garry’s posthaven

During economic down times, we kind of ignore the rest of the world, and out-innovate the rest of the industry. While they're cutting costs and bracing for impact, we're increasing our lead. Our philosophy has always been to pay attention to the top line, and the bottom line will follow. This has seemed to work out pretty well for us.

-- Steve Jobs

Hat-tip DCurtis

1. It's a movie about being young and crazy and in love and heartbroken all at once.
   
2. Amazing soundtrack.
3. New York City
4. Not settling when it comes to your most important relationships. This is important.
5. Great comic timing and hilarious repartee.
6. Indie music.
7. Innocence.
8. Awkwardness. There aren't enough movies that deal with the awkwardness of life. We are all awkward sometimes.
9. Where's fluffy?
   
10. Epicness.

I'm a sucker for armchair economics and sociology. Here are some passages from a recent article about the widening inequality gap that I found really fascinating:

A trend is underway in America for marriage to be increasingly “assortative.” That means children of well-educated parents tend to marry one another and the children of less educated parents tend to marry one another... Today, the husband and wife are both likely to work in the market, and they choose one another because they have similar tastes in consumption.

When it comes to dating, increasingly it's not who you are, but what you like. Shallow? Yes. But researchers are linking that to a broader trend that society is getting more polarized than ever. We are self-selecting our future mates based on the kind of stuff we like to spend money on. Wild.

Another interesting macro trend happening with this widening equality gap:

An accountant or a nurse is not going to become extremely rich or extremely poor; they could be called “billers,” because they bill for their time. On the other hand, a professional singer or a software entrepreneur is playing in a winners-take-most tournament. The difference in talent between an international pop star and an unknown lounge singer may actually be quite small. However, the nature of these fields is that the difference in rewards can be enormous. People who choose these sorts of occupations could be called “players.”

...

Several factors have made it a lot easier to quit as a biller in order to take a fling at being a player. The Internet is one. As writer Daniel Pink has noted, the low cost of creating a business on the Web has fulfilled Karl Marx’s dream—an ordinary worker can now own the means of production. (emphasis mine)

So what are you waiting for? Go own the means of production. It's the only way you'll get true freedom... just make sure you win. It's a winner-take-most world out there.

Read the full article in the American

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Steph says HK Bistro is the most meta-dining experience there is. You are in America eating at a restaurant modeled after a Hong Kong restaurant modeled after a restaurant in the West.

Steph will post about it soon-- watch out for it.

Have a great weekend everyone!!

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I was eating at my favorite burger joint, In-n-Out Burger in Mountain View tonight. Luckily it was a Thursday night, so it wasn't too hard to get a free table. On Friday and Saturday evenings around 7, this kind place is absolutely packed!

How often is it that fast food restaurants are particularly packed on a Friday/Saturday night? I can't imagine a McDonalds or a Jack in the Box experiencing that kind of weekend bump. What that means is that In-n-Out has become a destination. It's a place that people choose to be at because they want to have an great time when they're free to go really anywhere.

How did In-n-Out get there?

1. Great product, impossible to get anywhere else
2. Great, reasonable prices
3. Clean, enjoyable atmosphere

This checklist is applicable for almost any sort of retail, online, or dining experience. If you can build your startup/idea/restaurant/dream into the clean, wholesome, good place people want to spend their weekend at, then you've got a good thing going.

They come in 24 packs for $17. Sounds like a good compromise between setting the poorly parked car on fire with gasoline and mentally berating them without doing anything.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=15566315

Hat Tip Joanna Birch

People become disassociated from one another online. The computer somehow nullifies the social contract.

--Heather Champ, Flickr Community Manager

Would you go to someone's front lawn and punch them in the face, or call them a jackass? Would you stand on their front steps and take a crap on their doorstep? Probably not. You'd get either a) arrested, or b) in some red states you would probably get shot for trespassing.

But it staggers me how people feel just FREE to take a crap on other people's property on the Internet. Why? Because there's no cost to it. In real life you can punch someone back, or shoot them. There are real consequences that are actually at stake in the real world. Identity, reputation, and life itself.

If someone comes and takes a fat crap on my doorstep, that really grosses me out. In the current scheme of things, what can I do?

a) I can call the police. I can try to track down this miscreant and have him arrested... or in the online case, booted from the community.
b) I can track them down and crap on their doorstep, in return... or flame them right back online.

In both cases, we have the fundamental problem of anonymity and identity online. It's an order of magnitude easier to be fully anonymous on the Internet, just as a matter of course. As a result, I can't even provide an effective counter-response. In the case of being booted from a community -- the cost to join is typically zero in the first place. Destroying one identity is meaningless because an unlimited number of new ones may be created. If I flame them back, then the terrorists have won.

Facebook has attacked this problem head-on by being the first successful online community that requires real names and real identities. These identities are backed by real-world organizations such as the school you went to or the corporation you are a part of. I think this remains the great underdeveloped frontier of Facebook Applications -- real apps that actually capitalize on the incredible Facebook "social graph" while still providing value, rather than rent-seeking time-wasting garbage apps like Vampires vs. Werewolves.

Alternatively, other sites like Flickr or Twitter develop strong community through reinforcement of identity through participation. These sites result in hours per day of use -- they are behavior-changing and valuable through the connections you make on the system. From first hand experience, losing those connections is painful enough to strongly dissuade egregious behavior. Newcomer miscreants still exist in these systems, but at least they're easily identified.

Hacker News has a similar aspect that focuses on use instead of connections, with karma score as a way of tallying usage. Parts of the site (like downvoting comments) are not revealed to you until you've become a participating, fully committed member of the group, at which point you're willing to invest in the community fully and defend it from Internet miscreants (of which there are many.) Once again, miscreants can be identified immediately with their karma score of 1. In fact, newcomers are moreso scrutinized and evaluated earlier because they're so easy to identify.

Clay Shirky likens truly useful collaborative groups to corporations in the legal sense. I can't walk into a bank and get a loan just by creating a fictional organization. However, if I incorporate as a C-corp, I can operate as a sovereign entity. A C-corp is: a) hard to create, b) hard to join, c) hard to leave, and d) hard to disband. These are the barriers that make legitimate groups and collaboration possible. I'd argue the forefront of social software is pointing in this direction more than ever.

Or in other words, good fences make good neighbors, in both online communities and in life. Barriers are what make meaningful interactions possible.

In the meantime, try not to crap in people's front yards. Please! Were you born in a barn? As Pastor Paul says at Abundant Life Church in Mountain View, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about someone in your row!

Part Radiohead, part Mogwai... According to their wikipedia entry / Stylus Magazine:

WFANFC's sound has been described as "a flawless lucid-dream trip through a thousand fantastical influences"

This description is a good one. These guys are freakin awesome. They hail from Manchester. They are named after the "Nuclear Free Zone" sign from their hometown.

MrVix and Patrick introduced them to me. I bought the whole album shortly thereafter. You should too.

Fascinating talk, massively inspiring. Did you know Wordpress.com only shows adsense ads to dumbass IE users who are likely to click on them?

Brilliant.

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