My four step kids have no idea what boredom is. I, however, do, and found most of my creative endeavours and hobbies arose when I was bored. I'm pretty sure if boredom wasn't the alternative, I wouldn't have learned the guitar, or spent many hours daydreaming science fiction fantasies.
I think you may have missed the point of the article if that's your take on it. Its not about deliberately mining boredom, it's that being constantly "entertained" by social media means you will not enter the mind state where creativity can reach significant peaks.
Exactly. Back in the hardware days of music technology, I had an Akai S2000 Sampler. I could navigate the most commonly used functions by touch alone, using actual buttons - even with complex menus.
With simple menus (or a custom setup of your own), the common things could be on buttons, instead of taking your concentration off the road.
> A union is a huge additional layer of bureaucracy.
They can be, undoubtedly.
But don't forget the times when they go into bat to defend the rights of workers who have been treated badly by their employers - whether during employment or when they have been made redundant and procedures have not been followed correctly. When you're a part-time worker who is in a union who has very little input in your day-to-day work, but they come to your rescue with a considerable amount of legal muscle behind you in such a situation, the £10 a month you've paid them looks like very good value indeed.
I totally get that unions can be the embodiment of self-protection and bureaucracy, and can lead to expensive and crazy situations (indeed when I see some union leaders here in the UK it appears that is their desire). But that isn't all they are there for - they can also help the little guy out when their back is against the wall.
After much deliberation, I bought a 2017 13" MBP, upspecced to 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM. While I've not had a complete failure from the keyboard, it did need looking at at the Apple Store when it also had the entire display assembly replaced because the keyboard had damaged the screen - despite me looking after it well, always putting it in a soft slip case and then a laptop bag.
While I've liked some elements of the design, it's not (to me) a Pro piece of kit, and I've sine replaced it with a 2016 15" MBP which is much better built and doesn't need extra dongles to connect to everyday devices (and has magsafe, which is the best piece of design I've seen in many years).
Given this performance, I'll never buy a new Macbook again - particularly given all the issues about thermal throttling, battery life and indeed the way that macOS seems now to be going.
Don't get me wrong, there are elements of the 2017 MBP that I love - it looks amazing, the screen is fantastic and it's just so precisely made. But the lack of ports, the lack of ruggedness, the keyboard and the performance outweigh any 'look, shiny!' feeling I have about it - so much so that I've not sold it because I feel like I'm stitching the buyer up - even though they've not held their price compared to previous models, which shows that people know this to be the case, and the keyboard still has the 4 year warranty in place.
I did so about 2 years, and haven't been back other than when programming sites livestream on Facebook (which I hate!)... it is possible, and once you're away, I think life is much better, aside from being viewed as a bit of a weirdo by friends who don't share the same view on FB, and think I'm a tinfoil-hat nutter.
Unfortunately I still have messenger* because that's the way all my friends and kids communicate, but if there was another platform they were all on I'd delete my FB account tomorrow.
* Yes, i know what that all means in terms of 'sticking it to the man'!
It's based on a significant number of people who are large Patreon account holders closing their accounts (Sam Harris is the first one to spring to mind, I believe he had the 13th largest account by monthly donation), and also a number of people saying their income via Patreon has decreased significantly as a result of patrons leaving the platform.
Plus there seems to be a lot of disquiet about Patreon and people trying to set up competition for them (SubscribeStar, Dave Rubin/Jordan Peterson's project) which seems to be gaining a lot more attention than it would have otherwise - up to this point many people (myself included) were completely happy with Patreon.
>>and that's going to leave you uncertain about its future unlike Patreon
Given the events of the past month or so, I wouldn't be completely sure about the future of patreon. It's definitely shown the way forward in terms of supporting creators, but the repercussions of their actions seem to be gaining a lot of traction and putting doubt into trusting patreon for people who supported creators via the platform in the past.