I can't do anything productive or mentally taxing on long flights, I don't know if it's the air pressure or premature jetlag or what, but I have a very hard time exercising my will. What I do enjoy, though (in addition to the Marvel comics movies – I only watch them on planes) is reading documentation. It's a great time to sit down with an in-depth manual and just soak up information you didn't have before. You don't have to do anything, or make anything, you just learn how something works. Another related activity is reading a bunch of code that I know I'll be working on in the near future. There's something very pleasurable about absorbing a codebase while at the same time completely excusing myself from actually doing anything.
I've experienced the same thing. I had planned to spend a 14hr flight gaming and after 4hrs, had neither the ability not will to continue. I'm completely uninformed on the subject, but wondered whether it was the effect of a thinner atmosphere on cognitive abilities.
Another one of those threads that causes intense navel-gazing, shame, and mounting disgust in my gut for myself as I realize that everyone around me is working hard to better themselves while I just binge-watch movies.... and then my eyes glaze over as I mollify myself with the movies until I forget that this thread exists.
Life is short, enjoy your time watching movies.
I have wasted a lot of time being busy (reading non-fiction, TED talks etc) that did not translate into any noticeable self improvement or progress in my life. I have feeling a lot of people makes that mistake too.
I've always just read this as people on Hacker News feel more compelled than I do to be productive all the time. I have a corporate gig, and need to be my most productive self during work hours (he said, while commenting on HN during work hours), so I'm not as hard on myself outside of work. Maybe if I had a different mentality I could create the next Facebook or Uber or who knows what, but honestly I'm pretty happy as is. Don't have shame, friend. You are who you are. Better yourself by being a well rounded, nice person, not by spending all your free time reading books or watching TED talks.
A bit cynical, but my guess is the vast majority of people forcing themselves to consume productive media are not retaining anything and just don't want to feel like they're wasting time.
And as the sibling comment said, nothing wrong with a good movie. Enjoy your life.
I've been getting better, though, and I don't mean getting better by reading more technical literature, listening to more podcasts, and doing more programming in my free time.
Instead I mean accepting the fact that I simply don't enjoy those things and the way forward is to let go of the shame I feel for not liking them. There are plenty of things I do want to do in my free time, and I'm going to do those things. Every once in a while that thing is reading something technical or writing a program. In fact, I find that I enjoy those things more often when I'm not trying to force myself to do them.
I used to have quite a large stack of technical books I bought and then never read. Now the local Goodwill has them. Hopefully the next owner is someone who actually enjoys them.
Good movies are nothing to be ashamed of. While you may not be learning new facts about science and tech, you're interacting with different emotional models and stories depicting human interactions. Awhile ago I saw research confirming the link between watching a lot of movies and increase in emotional intellect (same people, over time), but I can't google it up now.
Watching videos can only help you develop a superficial understanding, anyway. A superficial understanding is a good place to start, but videos have usually been a form of procrastination for me, even when the content's been ostensibly serious.
Never had a mindset to understand what sometimes are they talking about in humanities. Recently found this series of short and clear leactures on many of such topics.
Philosophy of the Humanities
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPeStI124dee1ByfcDzRv...
Then this category theory keeps popping up everywhere, completly incomprehensible, seems like mathematicians are gone mad. I found that this lectures help like no others to catch up to them.
Category theory for programmers by Bartosz Milewski
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbgaMIhjbmEnaH_LTkxLI...
I've started watching Raymond Hettinger's talks lately. He's a core dev on Python. I love them, the guy is charismatic, very smart and his Python knowledge constantly impresses me.
Just as a side note for all these wonderful youtube resources. You can use this recently discussed tool on hacker news [0] youtube-dl [1] for downloading youtube videos. There's also this video transcoder Handbrake [2] that uses ffmpeg [3] under the hood if the previous tool spits out a video in a format that is not specifically mkv or mp4 (whichever of those two you prefer).
I like to watch the map that shows the where the plane is. As the agony of travel bares on after hour and hour, you watch as you get closer closer to escaping your hellish existence in a tin can at 30k feet.
I look at the map then take a sip of whiskey. Map, whiskey. Then I suck the last of the whiskey from the ice cubes while cracking open another bottle. Map, whiskey. Day dream a little.
A kindred spirit. I always spend long flights watching martial arts movies and drinking tomato juice. I'm too uncomfortable and tired on flights to do anything productive.
