Let's be Fwends #149:

Walking as a Method for Getting Unstuck

"I'm afraid that the Ministry of Silly Walks is no longer getting the kind of support it needs. You see there's Defense, Social Security, Health, Housing, Education, Silly Walks ... they're all supposed to get the same. But last year, the Government spent less on the Ministry of Silly Walks than it did on National Defense!"

~ Monty Python

Did you know that 2025 is kinda special? Mostly because (0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9)² = 2025, but also because 1³ + 2³ + 3³ + 4³ + 5³ + 6³ + 7³ + 8³ + 9³ = 2025.

I'm happy to be back after a short Christmas/New Year's Eve break to bring you news about the Internet, why humans crave expensive things, what to do when mentally stuck, smartphone bans, lego parts and astronaut urine.

The Splinternet

Two years after the concept emerged for the first time, it finally happened: Russia has ruptured the Internet. Access to the global internet was successfully disabled in two regions of Russia while national services continued to work without interruption.

Citizens were unable to access global services like YouTube, even when using VPNs.

Why is this news? This is substantially different from blocking websites in your country. Blocking is performed by restricting traffic, a method that can be circumvented by using a VPN solution. Of course, those can be made illegal, but this is a legal method, not a technical one.

But the fact that services were unavailable even when using VPNs suggests that the Russian "internet" was cut off from the actual Internet on a technical level - while Russian services remained unaffected.

Why Humans Crave Expensive Things

Have you ever wondered why things like luxury goods exist? Why people spend more money on things than they are actually worth? Of course, you will interject, this is easy to explain: Social status.

That's a great explanation, but only half the story. If social status would be the only thing at play here, and people would still behave like rational agents, we would see people buying high quality goods that are expensive (due to increased production costs) and are also advertising quality and cost (for example, through branding) to increase social status.

But that's not what is happening. When things are expensive, quality is not important. People crave expensive things not because of their quality, but because they are expensive.

Those goods are called Veblen goods, and they are breaking the supply-and-demand curve, a very basic economic concept.

Go For a Walk

One of the many tactics I cultivated over the years that really paid off is giving ideas some rest. I'm sure you know that situation: You think about a problem the whole day, but you're stuck. Whenever you want to conjure a solution, you come up empty. Frustrated, you give up. But then - hours later - you have a break-through thought while doing something completely different (taking a shower, for most people).

My workflow avoids the frustration. Whenever I have the feeling that I might get stuck, I write down something - really anything, and then stop working on the problem. Instead, I do something else (like the laundry, or cooking, or going for a walk) while keeping my thinking about the problem on a background simmer.

It's the most effective way of creating a positive tension in your mind: Just keeping your thoughts in a light and very delicate grip, and having some distance to them at the same time. Letting your brain do its work.

I'm happy to read that this method has scientific backing.

Smartphone Bans, Mood and Sleep

If there's one technical artefact that is everywhere, then it's the smartphone. When I bring our 6 year old daughter to school, I see a significant amount of kids between 8 and 10 years standing in front of their school, phones in hand, glued to their screens.

I know that the lament that all those new media are bad, especially for young people, is as old as media itself. But there is enough research already to say that smartphones are different and do impact humans (and especially humans in their adolescence) in a negative way.

But researchers at the University of York found that not using smartphones for 21 days had a significant impact on sleep and mood in 14-year olds:

"Pupils in the phone ban group reported a 17% reduction in feelings related to depression and an 18% reduction in feelings related to anxiety, feeling generally less upset and nervous. "

Source

There's increasing evidence that kids should not have a smartphone before the age of 14. But how can parents implement this policy, when kids as young as 8 years old already have them?

Insights welcome, both for this humble journal and for personal need.

The Lost Lego

"Hundreds of pieces of Lego lost at sea off a cargo ship 27 years ago have been found this year, including the first ever shark."

4.756.940 pieces lost at sea, recovered piece by piece. And of course, a shark's among them.

How's the Urine Situation on the International Space Station?

Just in case you wondered, here's a solution from Jännät:

"pISSStream is a macOS menu bar app that shows how full the International Space Station's urine tank is in real time"

pISSStream on GitHub

That's it for this edition of Let's be Fwends. Let's be Fwends, and make 2025 amazing together. Somebody has to do it. 💪