Constraints can be liberating and increase focus and creativity. See limited budget films vs formulaic blockbusters, or even twitters orignal 140 limit and how it led to the platform flourishing.
I think there is definitely room for a product like this, and maybe even some kind of max follower limit could also skew more to connection over influencers.
Funny seeing this as an Element owner, who is just dealing with the hell of having the catalytic converter stolen. With the relatively high ground clearance, these are absolute magnets for catalytic converter theft. Estimate to fix it with OEM parts ~$6k! Waiting to see if insurance totals it.
Switched to DDG + Brave browser on my laptop and I am surprised how subtly different browsing feels with this combo. Simply you realize how "watched" you feel on Google products and the tracked internet.
Without realizing it there is a "how would this search/page visit etc. look on a tracked profile" process running in my head that is greatly reduced by DDG+Brave. A chilling effect not just on speech, but on browsing behavior that we have to counteract.
The 2 main studies in this article are not very instructive -
1 was done on diabetics with groups eating more or less fruit, but no mention is made of what the rest of their diet was in relation to sugar/carbs. It mentions no impact to their weight or diabetes, but would their diabetes + weight have improved by cutting carbs, sugar & fruit?
The other study was n=17 so not very solid.
What's more interesting is research where fruit, sugar, and carbs are removed entirely or almost entirely (keto). T2 Diabetes is commonly reversed and weight loss adherence increases.
I'm surprised so many still categorize fruits and vegetables together in these studies and in general thinking, given all we know now about sugar.
Fruits in terms of calories are essentially sugar, and despite the fiber, more than 1-2 a day will start to impact insulin, fat storage etc. negatively for most people. Especially fructose-heavy fruit.
Non-starchy vegetables are not nearly as sugar or calorie dense, can be eaten in much higher volume with little effect, and as such should be thought of much differently than fruit.
(non-avocado) Fruit falls more in the dessert/candy category IMO.
Thanks for the links and comment, I'm on the adtech side and largely agree - true measurement of effectiveness is unsolved, and we conflate measuring lift with causing lift.
IMO anyone paying attention in the industry knows the answer is probably less ad spend, aka most inventory is overpriced...but then the incentives take over and the firehose stays on full blast. Publishers, agencies adtech/martech, are not incentivized to right-size ad spend at all, and even for advertisers orgs, the slightest bit of silo/politics incentivizes CMOs to spend & protect their budgets.
It is a select handful of orgs with serious CEO level buy in that are willing to honestly tackle this and spend less, more efficiently. That tends to be a competitive advantage in a sea of waste.
It's not always about growth. Making it easier to meet your needs like this project does, replaces the need for that piece of income/job/growth so is still an economic positive in that way.
This easier path to consumption means the time/effort needed to own these things previously can be redeployed in a productive way.
I do like Kindle Paperwhite after switching over, but I do think the Nook I used before was better designed in terms of the hand weight/feel, the tactile buttons to turn pages on the bezel. One hand operation was much better on the Nook, whereas with the Kindle, awkward hand positions are needed to touch the specific screen spots for backward page turn and menu.
This passage from raptitude post always sticks in my head, comparing 2 mental approaches to a disgusting part of a cleaning job he was squeamish about, basically practice to feel & observe the fear but do not resist or react to it:
>...It usually involved holding your breath and averting your eyes as you scoop out the food-slime and hurriedly direct it toward the garbage bin, bracing yourself throughout, as if you’re jumping into icy water.
It’s the same strategy a wide-eyed Fear Factor contestant uses as he chomps frantically on the June bug in his mouth — he doesn’t want to confront it, he wants to escape it.
That method didn’t work for me, it just made me more aware of how awful it was. As soon as I tackled one sink, I began dreading the next room.
I don’t remember when it clicked, but after not too many kitchens, I learned the secret:
Let it feel like whatever it feels like.
Just do it and let it have its way with you. Turn toward it, not away.
Whenever I came to a gunked-up drain, I just scooped it out without rushing. I reached into the drain with no more reluctance than I would have reaching into a cookie jar. I looked at the mess with a stoic curiosity, allowing the swollen noodles and bread-mush to rest freely in my fingers for the two or three unhurried seconds it took to transfer them to the garbage can.
As long as I wasn’t rushing or trying not to touch it, it was painless. It wasn’t worth trying to escape.
I had never heard this, potentially SV history changing story before...
He recalls a story from his and Mr. Musk’s PayPal days, when Mr. Musk joined the engineering team’s poker game and bet everything on every hand, admitting only afterward that it was his first time playing poker. Then there was the time they were driving in Mr. Musk’s McLaren F1 car, “the fastest car in the world.” It hit an embankment, achieved liftoff, made a 360-degree horizontal turn, crashed and was destroyed.
“It was a miracle neither of us were hurt,” Mr. Thiel says. “I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, which is not advisable. Elon’s first comment was, ‘Wow, Peter, that was really intense.’ And then it was: ‘You know, I had read all these stories about people who made money and bought sports cars and crashed them. But I knew it would never happen to me, so I didn’t get any insurance.’ And then we hitchhiked the rest of the way to the meeting.”
While pricing people out of "hot cities" sucks, there is an upside to up and coming cities being built up. Even Austin and Denver mentioned in the story were not on par with 'out of reach' cities a decade ago.
There will continue to be waves of this as we see places like Nashville, NC cities, SLC, Charleston etc building up now.
This relocation is a form of spreading the wealth and based on geography the optimistic view is some of the benefit will go to areas we saw most left behind and divided this election (south, midwest).
In the long term that could be a boon to middle class outside megacities and more opportunity to escape the mega city bubbles/echo chambers
Have they ever addressed concerns about endocrine/hormone disruption from using soy protein so heavily? I steer clear of the stuff with a 10 foot pole.