I know this is not answering the question from the poster but I found meditation very helpful during my recent 15 hours flight.
It is very rare to find such a long time alone in an almost quite and non-stimulating environment. Getting meals served to you on your seat and knowing that you are
stuck here for next many hours takes away the planning ahead part of the head. I found it easier to be with my breath and thoughts.
I also drifted in and out of sleep during this time and felt very relaxed. It helped me upon landing to minimize effects of Jet lag. I believe it was more helpful than any talk or video and could also help getting some good insights.
I'd like to add that my morning 1-2 hour commute is much more enjoyable if I do some exercise before it. If not, I have trouble staying put/sleeping/concentrating on work/meditating, etc. Also, someone recommended to me recently to get a massage before a flight. I'll try that next time.
Anybody even remotely involved in designing anyth9ing connected to a network should watch Raph Koster's GDC talk about the ethical issues involved in developing AR and VR games. Except it's not really about "games" as we usually use the term. "Twitter" is a "virtual world"/MMO where they only bothered to built the chat feature.
This is really about the ethics and responsibilities that come with managing social spaces or infrastructure that people use to interact socially (which necessarily includes the problems that humans always have). The MMOs (and the MUDs/etc before 0them) have been working on these problems for decades. That doesn't mean they have the solution, but that experience does include a lot of lessons about what not to do; far too many projects are choosing to learn those lessons the hard way.
For 5-6 hour flights, it's usually a combination of things for me:
- Videos related to whatever technology will be pertinent at the meeting I'm flying in for.
- Distraction movies: Bourne Identity, etc.
- Anime I'm currently binge-watching.
- Games on my phone.
- Printed technical articles I've been procrastinating about reading.
Honestly, how virtuous/edifying my in-flight activities are depends on how much sleep I got the night before. This is one reason I dislike early-morning flights - they leav me zonked and unable to make good use of my in-flight solitude.
Side note: On Android, I just discovered "Movies Anywhere". It was a great tool for downloading DRM's movies/shows for my last trip.
This is a talk by Professor Fritz Henglein about how to sort general datasets in linear time. Most people in industry do not believe this is possible, but it's actually part of a family of well-researched techniques.
https://youtu.be/sz9ZlZIRDAg
And this channel did a great compilation that introduces to all Chomsky's works. Table of contents is in the video description. Topics are: War, State Power, and American Exceptionalism. Capitalism, Neoliberalism, and Corporate Propaganda. Anarchism, Libertarian Socialism, and Classical Liberalism. Science, Philosophy, and Language.
Noam Chomsky - The Essentials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1umiaNjOinE
For that long time period you might want to watch "A Glorious Accident". Wim Kazyer sits down with Daniel Dennett, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks and Stephen Toulmin (and Rupert Sheldrake) to do one-on-one interviews. Then all of them sit down together for 3 1/2 hours at a round table and have a wide-ranging discussion. Wim Kazyer acts as a kind of moderator, Rupert Sheldrake, who has written books like "The Science Delusion" acts as a kind of antagonist.
[+] [-] girzel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jason_slack|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deminature|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PakG1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] byebyetech|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eddieroger|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sotojuan|7 years ago|reply
And as the sibling comment said, nothing wrong with a good movie. Enjoy your life.
[+] [-] sjbase|7 years ago|reply
What you've done with this comment is refreshing: you've overcome the enormous pressure to be the best version of yourself online. Well done!
1: https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(17)30016-8/ful...
[+] [-] wilsonnb2|7 years ago|reply
I've been getting better, though, and I don't mean getting better by reading more technical literature, listening to more podcasts, and doing more programming in my free time.
Instead I mean accepting the fact that I simply don't enjoy those things and the way forward is to let go of the shame I feel for not liking them. There are plenty of things I do want to do in my free time, and I'm going to do those things. Every once in a while that thing is reading something technical or writing a program. In fact, I find that I enjoy those things more often when I'm not trying to force myself to do them.
I used to have quite a large stack of technical books I bought and then never read. Now the local Goodwill has them. Hopefully the next owner is someone who actually enjoys them.
[+] [-] golergka|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pxtl|7 years ago|reply
Low oxygen environments are not a place for brainwork.
[+] [-] bjelkeman-again|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexCoventry|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qume|7 years ago|reply
Savour it. Value it.
