I say this with complete sincerity: I think you’re looking for a book! Maybe consider an ereader app for your phone
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Specifically an encyclopedia.
Going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole can be a reasonable digital alternative.
Library Cards are also OP
Libby app for the win! A brief history of time is a fun mind-blowing read by one of the greatest brains of our time.
Amazing book :)
"Educational" and "mindless" are fairly mutually exclusive.
But I agree, what you want is a book.
Learning random trivia is kind of both tbh
I absolutely disagree with you. Watching Our Universe on Netflix while high is definitely 100% educational and mindless.
What you're looking for is called RSS. Install a RSS client, subscribe to some blogs or interesting sites like Aeon, Psyche, Nautilus, Longreads or Hacker News and add them to your client. Then you can scroll mindlessly through your own curated list of educational content.
Google reader was so simple and really amazing. Too bad they dropped it.
Nothing they do is unique, ask around. Must be something analagous
Well TikTok actually has a pretty good algo (At least awhile ago, it might have become enshittified since) once you use it enough to train it beyond the default new profile feed.
When I was on it, I had gotten the algo to spit out mostly cool educational stuff. Like chemical fun, space stuff, Hank Green stuff, technical things (Like programming tips, cybersecurity, homelab etc) and other nerdy things (Like Star Trek stuffs) with a bit of memes sprinkled in
I don't agree with the other commenters about books, I see what you're asking for at least, books are more for when you want to dive more in depth in a specific topic
Nope to TikTok since I don't want an algo deciding what I get to see and what not, and this sounds identical to Instagram, more or less
If you don’t want an algorithm to decide for you then you’re not looking for a scroll. Even Lemmy has an algorithm. You’re looking for a library card.
You're looking for an algo of some kind, that's what enables the "endless scrolling". Instagram stories or whatever their TT clone is called is definitely much worse than TT itself, yea it's an algo but I can tell you that it's algo is really good at sticking to things that are of interest to you (Provided you are at least a bit mindful of what you're watching during it's training phase)
If you really don't want an algo of any kind, then I'll have to agree with others, what you want is a book.
Well TikTok actually has a pretty good algo
It's still pretty good, especially with the Revanced version that cuts the ads and trackers
Why not just visit a couple communities that have info that you can learn from, like "TIL"?
Could also look into Kahn Academy website, don't know if they have a free app. That's loaded with educational stuff.
Seriously important to make your subscriptions very carefully in apps like lemmey, reddit (if you have access to a third party app) and newpipe (youtube where you can set your startup tab).
It makes all the difference in the world never to land on /r/all, suggested for you or any sort of trending pages.
Read books like the others have said and only subscribe to channels and communities that forward your productive aims.
Make another account on Lemmy and only subscribe to communities you wanna learn about
Maybe not quite what you're looking for, but the press releases section of a research university often contains brief articles about current research projects, as well as other topical info regarding that university.
University of Washington: https://www.washington.edu/news/category/news-releases/
I always enjoy reading Popular Mechanics magazines. They have a digital subscription available.
HackerNews is pretty good
Podcasts for longer boredom sessions.
Octal for hackernews. Lots of peer reviewed papers, reports, and good articles. And lots of smart people in the comments. No memes, no bs.
Maybe AnyQuestion?