Why is justified text so bad on the web? And why do people still use it, despite how terrible it looks? When I was in journalism school I learned how to properly justify text with line breaks, tracking, and other techniques to make sure we didn’t have “rivers” of blank space through the text or other hard-to-read layouts. Is there no way to achieve the same readable outcome today with CSS, or otherwise?

If not, I beg of you: Please don’t use justified text on the web!

I worked at a small company where a significant portion of my effort went toward shielding my team from the distractions created by a CEO who couldn’t seem to help meddling in every aspect of the business. I think it’s because he started out doing, or at least being involved with, many of the functions of the company and had a hard time letting go as we grew. Even after the organization grew to 50+ people he couldn’t keep himself out of the nitty gritty details, but the format of the distraction changed over time. Instead of walking up to people and interrupting them in person (a double whammy according to this study, including both an “important” person and the in-person aspect), he would send what we called “Slack attacks” throughout the day. These were paragraphs-long Slack messages without any semblance of organization, punctuation, or line breaks. Fortunately, many of these messages were sent during the very early hours of the morning so they could be dealt with first thing in the AM, but that wasn’t always the case.

In the first phase I literally moved my team location and reorganized the desk arrangement so it was harder for him to get in and bug everyone. I had to “guard” the area and try to stop him from physically entering the space, which was always a strange dance. I couldn’t control his Slack messaging behavior so I worked with people to understand that while yes “the CEO is asking you for urgent work in Slack” seems like a valid reason to switch gears, but instead let me work to figure out what actually needs to be done and we’ll catch up later about what to do.

It was a weird dynamic but there was no doubt the distractions were a drag on performance. Every time he went on vacation we saw a marked increase in productivity, and more creative solutions seemed to come up as well. I don’t wish this type of environment on anyone but in a way I’m glad to have gone through it and learned some lessons about interruptions and how to avoid them.

Jests aside, I love the idea of incorporating an all encompassing AI philosophy built up from the rich history of thinking, wisdom, and texts that already exist. I’m no expert, but I don’t see how this would even be possible. Could you train some LLM exclusively on philosophical works, then prompt it to create a new perfect philosophy that it will then use to direct its “life” from then on? I can’t imagine that would work in any way. It would certainly be entertaining to see the results, however.

That said, AI companies would likely all benefit from a team of philosophers on staff. I imagine most companies would. Thinking deeply and critically has been proven to be enormously valuable to humankind, but it seems to be of dubious value to capital and those who live and die by it.

The fact that the majority of deep thinking and deep work of our time serves mainly to feed the endless growth of capital - instead of the well-being of humankind - is the great tragedy of our time.

In this post the author tries to set up an unassailable scenario where two very similar people end up with strikingly different life outcomes because of “how some of us have chosen to live their lives.” Conveniently, the author is the successful one because he is part of “a small set of humans who don’t act like their lives are predestined.” The majority, and the person he compares himself to, obviously couldn’t succeed without this special character aspect. In reality, it’s the “small set of humans” part that shows the way to the truth. The analysis that says successful people are different because they chose to act differently and not live a “predestined” life ignores all the people who also made that choice without getting lucky and achieving success. It also leaves out the people who lived a “predestined” life and succeeded despite their lack of willpower or special abilities or whatever else we can point to as an explanation.

Like I said, I am victim to the same fallacies in my own reasoning about my life, but I try very hard to overcome them or at least recognize them. The takeaway from this article isn’t that “you are the master of your own fate” but instead something like “be careful when trying to explain your own life’s circumstances, especially when your explanations put you in some special class that only few people have achieved.” Luck, by its very nature, is only for the few.

Bentham might apply if you consider the overall outcome: is the work your company does positive or ethical for the majority of people the majority of the time? It seems like the “greatest good for the greatest number” would allow for some small unethical aspects so long as the outcome is good for the majority. This could also be seen as a shortcoming in that philosophy because it justifies some pretty terrible actions for the greater good (some of which, like the Manhattan project and its outcome, are mentioned elsewhere in this thread).

Kant might make you look at your company and imagine that all companies acted that way as a way to reason ethically. If all companies acted the way your company acts would that be good or bad for humanity? Kind of like the golden rule, but more rational.

There are many more to consider but it’s my view that most of them will get you to the point where you probably shouldn’t work for an unethical company, even if your particular work or area of focus is perfectly ethical. Mainly because you working for the company allows or helps it to exist in some way, and we don’t want unethical companies to exist. So maybe you could reason your way into working there if your sole focus was finding a way to destroy the company somehow. Otherwise it’s probably better to work elsewhere.

There are undoubtedly many areas in which memorization is useful. I tend to use memorization as a second-order tool, in the sense that it is only useful to memorize once I’ve learned that memorization would be necessary.

