Capoeira Angola: Contra Mestre Gato Preto (GCFA) e Contra Mestre Reny (Oke Aro)

Seems like they escape so fluidly that they must stop to appreciate.

Mestre Gato Preto e CM Jorge

Crazy flying cartwheel at 5:50.

Ex-Google Officer Speaks Out On The Dangers Of AI!

[On our behalf, unelected Californians are making decisions about our collective future, justified through media and slogans.]

[Whereas having 50 extra IQ points in today's world makes a difference, a future where everyone can borrow 4000 will render everyone's baseline irrelevant, and therefore: 1. we are all effectively equal, and 2. we all become peasants to the 1% as the middle class vanishes.]

i learn from everyone, but the teacher is myself

Reflections on the social web

For many people, terms like ActivityPub, Fediverse, bridge, protocol, server, toot, boost, and Webfinger are alienating and confusing. They subtly imply that unless you understand what all these words mean, this might not be the place for you; in the same way crypto terms—blockchain, web3, wallet, keypair, nonce—are a wall of jargon that scream "you don't belong here" to normal people.

To send an email, you don't need to know what SMTP, IMAP, POP, DKIM, SPF, or DMARC are. To browse the web, there's no requirement to understand HTTP, DNS, servers, SSL, TTL, load balancing, or caches. The most significant impact these protocols have is perhaps that users never have to think about them.

grouping these together:

• military's "never give a command that won't be obeyed"
• teacher anti-pattern of "instructions that the student can't follow"
• basic-minded "using a foreign language to feel superior with someone who doesn't know it"

related to communication fails creating a false sense of authority and effectiveness. somehow everyone loses, but the speaker doesn't know.

Treinel Onça Branca (Ngoma) e prof. Negao (Capoeira sem fronteira)

Example of how someone with more experience can make it easy to play beautifully together.

The Shape of What You Meant

Over time, you start repeating yourself, rewriting the same paragraph for different people, reposting the same message in different groups, reframing the same problem with different jargon. And when something finally connects, it often feels like luck. Like you just happened to be visible at the right moment.

This is the system we pretend works: discovery as noise, identity as content, and visibility as a full-time job.

i continue to be blown away by local community centers all over the world and how they offer so much that isn't legible or relevant to technological systems – the underrated potential of not needing platforms to care for or live with your neighbours.

[Value means helping people. Giving more value means helping people more.]

[Features describe, whereas benefits are emotional.]

[Don't go crazy buying additional businesses within the first year. Focus on one and create alternate revenue streams through add-ons and premium services. Aim to develop towards half a dozen baskets for your eggs.]

[No client should be more than 15% of revenue.]

Zero-sum Thinking and the Labor Market

Boomers could trade 4 years of college for 40 years of middle-class security (more or less). Today's 25-year-old faces a negative net-present-value on that same deal. When the fundamental economic bargain breaks down, it flips everything - your discount rate, your risk tolerance, your entire worldview, again, leading to zero-sum beliefs.

Back in 2019, I applied to over 150 jobs when I graduated Western Kentucky University. LinkedIn had their little QuickApply feature, but I wrote so many essays, did many projects, and endless interviews. The entire process made me better, but I was rejected from most of the jobs.

I had a 4.0 GPA, was valedictorian with three majors, worked three jobs for most of my time at university, sold cars, ran D1 Track and Field for a year, and yet, I only got into my first job because the recruiter and some people at the company took a big chance on me (and I only got there because they had a blind resume process where they hid the school. Says a lot about a lot).

The only reason I got my chance - a truly lucky break - was because people bet on me. A computer would have instantly rejected me because I didn’t meet some arbitrary qualification. AI has spurred us right into the depths of what David Brooks calls the rejected generation - endless nos from platforms that are meant to serve as human interfaces (slot machine grabs across dating, investing, and now jobs), but really end up dehumanizing the whole process.

This is the casino economy in action. Again, just like dating apps and meme stock trading, the job market has created the illusion of abundance by replacing meaningful friction with meaningless volume. It has become a dopamonster, to borrow Scott Galloway’s word. More applications, more swipes, more trades - but every extra option raises the noise-to-signal ratio, making the median outcome worse for everyone.

Raise your prices. Add a three-tiered price structure (low, medium, high). Add discounts for up-front payment, annual plans, and institutional versus retail pricing.

[It's easier to sell more to existing customers than find new ones, so offer a menu of add-ons to increase your average revenue per job.]

[Use leads, conversion, jobs, and average revenue to calculate annual revenue, then annual expenses to calculate annual profits.]

Most small-business owners "live in their own wallet," meaning they won't charge any higher than what they would be willing to pay. That's dumb. Let rich people pay you lots of money if they want to. You'll be surprised how often they will.

[Lead with benefits, not features.]

[Output-based metrics measure numbers you don't directly control, such as traffic, signups, revenue, growth. Activity-based metrics track things you do to influence the other numbers, such as calls made, posts published, machines in operation.]

The rise of Whatever

The Web is a cool thing because anyone can just put stuff on it. It is the largest town square bulletin board ever devised. Back in the day, your ISP would even give you your own website! I don’t think they do that so much any more, but there are more cheap or free options than ever — hell, you can host a little website on GitHub.

And it used to mostly consist of little things made by people, and that was pretty cool! You would see more than four websites in a day. Websites would have colors! They wouldn’t all be designed for a three-inch-wide screen and then just scaled up when you’re at your desk! Twitter once let you set your own background image for when people looked at your profile.

Look at it. Look at it, you stupid baby. Look how outlandish or shocking or extreme or dramatic, Whatever it is. Just shut up and look at it, so Home Depot will give me a quarter of a tenth of a cent.

At least when I write a lot, you know it’s because I wanted to write it. Also I’m probably not lying to you because someone paid me to do it!

But we didn’t really get that. We got, I guess, sparkling autocomplete — a fancy chatbot that can string words together in the most inoffensive people-pleasing customer-service voice you’ve ever heard.

What even is this thing we’ve invented? Stack Overflow, but you only get the answers people scramble to type first so they can get the points? Oh and they just lie to you sometimes? Why would I want this?