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We need to separate our jobs and where we live.

Educating the TikTok generation

I'm against writing advice but here's some anyway

There are infinite forms of capital in the world, we just haven't tapped them yet.

Digital fragrance as NFT, a $40 billion Dogecoin market cap, unprecedented stock market speculations... weirdness is no longer feared but leveraged!

We analyzed our biggest "viral" hits to discover 4 essential characteristics of viral content marketing.

A Bull Case for Ethereum

The internet gives more people an opportunity to win. But it forces everyone to play the game.

“The patterns of our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us.”

When your commonplace book is a public database

I started following a bunch of new newsletter publishers recently to see what advice they were giving out to young people. I don’t disagree with the things they say, but I usually disagree with the context. Personal newsletters should have no rules. They are where you find your audience, voice, top

The way we talk about distraction, especially digital distraction, has changed a lot in recent years. Before, most people thought of resisting distraction as a matter of willpower – of training your brain to focus, setting personal rules for when to check your phone, and so on, with the implication that if you failed, you were an ill-disciplined loser. Now that more of us understand how the attention economy works, we see things differently. There’s a vast global industry dedicated to distracting us, because our attention is the resource they’re exploiting. And it’s not a fair fight. Every time you click on a major site or social media platform, the tech critic Tristan Harris likes to say, there are “a thousand people on the other side of the screen,” paid to try to keep you there. No wonder your paltry willpower can’t compete. All of which is true. But… The problem with this framing is that it characterises distraction as a war between the individual and nefarious outside forces: there you are, longing to concentrate on your work or your family, when along comes Mark Zuckerberg and his evil social media platform, to lure you away against your will. To me, that ignores something crucial about the experience of distraction, which is that you don’t get dragged away against your will. You surrender willingly. It’s a relief to turn from the unpleasantness of a challenging work task, or a moment of boredom while caring for a child, to scroll through your phone instead. If there’s a “war for our attention” – as we’re often told – our role often seems to be that of collaborators with the enemy. At first glance, that’s really odd: why would it feel so unpleasant to do something you do care about that you’d prefer to seek out distractions, which by definition are things you don’t care about? The answer, at the most general level, is that you’re fleeing a disturbing emotional experience – some kind of unwelcome reminder of your status as a limited and finite human. (I explore this in detail in a chapter of my forthcoming book – of which plenty more here in the coming weeks, don’t you worry…) Meaningful work stretches you, bringing you up against the edge of your talent. Difficult conversations are difficult because you don’t get to control how they’ll unfold. Boredom descends whenever you wish something was happening other than what’s happening now, and can’t do anything about it. In all such cases, the mysterious entity Mary Oliver calls “the intimate interrupter” – that “self within the self, that whistles and pounds on the door panels” – is urging you to distract yourself as a way to escape a negative feeling. Mark Zuckerberg just found an especially cunning way to take advantage when you do so. This is why most anti-distraction hacks – web-blocking apps, noise-canceling headphones, personal rules – never seem to work very well. They involve denying yourself access to the places you usually go for relief from emotional unpleasantness. But they don’t address the unpleasantness itself. They’re not entirely useless. But if you can’t bear the fact that a given activity causes discomfort, shutting down Twitter won’t solve that problem. You’ll just find something else to do (stare out of the window, go and get a snack) to avoid the unpleasantness instead. All of which points to a more fundamental solution to distraction, one that’s incredibly simple, but not at all easy: just stop expecting hard, important, meaningful things to feel constantly comfortable and pleasant. Consider the possibility that mild discomfort – butterflies in the stomach, a sense of difficulty, a moment of boredom – might simply be the price of doing things you care about. And I do mean mild. I’m constantly amazed at how low the threshold is, for me – how just a tiny feeling of being challenged or tired or bored, while doing something I really want to do, is enough for me to leap eagerly away to fritter an hour on social media instead. (Severe discomfort, on the other hand, may be a sign you’re engaged in the wrong task.) Whenever I’m able to recall that the urge to distract myself can be observed without being acted upon, the effect is quasi-magical: “Oh, right! I remember now! Important stuff sometimes just feels difficult!” Of course it does. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, really. And it isn’t a problem, either. • I'd love to hear from you – just hit reply. (I read all messages, and try to respond, but not always in a timely fashion: sorry!) If you enjoyed this email, you'd be doing me a big favour by forwarding it to someone else who might like it, or mentioning it wherever you emit opinions online; the "View in a browser" link above will take you to a web version. And if you got this from a friend and would like to subscribe yourself, please do so here. 540 President St, Brooklyn, New York 11215

1) ETH's ultrasound money thesis is contingent on deflationary pressure from burning gas fees. i.e we "hope" that Ethereum will become deflationary. There is no such guarantee as one would expect from "ultrasound" money. @udiWertheimer

If you ever find yourself stressed, overwhelmed, sinking into stasis despite wanting to change, or frustrated when you can’t respond to new opportunities, you need more slack in your life. Here’s how slack works and why you need more of it.

My happiness results from keeping a sane balance between achievements and what Jim Carrey calls "freedom of concern"1. I like to work and I love to daydream. As much as daydreaming is about wandering, work and personal achievements are about focusing, which in turn requires motivation, clarity of purpose and control, all of them sustained by discipline. Very often, your to-do list becomes your enemy. Because it gives you a false sense of control, it slowly erodes your goals' clarity, which weakens your motivation.

Maggie Appleton is an art director and anthropological designer. This is her digital garden for growing visual explanations about technology, culture, and programming

According to a new school of thought, virtual humans are the future of your life online.

My new website In early 2021, I rebuilt my website at origami.kosmulski.org from scratch. It was a complete redesign which started with planning what I wanted the site to be and who its intended audience was, followed by looking at a few potential technologies, checking them out and choosing one, building the site, and tuning its load times and SEO. While a few details are specific to origami, most are completely general and should be interesting to anyone planning to create their personal web page, regardless of topic.

Dreamweaver as a low-code local-first native app

So except for the occasional on-site meeting, almost all of my meetings have been done on the phone.[image] If you were a fly on the wall in my office during a phone meeting, you’d see me with my head down scribbling notes while listening, scribbling notes while talking, and even asking for a…

220+ platforms that can help you turn your hobby into a paying profession!

How to Win the Internet

When I was in the third grade, I learned that being Asian was different.

The New York Times caused a stir recently when, in an article about pandemic book sales, it disclosed that “98 percent of the books that publishers released in 2020 sold fewer than 5,000 copies.” Though that statistic was shocking to many, it is not new information.

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And start raising kind ones.

Give a good ending to your readers that’s good for business too. Here’s how to do that – Content Marketing Institute

Dean Jackson is old school. He's the creator of a bunch of cool marketing tactics that make up the foundations of internet marketing. I've heard him speak 100's of times and his simple, conversational approach to marketing still blows my mind every time. I was a guest on Dean Jackson's…