From my wife (who runs a recruiting firm):

The US has gotten so expensive that we've shifted from a candidate market to an employer market. The real-world effects of this shift are that US employers increasingly seek to hire people from overseas.

Because they only cost a fraction of what an equivalent American would cost.

PARKING is the number one bugaboo in city planning, as it requires massive land use while yielding uniformly ugly results.

Car parks are anathema to good urbanism and delightful places where humans want to gather.

This is why so many architects now clamor for “car free” cities. But in a modern context, the desire for a truly car-free city is a childish pipe dream.

In fact, I suspect most people would see the whole thing as a net loss—ESPECIALLY families with children who are into sports or other activities where longer-range travel is essential.

Here's something you'll almost NEVER hear from the "product launch" crowd 👇🏿

This formula is one of the best ways to measure your CONNECTION to customers:

([upsell amount] - [refund amount]) / [total number of customers] = connection Higher numbers mean a greater connection to your audience (and it hints at the affinity they have for your business, products, and practices).

UNEXPECTED:

I focused on reducing refunds in 2021, and I ended up making way more upsells as a result.

From 2008–2010, hanging out on Twitter felt like spending 24/7 at a tech conference where everyone who was anyone was in attendance.

By 2015, Twitter morphed into the crossroads of culture and politics—but energetically, it still felt like the place to be. For me, this remained true through most of 2021.

But recently, something shifted—something SIGNIFICANT.

For the first time in at least a decade, the energy of growth and change is NOT concentrated on a social media platform.

The process of MINTING things to the blockchain has resulted in a new CONSIDERATION LANDSCAPE.

Due to the FRICTION and COST of minting, we now want to make damn sure we’re dealing with something *actually* worth minting. A random blog post?

Probably NOT blockchain material.

But a contract that requires action from both sides?

Absolutely.

What else should be minted?

Property deeds, licenses, registrations, research papers…

🧠 THOUGHT OF THE DAY 🧠

MOST of the transactions that COULD take place do not actually occur because they fall beneath the MINIMUM TRANSACTION THRESHOLD (MTT).

The MTT is an artifact of the need to involve a “trusted third party” in all transactions. Because of this MTT, it’s literally impossible to establish a TRUE, completely efficient pay-as-you-go plan for ANY GOOD OR SERVICE!

As a result, some segment of the market pays too much for goods/services they don’t use, and another segment pays too little for what they DO use.

The battle for humanity’s future doesn’t have a direct historical antecedent.

In other words, it’s not Christians vs. Muslims, Axis vs. Allies, or any other “rivalries” we all recognize.

Nope. Instead, it’s…

CENTRALIZATION vs. DECENTRALIZATION 🥊 Perhaps most fascinating is how the origin of these forces has shifted away from church, culture, and governance…

…to corporations, which have become the strongest players in the world.

(Indeed, many corporations have a greater impact on world GDP than 80% of countries.)

🚨 Want to fight back against Big Tech? 🚨

First, you must understand Big Tech’s primary source of power—CENTRALIZATION.

Here’s an example of how this works:

With Twitter, you use their app to post content to the site…

And that’s where your ownership/control ENDS. At this point, what happens with your content is entirely up to Twitter:

• Do your tweets show up in your followers’ timelines?

• If you get banned, you LOSE your content!

• What if you want to reference old content to re-publish on a different platform?

At least 98% of people who purchase #WordPress Themes make the following mistake:

Their purchase is *completely* predicated on acquiring a Theme that gives them the “look” they think they want.

They don’t consider what matters to visitors AT ALL. What do visitors want?

• Speed — pages must load FAST on every device

• Clarity — no scrolling required to get to the point (no hero images, no ads, no BS)

• Ease of Use — great typography, clear + adequate spacing, and NO CLUTTER

• Simplicity — less is more!

Today is the last day of my 30s.

I'll do some deadlifts later tonight and then post my annual shirtless selfie tomorrow 😘 In August 2005, I took the first steps toward my own entrepreneurial path by teaching myself HTML and CSS.

By September, I created an ecommerce site that funded my next 4 months of learning.

And by January 2006, I was the most sought-after freelancer in the #WordPress space.

Scott is accusing naysayers of not providing "reasons," but he hasn't provided any, either (only an assertion).

My issue with his assertion is that a huge swath of commerce will only be available to people with vaccine passports.

Hegemony is more likely than rogue agents.

https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1376514735634456579

We've already seen this with COVID responses since March 2020.

In places like Austin, for example, there is no longer a mask mandate.

