📖 Stolen Focus

“I would start with three big, bold goals. One: Ban surveillance capitalism, because people who are being hacked and deliberately hooked can’t focus. Two: Introduce a four-day week, because people who are chronically exhausted can’t pay attention. Three: Rebuild childhood around letting kids play freely – in their neighbourhoods and at school – because children who are imprisoned in their homes won’t be able to develop a healthy ability to pay attention
”

―
Johann Hari
Stolen Focus

//

The book touches on many things you may have read before elsewhere, but Hari has a message, and a coherent one. Although I half-expected myself to be let down (because we’ve all read about the topic), Hari does well to add perspective and value. If nothing else, you get good reminders for how to navigate the 2020s (is there a name for the period between 2015 to now?): the importance of playing outside; why you need to read fiction sometimes; the destructiveness of multi-tasking; media/tech’s tendency to rile and distract you; the importance of taking walks


(While reading the book, I checked the writer out, and found out about his previous issues. Perhaps that is why his writing is quite careful at times, in explicitly stating that it is his view. Sometimes, writers (or anyone really) are not careful and it may be left unclear whether a statement flows from an earlier source or if it is the writer’s own belief and interpretation, after reading the source material. Being explicit may make the writing a little cumbersome, but I do appreciate the thought that went into it. I wish more of us were more careful in how we think, write and process.)

//

“Democracy requires the ability of a population to pay attention long enough to identify real problems, distinguish them from fantasies, come up with solutions, and hold their leaders accountable if they fail to deliver them.”

Links from the past weeks

  • If Books Could Kill – Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers
    Michael Hobbs asked what is the most harmful airport book, and following up on this interesting question, he does a podcast about Malcolm Gladwell’s very popular book. It is worth a listen.
    I looked through my Goodreads and I’ve read 4 of Gladwell’s books, giving them around 3 stars each. Gladwell’s books had its attraction. He was able to write about things in an interesting way. But as the podcast shows, some basic fact-checking might bring some interesting finds!



  • Another podcast: Is pay transparency good?
    Apparently not always – because you need to factor in equal increase for all workers and therefore bosses will make increments smaller and/or be more cautious about any increase.



  • Word Persons and Web Persons
    In the wake of the Twitter exodus, we have all read pieces on the resurgence of blogging, but I particularly enjoyed this one by Roy Tang.



  • What really matters.
    The economy and the markets are giving people pause these days. It is good to spend some time thinking about what really matters, and calm yourself.



  • I watched a documentary on Netflix called Generation Wealth. I stayed mostly because of the great visuals. Lauren Greenfield’s photographs are gorgeous. This peek into extreme wealth is fascinating but it also induces a feeling of repulsiveness. I also noted that Greenfield and her family are featured quite a bit in this show. Does this make the film better or worse? Overall, I would still recommend a watch.



  • A reminder to turn gratitude into grace.



Notes on e-reading

My Kobo reader (a lovely Clara HD) died some months ago, having spent about a year with me. It could not be revived (probably the battery) and I was out of the warranty period. [In any case, I purchased this from Rakuten Kobo over Lazada, and the customer service was slow, but I took it as a sign and moved on.]

I have had Kindles but I got the Kobo because I wanted a device that could load titles from my local library via Overdrive. I was beginning my weaning off from physical books. It is safe to say that since I was a child, books were a significant portion of my spending. When I first started working, I spent Friday evenings buying books, and hoping I would have time to read them during the weekends. As all devout readers know, book-buying and reading are separate hobbies. Anyway, at the peak, I was buying around 50 books a year (the last time this happened was in 2018), and while I do manage to read most of them, book-owning was getting to me. The housemate also loves books, and we had piles too formidable for our relatively smaller home. So we started on our path towards e-books.

(Statistics: I bought 20 books in 2019, 14 in 2020, and 6 in 2021. I am at 9 for 2022. I read around 30 books a year.)

