There’s no such thing as writer’s block. There’s simply a fear of bad writing. Do enough bad writing and some good writing is bound to show up.
Seth Godin suggests just write something. I agree with him.
Why’s there a sudden rise of alternatives for GoodReads being launched? And curiously, most are open sourced. What is the problem with the existing service — of course, besides the fact that it stays neglected by Amazon?
I am seriously considering Dropbox for everything backup - PCs, Mac, Photos across all services. Because frankly speaking, no other cloud storage provider seems to be interested.
Why do I need to set the skin tone modifiers for every emoji separately? That does not sound right. Did no one think that I would have the same skin tone irrespective of the emotion I want to convey?
If you are not fully vaccinated yet — well, McSweeney’s essay is important for you — you need to search for a genuine reason for that. The only reason that’s genuine is that you physically can’t. Either there aren’t enough vaccines where you live, or you have some physical condition which limits you from getting the shot.
I always wonder what is the right response to people reaching out for guest posts. Most of the time I feel they are just fishing for attentions. So, ignore and mark them as spam? Or be patient, read and decline humbly? Or maybe inform them politely that you are marking them as spam, and then mark as spam.
I am not the one to do the last option here. But I will get fed up someday and that will be my option.
While closing a task in most of the task management systems, including to-do lists, you can set it to any of the available states. So, basically, you could say it is completed or fixed etc. There is one state in there that always tickles my funny bone, “won’t do”. I mean, that’s an official way of giving the middle finger, isn’t it? Learn to mark issues with that state and you have found the best way to say no.
Is a third booster shot proven to be helpful for all? Nope. So I don’t understand the rush to administer it to all the populace just because you can. You know what would be better use of those shots? Making sure each person in the world is fully vaccinated.
I’m cleaning the list of the RSS feeds I am subscribed to. There are a few subscriptions that I have no interest in today. They simply get marked as read every few weeks. Plus the list is missing a few voices I follow that regularly write long form posts. Time to curate again.
The tension is simple: If a platform is carefully vetted and well-curated, it meets expectations and creates trust. If it’s too locked down and calcifies, it slows progress and fades away.
Seth Godin talking about how open platforms are always in risk of becoming spammy and losing the trust of the users. I entirely agree — it’s a path that most platforms, open and closed, follow.
They enjoy the carefree attention from the excited early adopters who associate with the core values of the platform creators. But as the platform grows, it attracts users which would neither share the excitement nor the patience of the early adopters. They get noisy — they want to use the platform like their old one they are comfortable with. They need features that they are used to, not what the platform provides.
So, eventually, the tension that Seth refers to above gains prominence.