I think I’m probably slowly transitioning to “the ghost” but more as a matter of digital minimalism than for privacy lmao

Hi! Thank you so much for your answer! I’m using koreader now for my reading and getting books online, a Kobo looks nice because you can apparently install Koreader on it as well, and synchthing too.

The mp3 is also a good idea, but I realized I will have to use a computer and an internet connection somehow at some point, whether it’s for managing my ebooks, downloading music or other stuff… And while it can be wonderful to not having to work at a PC all day, I think I will need at least a laptop that I can bring to a library and help me manage some stuff every now and then, even if I have no internet/smartphone at home… Well I hope it can be a cheap b/w e ink laptop one day!!

I think part of me just have to learn that some emotions I feel are so strong that sometimes having control on my media use is hard unless I address my underlining condition. I can definitely do better tho!

For example I can change my workplace so I don’t have to be on a computer all day alone, working on social medias too pheraps, and I can ditch my smartphone and get a Garmin for gps, mp3 and eBook reader… Even tho my smartphone is not really being as much of a problem anymore since it is really really minimal already thanks to e ink and plucky andoff!

One thing I notice is that when I feel worse I somehow try to rationalize I can “unlock” some restrictions because I might have become able to handle it, eg. I can install Instagram or a browser to look for events, but I end up in bad media use every time after that!

I think that’s mostly because I really need some relief from the constant stress I experience / fear of intimacy which brings me to porn/social medias (from PTSD), and partly because these softwares contain the bads alongside the goods.

Anyway the e ink world is being more and more amazing the more the time passes, and there are people who do care and build better / less or non addictive software too! I think the goal shouldn’t be perfection, but rather the best balance between convenience and unwanted effects…

I would be much less driven to use technology at all if I did not have internet at home or didn’t have to work alone at a computer, but I could lose too much if I didn’t own a computer I could bring to a library once or twice a week to download ebooks / music / watch for events to go to with my friends or download my guitar tabs!

I think people should really read books like digital minimalism by cal Newport, stolen focus, surveillance capitalism, your brain on porn ecc to understand how social medias (but the internet in general) IS DESIGNED to be addictive, and what are the addictive traits.

Lemmy is definitely better but still holds some concepts from addictive social medias (not because of developers fault, I think they just tried mimicking popular socials, since these are born as “alternatives”). Infinite scrolling and upvotes are just two examples.

Some frontends do a great job leaving power to the user in that, like eternity, but I think a lot more consciousness should be raised on the topic and, at least in the open source / federated community there should be some guidelines on how to design social medias just as useful tools while minimizing distractions/useless/addictive parts.

It’s great to be decentralized, it’s great to avoid ads, profilation and targetization, but we can do better in designing really new and useful tools starting from certain principles.

Have you checked out other types of therapies? Not all therapies are the same and not all medicines are the same!

You might just be missing what works for you! Don’t get discouraged, I have been in therapy for 4 years and only after this time I understood that my therapist doesn’t make it for me anymore!

I have PTSD from childhood trauma and from what I’ve read many therapists focus on other symptoms without actually addressing the core trauma.

Currently changing therapy with a microdosing friendly Gestalt therapist! Just the fact of standing for myself in one of the ugliest times makes me feel so proud.

Whatever you do, don’t stop trying and don’t stop seeking for alternative solutions. Think about how you managed to live with all this pain until now, and how strong you are for that. Most of the others cannot know how much strength is required to deal with such emotions.

Think if one day you will unlock this all, think how many beautiful things you could do with the consciousness of how it feels to actually feel bad!

No I actually prefer GNOME, but have to use KDE because I need specific features (kiosk mode), but yes I feel like Gnome is so much better integrated with its defaults apps!

When Linux phones?

(Actually usable ones)

Crypto - wall street on steroids Bitcoin - an actual alternative to the collapsing monetary economy

That doesn’t take into account privacy coins like monero, which have different purposes, but most crypto is bullshit.

Glad to know xfce has a kiosk mode, I wonder if it’s easier to set up than KDE or GNOME…

UFW definitely and maybe also selinux or apparmor to give internet access only to applications that need access!

I thought about Nix, it is indeed cool to declaratively install stuff and it would indeed be very helpful to set system settings all from one file so that you control everything there, but I don’t think that’s what I need, I think I’d need a more focused desktop environment maybe?

Kiosk environments could be a solution, because once the UI is limited, you can install software in any way you like and from any distro really, I think the focus is to keep it minimal under the hoods and very simple on the surface!

Thank you so much for sharing, so what’s a mood stabilizer? Is it like lithium? Or something less potent?

My therapist also says I have really big spikes both up and down, so that could be more suitable maybe…

I just can’t trust a psychiatrist that simply doesn’t know me and cannot trust pharmaceutical industries as well… Also I’m scared as hell for possible side effects since I already have very mild tinnitus which I don’t want to make any worse, and long term side effects scare the hell out of me even more. I’m also scared as fuck to lose my libido. I spent years and years in holding myself back and never actually enjoying sex until a few months ago… Since relationships were always too painful and I resorted to porn most of the times, which killed my libido and my sex drive towards real partners as well… When you have PTSD you kinda have few choices: live with your pain, find ways to continuously vent out your stress or numb yourself out, I numbed myself for years and only lately I’m trying to live with my pain and venting the stress with sport, which is terrible but also gave me back some joy as well, and the sport part is amazing both for my body and for my general wellbeing…

I kinda feel trapped in this situation… My therapist also said we would be able to work better on the trauma once I start taking a medicine…

Probably an unpopular opinion but if you want absolute minimalism without ads use Violoncello text browser!

I think one of the problems is actually I’m lacking sugars and I frequently go in hypo, I do plenty of sports and don’t eat anything sweet except for some fruits.

Yesterday I measured glicemy AFTER having had a snack like an hour before and it was 76, which is fine but on an empty stomach, it’s supposed to be >100 after eating…

I will try again when I feel those strong symptoms like some evenings ago when I couldn’t even think clearly and I was feeling like I was almost passing out.

For now it looks like when I’m really really down, I eat something sugary like juice fruit and I feel immediately better.

I think this is definitely playing a role, but got to investigate further and correlate with measurements.

Can you tell me more about your story?

Thank you

My god would love to see all events on pixelfeld instead of Instagram…

Having a federated music platform would be great both for people and for artists!

How is the user experience compared to matrix? Is it easy to gateway towards matrix or other services? Can I easily join matrix or other communities servers?

I see a lot of people are now using matrix but not so many xmpp, but yeah it hoggs resources on my server too. Also I feel like it’s still pretty buggy…

Yes, sorry, not a native English speaker

Didn’t think about the 2 machines thing. But yeah it looks definitely easier than setting a transparent proxy… But I guess all of this has to be on the same network, I cannot use an external server to which I connect to via wan because at that point the connections would be already need to be unproxied going out right?

But can’t your setup be done on the same machine with a firewall?

Yes DNS and pihole were never thought as content filtering tools

I need to block IPs and unauthorized connections that are not http/https as well, I know about DNS filtering but it’s not what I am trying to achieve.