The Kobo was great – it had a warm lighting option, and worked well in bright daylight and also in bed. It was the size of a book but I could make the font bigger for my aging eyes. You could load fonts you like and/or geek out about which fonts are more suitable for e-readers (vs print). And so, the Kobo was great until it wasn’t and I was wondering if I would buy another e-reader. I wasn’t convinced that I needed one, and so I continued reading on my phone (as I have, using the Libby app).

Very happily (and belatedly), I realised that highlights made on the phone Libby app could be extracted easily. This suits me very well, because for non-fiction books, I usually have many highlights and this is a good way to keep them. [I tried hand-writing notes but it is either too disruptive to be switching to taking notes while reading, or too tiring to have to seek out and write notes after you are done with a book.] This merriment offset the mild gloom of realising I had no way of extracting the highlights I made on my now-dead Kobo.

So far, I am fine staying on this path of reading on my phone. Sometimes it annoys me that the screen is relatively small and I have to remember to take eye-care breaks. Sometimes, I wonder whether there is a better setup for myself, and I chuckled at this post on reading books on the iPhone. Sometimes, I wonder how much authors earn from e-copies lent out by the library. Because I worry about the bookshop closing down, I still buy books, which means I’d still need to dispose of some books from time to time. For that, I leave them at the book exchange corners of our public libraries.

Links from the past weeks

  • I have been spending time on crosswords and the Spelling Bee on NYT.
    I was reading The Puzzler (which I really enjoyed but it opened with crosswords, which sent me down a rabbit hole, ending with my subscribing to NYT Games).



  • As might be apparent from a previous post, I am the sort who would enjoy a video titled 15 reasons why I still buy CDs.



  • I stumbled upon this vast and deeply lived resource on thinking called Less Wrong.


    It is amazing and I don’t know how I’ve never seen it before. It is “an online forum and community dedicated to improving human reasoning and decision-making. We seek to hold true beliefs and to be effective at accomplishing our goals. Each day, we aim to be less wrong about the world than the day before.”



  • This article that mentioned that employees who are motivated to be kind and helpful tend to have higher well-being at work piqued my interest.

    Workplaces are generally competitive place; an abstract idea of teamwork is generally acceptable as a positive trait in a year-end appraisal, but kindness, helpfulness and compassion are not. I don’t know whether such traits / behaviour make a difference to your renumeration, but I fall on the side of believing in the benefits of being helpful because the time spent at work is long, and even if you are incompetent, I hope you are not unhappily incompetent.



  • This is a really good video showing a slice of life in Singapore: Where Have Singapore’s Karung Gunis Gone?


    Karung gunis are in essence scrap dealers. They used to be prominent in society, roving round blocks, soliciting your trash. But the worldwide reduction in demand for the scrap they collect means lower earnings, and there seem to be fewer of them around these days. If you are interested in this topic, you can read Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter.



  • There is a tool for you to figure out the proper distance your TV ought to be placed at.



A note on walking

I started jogging in 2019. When the Covid pandemic hit, I jogged a lot more. Exercise allowed me to go out of the home; if life is put on hold, the least I could do was – running to stand still (my life motto, it seems).

In 2022, between a hectic period at work and contracting Covid (which meant a recovery period), my running volume dropped. Perhaps it was just waning interest making the time/ effort seem more onerous. And so, I looked for different places to jog, and found that I really enjoyed being amidst big trees. This small city-state does not have much of forests or trails, but I began checking out more places.

I love running at Gardens By the Bay, but it is more of a garden and the routes around it does not offer much shade. I tried Changi Bay, Tampines Eco Green, Punggol Park, Botanic Gardens, Labrador Park, Hort Park, Fort Canning
 and finally, I decided to give Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and MacRitchie Reservoir a try. I quickly realised that they were not suited for jogging (for me). I am the sort who worries too much when it is a slippery downslope. They became places to walk for me.

These places are a little further for me, and I worry about it being crowded and so I went during weekdays on my days off.

