Libb

Also: if anyone is wondering I'm not sad or anything that I can't get more people to participate. I'm only mentioning the few participation as an information regarding my attempt to revitalize that community. I will just keep on trying for the time being (to tell you everything, I gave myself at least 6 months before deciding if it's worth insisting, more likely a whole year as I realize Lemmy is small and that community is so niche).

And if it ends up not working? Well, my attempt will have failed, that's no big deal and it wont prevent me from keeping journaling on my own and probably to post stuff from time to time ;)

Don't worry, I know you're willing to participate and that's perfectly fine if you can't.

Don't worry either about participating into the PKMS community instead as I would love to see more content shared over there too, even though I'm no Mod there. Journaling & actually using a PKMS are two things I consider essential to my creative and intellectual well-being (I would not dare say 'efficiency' ;). Tools that are way too often underused when not completely ignored. So, by all means, if you feel like sharing PKMS content I'll be very happy to read it :)

Something Like that, indeed.

Also, it could be because many of the longtime subscribers are not there anymore. I mean, the community was completely inactive for a year or so (and even its creator doesn't seem to be available anymore). So maybe we're much less than 330 and more like 100. I can't tell but I would think so.

I have stolen the idea of posting a weekly thread, as an encouragement for people to participate in the !journaling@sh.itjust.works

What surprises me is that the number of subscribers is constantly growing (330 last time I checked, so more than a hundred people more than when I started posting), but not many are willing to discuss much. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I don't know what. You're more than welcome to share your opinion and suggestions ;)

I did not sketch at all and barely wrote anything in my journal this last few days (not even my reading journal). But it could have been worse as I had written absolutely nothing up until I decided I should at least write a few lines to summarize those days. And I did, which is great no matter what as I now have a record of what happened no matter how not great that was ;)

As far as the reading journal is concerned, I have mixed feelings. I've taken a lot of notes while reading, like I always do but those are notes that will end in my Zettelkasten, not in my journal. What happened was that I could not be bothered with writing down any impression about those books (which is what I would like to put in the reading journal). I'm not sure if I should try write those impressions afterward, trying to remember whatever I felt and was thinking, or simply write about me not doing it?

Pour le dire poliment, je ne m'attends pas à grand-chose (comme pour la plupart des reboots, je veux dire ça n'a rien à avoir avec cette série en particulier ou sa réalisatrice), mais je jeterai avec plaisir un oeil sur les premiers épisodes (car j'avais bien aimé Buffy)... Du moin si la série est proposée autrement que par abonnement/streaming. Sinon, ben tant pis: il me reste les DVD de la Buffy originale ;)

I've not tasted many American beers so I could not tell if they all taste like crap, and I also do not drink at all anymore. But being French, I can say that our Belgian neighbors have some exceptionally good beers, as well as Germans do. I loved a few of those, back then. But then they may also be a tad too... tasty for an uninitiated palate ;)

I'm pretty confident there must some local breweries in a few US places that can make quality beer too, the issue would then mostly be to find enough customers willing to drink it because it's no use to make the best beer ever if most your customers prefer Budweiser or stuff like that.

As of now my nephew never touched a phone. This isn’t anything bad but compared to his class mates I think this is weird.

He just turned six. What do you need a phone for at six? Call your kindergarten sweetheart?

Imagine when he is in school and his friends tell him to scroll and he has no idea how to even scroll? Isn’t that weird?

No. I would consider weird to think kids need to be using a phone as soon as they get out of their diapers in order to be considered 'normal' ;)

As a side-note, maybe you could offer that kid books, instead. He will learn a lot more reading them. A lot. And have a lot of fun too.

Plus, there is no in-app purchase in books, no tracking, no spying, no ads. And they won't require updates either ;)

How many fiction books do you all read? E-book or paperback. But not interesting in audiobooks. I’m curious about physically-read books.

