It’s a time-tested strategy for social networks to pay influential early adopters to use their service, in the hopes of convincing regular folks to create content on it for free.
Mark Armstrong asks you to think about What to Consider When the Platforms Show Up with Money.
Jenna Wortham has a good piece on How an Archive of the Internet Could Change History, bringing together some interesting threads from Keith Haring to quantum mechanics. This is part of the reason I’ve been fascinated by the inter-planetary file system, which I mentioned on stage at WordCamp Europe on Friday.
This is my first father’s day without my father. His memories and spirit have been very present with me the past week, but today is still tough. Miss you, Dad, and I will continue to try and make you proud.
Dave Winer has a great blog post, Your human-size life which covers wealth, success, happiness, and Peter Thiel. Hat tip: Toni.
Thirteen years ago, building on the work of Michel and B2, Mike and I pushed the button on the first-ever release of WordPress. That means it’s now a teenager, which is blowing my mind similar to what I imagine real parents might feel at this stage. We now have 5-7 years of awkwardness and incredible growth to look forward to.
Good to keep in mind, especially as you’re making data-informed product decisions:
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
— Stephen Hawking
Anker has come out with a pretty cool new USB charger that also supports USB PD, which is the USB-C power delivery standard which means it can fully power a Macbook. So you can take the USB-C cable that came with your Macbook and use this instead of the white brick that Apple makes and other things as well, so fewer things to travel with. It will of course charge any USB-C devices like your Nexus phone super fast as well. I really hope everything uses USB-C PD in the future
If you’re looking for a fun Friday read, check out this story of a young GQ writer who gave control of his Tinder account to his Mom. It’s adorkable.
It’s now public that Automattic is the company behind Knock Knock Whois There LLC, the registry for the new .blog TLD. (And a great pun.) We wanted to stay stealth while in the bidding process and afterward in order not to draw too much attention, but nonetheless the cost of the .blog auction got up there (people are estimating around $20M). I’m excited we won and think that it will be both an amazing business going forward and give lots of folks an opportunity to have a fantastic domain name in a new namespace and with an easy-to-say TLD. You can sign up to be first in line to reserve a domain here. If you have a trademark you can get in August, and then October for the “land rush.”
Marco Arment has a great take on how the decentralized nature of podcasting is a feature, not a bug, and Apple being more proactive there would be harmful to the ecosystem. As an aside, since I’ve been in Houston more recently, which means driving a lot, I’ve been really loving his app Overcast and I opted in to the optional paid subscription for it. I just need to get in more of a habit of listening to podcasts outside of Houston.
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
This quote is almost always attributed to Buddha. Luckily there’s a great WordPress site called Fake Buddha Quotes that tracks down its actual provenance.
ESPN has a fascinating longread on The Secret History of Tiger Woods, especially in the context of his relationship with and the death of his father.
The economic uncertainty surrounding basic income is huge, and the politics of bringing such a program about on a large scale are daunting. But something makes this radical proposal so exciting that people and governments are increasingly willing to try it. Basic income challenges our notions of the social safety net, the relationship between work and income, and how to adapt to technological change. That makes it one of the most audacious social policy experiments in modern history. It could fail disastrously, or it could change everything for the better.
From FiveThirtyEight, What Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money?
If U.S. roads were a war zone, they would be the most dangerous battlefield the American military has ever encountered. Seriously: Annual U.S. highway fatalities outnumber the yearly war dead during each Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, the War of 1812, and the American Revolution. When all of the injuries from car wrecks are also taken into account, one year of American driving is more dangerous than all those wars put together.
From The Absurd Primacy of the Automobile in American Life in The Atlantic.
The New York Times food section has decided to “proclaim Houston one of the great eating capitals of America” and highlighted four great restaurants in town. Houston is really such a great city, it’s good to see it getting some love.
Burgers and fries have nearly killed our ancestral microbiome.
I’ve loved reading microbiome stuff lately, here’s a good one in Nautilus, How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution. For an older look from the New Yorker, check out this older one about the fascinating journey of helicobacter pylori.
This is a cool talk from Chamath Palihapitiya from a few years ago in 2013 which makes it extra interesting. It seems like a smaller audience so it’s fun and unguarded. (Though a great thing about Chamath is he’s incredibly candid in every context.) You can’t see the slides in the video, and there’s not much to them, but here they are:
Here are the values he talks about at the end:
Dries Buytaert asks “Can we save the open web?” and makes an amazing case for why we should. I agree with and endorse basically everything in that post.
Addiction is the relentless pull to a substance or an activity that becomes so compulsive it ultimately interferes with everyday life. By that definition, nearly everyone I know is addicted in some measure to the Internet. It has arguably replaced work itself as our most socially sanctioned addiction. […]
Denial is any addict’s first defense. No obstacle to recovery is greater than the infinite capacity to rationalize our compulsive behaviors.
Oldie but goodie from the New York Times, Addicted to Distraction.