And those days off were almost magical. I love hearing the crunch of my feet on the trail; I love how once you enter the shade under the big trees, it is a different world. There was so much to pay attention and yet, nothing to really pay attention to. You have to be careful of boars and monkeys, and put on a lot of insect repellant but being in nature, and walking yourself among big trees, this activity pleases me so. I don’t think of anything in particular, and I end up smiling to myself. I perhaps check my route to see I am still headed the correct way but well, I am fine if I end up slightly off-course. I take walks that are around 5 to 8 km, and average around 15 min/km. At this speed, a 8 km route takes around 2 hours. It seems like a big chunk of time to spend (because you also have to add travelling time to/from the park) but I can only say that I don’t regret the time spent.

Currently, I think the MacRitchie Reservoir area (see images below), starting from Windsor Nature Park is quite a pleasant route for me. It is not too difficult and is interesting. I do see (relatively fit) elderly people on the trails. Of course, I also see very fit people running within the trails and I am always full of admiration when they run past.

Notes on personal tech

  • Deleted my Twitter account. Read up on Mastodon but I was not convinced that we need to carry on down this path. I miss the days of the blog. I have not stopped using RSS and while Twitter allowed me to catch up on news and happenings in a certain way, I guess there is enough chatter in this world. So far, I’ve add some news outlets to RSS (after I got annoyed trying to read headlines via their Telegram channels).

    I feel mildly bad for the makers of Tweetbot.



  • I don’t know why but I managed to agitate myself into a fit of annoyance with the state of my bookmarks. I use Pinboard.in with the Pushpin app. It is a morass, but it is my morass and I am not ready to let go of them. (I am not one of those who get so stressed by their bookmarks that they end up deleting all of them.) I saw a review of Goodlinks and decided to try the app. (There is a one-time charge.) It is fast, and looks good, and its uses iCloud for syncing. I can add a bookmark on my phone and quite quickly see it on the Mac OS app.


    But I got annoyed that I could not see the date that the bookmark was added in Goodlinks, and so, after a few weeks, I’ve decided to say goodbye to Goodlinks. I could try Anybox next. But there is a nagging question – why do I want a repository of bookmarks?



  • Trying to listen to podcasts again. After so many years, the experience of downloading podcasts to the Apple Watch (whether via Apple Podcasts, Overcast or Spotify) is still annoying. You need the watch to be put back on the charger while on the same wifi network as the phone. I typically start thinking about what to listen shortly before my run, and there have been several times where I delayed my run by 15 to 20 minutes because I was trying to have the podcasts downloaded onto the watch (and the attempt may not be successful).


    Having made attempts using the above 3 apps in the past month, it appears Apple Podcasts is currently the winner. Overcast did not sync, and downloads via Spotify started but eventually failed. Somewhat relatedly, we are now listening to podcasts to put ourselves to sleep. I lean towards news coming out from Britain for this, because the American accent (yes there is such a thing) is mostly a tad too hyper.



  • I have begun to find the iPhone 13 mini too small. Maybe it is my presbyopia progressing, or the way websites are made (who would care for this segment of the market?). But perhaps it is good for me anyway, reducing the time I spend looking down at a small screen.



đŸŽ„ Ajoomma

We accidentally watched the movie before it even opened, and well, Ajoomma is a good film.

It is paced and written smartly. It is believable and yet, out there enough so that it catches your interest. It is a short movie, and doesn’t take much of you. It is bright and happy, and it is a very likable movie. Auntie Lim would remind many Singaporeans of their mother, and we know where the story eventually goes, but you’re still drawn in, rooting for Auntie Lim, Jung Su, and Kwon Woo. Even the son has a story to tell. (Call me old, but given the subplot, I am surprised the rating is a NC16.)

I find myself watching fewer and fewer movies over the years, and Covid meant a quieter movie industry in more recent years. But if you need a movie to get back into the movie-going mood, this is a good candidate.

Maybe we will learn to appreciate our families more, tolerate differences more. It is certainly not a movie for cynics. I really appreciated the theme of kindness that came out of the Auntie Lim/ Jung Su story, especially when it shows you how compassion sometimes doesn’t help. 💀 (Really, the best move would have been to stay put, or go back to the last place you lost whoever.) (And oh, I didn’t see it as a romance subplot, oops.)