I memorize combinations to locks I unlock frequently. I memorize names of items I sell in my shop so I don’t have to look them up over and over again.

In school I often memorized equations just long enough to get by. The few that are still with me are not those I used most frequently; they are the equations I understood at a visceral level. Obviously this means I am more conversant in Newtonian happenings than quantum concerns, so maybe there is a place for memorization. Or perhaps I lack sufficient experience in the quantum to really feel the laws that govern the smallest realms.

Either way the article paints a dull picture of learning. What of the feeling in the minds and hands of those future carpenters swinging their first hammer blows? What of the deep learning of the pianist that happens only after the transition from the first concerto as audience to the latest as featured virtuoso?

An exponential increase in the type of “learning” furthered by spaced repetition might be useful to some. I still prefer the linear road to understanding.

I have yet to experience anything even remotely close to the buzzing productivity of a newsroom minutes before the press deadline. Election nights were always fun because all the information was coming in later so we had to scramble. Obviously we knew about the time constraints beforehand so we could plan for it to the best of our ability, which of course usually fell to the curse of best laid plans.

I’m nostalgic for slower paced information flow and newspapers remain a near-perfect example.

In my newspaper days we stuck to around 60 characters as an optimal line length for readability. I've seen up to 80, but even that seems to be pushing it. Once you stretch out the lines so much it's hard to track back and forth from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line.

I'm reading the parent, top-level comment on a Macbook Air with a 13 inch screen and the first line is a whopping 194 characters long. Reading anything of length on this screen is decidedly uncomfortable when browsing HN.

I agree that simplicity is a noble and useful goal, but when it comes at the expense of usability it's hard to swallow.

It’s the weirdest experience because I want so badly for it to be like other shops I’ve browsed and loved. I’ve even considered opening my own bookshop down the street to fulfill my desire for a great used book shop in my city. Maybe someday.

> If you are a guitarist, you might notice that there is something strange about her technique. She was left-handed, but rather than stringing a guitar in reverse the way lefties usually do, she just played a standard-strung guitar upside down. She had to learn her own idiosyncratic chord shapes, and she played them by alternating bass with her fingers and playing melody notes with her thumb. This must have required some dedication! But none of it is as important as her sound and her material.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/rei-now-limiting-retur...

Before that there was no time limit though. I remember becoming a member in 2011 when I moved to a city with a local REI and that was one of the main benefits they pitched. I don’t miss it because I never returned anything after a year (or even a few weeks).

REI started a trade-in program that serves a similar function and probably manages to foil most of the people who would have abused the system in the past. I think it goes well with their overall “earth friendly” ethos and brand identity as well.

https://www.rei.com/used/trade-it-in

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/pinc-01/...

In any case what you’re proposing is selection bias. No one should be surprised that people who work full time are more likely to make six figures than those who don’t. And yes, if you cherry pick a group of “professionals” who receive larger salaries of course the percentage will increase. And it’s back to survivorship bias for the “prioritization” examples you mentioned. Unless you happen to have a random sample of people who don’t make six figures but would prefer to.

So if you’re buying or even just evaluating performance ads without considering the bigger picture you might come to erroneous conclusions.

Take the Lego Movie example from the article. The $65 million movie is no doubt an awareness play. Could you make the case that you should also increase your performance budget to help capture more of the demand you just generated with the movie? Or should you just hope that people go from the movie theater to buy Lego unprompted? Is it worth it for Lego to advertise to people who walk out of the theater and search for “Lego Batman set” or whatever? I think so, even though evaluating such branded search campaigns individually might make them seem inefficient.

It seems very easy to dismiss the performance advertising as a scam when you evaluate it in a vacuum. As noted in the article it’s important (and very difficult) to understand the incremental outcome of any channel or campaign. That incrementality includes awareness campaigns.

After more than a decade in advertising and marketing I am now more than ever unwilling to accept simple or definitive answers to highly complicated questions. At best I hope that we can unwind some of the overall complexity so we can have a chance to trust some of those definitive answers.

One day, after working diligently on the job for a few months, I pitched my editor an idea for an online-only story with some interesting multimedia elements. He told me I could definitely work on that story “on my own time.” I was an hourly employee so I asked him to clarify if he wanted me to schedule the work around the other stories I was working on at the time. He laughed and told me that he couldn’t justify paying me for any project meant only for the website. I was welcome to work on the story and publish it on my own time of course.

I decided to leave the publication and the overall newspaper industry that day. I still miss the feeling of working in a buzzing newsroom, there’s just nothing like it. Similar to the author, I’m nostalgic for the days when the news cycle was limited by time and column inches.

