I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.
Credit to the Hiro.report for finding this.
That whole “MBA, designers and marketers web” is now optimised thanks to analytics describing people who don’t block analytics (and bots pretending to be those people).
I wonder how long it will be before LLM’s and analytics find each other and create their own inhuman pocket on the internet. Just a bunch of LinkedIn and Medium articles written for, and read by, machines. Making some Engagement Manager look good in a meeting.
We’re all so hungry to share! We just live in this social and information ecosystem that rewards topical boomtowns, so people find ways to be part of those conversations.
@pdxmph summing up the human experience in this thread.
Avoid any food whose name has been altered for legal reasons.
As far as your life, I think I started having more success when I stopped feeling like there was a narrative to my life. I think, once you let go of that idea then, first off you stop seeing yourself as the most important thing in your narrative. You see yourself as more of a component.
There’s no arc to my story. There’s no climax, anti-climax, or denouement. So, trying to find where things connected or what made sense in my arc, didn’t really make a lot of sense. Once I let go of that, I started having more success and became happier.
Welcome, welcome, little stranger,
Fear no harm, and fear no danger;
We are glad to see you here,
For you sing “Sweet Spring is near.”
Now the white snow melts away;
Now the flowers blossom gay:
Come dear bird and build your nest,
For we love our robin best.
Always do your best, and know that your best will vary. Monday’s best may not be close to Tuesday’s best, and Wednesdays best may eclipse them both. Even if you don’t get the result you wanted, doing your best is really all you can ever do. We tell athletes to leave it all on the field. Whatever your version of that is, do it. And if you notice later that maybe you kinda phoned some of it in? Do your best to be gentle with yourself. We’re constantly learning and growing.
But once you are given a tool that operates effortlessly — but only in a certain way — every choice that deviates from the standard represents a major cost.
I recently blogged about my new music page and some really wonderful people stopped by to share their thoughts. It was really fun but it also made me wonder: Without that post, would anybody have ever found that page? Are blogs and social network streams the only tools we have left to discover content that isn’t selling something?
As horrible as Spotify’s upcoming TikTok-inspired home screen is, at least being honest about why they’re burning down their house: “What we’re optimizing for right now is to get you to see and listen to more of these podcasts.”
Apple Music may be getting a new customer this year.
The freedom to put your thoughts out there without too many impediments is one of the greatest benefits of the digital age, but you don’t have to develop a monetization mindset around that freedom.
Today is always the best day to be more yourself. Use your humanity to connect with humans.
Love isn’t a fairy godmother.
It doesn’t swoop in to change what you want changed, but it helps you to be a little more patient and kind through the things you wish you could change.
Annie Mueller, The First Knot
The web is becoming a miserable experience because some salesbro who is trying to meet his KPIs is doing stuff to marginally increase the number of paying customers. (And you know, the hell with the rest of us!) The more each site tries to create its own little walled garden, the less valuable the open web becomes.
Elizabeth Lopatto, I don’t want to log in to your website
We will not succeed with panic, cynicism, or despair. The tools we need are optimism, imagination, creativity, criticism and compassion… Art is not a precious treasure in need of protection. Art is a fearsome wellspring of human power from which we will draw the weapons we need to storm the gates of the reality studio and secure the future.
Though I liked summer light on you
If we ride a winter-long wind
Well, time’s not what I belong to
And I’m not the season I’m in
Our world is an ecosystem in which our only real chance at survival as a species is cooperation, community, and care, but it’s being lead by people who believe in an egosystem, run on competition, power, and self-interest.
What makes a great song great is not its close resemblance to a recognizable work. Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the …
There’s really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer….The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
