cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10828079
We all get bored sometimess and scroll mindlessly through various social media feeds, like instagram (fuck you), reddit (fuck you) or lemmy (no offense, love you guys).
Most of the time content is a wild mix of everything, from news to memes and educational stuff, and very hard to filter out.
Is there anything out there that contains educational stuff only? where you can just sit there, scroll through it and learn something. thinking of like a short text or image showing some facts, or some math examples, or physics, or whatever.
So…mindful scrolling?
I think you’d want to roll your own, basically. Get an RSS reader, subscribe to some journals, some sites like Mentalfloss and Atlas Obscura that “blogitize” information, maybe follow scientists’ RSS feeds on Mastodon or Bluesky. If you follow enough, it’ll be an effectively infinite scroll every time you open it.
Damn, people are really ripping into OP for saying the world “mindless” in a sentence asking for good snackable science content.
I wish people wouldn’t be so pedantic and would support someone’s curiosity in science, not rip it apart.
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That said, OP there are a lot of great science educators that are using things like short form video to give you a brief taste of a cool topic or area of study. I know a lot of them are using the big Google, Meta, and TikToc platforms for this content, but I would love to know if there are some people using Fedi platforms.
I tend to find that if I start searching for people like Brian Greene, Brian Cox, Carl Sagan, and I commonly downvote things like Joe Rogan, then the algos can provide some interesting science stuff to watch while I’m waiting at the car wash.
I know this will be downvoted to hell but. My tiktok is 99% educational content since i didnt press like on any dancing or rage content videos early on. Also theres a stem feed.
Educational and mindless rarely go hand in hand.
I think OP is referring to the short “oh that’s really cool” stuff a good educator knows how to use to excite people about a topic. People like Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson have been masters of this on talks shows.
It’s not going to be an 20 lecture MIT course on quantum physics (those are online for free BTW), but you’ll get the high-level gestalt of a something. And that might inspire you to dig deeper into a topic.
I like metafilter.com a lot!
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Hank and John Green’s TikToc and Shorts feeds are good for this kind of stuff.
Would you like an Asimov book maybe? Not a social media but they can make your brain work.
I’m going to recommend getting an app called Feedly. You can setup what you want to see on the feed. Put only educational or scientific articles, or customize it with sources that meets your need.
That would be considered as mindless scrolling through pop-science tabloids. That isn’t going to educate you in depth. Actual learning is really hard, and takes a lot of effort.
Currently, I’m finishing “Modern C” by Jens Gustedt - which is understandable - it’s just me going through C again for better understanding, but the other book I’m reading right now - “Algorithms in C” by Robert Sedgewick is damn hard, and unlike anything I’ve read before. I’ve completed one of the online versions of “Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach” by Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne before, and it was the most painful six months of total concentration. It was extremely difficult, but I learnt quite some stuff.
So yes, books are actually really good. RSS is also pretty neat, if you’re following some good blogs. Personally, I love reading Evan Ovadia’s blog on his new programming language Vale.
I disagree. Learning absolutely does not have to be really hard. Learning can be fun can you can motivated by curiosity. The best physics, research, and computer science professors I ever had were not the people that focused on the grind. They were able highlight something fascinating and dope, then make exploring that thing feel like solving a fun puzzle.
Moreover, if you’re recreationally curious about something you by no means need to study the full thing. People should be encouraged to be curious about lots of things. It’s ok to snack from the science sampler platter without getting into the kitchen. Explore the dope theory and high level gestalt first. Have fun.
If you’re curious about lots of things, you’re more likely to stumble upon something that you’re passionate about. And it’s WAY easier to get into the weeds with something that you’re passionate about.
Short-content pop-science video can’t teach eddy currents, empirical study of algorithms or even polysaccharides in general. Learning is not fun. It takes a lot of effort to concentrate. Articles and medium-length videos are slightly tolerable. Reading book adds to that difficulty.
Learning is not fun.
Well, speak for yourself. I enjoyed what I studied in both undergraduate and graduate school. 🤷♂️
Also, my favorite class in high school was from a physics teacher that made things a ton of fun. I had so much fun in his class that I used to skip track practice and sit in his class for another period.
A (academic) library it is called. - Pepperidge Farm remembers
Tiktok has a stem feed.
Fuck tiktok and the ccp
Correct