[+] [-] drharby|7 years ago|reply
Or write the next mad max. You could do that too
[+] [-] wymy|7 years ago|reply
https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepr...
[+] [-] jessewmc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evanb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dustinupdyke|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkotak|7 years ago|reply
1. The Great Game - by Peter Hopkirk 2. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples - by Winston Churchill
[+] [-] pro_zac|7 years ago|reply
The Ultimate Game Boy Talk https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8029-the_ultimate_game_boy_talk
The Ultimate Apollo Guidance Computer Talk https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9064-the_ultimate_apollo_guidanc...
The Ultimate Atari 2600 Talk https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4711-en-the_atari_2600_video_com...
More here:(Commodore 64, Amiga 500, etc.) https://media.ccc.de/search/?q=ultimate
[+] [-] TripleH|7 years ago|reply
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3mhkYbznBk&list=PLLzGzdSNup...
[+] [-] mcprwklzpq|7 years ago|reply
Then this huge series of lectures on western philosophy introduces to a lot of ideas about everything. Can listen anytime. Arthur Holmes: A History of Philosophy https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9GwT4_YRZdBf9nIUHs0z...
Then this category theory keeps popping up everywhere, completly incomprehensible, seems like mathematicians are gone mad. I found that this lectures help like no others to catch up to them. Category theory for programmers by Bartosz Milewski https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbgaMIhjbmEnaH_LTkxLI...
[+] [-] scrollaway|7 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRVdut2KPAguz3xcd22i_...
My favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zinZmE3Ogk
[+] [-] johnsonjo|7 years ago|reply
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17460060
[1]: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/
[2]: https://handbrake.fr/
[3]: https://ffmpeg.org/
[+] [-] sdf43543t345|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wierd0|7 years ago|reply
Ding! Ladies and gentlemen...
[+] [-] coldtea|7 years ago|reply
What agony?
>you watch as you get closer closer to escaping your hellish existence in a tin can at 30k feet
Might as well bring some paint, to watch it dry...
[+] [-] crispyambulance|7 years ago|reply
You need something engaging but not too mentally taxing while under the influence of jet lag.
What could be better than the righteous grist of King Fu movies involving good guys and bad guys duking it out?
[+] [-] Al-Khwarizmi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolkarni|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kovek|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdkl95|7 years ago|reply
This is really about the ethics and responsibilities that come with managing social spaces or infrastructure that people use to interact socially (which necessarily includes the problems that humans always have). The MMOs (and the MUDs/etc before 0them) have been working on these problems for decades. That doesn't mean they have the solution, but that experience does include a lot of lessons about what not to do; far too many projects are choosing to learn those lessons the hard way.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024060/Still-Logged-In-What-AR
[+] [-] DoofusOfDeath|7 years ago|reply
- Videos related to whatever technology will be pertinent at the meeting I'm flying in for.
- Distraction movies: Bourne Identity, etc.
- Anime I'm currently binge-watching.
- Games on my phone.
- Printed technical articles I've been procrastinating about reading.
Honestly, how virtuous/edifying my in-flight activities are depends on how much sleep I got the night before. This is one reason I dislike early-morning flights - they leav me zonked and unable to make good use of my in-flight solitude.
Side note: On Android, I just discovered "Movies Anywhere". It was a great tool for downloading DRM's movies/shows for my last trip.
[+] [-] KirinDave|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexCoventry|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mastax|7 years ago|reply
The title threw me off, but it's a very interesting and grounded talk about the different approaches to scaling fusion energy.
[+] [-] Diederich|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mastax|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TaylorAlexander|7 years ago|reply
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h_x0Y3FqkEI
I also enjoyed the documentary Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, which can be found on torrent sites.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Power_Mixtape_1967...
[+] [-] mcprwklzpq|7 years ago|reply
And this channel did a great compilation that introduces to all Chomsky's works. Table of contents is in the video description. Topics are: War, State Power, and American Exceptionalism. Capitalism, Neoliberalism, and Corporate Propaganda. Anarchism, Libertarian Socialism, and Classical Liberalism. Science, Philosophy, and Language. Noam Chomsky - The Essentials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1umiaNjOinE
[+] [-] unixhero|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ologn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Syzygies|7 years ago|reply
Podcasts are better for flying. You can close your eyes, and if you don't stay awake, all the better.
[+] [-] jtmarmon|7 years ago|reply