Immediately, one of the foster kitten sidled past me with a half-butchered gecko, still weakly struggling. I leapt up, grabbed a nearby broom, and gave chase. What followed was an episode of Tom & Jerry, but with more swearing. As I managed to part the cat from the gecko and punt the gecko outside, a calm bong brought me to my senses.

1/10, this did not make me sit.

(Sardine is the kitten who led the Great Gecko Chase; Anchovy is the kitten who meditatively masterminded the Amazing Poop Fling. Really need to get these guys adopted out.)

And as a practical matter, just chillin' is safe. But still:

  [sitting] can get uncomfortable. But when you finish, 
  for some strange reason you feel better

Zen shinkanzen in particular is considered difficult for new students because it is object-less meditation (unlike e.g. Tibetan use of mandala, Christian prayer, or Vispassana body-awareness). Even Zen teachers often start with breath-counting and progress to other heuristics before approaching emptiness.

People are generally robust to thoughts and opinions, even somewhat negative ones, so it seems like the marketplace of ideas and apps is a fine place for that. But I would encourage people writing meditation apps at a minimum to take the same care that any health/diagnostic app would, amplified by the likelihood that someone emotionally unstable might embrace your offering a little too closely...

That's precisely why I say that although I use it for meditation, the goal of the app is just to sit down and do nothing for a minute or two. That's it.

FYI I consulted a qualified therapist (CBT, ACT) after building it and they didn't see any issues with my app or the article. She also practices and teaches meditation, so I got lucky I suppose!

You probably meant to say "shikantaza", I don't think "shinkanzen" is a word.

Like what?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24185710 - Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26485608 - Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11752317 - For some, meditation has become more curse than cure

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14574205 - There’s a dark side to meditation that no one talks about

Cheers.

> [A]s a practical matter, just chillin' is safe.

I'm an autodidact so this chaffed at me too. But I have met people who've gone in a very strange direction by assembling a syncretic set of ideas plucked from different schools of thought, and ended up with something that was kinda nuts. And operating from this nutty set of principles sometimes lead them to make bad decisions, and made it very difficult to communicate with them.

I don't know think having guidance from a teacher is the only way to avoid that, but I think without feedback from others in some way it's really easy to start believing your own bullshit.

Anyway, I think meditation is best when used for thinking, not for not-thinking.

Personally, I don't need any practice to think - but not thinking, that's very challenging! And practicing has been very rewarding.

Sitting and just sort of existing for a little while without thinking (to the extent I'm able to refrain from thinking, which varies) keeps me grounded in the world beyond thought. If you forgot you had an entire body and thought you were just a foot, stubbing your toe would hurt a lot more.

Oh, man, that's a good one. Thank you for this insightful nugget to start my morning.

Many have gone through that and found they need more balance, and practicing non-thought is a good way (the best? Dunno) of getting that.

It's best to do both for different purposes. It's kind of like biking and weight lifting. You could count both as "exercise" but they serve different purposes and can work in conjunction.

Other than that, it's a great project. Anything to just sit without distractions gives us an unfair advantage over the majority of the world's population who are addicted to phones.

[0] https://mrd0x.com/browser-in-the-browser-phishing-attack/

That's what you'd think, but people rarely pay that much attention. The fullscreen prompt only shows up for a few seconds.

For example, recently a family member clicked on a fake YouTube link from an ad in Google's search results. Clicked the search bar and it immediately turned their whole screen into a "call apple support" popup.

They called me up because they thought it was a virus, but really it was just a fullscreen webpage, and being not very technologically inclined, they didn't even try Esc, Cmd+Tab, Cmd+Q, etc.

Then one day one of them blindly followed instructions to remove it so they can access an online newspaper. The only time they could actually follow instructions, it was actually malicious.

Wow. That's a new level of evil. I've seen "disable your adblocker", but not "remove your adblocker".

This makes it even more justifiable that adblockers remove anti-adblock messages, beyond just removing annoyances. :)

How many people actually read prompts? People literally share 2FA codes with scammers over the phone even though the SMS itself tells them not to share it with anyone, including their own support workers.

I believe that fullscreen notification got implemented exactly because of people not noticing their browser went into fullscreen mode.

I agree with some other poster, that it's unreasonable to assume that a majority of people would actually read the message. Luckily, though, that's not actually necessary. It's enough for them to notice that there was something fading away. Something unexpected happened.

Now it gets interesting: Regardless of people actively reading "Press [Esc]", as long as it was within their vision, their brain would still process it anyway.

This means that, in the state of confusion caused by the fading text, they'd be wondering "what just happened?" and their brain would execute the command "press [Esc]" regardless of the text being actively read or not.

The state of confusion causes the input to go right through, getting it executed, causing the user to press Escape.

That's a really fucking neat confusion technique!

