabetically-ordered series of cards. Those allow me to quickly find notes from any book and author I’ve read and to reference back to it, using its own unique ID. This also helps a lot when I’m reading to quickly take notes (on blank index cards, with that unique book ID written in one corner). So, while I’m reading it barely takes seconds to write down whatever idea or keyword I want to be able to find later on, plus the corresponding page number in the book. No need to reference the book itself, no need to write long comments or explanations (those will, or will not go later on in my main Zettelkasten cards, when I’m reviewing my reading notes) it’s really all about quickly jotting down a word or two + a page number, which saves a lot of time.

And when you want to find one again, do you have to search through hundreds of cards just to find the right one?

I use the index or the bibliographical refs, depending if I’m searching for an idea or a keyword in general or for some specific book annotations or author. Those point me to all relevant cards in my Zettelkasten. And like I told you each card can then also point me to other relevant/interesting cards on its own.

That said, at times I’ll randomly pick some cards and browse through them (just as a way to ’thought-provoke’ my own brain with random ideas and notions).

Regarding your first comment:

1. Easy backups

I take pictures with my iPhone of all new cards from that day, those photos are then automatically converted by the scanning app into a PDF and saved to my iCloud storage, it’s real quick. All my iCloud being regularly and automatically backed-up on external drives.

The app I use is ‘Scanner Pro’ by Readdle (I purchased the license many years ago and the scanner still works perfectly with the latest iOS). It’s very simple aka quick to use, it does an impressive job at auto straighten the card no matter how poorly I present it to the camera, then it creates a PDF with all the day worth of images and then save it to iCloud, all by itself.

2. No physical storage space required.

It’s not really an issue for me as my Zettel is not that large. That said, it does take space but I can use it without a computer/screen (which also takes space)… and for storage, old shoe boxes don’t cost much ;)

I might look up some tutorials next, but I don’t want to overcomplicate things. With any system there’s a point where you end up spending more time fussing with the scaffolding rather than just building the building, if you know what I mean.

100% agreed. If it works well enough, then it’s all one needs.

Watching a few videos to better understand the appeal of a digital Zettel myself, I realized it was something many ‘new’ users were not aware of and also something way too many video creators were not worrying enough about.

I mean, some of those videos are very well made but they’re also mostly empty chatting and/or trying to chase a unicorn by focusing on what to me seemed like insignificant details or an unrealistic desire for perfection. Doing so, they spend a lot of their time and energy, and a lot of their viewer’s time and energy too.

I do understand keeping the user watching as many videos as possible, for as long as possible, is the entire business model of making video on YouTube (more talking + more videos = more watching time = more ads viewed = more money) but as a user I don’t think it’s worth my time and efforts so I don’t watch them ;)