Wikipedia places nearby you on a map.
Wikipedia places nearby you on a map.
Showing your digital notes graph suffers from the same ‘infinitely expanding list’ problem of most ware: better to break things up around human fuzzy memory limits (maybe 5–12 things).
For my spicier content, follow me on RSS 🌶️
Link in bio 💋
How many HTTP requests does it take to read a blog post versus a thread? What does it mean when it matters? What does it mean when it doesn’t?
Putting something on the internet is unfortunately default public (insecure / opt-out) unless you can personally verify that it’s not, which might be impossible.
Rate my theory: I’ve seen an uptick in ‘your year in review’ summaries from apps & even phone providers. By packaging their surveillance of us in the form of pie charts & wacky slogans these firms are trying to normalize data extraction as a form of fun self-exploration
[RSS turns the web into tapas.]
The largest social network where I actually look forward to participate is the blogosphere.
[Divide the monthly price by average usage to get the hourly cost. Per hour, people might be paying about fifty cents for online streaming, a dollar or few for games and movies, five to fifteen for their creator subscriptions.]
The “cheap” web is a solarpunk philosophy of web design.
cheap ≠ free
cheap ≠ sleek
cheap ≠ creep
cheap ≠ deep
cheap ≠ dark
cheap = cheap
[cheap to maintain: should work indefinitely without falling over].
[cheap to access: should be compatible with screen readers and various devices.]
[cheap to explore: should be pleasant on low power devices.]
[cheap to contribute: creating and hosting websites should be easier than scrapbooking.]
1.8 Million Subscribers (and no one cares)
[Musicians can play until they’re 98 years old and beyond, but nobody wants a YouTuber doing that.]
[Not making an industry money puts you in a somewhat adversarial relationship.]
[The YouTuber career inevitably ends in burnout.]
[YouTubers have no elders, only peers, and this is isolating. Musicians have those who have been doing it longer than them, and a community in the real world to engage with.]
Cosplaying internet detective doesn’t do much to sate my curiosity, it just lets me spin my wheels and trick me into thinking I’m being productive.
I don’t care about what gets ranked on Google, I’m not trying to optimise for the people who come from that channel.
People who arrive via search are just looking to get a question answered and move on. That’s great and I hope I can help them, but they are not the reason I’m here. This site is here for the people who stay a while, have a look around and then send me an email to start an interesting conversation.
I’ve been feeling similar lately, but erring on the side of continuing until there’s a specific reason to stop; there’s some underlying fear of losing something in the future that I can’t describe. The data is kind of boring—maybe the whole notion of this analytics exploits a ‘wanting to know where people come from’ and the deep-seated desire for connection. I’m curious in your case, why not ‘just’ make a filter to see the non-search data?
I definitely believe in meaningful connections as the fundamental focus for myself; measuring this might be valuable but not necessary for me, I’d prefer to hear people’s stories of change over seeing numbers. Wishing that your ‘search query’ returns results 🙏🏽☀️.
[Each new tab feels like a choice: how do I want to spend my time?]
What a ’new tab page’ this is! I prefer queries (via keystroke launchers like Quicksilver or ‘Command-K’) over big lists, but this is beautifully personal and makes me drool; stable options can leverage muscle memory and reduce distractions. 👍🏽
Provokes me to wonder about social patterns and ‘formats’ like /now or ‘daily note’, ways of organizing that many people can practice and share so that we can all learn from each other.
If you have a website, what are your earliest meaningful links that still work? I have almost no broken links since 2012.
The difference between a blog and journal is the title field.
Instead of queuing ideas onto an infinitely expanding todo list, blogging (or microblogging) about it can be a useful way to find synergy. If someone else had maximum information to pick up where you left off, maybe you’d be free to do other things?
Does broadcasting happen because others make copies of the post? Does something exist online forever because someone made a copy?
Twitter’s game mechanics select for a low-effort posting strategy, the dunking game. The rules are: find a way to misunderstand the tweet so that it is wrong. If you can’t, quote it out of context so that it is wrong. Tired.
The Tyranny of the Marginal User
a company with a billion-user product doesn’t actually care about its billion existing users. It cares about the marginal user - the billion-plus-first user - and it focuses all its energy on making sure that marginal user doesn’t stop using the app. Yes, if you neglect the existing users’ experience for long enough they will leave, but in practice apps are sticky and by the time your loyal users leave everyone on the team will have long been promoted.
The first thing you need to know about Marl is that he has the attention span of a goldfish on acid. Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering headline, otherwise he’ll swipe back to TikTok and never open your app again.
Marl’s tolerance for user interface complexity is zero. As far as you can tell he only has one working thumb, and the only thing that thumb can do is flick upwards in a repetitive, zombielike scrolling motion.
You might think Marl just doesn’t know about the settings. You might think to make things more convenient for Marl, perhaps add a little “see less like this” button below a piece of content. Oh boy, are you ever wrong This absolutely infuriates Marl. On the margin, the handful of pixels occupied by your well-intentioned little button replaced pixels that contained a triggering headline or a cute image of a puppy. Insufficiently stimulated, Marl throws a fit and swipes over to TikTok, never to return to your app. Your feature decreases DAUs in the A/B test. In the launch committee meeting, you mumble something about “user agency as your VP looks at you with pity and scorn. Your button doesn’t get deployed. You don’t get your promotion. Your wife leaves you. Probably for Marl.
A substantial fraction of the world’s most brilliant, competent, and empathetic people, armed with near-unlimited capital and increasingly god-like computers, spend their lives serving Marl.