Ask HN: What do you read while in bathroom?

by Exuma on 6/15/2023, 7:49 PM with 4 comments

So during the hours and hours I’m not coding, there are moments of downtime where I used to look at Reddit in 5-10 minute blocks:

Going to bathroom, eating, short breaks where I walk around or sit on my deck.

Normally I look at YouTube learning sources as a first (3blue1brown, statquest, t3ssel8r) but unfortunately I’ve seen all those videos I want to see and releases are rare

Now since Reddit sucks, and I don’t intend to go back without Apollo, I don’t even know what to look at

I really love learning but I feel I need at least SOME just fun and light stuff to balance.

Right now I’ve been reading about learning R studio deeply and such, and reading about tibbles vs data frames while on can is … fun, it’s just not exactly the same.

I don’t even really know what to look at anymore.

I love HN but it also has a bit of a heavy and serious vibe which is great, but I also need those light feeling fragments content in between. My day definitely seems a bit more dim when I wake up, code, learn, and then even on my breaks I'm learning.

What is out there that I’m missing?

  • by damnesian on 6/15/2023, 8:06 PM

    My wife loves mysteries, and I love sci-fi. We occasionally will buy a pulp mag on the newsstand, one in each genre- in part to keep them alive, but also because pulp mags aren't really meant to be lovingly archived (though of course some do), so the idea of aerosolized poo on them is not too disgusting if you know they will be recycled at the end of the month. Plus it keeps the poo off your phone.

  • by ksaj on 6/15/2023, 11:08 PM

    I just do sudoku or crosswords - anything that is far removed from the processes I'm immersed in outside the loo.

    There was a time I'd use my phone and look at news headlines, but I already do that in the living room. I'm crammed with enough technology and "information" all day long. The loo is a bit of respite from all that.

  • by 082349872349872 on 6/15/2023, 9:06 PM

    Nothing (for I agree with Montaigne and Aesop; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34365663 )

  • by mrits on 6/15/2023, 7:53 PM

    I wonder how much better my GPA would have been if I had troubled bowel movements. Unfortunately I'm in and out of the bathroom in about 2 minutes.