I don’t think we’re ever going back to anything resembling the heyday of newspaper publishing. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area where halfway decent reporting happens then maybe subscribing to the print edition makes sense. Unfortunately I am not so lucky. I read magazines for my “news” and try not to check the headlines too often on my phone.

I grew up with a morning and afternoon daily. I never knew how good I had it. Two comics sections! News stories with same day updates! Imagine such a wonder…

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38315

Either way congrats on starting your own agency! I was an early employee at an agency (not focused on politics but likely similar to yours in other ways) and when I started out there were fewer than 5 employees including two founders. It was very top-led in the beginning, but as we grew to 20 people or so that became unsustainable.

At that point it became about building a system instead of trying to get everyone up to the same skill level. At a basic level we decided that we were really working with clients to set expectations and then meeting (and hopefully sometimes exceeding) those expectations. We too had issues with last minute changes, until we changed our contract and statement of work language to specify the framework for making decisions (usually budget/spend/creative related etc) and how those decisions/changes would be implemented. Same thing with mistakes: part of the expectation from both sides was built in time for QA to catch mistakes before they happened. The more you can set up the framework for success early on in the sales/pitch/onboarding the better. And clients will probably like you more for setting up reasonable guardrails in the beginning.

The framework also allowed for some influence/involvement from the top, which was helpful in filling those inevitable skill gaps. We used some version of the framework until we got to about 45 employees, and then it had to change significantly again to fix some of the bottlenecks that were coming from the top down. It also opened up more time for people at the top to work on business development and sales.

I left out a lot of details but overall it took a “systems thinking” mindset to fix issues once we got to a level where the top-down approach was no longer feasible. The system was set up from top down, but once implemented it could basically run itself with a few tweaks throughout the years. Maybe you can focus on setting up those systems instead of trying to level up every employee to be a mirror of you and your partner.

Hiring/firing when there is a strong system in place also seemed easier: look for people who can grasp/appreciate the system and their place in it, give them agency and opportunity to grow within the system, and evaluate them based on the system and the expectations it sets. We almost never lost talent to other agencies and we rarely had to fire anyone. Maybe we were just lucky, or maybe the system did its job!

My two cents on growth/profitability for an agency: The existence of other agencies, however inferior they may be, means there is a limit to how much of a premium your agency can charge. At some point someone with control over the budget is going to balk at your price and go with the competitor who is also saying they can do everything you can do. Which means at some point you will need to grow your client (and employee) roster or be satisfied with stagnating profits.

I’d love to see a “tell all” type of story from an insider at an auction house etc but I suspect the gains to be had from publishing are much less attractive than selling art, especially at these astronomical prices.

See below for some recommendations based on my 2020 reading.

Fiction recommendations:

- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. This book absolutely wrecked me emotionally (in a good way) for weeks after reading it

- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I enjoyed this even more than the Underground Railroad, which was also great. Both also won a Pulitzer for what it’s worth.

- The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea. This book gave me a glimpse into what it’s like for Mexicans who immigrate to the US, and the storytelling was just wonderful.

Non-fiction recommendations:

- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Mix together equal parts science, indigenous knowledge and myth, botany, and wonderful writing and you get this book. I love Kimmerer’s voice (both in terms of her writing and her performance of the audiobook) and I read Gathering Moss by her this year as well because she’s just that good.

- American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. In my opinion is the definitive book about the atomic bomb and Oppenheimer. I also read The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman and I think that was a pretty good follow up about the arms race and Cold War that came after.

- Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. I knew nothing and cared little about surfing before this book. I couldn’t put it down after I picked it up though. I’ve heard the audiobook is great so I might just read it again in that format because it was that good.

Good luck with your reading!

1. Buy ebooks and read them at the same rate as I do now 2. Use the proceeds from reading to buy physical copies of the “best” books I want to have a hard copy of for rereading, reference, or gifting

In looking at my read books from 2020 I probably would have purchased hard copies of about 40 out of the 131 books I finished.

So using the example in the post I would get $131 for my reading (assuming I finish 100% of the books I buy). The post doesn’t say anything about the cost of physical books but I could see them priced at 2x the cost of the digital version for $10. That price would put me at $400 for the physical copies, for a net of $269 for the publisher.

That’s obviously less than the publisher would get if I bought all the books outright. However my current book buying strategy is to wait until digital books go on sale to buy, and the physical copies I purchase are 95% second hand from local book shops. So the publisher might actually stand to make more from me with the Kevin Kelly method.

It’s definitely interesting to think about even though I think this scenario is highly unlikely to become a reality.

Instance from 2018 (with what you termed “racist” insinuations): https://youtu.be/OXp5GJjuOvQ

Instance from 2020 actually relating to COVID-19: https://youtu.be/N5NQdmHzBTY

I’m going to take this as a reminder that we should all carefully consider sources of information, even when those sources are our own recollections and experiences.