To answer your question, I read fiction (be it novel, short stories, poetry, plays) less than I read essays, history, science(s), philosophy, sociology, spirituality books, and stuff like that. But I will always be reading some fiction, at any time. I love fiction, I just have to prioritize other kind of books if I want to read them ;)

The number of books depends the type of book I’m reading and their author, and in what language. I'm French, but I read a lot more in English and can also manage my way through not too complex Spanish books and this year I hope I'll be able to really start reading in German but obviously I will not read as fluently in any of those languages than I read in French, not even in English. And that's true not just for fiction.

I mean, I’m reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau at this moment and I obviously do not read him as quickly as I will read a novel but I also read Rousseau much quicker than I have read, say, Kant (Kant’s style is not as easy going as Rousseau’s, and his thought process is not as straightforward either, even though they ideally both require a lot of thinking in order to get anything worth out of reading them).

Even only considering fiction, my speed does vary a lot depending the author and their style, the length of the book and the type of book as I have personal preferences that will help me read a lot more than with anything written by an author or even in a genre I may not appreciate as much. I’m also much more likely to quickly finish a volume of short stories or a short novel than say Anna Karenina (which is probably my all-time favorite novel, btw) because I can read it even when I have much shorter time available to read.

Right now, I’m reading Proust In Search of Lost Time (I read it in French) and I know I will probably spend the whole year reading it. So, that’s one book a year? Not really, since I will read other fictions (and already have read others) during that time but still, it’s a whole year spent on a novel, or not?

Also, should I count the books I start and don’t finish for whatever reason, or not?

And then, even more so with fiction than with essays, I always have multiple books started at once. I don’t care much about finishing one book before starting another as I’ve pretty good memory and can instantly get back into the story where I left of and get back in the mood/atmosphere when I'm switching book), like when I'm watching a movie or a series. Even years after, I just have this odd memory.

So, it’s kind of a difficult question to answer but I would say: a lot ;)

Very interesting thoughts! Definitely agree that people do not seem to prefer personal contact, but to be honest, even on old forums and on IRC I don’t recall messaging people 1-on-1 that much. I think another issue which relates to this community is the fact that people do not tend to read personal websites or blogs that much anymore.

Thx and yes, I think this is an issue. Not for the well-being of those blogs but as a signal of users unwillingness to find content they can relate to by themselves or more accurately I should say outside of a few main places where everyone is expecting to fond them be they privately owned or even Free/Libre/Federated.

The small web just feels "cozier", anyone agree?

I don't know about it being cozier (maintaining your own domain/host or even just your own blog requires regular work and some efforts), but my personal blog as well as the blogs or the websites of other persons I regularly read feel a lot more personal and humane to me. And that's what I'm looking for :)

I could almost say the same for Lemmy and for the Fediverse even though, like you mentioned, there are a lot of morons and assholes around here, once you setup decent filtering rules and stick to well-established personal do's and don't it's quite a nice place with some nice people.

But what old-me think is really odd and sad on the Fediverse in general is to realize how few people and how little they are interested in meeting/discussing with other people outside of those 'social networks'. That's how it feels to me, here on Lemmy like on most social networks. It feels a bit like all our interactions should be happening in some public place and should not really be personal.

I've linked my blog in my Lemmy profile and, in the year or so I've been using Lemmy, I've been contacted once through my blog by someone coming from Lemmy. To be honest, I should say it's impressive considering I was contacted three times total the year before that while I was using Reddit. But still it's not much. Sure, maybe it's just my blog that sucks but even a few years ago, I don't know about you but I received and sent a lot more emails and personal messages. Like a lot more.

To me, it feels like people don't want 'personal contact' anymore, in the sense of a direct person-to-person contact. Instead, they're focusing on something more akin to a public meeting or something that should happen/be performed in front of an audience.

I have no idea why, nor do I know if I'm right or if it's just me that lost touch with the rest of the world but that's how it feels to me. And, to get back to Lemmy, that's also one of the reasons I like using it: even though discussions will often be performative (we seldom just chat, we say things in front of an audience) it's still small enough to feel personal, which is great :)

Here in France it's probably the norm the moment it's some other person you vaguely know. Or if there is no 'power' or authority relation involved.

That said, things may be different for younger people (I'm in my 50s) as I've noticed they don't talk that much in person.

Edit: typos. Cooking at the same time I'm trying to post a comment is not the best idea ;)