An Open Letter To The SEO Industry
“What we do is make things easily findable. Our primary purpose is to ensure that search mechanisms such as web search engines show our clients’ content first. And because search mechanisms change so rapidly, we have to change too.”
Great article on what SEO means today, and why it’s still important.
Confessions of a Watch Geek
“In talking to collectors, I have heard the tale of a grandfather who was able to escape Occupied France because he gave a gold Omega to a stationmaster. Is this it, then? Is that what my obsession is about?”
If you like watches, this article is a great look into what the obsession is about. There’s nothing like a solid timepiece.
Smartphones are the New Cigarettes
“I’ve started to notice people who feel like they need to always be checking email or their messages to feel as though they’re being a good, productive employee. Doesn’t matter if it’s their kid’s violin recital, or in the car at stop lights, or in bed at midnight on a Saturday. They feel like they have to always be caught up on every piece of information that is flung their way, otherwise they’re somehow failing. I’ve noticed friends who can no longer sit through entire movies (or even episodes of a TV show) without pulling out their phones multiple times in the middle of it. People who can’t make it through a meal without putting the phone next to their plate.”
Take from this what you will.
Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement
“Sonic Adventure DXdidn’t take long to beat, but I didn’t let myself stop there: the game had an achievement system, in which the player was awarded with “emblems” for reaching various goals – like speeding Sonic through stages with impressively quick times. Many of them were very difficult, and I couldn’t accomplish them on the first, second, fifth, or tenth attempt. But I kept trying. And when I finally had all 160 emblems the game offered, I knew I’d crossed a milestone. I, not Sonic, had improved until I could pass these challenges. I had developed actual skills, even if they were objectively useless ones. I had done something I could actually be proud of: I had built a habit of not giving up.”
Great article on the state of video games today, and a comparison on achievements today versus years ago.
How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions
“The Sinaloa cartel can buy a kilo of cocaine in the highlands of Colombia or Peru for around $2,000, then watch it accrue value as it makes its way to market. In Mexico, that kilo fetches more than $10,000. Jump the border to the United States, and it could sell wholesale for $30,000. Break it down into grams to distribute retail, and that same kilo sells for upward of $100,000 — more than its weight in gold. And that’s just cocaine. Alone among the Mexican cartels, Sinaloa is both diversified and vertically integrated, producing and exporting marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine as well.”
“For his efforts, Martínez was paid a million dollars a year, in a single annual installment: “In cash, in a suitcase, each December.” When Martínez’s son was born, Chapo asked to serve as godfather.”
“These vessels can cost more than a million dollars, but to the smugglers, they are effectively disposable. In the event of an interception by the Coast Guard, someone onboard pulls a lever that floods the interior so that the evidence sinks; only the crew is left bobbing in the water, waiting to be picked up by the authorities.”
This is a long read, but it was incredible reading about the ins and outs of the Mexican cartel. Can you imagine having so much money that you can sink a million dollar submarine that you use for transportation without thinking twice?
Let’s All Stop Apologizing for the Delayed Response in Our Emails
“There is a beautiful term called structured procrastination, the feeling that we make progress, even if all we’re doing is making to do lists and crossing them off, or deleting emails that nobody should have sent us from the beginning. But it gives us this sense of progress. Whereas writing a book does not give you the same sense of progress, because maybe you worked the whole day to try and explain some topic and at the end of the day you decide you didn’t do a good job and you have to start again tomorrow. …. We get the sense of progress from all of these emails and to do lists and things like that — but it’s not the real progress. I mean, how many people are going to die happy knowing they got to inbox zero 721 days of their life?”
Don’t say sorry. Set times to reply to your email, and reply during those times. If your clients don’t understand, then there’s a larger question at hand.
Painful Things You Have To Hear To Be Successful
“It’s very hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.”
Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy
“It’s pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they’re happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they’re unhappy.”
Simple formula to judge whether a person (or you) are happy or not.