I live about 35 miles outside of SF. I like my home and I venture out into the city once, sometimes twice per week, either to go into the office or catch up with some friend or other. I’m otherwise happy with my home and being home.
I read a lot of tech articles, where probably 60% come from HN. The other 40% are probably things I search for organically out of curiosity, and then on top of that is the tech reading I always end up having to do for work.
As far as tv, I watch a few shows here and there and definitely like watching movies, though I’m always out of ideas.
Otherwise, I’m usually listening to music or going for walks. I used to game a lot, been a while since, but I didn’t like the effects it was having on my health so I quit.
I’ve probably lost you by now so I should have made this the first question, but I feel disconnected from the outside world. I don’t even know if this is a terrible thing or not actually, but I was curious to know what you all do to stay in tune with society beyond tech stuff.
I suspect when I have kids all my time will go there, but in the meantime I’d love some ideas.
I’ve tried for example reading the news, but two things happen. I either get exhausted of constantly having to be on the lookout for bad info or agendas by the author, or the events themselves stress me out. A good, light, neutral source of news would be welcome.
Have never found anywhere reliable for tv or movie recommendations.
I don’t have any hobbies other than some of the deep dives I used to do when I gamed into fine tuning my machines. You’d be surprised how bad the info on YouTube is.
Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for readin, genuinely curious to know what you smart people do and consume.
More productively I read fiction, usually some variant of mystery or police books. I'm going through some (translated) Japanese "golden age" mysteries right now, there are lots and it's a good way to read something light where you still learn a lot.
I don't like being a consumer at all but you can't avoid a lot of it, so at least if you set your mind to it you can end up being a net producer when you do the math.
I'm currently keeping up with the outside world in part by going back to university (doing a PhD part time, with all the reading that that implies) and socialising hard (even though I think that I'm an introvert), and trying to get invested with various start-ups / mentoring / etc.
Here is my favorite author, I own almost all of his books: