“A simple way to get started training this ability is to frequently expose yourself to boredom. If you instead always whip out your phone and bathe yourself in novel stimuli at the slightest hint of boredom, your brain will build a Pavlovian connection between boredom and stimuli, which means that when it comes time to think deeply about something (a boring task, at least in the sense that it lacks moment-to-moment novelty), your brain won’t tolerate it.”
I’m excited to announce my latest project, entitled I am the Internet: AMA. The site lets users ask the Internet questions, as though it were a real person. A real… crazy person who can’t spell for crap.
After work, I headed over to First Draft (formerly Villains) to meet up with my friend Mitch. What’s weird is that Mitch and I have known one another for maybe 15+ years now… and today would mark only the fourth time we’ve met in person.
As an example, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have a combined market cap of $1,306,180,000,000 (that would be 1 Trillion, in case you get lost counting the zeroes). Which is a number greater than the GDP of South Korea.
“But the intelligence world is a schizophrenic one. The NSA’s job is to defend the Internet while at the same time exploiting its security holes. It is both cop and robber, consistent with the motto adhered to by spies everywhere: ‘Reveal their secrets, protect our own.'”
Curious about the overlay on this site? Hearing a lot about Net Neutrality, but not super sure what it’s all about? Check out two good overviews on Net Neutrality, from John Oliver and Vi Hart (below). You can also find out more via battleforthenet.com.
I just learned about Soundslice the other day, and it’s just freaking amazing. It’s a hybrid audio player and notation viewer, letting you see and hear guitar tabs… making the whole process of learning a song that much easier. In addition to the great functionality, they’re also accepting annotations of YouTube videos. The whole site is really slick, and looks to be a wonderful departure from the ugly world of text-based tabs.
There’s so much packed into this thing, it’s absolutely mind-boggling: natural language, symbolic references, visualizations built-in. It’s a long video, but very worthwhile watching.
In the early years of this blog, I would find myself taking photos at parties in a frantic attempt to document the event. Over time, I realized I was taking myself out of the very thing I was wanting to remember. I want to think I’ve gotten better about such things, but it’s difficult to avoid the pull of social media – wanting to tell everyone Hey, look at what a great time I’m having!.
For some reason beyond my understanding, the song that Bugs Bunny first sings in the episode Long-Haired Hare got stuck in my head, a few days ago. And after kind of humming it quietly to myself, I came upon a sudden realization: I could look it up on the Internet!
I’ve never known the name of the song, and I’m not sure why it took me all this time to actually look the thing up. It’s been a bit of a mystery to me, and it’s silly to realize that I could have easily looked this up 5+ years ago.
On arriving in Orlando, Liz and I decided to get a car for the day. We saw a ton of rental companies at the airport, but several turned us away saying they didn’t have cars, and they were only giving them to people with reservations. A few places had signs saying “Cars Available.” We ended up getting quoted something like…
Shirky does a remarkable job articulating the history and the problem of copyright violation, and why measures like SOPA/PIPA are incredibly problematic. He is clear, concise, and is able to summarize a complex topic and make it digestible. More than that, he’s able to describe the inherent problems way better than anyone else I’ve read or heard.
A lot of the discussion has been going on for some time, but I ignored it until very recently. Back in November, there was a full-page ad in the New York Times from several major Internet companies, claiming SOPA would hurt innovation. More recently, a group of 83 Internet engineers wrote an open letter to Congress, warning against both bills.
Having one of those days full of sad rainclouds, where nothing’s quite going right? Well swing on over to the nicest place on the internet, and we’ll see if we can’t make you feel a little better.
Made entirely from user submissions, the site features a rolling display of people hugging their webcams – and is surprisingly moving. Users can also create their own videos on YouTube and submit them to the site for possible inclusion.