Hello strangers!

I strained a muscle in my back and so have not been carrying my laptop around with me (or much else) while it healed. This has dramatically reduced my scuttle-time.

You are all great, interesting people and I have missed reading your news yet I also have enjoyed the calm of not participating or trying to drink from the firehose.

My time on here is going to remain reduced for a while so apologies in advance for slow responses to questions.

Hey thank you everyone for the lovely words :) I am carrying my laptop today and unfortunately my back is aching so I probably will need to rest it more before doing so again but it's great to have a little time to download 2000+ (!) posts and catch up a little on what I have missed.

It's a very interesting experience not having the distractions of a computer in my idle moments. I've been reading a lot and also spending time simply thinking.

I'd love to say my reading list has been non-technical but that would be a lie!

Over the last month I've read the following and would heartily recommend to (most of) you:

• Masters of Doom by David Kushner: the story of id software shows how uniquely productive and also how precarious a creative partnership can be and it's also a nostalgic look at an era when it was necessary to get really close to the metal to write code that seemed like magic and a few people with a cool idea and some hardcore skills could create something brand new and genre defining.
• Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D 1 by Fabien Sanglard: probably one for developers only. A close look at some of the really clever parts of the source for Wolfenstein 3D. I read this before Masters of Doom: it made me curious to learn more about id software.
• You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier: a book that will resonate with many on SSB with its call not to reduce your humanity to fit into a simplified template offered by social media (plus some more contentious but provocative ideas on open source, piracy, the nature of consciousness, VR and cephalopods)
• Playing at the World by Jon Peterson: a comprehensive history of wargames, roleplaying games and fandom up to D&D. The book is very - sometimes tediously - detailed. It is hard to imagine a more comprehensive survey of the domain. What I took from it above all was a reminder of the importance of following your passion - however pointless it may seem to others especially if the time in which you live is not quite ready for it - and for finding people with whom to share it so that the ideas can evolve through a dialogue with others.

I don't anticipate having a lot of free time in the next few months and I'm not going to be carrying my laptop on a regular basis but I am going to dip back into the scuttleverse more often as and when I can.

Much love to all of you!

Hi everyone

My back is better but I have got out of the habit of carrying my laptop and whenever I open Patchwork I feel overwhelmed and close it without participating (but not before noticing how beautiful it looks since the recent updates).

I have an atypical sensitivity to distracting stimuli: it might simply be that I have a personality type that doesn't handle well social or chat platforms.

I've just unsubscribed from a lot of channels and unfollowed a lot of people hoping to make the information flood more manageable. If I have hurt your feelings by unfollowing you, I apologise. If this seems a good opportunity to unfollow me at last, please jump in and do so! :)

I have enjoyed very much meeting and talking with all of you, been challenged, inspired and informed - however the time I spend here comes from the time I have to do other things and in the end my other projects are more important to me personally right now. I won't be participating in the grant discussion threads or welcoming new joiners or many of the other things I have done in the past. I may not post or reply to messages for weeks or months.

Realistically, I do not have time right now to develop the skills I would need to write a quiet or calm client but I have not given up hope. I do believe that the world needs an alternative to social media platforms grounded in surveillance capitalism and that SSB holds out the promise of this possibility. I do not want to lose touch with everyone here but in the end I also need to do what is right for my own well being.

I have recently read Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy by James Williams, available for free via Open access. His central argument is that the modern digital media landscape is engineered to compete for our attention to a degree that citizenship itself is being eroded as we lack sufficient mental space to set clear goals for ourselves or the clear spans of concentration needed to attain them.

It's a short book with a powerful argument. I recommend it to anyone thinking about why social media feels so toxic and how we might avoid replicating its architecture of distraction - even for those of you who are more comfortable drinking from the firehose than me!

Welcome back @tim and thanks for the book link!