Interesting Links for 04-10-2025

[andrewducker]

1. Here Is Your Periodic Reminder that Stars Move

(tags:space time )

2. Anti trans school guidance causes children to not use school toilets leading to worse physical and mental health.

(tags:children bigotry lgbt school scotland uk transgender )

3. What Did People Do Before Smartphones? (I carried a book at all times)

(tags:phones history boredom )

4. Common mistakes when drawing the moon

(tags:moon drawing video )

Comments

[channelpenguin]

Back in the day ? Books, Walkmans and just actually experiencing my surroundings.

Now, I actually don't need something to fill the idle time so much. Weird but true.

I have no social media bar YouTube (and when I'm job hunting, LinkedIn etc). My phone is on Do Not Disturb by default, only changed its I'm expecting a call (an infrequent occurrence). I wear a watch (though I've lost any knack I once had to use a laptop wearing it!). I often don't even have my phone with me.

I don't listen to music all the time like I used to, usually only when driving or doing mindless cooking and preserving tasks.

I can just sit or stand and wait things, looking about me. Though people aren't as entertaining as they used to be since mostly they just stare at and poke at their phones. :-)

[andrewducker]

I'm delighted to experience my surroundings the first 10 times. After that I'm not getting anything new out of it. And I still mostly value novelty.

[channelpenguin]

Ah, I usually find plenty of variety, noticing new details, new lighting conditions from weather or time of year. Motorway driving needs music though!

[calimac]

3) I still do carry a book. Sometimes that book is in the form of my e-reader, and my e-reader can also connect to the internet, so if there's wifi I sometimes do. But experience has taught me that significant movement in my e-mail or web news reading takes several hours to occur, so if the time has been less than that I don't bother.

[cmcmck]

3. We lived our lives without the damn things clamped to our ears at all times!

[andrewducker]

I think I have a smartphone on my ear for about five minutes a month.

[cmcmck]

I don't own a smartphone- just a dumb one.

[andrewducker]

Aaah. Mine is most of how I keep in touch with my friends, read the news, read books, watch TV and movies, and all of the other useful things a pocket computer attached to all of human knowledge can provide.

[bens_dad]

I rarely listened to my phone, except during a call, until I got a hearing aid. Although it is NHS it has bluetooth, and I listen to the radio on it quite bit.

[mtbc]

Cool, I had no idea that bluetooth hearing aids might be commonplace.

[marymac]

They've been rolling it out since the digital aids got good about 15 years ago.

Gave my mate a lift home from collecting her first pair of the new generations and she spent half the trip raiding my phone music library.

[andrewducker]

That's handy!

[conuly]

I know exactly what I did when waiting around. I read a book, or I talked to people on line with me. It's the same thing I do now.

Like, I love the internet as much as the next person, perhaps more even, but....

[ninetydegrees]

3) Smartphones don't make much of a difference to me. While I'll browse some online stores occasionally, I don't use them much and always have my Kindle instead of a book nowadays. I used to listen to music more but I don't wanna do it on my smartphone and good players are very expensive so that's the one thing I miss I guess. I still watch the scenery or other commuters, talk to the people I'm with, watch a lot of 'TV' on my laptop, pretty much the same as before. And while a lot of people are on their phones during my commute, quite a lot aren't. I think I remember people reading more but I also remember a time where it seemed like everybody was playing Candy Crush on their phones. Now it seems a bit different. A lot of people just do nothing.

[yalovetz]

I used to carry a book to read and a street map with me at all times. Now I can take both conveniently on my phone.

[channelpenguin]

I'm amazed how many people are saying that they read books, watch films on their phone. It's so SMALL!

I mean, I was longsighted all my life, so my eyes took much more of a hammering, constantly working even for distance and needing much more power for close up. So that biases me, of course. And even though I had my eyes adjusted a few years ago with LASIK to make distance vision work without effort, still need reading glasses due to age.

But I THINK most of us here are also of the age to need reading glasses? So I'm surprised people still seem to be happy using small screens for extended time.