Building your own website isn’t quite as easy as 1, 2, 3. But it ain’t that much harder.

📝 NOTE: This post is now outdated, as I've moved my site back to micro.blog. But I'm leaving the post up in case it can help someone else in the future.

This weekend I got the itch to customize my personal website again.

(Just FYI, if creating your own website sounds like a horrible idea, then check out mataroa.blog¹. You get a simple, distration-free blog with email newsletters for $9 a year. But if you instead find yourself itching for more control, then keep on reading.)

I’d made plenty short-lived personal websites with GitHub Pages and Jekyll in the past. This time I wanted to try something different, so I decided to give Hugo a shot. The only previous experience I’d had with Hugo came from my micro.blog² days. Before this weekend, I’d never built a Hugo site from scratch.

I mostly followed a tutorial I found on someone else’s blog, so this post won’t be a step-by-step repeat of that wonderful resource. In the hope of saving you time and sparing you some headache, I’ll instead focus on some issues left unmentioned in most tutorials for making your own site with Hugo and GitHub Pages.

The theme

I chose the PaperMod theme because I fell in love with a fork of the Paper theme³ on micro.blog. The theme is simple and elegant.

A few things I love about the PaperMod theme:

• Social icons
• Dark/light theme toggle
• Post navigation at the bottom of each post
• Search page included
• Tags pages automatically generated

The tutorial

I mostly relied on a tutorial by Chris J. Hart⁴.

As I’ve already said, I won’t be repeating his great tutorial. But I had some problems not addressed in his tutorial, so I’ll cover those issues below in the addendums.

Addendums

Let’s take a look at some extra information I would include to any tutorial about building your own site with Hugo and GitHub Pages.

Put a CNAME file in the static folder

Updates caused my site to forget the custom domain (jakelacaze.com), so after an update, I had to re-enter my domain in the Settings panel of the repository for my site.

The fix ended up being to create a CNAME file (with my custom domain as its contents) inside the static folder.

Putting a CNAME file in the root directory didn’t fix the issue. I can’t say why putting the CNAME in the static folder works; I can only report the facts as far as I understand them.

Fork the theme for your submodule

The tutorial–and most others like it–recommends using your desired theme as a submodule.

I instead ended up forking the theme so that I could easily edit it.

I ran into a problem when I tried to change the theme’s RSS feed to show full content rather than just a summary. I needed to change only one word, but to do so appeared to require a change from the original theme repository and developer. By forking the theme, you can make all the changes your heart desires, directly in your main branch⁵.

Maybe there’s a workaround if you don’t fork the theme, but I couldn’t find one. So, unless you already know the solution, I’d recommend forking the theme in case you want to change something later.

Confusion about the the config file name

The tutorial references config.toml as your config file. The convention now appears to be to use hugo.toml instead⁶.

You’ll have a basic hugo.toml file when you create your site. I changed mine to hugo.yaml because I was already familiar with the YAML syntax. Just something to keep in mind . . .

See my repo for more

Feel free to check out the repository for my personal site⁷ if you want to dig deeper into my customizations, or if you’re interested in something I forgot to mention here.

Jake LaCaze loves the way Gary Marcus rewrites his bio at the end of each blog post, and he's considering stealing that idea for himself.

A quick video in which I question the approach of the prophets of AI, and what it means for us

Back in June, I recorded this quick video I posted on LinkedIn, in which I asked if AI developers are putting the cart before the horse.

So now I want to share that same video with you.

Thanks for watching.

Or, if you prefer to read–no worries, just check out the transcript below.

Transcript

(edited for clarity)

Is AI the ultimate example of a solution looking for a problem? Or, to use another analogy: Is AI the ultimate hammer to which everything appears a nail?

When you solve most problems, you usually start with the problem itself. You identify what’s wrong and you have an idea of how you want it to be better. You then work your way through the problem and escalate as needed.

In so many situations with AI, it seems like we’re going backwards, as if we’re saying, Here’s a powerful tool–what are some major problems it can solve?

It seems we’re having these great advancements in AI, but we’re not adopting or using the technology as quickly as the developers would like. It kinda feels like they’re forcing it, like they’re trying to squeeze it in wherever they can. In so many situations, there identifying real problems–and technology can likely help–but I’m not sure AI is needed in all these situations.

So I’m worried that we’re going too extreme.

I’m not afraid that AI is capable of replacing humans. I’m afraid that it’s incapable of replacing humans but that certain people will try to make it replace us anyway.

Either a work is inspiring or insightful, or it’s not. Stop qualifying the work by saying it was created by an LLM or another form of generative AI.

I recently made a tongue-in-cheek post on LinkedIn, directed as a jab at how some people give large language models (LLMs) too much credit simply because they’re machines.

This silly post got me thinking about content quality vs. content source.

If you disagree with the point of my post, that’s fine. You’re free to criticize it, poke holes in it, and tear it apart. I ask only that you would do the same if this post were created by an LLM like ChatGPT. Please don’t be one of those people who would think the post were insightful if written by a machine trained for countless hours on terabytes and terabytes of data. In this situation, the result is far more important than the process.

LLMs and other generative AI must be held to higher standards. We must stop pretending these models are smart just because they use so much data. Data alone is useless without critical thinking and insight. If the models and their algorithms are flawed, there’s only so much the models can do with more data.

My own model, JakeGPT, is trained on nearly 40 years of experience as a real-world human being, including a marketing degree and 15 months in tech marketing. JakeGPT may not have been trained on the largest dataset, but at some point, data is no longer the limiting factor–so more data is not the answer.

