Category: Me Myself&I

Yes, this is the main argument in Clay Shirky’s "The Case Against Micropayments" (2000) [1]. It holds up pretty well 20 years later.

Micropayments are not "pay $2 or $3 per month" (either flat-fee or average), there are plenty of successful examples of that. Micropayments are "pay $0.004 or $0.02 for reading this article or using this service now". As Shirky noted, the problem with micropayments are not the technology or transactions costs. The problem is that they require a huge amount of user time and attention, relative to the value of the item being bought. This has not changed in the past 20 years.

The Case Against Micropayments

“The problem with micropayments are not the technology or transactions costs. The problem is that they require a huge amount of user time and attention, relative to the value of the item being bought.”

Fuck. He’s right. And that’s a huge issue that can’t be fixed; no one wants to ponder all the time, as we already do that.

But! We definitely need to nurture independence, without corporations. With fairness in mind.

Maybe the government should absolutely take on that task. Brazil did it in 2019 with Pix, a very successful instant payment system 100% public-owned. Brazilians can pay 24/7 instantly anyone, any business, any bills. You can have up to five different accounts to pay for different things and all you need to login and pay is an email address, a phone number or a taxpayer number.

That’s what we want, and nothing else. C’mon ‘Murica.

Got this as a birthday present from a great friend. Trying it out.

Edit: So, it’s a toothbrush. It’s brushing alright. Feels good in the hand. There’s toothpaste, doing its thing. Pretty satisfied.

“I am in my mid-thirties, working four days a week, and making over 100k. I have a house, a good relationship with my wife, and young and healthy kids.I work from home. My job is technically interesting, and I still learn/improve. I do not have meetings. One or sometimes two 30 min calls a week with my boss. Most days, I do not have to interact with anyone from work, not even customer contact.If I knew I could have a job like this ten years ago, I would have thought that’s it, the dream.But somehow, it isn’t. It’s never enough.I dream about doing my own thing or retiring early to do other projects. It is probably human to always want more.So HN, how did you settle and slow down and become happy with the way it is without always wanting more?”

Explore. Question. Invent. Ponder. Challenge yourself. Do more.

There’s no slowing down, only management to last further. You keep doing until the wheels fall off. Ask young retirees in their 60s or 70s. The day they stop having something to do is the day their health declines, almost every single time, no matter what.

So keep learning and improving. Settle into the move. Forever.

A huge aspect of me enjoying publishing online these days, is witnessing every single silo out there censor, ban, abuse their customers. The latest case is the insane takedown of a YouTube stream with half a billion views by a Malaysian company. Yes, the stream is back but until when?

52% of YouTube videos live in 2010 have been deleted, by the way.

Twitter is probably the craziest case. People who use this app daily, don’t own anything they’ve spent hundreds of hours on. Some folks have literally tweeted a million times. It’s wild.

Reddit is known for being controlled by a .01% of mods doing whatever they want.

There are countless stories of Google, Apple and Microsoft fumbling people’s cloud drives, making them lose their accounts or getting banned, for x or y reasons. It’s always vague and support is always missing.

Being very dependent on private, huge companies online is not what you want. Convenience is the Bait, do not fall for it or if you do, know what’s going on: you don’t own your stuff anymore. Believe that.

When I post a gif and that I know it’s not going to go anywhere, that all my pictures are mine and not Meta’s, that all my music is mine and not YouTube’s, etc. And that I can backup and export and start over my digital life if I need to.

Well, it feels fucking nice.

Reminder that $44B is 44,000 million dollars.

Reminder that 44,000 million dollars divided by the U.S. population, which is around 331 million folks, would mean that we all get a one-time payment of $132,930.

I think that would alleviate that inflation thingy quite well.

Elon, get your ass on Venmo and start spittin’.

So uh, it’s been a decade of this on y’all’s necks. 27kg is 59 pounds.

Weight on arteries, blood flow slower, which means less oxygen to the brain, which means slower activity.

Simultaneously, it seems like people’s ability to process things has gone down a lot. Like, a lot.

People are constantly in this 30 to 60° position. Hours on end, every day. Everywhere. 10 years of this.

I know, reading books. Well we rarely read them in this position, and phones and social media are a different beast: they stress us out, no matter what the content is, unlike books. It’s excitement, intensity while the weight on our necks and shoulders is pressing those blood vessels. We hold our breath, doom scrolling.

Could this combination of unnatural physical position and mind burn out be making people ultra-confused and unable to think properly? I’m speculating!

But as someone who’s never been on his phone like that, I’m looking at society acting up like

Please put your phone down. Stretch, and raise your head.

It’s super surreal to have 4K pictures of the universe’s old ass, with all those numbers that we can’t comprehend. 13 billion years ago? 13,000 million years? The fuck am I supposed to do with that information? Mind boggling. Those colors, precision and scale? I mean, it’s intense.

This stellar data is harvesting the absolute best of our best scientific brains to process it with love.

Meanwhile half the planet still has to fight for their bodily autonomy, because of some old ass, inaccurate book of stories that people believe.

Just Wow Seriously Though

It’s kind of scary how good at mutation this covid shit is. Wear yo mask, still.

There’s an Uber Files scandal in France, involving the French president.

Ugh.

Uber is this weird thing where I know they’ve been bad but also where I know how much they changed the game for good. They did.

In 2014, not so long ago, Uber was a freaking lifesaver. Taxis would be horrendous to me! I would never get one, or it was killing my bank account, $60 at a time. Uber solved that problem in a second.

I still remember my first driver, on a super-hot day, straight off of the T-Mobile shop, after grabbing my first and last US phone number. He was so happy to drive, and I was so happy to drink water in the back of his SUV.

But then, yeah. Virtually unlimited VC money, Bait & Switch tactics, massive lobbying at every government levels everywhere, and here we are.

I mentioned recently how every good idea turns into terrible business in no time these days, and Uber is probably the best example of this.

For those outside the United States, there’s this Vehicle Registration Renewal that has to be paid every two years. Yup. What for? Just because you own a vehicle, you need to pay a fee every 24 months. It doesn’t do anything.

You also need to renew your driver’s license every four or five years in CA. It could be valid for life, but rent from every single driver every few years, is a good deal for the DMV.

And then, there’s car insurance…smh