I realized some time ago, playing Minecraft, that it is *intensely* gratifying to build and improve the world around you. It was a big motivation for buying land, of course.
There's something we yearn to do wrt building from a very young age. When I was ~5 I would turn on the hose so it would run down the driveway, just so I could dam the stream, create this waterway, gain Apollonian mastery of some great (imagined?) project.
I think most people have this drive to create and ultimately excel at some craft, improve the world, go on to build gardens and temples and other wonders. It seems to be a very natural impulse.
It seems, in somewhat frightening way, odd that we *don't* do it more.
This drive gets pushed into Video Game World, and I worry it's somehow a huge mistake.
I think it v important to find out how to allow others (esp children) to easily make some kind of mark. Have the means to build or improve something. Make something beautiful.
The people who built the remaining beautiful (for ex medieval) city centers, towns, villages, churches, temples, understood something that we don't. They were participating in something that is lost on most of us.
Why is it lost?
These things are divinely inspired. There is no rationalist neoliberal economic calculus etc. They weren't (originally) for tourism. They were created because we once knew it was the right thing to build them.
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An example of a product that's JOYOUS to use is Substack. It feels beautiful to write and format. There aren't tons of distracting non-features. The product team seems to consistently look for how people are using it and make sure they can use it in those ways better.
It's especially incredible in a world where Blogger and WordPress both languished for years, never bothering to simply make the authoring process pleasant. Medium was able to do this, and had a good start because of it, then (inexplicably) found 5000 ways to drop the ball.
Substack found a way to ameliorate several of the ills of other platforms, while making blogging FUN, while not annoying the authors OR the audience, while also normalizing letting people get paid for their own blogs. These all sound tiny. They are not tiny.
well, when I was in high school my computer programming teacher asked me if I wanted to apply because they were looking for HS interns. I'm just kinda still here.
I took other internships in college and have interviewed elsewhere in the past. But after college this small company made me an offer and I accepted it in lieu of Going Out West
Since I joined full time we've hired other people that started out as high school interns, too. High school kids are great. You can train them! Just ask the teachers to rec their best students. Maybe this is easier in New Hampshire, though.
I say all this as one who loves Twitter: There is an *intense* un-seriousness about the product.
Features are carelessly added, like audio tweets, and forgotten (still no android verision). Or abandoned like fleets. Nothing is ever polished. Leadership doesn't use the platform.
The payload for a single tweet should be miniscule. One tweet with replies:
576 kb transferred in 131 requests, over 2s to paint the tweet, 6m resources
nitter, same tweet:
61kb, 17 requests, done in under a second, 108kb resources
There is no reason you can't load more stuff after you actually display the tweet. It's just careless. How can you not prioritize a tweet, on twitter? What were those values 10 years ago? There should be a payload graph at HQ showing over time.
In 2012 the Obama admin "reformed" CAFE standards so that the larger the vehicle's footprint, the worse fuel standards it needed to be compliant. To keep your trucks legal you must make them ENORMOUS.
Automakers responded to government demands, not guys that wanted to feel tough
That little truck needs to get 50mpg by 2025. If for any reason an automaker is unable to do that, they need to PHYSICALLY INCREASE ITS SIZE. This is what the government demanded of every automaker.
Incentive structures are not trivial.
I drive a 2014 Mazda 3 hatch. You can fit 2x4x8 in it if you take the headrest off the passenger seat.
If you study this painting and others of of Krøyer's, and you learn to see what is here and what is missing, you will come to understand more than any living politician
It is very difficult to articulate these things, so they have been mostly lost. But it is not a small loss.
How was this place built? Where did the materials come from? How much does it cost to operate? How difficult was it for the owner to open such a place? Could they have done it if they were illiterate? What are *all* barriers to opening it today?
Most of the healthiest countries in the world have very high dairy consumption.
I think dense animal products like eggs, skyr (or other thick yogurt), cheese, salami, meat, esp red meat, the highest quality that you can afford, are the best things you can eat.
IF there is a problem with dairy it is on milk itself, and not yogurt and cheese, the fermented products.
A Swedish study did find that HUGE milk intake increases risks of fractures and tiny increase in mortality in old age. And showed *opposite* effect for fermented products.
So it is possible that non-fermented dairy puts some stress on your body. I could believe that. I still love milk, but mostly I eat huge amounts of yogurt, cheese, butter, and cream.