PS: I'm not good at linking to topics so people gain better understanding, but I'll just read through some until I find good ones.

Milton Erickson's confusion technique. ( https://www.scribd.com/document/179357099/Milton-Erickson-TH... )

Quora's ChatGPT ( https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-simple-pattern-interrupt-con... ) has a few good lines to write about a confusion technique called "pattern interrupt".

This one here ( https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070912124017.h... ) is interesting. They either pretend, or are unaware of the fact, that they are using a confusion technique to program the client.

This behavior is a pet peeve of mine. I almost never want anything to be fullscreen, and it's extremely irritating when applications or, especially, if a website makes the browser do it.

My WIP attempt at achieving something similar: https://ant.care/

There's a button "breathe for food" that'll trigger a similar effect as your website. The difference is that the user is given a digital reward ("food") which they use to feed their digital ant colony.

I'm now trying to add intelligent behaviors to the ant colony in an attempt to make them seem alive and compelling enough for users to repeatedly engage with the breathwork exercises.

Good luck with your project! :)

I’ve been running it for a short while and they’ve dug a little L shape with blue pheromones vertically, and purple horizontally - looks like they are putting food in the horizontal but one ant is stuck behind a food block. Poor Taquan.

Edit: the ‘view crater’ button also crashes the simulation, at least on an M2 Air using Chrome 120

The queen will give birth to worker ants every hour or so. Worker ants have a low chance of applying tunnel/nesting pheromones when they are surrounded by other ants. So, when your colony grows to a few worker ants then they'll start digging more tunnels and chambers to give themselves space. Food is taken from the surface and brought into the nest and has a higher probability of being dropped near other food which allows for food piles to form over time.

Ants go to sleep at night (not realistic, but I thought it was cute) and, if they're well fed, can regurgitate food to other hungry ants (like the queen, who can't move once giving birthing). They'll emote when these things occur.

And oops, yeah crater view shouldn't be live. I forgot I shipped an update live to debug iOS performance (works on iphones now without crashing!). The goal is to get a "top-down" view and to let ants leave the nest to forage for food, but have been struggling with architecture issues blocking me from it for a while.

I think you should share it with https://mastodon.cloud/@[email protected] a.k.a. myrmepropagandist

I've long given up on meditation timers. I go to a room without any digital technology except for a Casio F91W. I have gotten good at gauging how long I've been concentrating for and if I have aversion to continued sitting I just peek at the watch to know how long it's been.

This is a solved problem that costs $0 and I don't have to worry about receiving personalised ads because I'm into 'mindfulness'.

Re: the app. My personal experience has been after while if you need an app to do nothing …

I call this doing nothing with... nothing. It aligns closer to the spirit of emptiness.

I get the impression that you haven't read the article/UI text in the app, so can't comment on the rest of your message I'm afraid.

But, to you some time: I don't charge for the app, I hate ads, I just want people to sit down and do nothing/stop doomscrolling. No need to meditate and no ideology involved.

Good-quality incense burns pretty consistently -- when I sit, I sit the time it takes one stick to burn down. There's even incense-burners that will ring a little bell when the stick burns down, but I just stay aware of it.

That's my reaction to all these mindfulness and mental health apps/services. The same tech bros that have created and profited off this crisis in the first place are now trying to sell a solution.

Ironically, however, I'll probably use this to _stand_ and stare out the window as a nice break from sitting all day.

Thanks for providing the sound to make this tool eyes-free. Cool little demo.

This also gave me the idea to use web tech to build the timer I always wanted, which is the reverse of this one: a bong when the timer expires, but also ticks every minute (or 5) while the timer is running.

Edit: you also have a very beautiful website... and extremely nice drawings!

I've discovered a helpful tool: the BlipBlip app on my Android device. This app allows for customizable settings such as selecting a ticking interval—in my case, a 15-minute reminder—and choosing from various ticking sounds, with my preference set to Casio.

Notably, it also enables the configuration of periods without ticking, particularly useful for nights or weekends.

The are plenty of other options but these are the ones I care about the most.

https://untested.sonnet.io/Things+to+support+my+own+well-bei...

hit me up via hello @ or my newsletter on untested.sonnet.io and I'll message you when I have it.

> I was in a (unnamed cafe) browsing HN. I clicked on 'sit'. didn't expect the gong noise & my headphones weren't connected - got strange looks from a couple people.

> I'm usually super hyperfixated with things but I immediately just snapped into a zone. the 'you can stop looking at the screen for now' prompt was super helpful.

> so just I let my eyes just wander, it felt weird to do so, but slowly felt those knots in my brain fizzle out

> I started with the window, watched some people past - the usual mindfulness - nothing too interesting. started listening to the traffic on a car-by-car level which seemed to bring everything into scope. I saw a baby pigeon pick at something across the street, a mother lean down to kiss their baby in a pram.