However, EVERY BUSINESS is still requiring masks due to SOCIAL PRESSURE from local shitlibs.

Want to participate in commerce?

You need a mask.

Most people don’t realize how incredibly rare it is to produce significant, useful, interesting content—specifically WRITTEN content—for a period of 5 years or more.

The dedication and consistency of effort required are extremely uncommon traits. HOWEVER...

Short-form content is changing this reality by reducing FRICTION on both sides—creation and consumption.

Example:

I’ve run websites since 2005 yet never blogged consistently for more than 2 years.

But I’ve been shitpoasting on Twitter non-stop for 13 years!

My man @jackmurphylive provided some great insights after my thread went viral, and I've watched him employ a very smart strategy after his own threads went viral.

Let's take a closer look...

A viral thread can bring hundreds—or even thousands—of followers to your doorstep. But these new followers have essentially been dropped into an arbitrary spot your timeline.

They know which content brought them to you, but they may not have *any* real idea what you're about.

To make the most of these new connections, you've got to get them "on board."

From November 2003 through July 2005, I worked in the prepaid cell phone and phone card industry.

Most of my work was in BFE meth towns and urban ghettoes.

I learned things about the poor in this country that most of you wouldn't believe. The situation was HORRIBLE in 2005.

The opioid crisis was already in full swing in rural Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio.

Small-town South Carolina was no better.

To think we are 15 years removed from that...

and things have only gotten worse...

*shudders*

I'm not waiting for your sh*t to load.

I'm not turning off my ad blocker.

I'm not taking action on your stupid pop-up form.

I'm not clicking a cookie consent button.

I'm not gonna put forth effort to cut through the ridiculous information density in your design. I'm not reading text with horrible typography metrics.

I'm not reading *anything* over 115 characters per line.

I don't give a sh*t about your irrelevant hero image.

I'm not scrolling through a bunch of crap to get to the reason why I ended up on your site in the first place.

A YangBanger just texted me.

His "persuasive pitch" was that automation will make 1 in 3 jobs obsolete by 2030.

This is utter horse sh*t.

I'll give you one example why, and you can extrapolate that out to other scenarios.

Here goes: The jobs that exist now represent the most systematized and frictionless available.

INFINITE other job possibilities exist, but transactional friction + a lack of systems to support them make them appear to be non-viable relative to the jobs we "see" now.

This new "dark mode" design trend is quite literally the worst trend of the last 18 years.

Light text on dark backgrounds highlighted the early web as coder types latched onto that aesthetic.

But we quickly learned that a high contrast environment puts major strain on the eyes. As a result, we saw a major pendulum swing toward the more natural black-on-white palette that dominates in digital environments.

(As a rule, you want the object of interest to be effortless to focus on. B on W achieves this, W on B achieves the opposite.)

Paying for web design is *almost certainly* a huge mistake.

Here's the approach you should take instead...

A very wise THREAD based on 14 years of experience with overbuilt, broken, and downright expensive websites: WHAT YOU WANT:

A totally custom look that fits you or your business.

You're cool. You're interesting. You're special!

You need a design that reflects these obvious truths.

Also, you don't want to look like everyone else—that's super boring!

The biggest shift EVER in internet user behavior has already happened.

Few website products or webmasters have made adjustments to accommodate this "new world."

A new paradigm *requires* a new approach.

When you're ready to face the truth:

diythemes.com Nobody browses your site anymore—they click through from social media.

They click through for a reason!

• to close an information gap
• to receive value that's relevant to them
• to take a specific action based on priming from a different message (email, referral, etc)

Regarding website design…

By virtue of the medium itself, every website has a top-down flow.

But on bigger screens, designers often default to a horizontal presentation style.

The problem?

The process of scanning horizontals is a pattern break—it interrupts the top-down flow This pattern interruption can actually be a good thing.

Savvy designers can use horizontals to focus attention on very important elements.

But if horizontals are used copiously, they no longer represent a pattern break—

They just destroy the natural flow and scannability.

THREAD!

For 2 hours and 37 minutes, the wormhole was open.

If you thought the Joe Rogan interview with Elon Musk was all about smoking weed, you may have overlooked the best opportunity we’ve EVER had to see the future.

I’ll show you what you might have missed! Despite its organic flow (props to Joe Rogan), the interview can be broken down into easily-digestible segments, and that’s precisely how we’ll go through this thing today.

(And thank goodness for that—you won’t have to watch the world’s longest Periscope, and I’ll get to pee.)