January 2021

I’m going through an exercise by Dr. John DeMartini called The Value Determination Process. In the first part, you list the top three things for 13 different questions. Examples of questions are how do you fill your space, how do you spend your time, how do you spend your money, etc. Then today I listen to a podcast with Derek Sivers and he talks about paying attention to and following what you do when you’re playing hooky. Another example of serendipity. #

But, let’s get to the real core question, which to me, is what do you do when you want to play hooky? Playing hooky is American slang. Playing hooky means you blow off work or school to go do whatever you want that day. #

I found that throughout my life, the best things I ever did were when I was playing hooky, not when I was supposed to be doing my “real work”. I was fascinated with something else instead. Something more fun and interesting. #

If you follow the more fun and interesting thing, it’ll probably turn into something as good or better for work. #

Derek Sivers #

There’s a big problem in the world today with people who are humoristically-challenged. If you are politically correct, you have an idealized notion of how people should be, and no one is really like that. It takes all the fun out of life. #

Aline Kominsky-Crumb #

You cannot have proper respect for yourself until you know that you’re a monster because you won’t act carefully enough. #

It’s a meta-story about how to act, about how to conduct yourself in the world. To face the things that you’re afraid of that would otherwise paralyze you. To let the death of what is insufficient about you occur and then to wait for the rebirth. #

Jordan B Peterson #

The fundamental flaw with the cancel culture is that every attempt to silence ideas you don’t like is an admission that your ideas are too weak to stand against them. #

Uncle Bob Martin #

I’ve followed Justin Jackson since 2015 and I’m in his MegaMaker Club. It’s cool to see him featured in SaaS Magazine. #

The perfect wave, or SaaS product, doesn’t strike you by coincidence or pure luck, it comes with the aforementioned patience and observation. “And it could be adjacent to what you thought you were going to do,” Jackson elaborates. “For example, I thought that I was going to make online courses forever, and the truth was that there was an opportunity adjacent to that in podcasting. I had been in “podcasting waters” since 2012, and for a while, there were no true opportunities, but in 2017, I began to notice a shift in the water.” This shift, for Jackson, was the idea for Transistor.fm, a podcast publishing platform. #

Riding the Wave: Justin Jackson on His Startup Journey and Finding Market Fit #

The Federated World Tesseract

The more I look at FedWiki, the more overlap I see with the work Dave has been doing with outliners and publishing. Especially with Trex and the World Outline. #

The World Outline is like the World Wide Web, except instead of a web of linked pages, it’s an array of outlines that include other outlines. The outlines can live anywhere on the Internet. They are accessed over HTTP. #

worldOutline.root #

I released an experiment opml.wiki that consumes FedWiki JSON files and turns them into an OPML file. Seeing this hybrid gives me all sorts of ideas. I see these two platforms as three-dimensional representations of a four-dimensional object. #

Add in a good helping of the semantic web utopia, stir, and let it simmer. #

Voting with dollars

I recently saw a post on Nextdoor called Wealth shown to scale. The gist is to show the scale of just how much Jeff Bezos is worth ($200 Billion). It compares this to things like average household salary in the US and how much Tim Cook of Apple is worth. It literally at one point says, “No single human needs or deserves this much wealth.” #

It is disgusting that someone would actually say no single human “deserves” this. Who are they to be the arbiter of who’s worthy or not? #

This is the reality of the situation: #

1.) Jeff Bezos owns 11.1% of Amazon, a company currently worth $1.63 Trillion. That’s about $181 Billion—the vast majority of his wealth. His net worth also reflects his ownership of the Washington Post and the aerospace company Blue Origin. #

2.) Jeff does not have 200 Billion dollars sitting in his bank account. He also doesn’t keep it in a giant vault like Scrooge McDuck. I would guess that tops, he has $100 Million in liquid assets. Still a lot of money. #

3.) Amazon is worth $1.63 Trillion because it produces value for lots and lots of people. In 2020 alone, I personally spent almost $6,000 with Amazon. This report doesn’t seem to include digital goods like movies on my Roku, Kindle eBooks, or Audible audiobooks. #

4.) Amazon also provides the infrastructure of a substantial portion of the internet. We’re talking Netflix, Twitch, LinkedIn, and Facebook to name a few. When AWS has an outage, the internet is broken. #

If you think it would be difficult to live without contributing to Jeff Bezos’ net worth one way or another, you’d be correct. He is worth 200 Billion dollars because his leadership and vision has directly contributed to our lives being better. #

If you think Amazon is a bad thing and you don’t want to support them that’s your choice. Don’t stream video or audio, to be safe just get rid of your TV and phone. Don’t shop online or use social media. #

Even if you buy something online from one of your favorite local shops, the eCommerce platform they are using is probably hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services.) So you can stick to driving over there and paying in cash. #

Obviously I’m being ridiculous. #

Even though I buy a lot on Amazon, I also go out and buy things from local bookstores because I want brick and mortar bookstores to continue to exist. #

Back in the day I had an idea for a website. It would be an index of what local stores carry. This way, you could go to one website and see all the places locally where you could buy it. It’s midnight and you’re looking for a toothbrush? Well, maybe only CVS, Walgreens, Super Walmart, and that 24-hour grocery store. But if you wait until 10 am you can get one at a local mom & pop store. What’s even better? They sell toothbrushes made locally out of 100% recycled materials. #

I probably won’t build that, so there you go, free idea! #