> then my gaze sort of drifted back into the cafe, both visually and audibly

> I heard the coffee machine whir, listened to the waiters giving each other ordered - which felt sort of intrusive but also kind of like a superpower.

> THEN I caught this waitress' gaze, and I shit you not, she smiled at me.

> maybe it's because I looked like a creep sitting in a cafe watching people with an open laptop in front of me but...

> I learnt things from that 2 minutes of mental silence. thank you

edit: as I was writing this comment, the same waitress brought over my food and we had a chat!

side note: on my Mac there seemed to be some kind of UI glitch with the minutes dropdown menu - it was gigantic

I use it on sonnet.io, consulting.sonnet.io and sit.sonnet.io I didn't use it on days.sonnet.io only because I felt weirdly obsessed with performance when I was coding it.

One thing i found a bit distracting is the very obvious looping point of the background music

I love this. You are my kind of a person. I'm also a big fan of meditation, mindfulness, and taking care. I hope you find success in this goal.

"Sit." as a name for the app just doesn't work for me. I laughed out loud when I found out it was an app for meditation, as I think of "Sit." as a put down. For people who don't know, It's a commonly used aggro comment put in match chat when you kill someone, typically in a high stakes duel.

However, that association puts me in the exact wrong headspace for meditation. Probably just me though.

https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.%2C+(together)

I also kind of want to personalize the sound my gong makes and to be able to share that with others who are sitting. If we could create a sound bath with all our little gongs it would be sooooo cooool!

(plomking still feels more personal to me than communicating via text for some reason)

Plomking feels more like making a gesture, and I think we still lack that in the online world. Any reactions on social media usually have deeper and more loaded meaning than, say, a nod of acknowledgement, or even a wink.

I was wondering, could it be due to the value we mentally assign to our reactions when interacting online? “Liking” a post or message is never just about the “like”, it is also:

- forcing you to make a decison to “like” or not react (is this really worthy of my “like”?)

- broadcasting to everyone that you’ve liked something

- signaling the algorithms that there is some weight to the message

- keeping permanent record of your “like”

“Likes” and other reactions have so much weight and complexity behind them.. it kinda takes any intimacy and any human touch out of the equation.

A few months ago I created Harbor (getharbor.app) which played some sounds with some haptics and tried to get people to focus on the sensation of the haptics.

I'm a meditator, but I know many people who aren't and trying to get them to just "sit" and do nothing is a challenge. Some people get stressed out about are they doing it "right".

These are the challenges to try to overcome with meditation, so I'm not quite sure why Sit is different to other timers.

You're looking at it as a product, which is understandable, but that's not the point. I communicate with people through my articles, drawings and code, and this is one of the ways of achieving that. It's like telling a friend that it's ok to slow down and do nothing for a moment but then scaling it up to 50-70k people. You can call it meditation or fucking around, I don't really care.

Thanks for sharing Harbor. Weirdly enough, I actually worked for a company specialised in using generative audio + biofeedback during therapy sessions (led by some prominent scientists in the field, mainly from Imperial College IIRC).

Harbor was just a weekend of coding for me, as we work in neurotech focused on sleep, and I hadn't published anything that people could use in a long time, and it was getting to me.

We decided not to pursue Harbor because the science behind the impact wasn't compelling enough.

I'd be keen to find out more about the work you did at the Imperial College.

We may pick Harbor up again in the future, if we can be convinced of the efficacy.

https://code.rocket9labs.com/tslocum/meditationassistant

(I also bent the rules and let the title have a trailing period.)

We do say "elegantly simple". According to Google search result counts, "elegantly simple" is used about 15 times more often than "brutally simple".

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=elegantly+simp... is much more accurate.

Thank you for this!

I often set a minimal timer (e.g. 15 m) and then, either:

- use the 1-minute interval to get a rough idea of how much time has passed, or

- practice different breathing patterns (e.g. 3 breaths per minute)

Looks at uBlock Origin. Yep, requests to convertkit.com and sonnet-events.vercel.app are blocked.

https://untested.sonnet.io/MISS+–+Make+It+Stupid%2C+Simple

Similarly, Ensō (enso.sonnet.io) is just a dumber

    Looking for something
    else, but you got this haiku.
    Now, was it brutal?

It is beyond me how this fart huffing pseudo spiritualism becomes intertwined with engineering culture.

I mean, I respect the hustle, turning lifestyle advice and a general sense of being better than you into expensive billable consulting hours.

Don't like: "at the intersection of". 1/10

Overall: 4/10.

Yawn

https://nothing-together.sonnet.io

Sometimes * I communicate with random people via that site, without any words, just sending little "plomks" to each other.

* literally 30 seconds ago!