The largest tech companies in the world are selling your attention. At the same time, the internet is the great democratizer, and is giving you access to the vast majority of the world at lightning speed. You can’t possibly read everything on your many screens, and you can’t possibly disconnect completely. What’s a human to do?

Yesterday, I found out about TreeCard, an app from Ecosia that pays to plant trees based on how many steps you take.

Today I’m at a 95-days streak of walking 10,000 steps a day - so my first reaction was that I wished I had found out about this a few months ago! (Why so many steps? I read Built to Move.)

My second reaction: Where does the money come from? Here’s the official TreeCard answer:

Brands pay us to feature their eco products within our rewards structure. These can be earned by planting trees!

So basically they’re selling my attention. (What’s new?) I’m not sure that this alone is going to save the planet, but so far my review is: why not? I’m going to get those steps anyways, why not get some carbon offsets along the way?

I’m still figuring out how the app works, but apparently if you join with my Treecard link and enter the code ray-5d7 then we both get extra trees (or something like that).

• One holy day

  • Optionally in your tradition of faith, but someone else’s holy day will do

• One patio chair

  • Set up your patio chair in a peaceful location

• One decorative pillow

  • Place the decorative pillow on the chair for added comfort

• 15mg Ketamine HCl

• iPhone with AirPods

• Playlist including but not limited to:

  • “Sit Around the Fire “ by Jon Hopkins with Ram Dass, East Forest
  • “Indian Summer” by Jonsi & Alex Somers

• At least one felt sense of unworthiness, preferably from the present

  • Finely dice the unworthiness into the smallest possible pieces

• At least one memory of being scolded for “bad” things you did as a child

  • Whisk this memory thoroughly and compassionately

• (Optionally) tears

  • Cry to taste

• A shower

  • As long as necessary

On the day of the equinox, I found myself embarking on a new journey, one that I am now eager to share. A great occasion for a pinch of discovery and a cup of self-care. This was my Day One trying out Joyous, a brand of low-dose ketamine therapy that you can self-administer within the comfort of your own home.

In the chaotic landscape of the digital age, content is king. Companies, individuals, and brands compete in a relentless bid for attention, and content creation has become the currency of this competition. The sheer volume of information available at our fingertips is staggering. We are bombarded with blogs, podcasts, videos, social media posts, and more, all vying for our time and attention.

In this whirlwind of content creation, a dilemma often surfaces: should the focus be on quantity or quality?

On one hand, producing a large amount of content regularly can improve visibility, boost Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and keep an audience engaged. On the other hand, high-quality content can build credibility, drive conversions, and create loyal followers. But, can one really strike a balance between the two or does one inevitably sacrifice the other?

In this post, we will delve into the tug of war between quantity and quality in content creation, examining the importance of each, the struggle to balance the two, and strategies to maintain this balance effectively.

Who gets paid for your work?

Elon Musk? Alphabet shareholders? Medium? Meta?

Does it bother you that you are a sharecropper?

Most of my experience with machine learning and artificial intelligence has been in art. (More on that below, for the curious.)

Today I’m excited to share my first “win” using AI as a business executive: Mendable. I can’t really take much credit other than to say that I’ve been keeping my eyes open, but the impact that Mendable will have on polySpectra is going to be truly transformative.

TL;DR - with Mendable I was able to train, test, and deploy a customer support chatbot on our full technical and product documentation in about 4 hours (and I will explain below how it could have been 40 mins.) If you run a business, have someone on your team try it today…you’ll thank me.

It is risky to offer advice for what someone else “should do”.

It is generous to offer a “what if”, a beautiful future of the possibilities if they chose to.

It is noble to offer your vulnerable truth about the lessons you’ve learned and the choices you’ve made.

After his brief internship at Twitter (now X), George Hotz concluded that the company could be run by 50 people.

I’m not an expert in digital infrastructure, but 50 people doesn’t sound that ridiculous to me, at least for running the product day-to-day. Maybe he’s being dramatic, but the point is that the product would be functionally equivalent with 10-100x fewer people working at the company.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

TL;DR: You can automatically create social media posts from specific Hugo blog posts using tags, RSS, and either IFTTT or Make.com. Just point the automation to the tag-specific RSS link: https://yourwebsite.com/tags/yourtag/index.xml

Once you know this trick, you can set it up in one click. Keep reading for the long boring saga of how I figured that out.