Links from the past weeks

  • Japan’s jazz coffee bars transcend global barriers.
    On the day that it was announced Japan will soon allow tourists back into the country, a flurry of links about Japan were sent around. We Singaporeans seem to have a mad love for this country. But yes, that image of us in a dark room in Tokyo, sipping black coffee and listening to music
 I can’t wait to go back to Japan.



  • Apparently, being wowed is good for you.
    I do like looking at trees, and my phone contains too many photos of “oh I like this big tree” without me being able to recognise its species, but hey, now I know for sure looking at trees is good for me.



  • I have not been keeping track, but there are now many new switches on the market.

    Having used a TKL for many years, my current favourite is a 75% Vortex 3. And why did I end up buying a Varmilo Minilo? Was it for the skin-like texture? Or the Iris switches touted to have a superior typing experience? Why did I end up with a 65% keyboard that does not have the Home and End buttons that I rely on?



  • ‘There’s endless choice, but you’re not listening’: fans quitting Spotify to save their love of music
    This is of course a very familiar feeling, and I too am guilty of passive listening, and taking too utilitarian an approach when I set music to an experience (e.g. for work; for running), instead of what we used to enjoy: music for the sake of music.

    And so I cancelled my Spotify subscription, bought a few albums off Bandcamp, and consoled myself with this page asking whether ripping CD collections to FLAC is worth it. I also popped some CDs into the Denon, and then smiled when I realised I have quite a number of CDs already ripped using iTunes. Apple doesn’t play that well with high quality audio, and some things don’t change, so you need advice on how to play hi-res music on your iPhone.



  • I remembered being pissed off about the way the knotting appeared on a badminton racket that was restrung by a company that offered delivery services and confirmed my bias by reading this forum thread on badmintoncentral. I will be sending my rackets to the shop I like in the east, even though it is a little troublesome and I will have to collect the rackets some days later when they are ready. Racket re-stringing is always such an exercise.

📖 This is How They Tell Me The World Ends

“In the United States, though, convenience was everything; it still is. We were plugging anything we could into the internet, at a rate of 127 devices a second. We had bought into Silicon Valley’s promise of a frictionless society. There wasn’t a single area of our lives that wasn’t touched by the web. We could now control our entire lives, economy, and grid via a remote web control. And we had never paused to think that, along the way, we were creating the world’s largest attack surface.”

―
Nicole Perlroth
This is How They Tell Me The World Ends

//

Zero-day exploits, passwords, airgap systems, multi-factor authentication, attacks on the grid, spies, a market for cyber weapons
 the arms race all over again.

The book induces a breathlessness, an anxiety that you do not let overwhelm you because you know we are all screwed. Because you know that some things have already bolted out the door, the likely outcome already set in motion many years ago, when the world was a more naive place. This is a sobering read, and my helpless self proceeded to pat my password manager, change some old passwords, and set up multi-factor authentication for more accounts.

Highly recommended.

Links from the past week 

  • 8world: Tuesday Report – Trails Across Time: Thomson
    This is a video made by Mediacorp Singapore and it traces the developments in the Thomson area from the 1930s onwards, where there were once villages and plantations. The green spaces and reservoirs we know of now were once places where people lived, cultivated food, washed their clothes
 The video includes a segment where an old gentleman draws a map of his village (he could still remember where each household was!). There is also a rendering of how a village looks like; I can still drag up a fuzzy image of my grandmother’s kampung house but it is such a distant memory.



  • Love, Happiness, and Time
    Is love/ happiness a thing/ a place? Or is it an event? This is worth a few minutes of your time.



  • The Apple Watch Ultra finally convinced me to leave Garmin behind
    Quite an unexpected title, but I guess this “good enough” and being part of the Apple ecosystem explains why there are people who would take the Apple Watch over a Garmin (or any other real sports watch).



  • What’s the Most Harmful Airport Book?
    What a good question, and what an interesting read. The #1 is a little unexpected, but the view expressed is quite valid. đŸ€”