When we read the news, we care not just about accuracy but relevance. It’s no good presenting a bunch of true facts and reporting nothing about the most important issues of our time. In fact, doing so is misinforming people.
Advertising is the same. Just because a company has the most money doesn’t mean their products are deserving of our brain space.
Advertising is inherently biased. What you describe, “not made or paid by the seller” is NOT advertising.
Imagine I came to you and say “would you like this sandwich?”. You might take it, if you felt hungry or liked the filling. Now imagine I come up to you and say “I’ll pay you 100 (insert currency) to eat this sandwich”. Suddenly, the sandwich becomes decidedly less appealling…
The sandwich is advertising, and eating it is exposing it to your brain. If it were really beneficial to you, no one would be getting paid.
Jabber is another protocol, so yes it is different to both. Like Matrix, Jabber (which is the same as XMPP) is an open decentralised protocol so people can talk to each other even if they are using different providers (like email). However, Matrix supports bridging so in theory with some effort you can talk between Matrix and XMPP.
XMPP is not as sophisticated as Matrix because afaik it is not actively being developed by any organisations.
I do try to get out every day, sometimes it helps but sometimes it makes me feel more worn out.
I’ll try keeping my window open a bit more often.
I don’t think the distractions are the problem, on good days I’m motivated enough to keep away from the distractions. On the bad days I can force myself to keep staring at the work but my brain just wanders or I just stare into space.
The point is to get rid of gun culture. Guns should not be a normality, whether they are banned or not. Restricting access could certainly play a role in changing the culture