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I can't shake sonething I read in one of Terry Pratchett's books. In it, a character convinces a barbarian horde that it is a bad idea to descend on farmers, kill them all, and take their belongings. It is better to keep them alive, and collect 30% of their belongings each year perpetually. The connection between politics and crime is very close.

A very information-poor article, about something a Russian envoy said at a Moscow conference with no corroboration from other sources.

Coming soon: "The forced births will continue until MAU improves!"

I love this. Eventually, this kind of taxation will happen. Especially in countries where the Rule Of Law is breaking down.

I recently finished crossing all of Toronto (from West to East) on foot, and had gone through some rmarkably pedestrian-hostile areas. Sometimes its shocking how some parts of a city are designed just for cars. And don't get me started on Markham...

I love the kind of phenomena you're describing with the Seoul neighborhood, where a place has become unmoored in time. From online sources, you'd think it still exists, but it is gone IRL.

There was a mall in my vity that got demolished, but Google Maps still showed it active w/ interior layout and shops' details. It inspired this project: https://jacobfilipp.com/place/

This is very well written (and, yes, it exxagerates - but that's to heighten the effect).

My solution is to remember: when you're living in hell, you still have to go to work in the morning. And at some point you'll start knowing the demons' names and make small talk about how their kids are doing in college. How can you bring a little joy to a bad situation? Do a strange little wiggle dance and go sideways instead of staying on the pre-assigned track that's been laid out for you.

I'd be curious to hear of your progress on this idea. Its not dumb, and it sounds similar to what co-ops do.

>I hope someone else does this so I don't have to.

This is a type of challenge I've been thinking of a lot. A "you have to dedicate your whole life to becoming X" challenge - I had the thought of doing something similar here in Canada with groceries. An obviously profitable business where the challenge is "how do you resist a sweetheart buyout" when the cartel comes knocking with cash...

I think this framing device was unnecessary. This was interesting historical food for thought without tying it to AI. I think its relevant to a mass-unemployment, economic depression scenario too, and others.

I loved that book!

Yes, of course people have built a successful promotion engine with PPC. But if there was a repeatable method I could describe to you then, well, I'd be a very rich man!

I always recommend focusing on Sales first, and coming up with a steady, repeatable way to move people from "being aware of your product" to "deal won". With people. Manually.

Only then, when you have a sales funnel that's economically viable, you can start paying to bring more people into it through PPC.

As qingcharles commented, PPC is a fast easy way for big players and fraudsters to fleece you. There is a lot of domain knowledge to build on the path to effective PPC advertising. Here is one piece of practical advice: every ad network has an "opted-in by default" gotcha. Your job is to discover it before you give them a dollar. Sometimes it looks like "relax my targeting criteria for broader reach" that will bring in irrelevant visitors. Sometimes it is "also run my ads on partner sites/off network", those sites will have extreme fraud. Sometimes it looks like "automatically pick the right landing page URL to promote, so I don't have to think for myself" which will drive paid conversions to your Contact Us form.

PMAX is particularly awful because it incentivizes the scammers to actually book meetings with our Sales team, and waste their time with a no-show.

(For anyone unfamiliar with how the PMAX scam works: PMAX will send more ad traffic to sites that perform well for an advertiser. So scammers who own a network of fraudulent sites will fill out that advertisers' forms, register a great conversion rate, and get a lot of ad traffic directed to their network of bot sites. When you spot the fraud, Google will say: "um, maybe put their IPs on the ad blocklist?" like its 1998 and the most sophisticated click fraudsters are the ones who can click their mouse the fastest. Enshittification Endgame.)

I've worked in different parts of the online ad industry for years. This is correct: fraud is a systemic and convenient part of the business model. The victims are the advertisers, who's in-house marketers don't know enough to detect/call out fraud.

Google itself forces advertisers into fraud-friendly products like PMAX. Then, when you detect the fraud, the hapless account rep says "ummm... maybe try using IP exclusion lists?" (Like one of the comments below). Google, with all the data it collects on people who click the ads, wants you to catch sophisticated fraud networks by manually building up IP blocklists. Yeah right.

And the victim of this entire ecosystem is your clever YC startup.

There is a lot of material on this theme. One place to start is a book like "The Last Bohemia" or a general search for books about Williamsburg (the Brooklyn neighbourhood) at the library. Lots of first-hand stories about how that pattern of gentrification plays out.

I suggest you keep it quizzical - that little not-knowing is like spice in a recipe.

I wonder if it was AM's writing contest. Your writing is great, keep going.

>>All decisions come with a tradeoff Yes! I've heard it out as "the price for something you really want is something else that you really value".

I'm glad that this piece spoke to you :-) While I don't know exactly what's been on your mind, I keep being surprised by how hard it is to let go of past identities / stop struggling against current reality.

The ancient Qanats are actually vertical launch shafts, with a convenient water supply for transportation below. It helps that they've had a single unbroken administration for 5,000 years. Helps for long term planning.

You got some solid tips from the other commenters! The jewellery looks good. Remember, jewellery is about identity - can be to signal to others, can be for yourself. Figure out how to "sell" the pieces (in person) before you spend any money on advertising - it only makes sense to turn on the water if you've built a working waterwheel.

I'm working on writing up pages for projecthammer.org, the new website where I'll host my database of Canadian grocery prices. It's getting interest from more academics and needs a more formal home.

I've been curious about ways in which politicians who are in the minority/out of power can still make progress on issues that matter to them.

isitweimaryet.com

The great Egyptian desert. Those raised "lines" across the wadis - what is their function? The remote border stations near the Egypt-Libya-Sudan border: what is life like for the soldiers stationed there? What are all those trucks nearby on the Sudanese side of the border? Smugglers?

On the Eastern side of the Nile, what are all those small areas of bulldozing near the gold mines? "Artisanal" mining? Is that profitable?

What have you been curious about, adityaathalye?

I appreciate your comments here. My takeaway is that the lack of family bonds/expectation of contribution within the family is a bigger factor than simply Capitalism. The key to resilience is tighter family bonds & neighborly bonds (those 2000 villagers would absolutely give you favours if they liked your art and you made some for them)

I think it would be wonderful if there were more work arrangements that fit a person who can write a lot - but intermittently and unpredictably. Right now, that's not the case. That's one of the author's main points. (Even for things like highly-paid, high-skill part time work: its as rare as hen's teeth)

This thought pattern of "I will die if I don't work" comes up so often. The streets are not filled with bodies. There are people who are chronically unemployed, and women who left the workforce to care for their children and never returned/returned after 15 years, and they're not dead...

There are a lot more ways of living in the world than our main story here in the West.

Bingo. And remember, these lawsuits to establish the magnitude of the payout/severity of the injury: you'll be going through them shortly after sustaining a disabling injury.

Does anyone have examples of peasants' revolts that were effective? (excl. the 20th century Communist revolutions) Each one I heard about was suppressed by the aristocracy.

I am in the same boat as you and OP. For me, its partly age related, partly a (normal) boredom with my profession. I find my mind intentionally trying to switch tracks/find a distraction even while working on a task without external interruptions. For now, I'm just trying to observe and note that this is happening.

Recommendation for Linkedin/web distractions: use an ad blocker, add the central feed/sidebar with news and games as an element to your ad blocker. That way you can use certain parts of LI with less distractions.

I keep thinking of how certain religions deal with this challenge: going through intentional fasting and periods of retreat in order to reset your "dopamine floor" by reducing stimuli.