Dan's Notes / Issue 3: Better Google searches • Rituals for consistency • Supply chains & economy rebuilding

Hi friends,

Chessa and I have begun down the long path of planning our wedding, which, lest we surrender our hopes, dreams, and bank accounts to the wedding-industrial complex, means it's time for some simple Google trickery to navigate around the marketing machines and find authentic recommendations.

Google search is dying

Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit, who can’t be bothered to build a decent search interface. So instead we resort to using Google, and appending the word “reddit” to the end of our queries.

This, right here, is the key to finding any opinion-based information on the internet in 2022. I've been telling this to anyone who will listen for years. It's the best way to bypass all the SEO-hijacked content on Google and find real content from real people.

Here's the tip: when you're looking for reviews, advice, or anything involving opinions or personal anecdotes, type your search query into Google followed by "reddit".

Want to hear what normal people have to say about their new cars? "honda civic vs hyundai ioniq reddit". Planning a wedding? "southern california wedding venues reddit". My first step for planning a trip to a new city is opening a bunch of Reddit threads in tabs and absorbing what a bunch of internet strangers have to say about that city.

Gaming your way to the top of Google's search results is a multi-billion-dollar industry and many of the top search results on Google are hyper-optimized to rank as highly as possible. This is why, for example, all the recipes on foodie blogs feature a mini novel before the actual recipe. (Paprika is my go-to app for saving recipes.) Stuffed Bell Peppers with an appetizer of Stuffed SEO Keywords.

(In case you aren't familiar with Reddit, it's a social media site organized around topics ("subreddits") where people submit links or text content that are upvoted or downvoted by community members. There's a sort of magic, Wikipedia-like self-moderation aspect to Reddit, where low-quality, spammy content is typically downvoted while legitimately helpful content is pushed to the top. It's basically one of the last bastions of authentic user-generated content on the internet.)

A Vision For Making The U.S. Economy More Equitable

Great interview with Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong about the failings of neoliberalism, designing a redistributive economy, and why the ongoing supply chain issues highlight a clear need to make big investments in infrastructure, energy, healthcare, education, & more.

And I think we have to look at the ways in which we shape markets using two mechanisms. It’s not just about distribution and redistribution to families and workers, although that’s obviously incredibly important. It’s also about using public investment to shape markets so that they really help the American people. [...]

But, as for inflation itself, we need to do a little more explaining, to get past the model in people’s heads that inflation is driven by too much money in the system, especially by too much money going to workers. Because that neoliberal thinking leads to austerity, which is a bad answer today. [...] When you look at the drivers of price increases, whether it’s ports running at full capacity or a shortage of semiconductors — that requires not rate hikes and a throttling down of the whole economy, but more investment, both public and private. What you want to be doing in certain sectors is to spend more money, not less.

See also: Re-Engineering Our Supply Chains from The American Prospect.

Discipline, Consistency, and Rituals

The most successful people consistently do the thing they’re great at. They do it on easy days and they do it on hard days. They do it when they feel like it and when they don’t. Only what I’ve learned is that they’re not more disciplined than you or I. So how do they do it? The answer is they create a ritual.

Suffering and Creative Work

Advice about “productivity” and “motivation” often rests on an adversarial foundation. The notional goal is to focus better, work harder, achieve more. And the obstacle is you. [...]

Too often “productivity” and “motivation” techniques treat a symptom without addressing its cause. I don’t want to train myself to shout over my impulses, especially when my work depends on following creative instinct. I’d rather cultivate a healthier relationship to the sensations of doing the work, in the moment, so that my impulses will naturally serve me well.

Until next week,

Dan