Until AI can replace humans everywhere, it will be necessary to relate to humans to influence them. Data and facts and figures–the strengths of AI–can go only so far. Humans still respond to story, and personal stories are more effective than the generalizations that LLMs churn out.

Personal story and insights are the strengths of JakeGPT. Sure, the model is flawed and unintentionally biased in its own ways. But so are models like ChatGPT. And JakeGPT needs less data, less training, and less electricity. And perhaps best of all, JakeGPT is less likely to empower bad actors looking to deceive or harm others. (But if JakeGPT does ever go rogue, it can’t be used for nefarious purposes at the same scale as other models.)

And the cherry on top: JakeGPT plays for Team Human.¹

The internet is full of people worrying about there being too much AI, too fast just around the corner. But what if there’s not enough in a timely manner?

These days, people are worried about AI taking their jobs. And who can blame them, with all the stories circulating about AI’s great accomplishments. (P.S. If you’re looking for a counterweight to the hype, read Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis¹. And subscribe to Gary Marcus’s Substack while you’re at it.²)

It’s only natural that workers would worry about their jobs and livelihoods, when employers have a history of eliminating workers wherever they can. But employees are not the only ones who should be worried. Employers may find themselves wondering what they’ll do when AI can’t replace enough workers.

The Baby Boomers, the largest generation of all time, are retiring. Generation X and Millennials are already entrenched in the workforce while Generation Z/The Zoomers are entering the workforce. So we can basically say Gen Z is tasked with replacing the Boomers.

So what’s the big deal?

As Peter Zeihan is constantly reminding us, Gen Z is tiny in comparison to the Boombers³. Gen Z simply doesn’t have enough bodies to replace the exiting Boomers. On top of that, Gen Z is highly educated and great with technology. Very few in Gen Z want–or have the skill–to replace the blue collar Boomers leaving the workforce. In the coming years, we can likely expect a shortage of workers in fields like plumbing, carpentry, and truck driving.

Workers would be foolish not to exploit their leverage into better wages, benefits, and conditions for themselves. Despite what the prophets of AI may claim, AI is not ready to replace these missing workers.

In America (and much of the West), we’ve built our economy around cheap labor. This strategy made sense when we had the population to support it. And if there wasn’t someone here willing to do the job, you could bet there was someone on just the other side of the border eager to take on the task. But what does our world look like when you can’t count on imported labor when other populations are experiencing a similar decline, but at a faster rate?

The anti-immigration crowd really won’t have a leg to stand on. As David Frum has pointed out, the question isn’t whether we should allow immigration. The question is, How much?⁴ The follow-up question is, What kind of immigration should be allowed?

If, for whatever reason we’re worried about not having enough workers in the future, it sure would be nice if AI could help out a bit.

I’ll take this chance to echo a point I’ve made on other platforms: I’m not concerned that AI is ready to replace humans; I’m concerned that it isn’t ready but people will try to make it happen anyway. Some will try to make it happen because they’re excited by the hype. Some will make it happen because they don’t want to pay workers. And at some point, some will make it happen because they’re having trouble finding anyone with the proper skills to hire.

It would actually help if AI were as capable as its prophets insist. AI could help fill the labor gap and save a lot of people a lot of pain. So maybe we’ve been looking at this AI issue all wrong.

If only AI really were up for the tasks as has been promised, maybe then we’d be in for less headache in the years ahead.

For the last few years, the oil and gas sector has been waiting to be reshaped through mergers and acquisitions. Is ExxonMobil’s latest move a sign of the prophecy?

ExxonMobil recently shocked the energy industry with its nearly $60 billion bid to acquire Pioneer Natural Resources in an all-stock deal¹. When the deal closes, one of the world’s supermajors will have the acreage and production runway of the Permian Basin’s top driller. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods justified the deal simply²:

Their [Pioneer’s] capabilities, bringing in their Tier 1 acreage, our technology, our development approach, frankly, brings higher recovery at lower cost.

You can find plenty articles discussing the financial sense of this deal–and by all appearances, the deal makes plenty financial sense. But, as a hopeless writer, I can’t help looking at the acquisition from a storyteller’s lens.

Energy analysts have been predicting a wave of mergers of acquisitions (M&A) for a while now. The long-awaited prophecy appears to finally be coming true with the news of Exxon’s pending acquisition of Pioneer.

The early 2000s saw American exploration and production (E&P) activity dominated by the independent producers, as the majors decided to take their money international³. When those overseas ventures failed, the majors struggled to establish a foothold in America’s onshore plays. I was lucky to have started my oil and gas career during this independent-dominated phase, when even a marginally capable and reliable warm body could quickly climb the ranks. (A note for the young: Scott Galloway is right when he says it’s better to be mediocre in a booming field than to be outstanding in a mediocre field. Unfortunately, I can’t find the article/video in which he said this, but trust me on this one–he totes did.)

Many of the land professionals of my generation started their careers working with land services brokers in North Texas' Barnett Shale, most likely running title and leasing for Chesapeake Energy. Under CEO Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake sought to acquire as much acreage as possible, as fast as possible–costs and fiscal responsibility be damned. When natural gas prices fell from $14/MCF to sub-$3 and oil climbed to over $100 a barrel, the long-written off Permian Basin with its stacks and stacks of oil-producing formations became the industry darling⁴. The great land grab eventually led to chants of ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ as operators sought to prove up their assets. Mineral and royalty buyers sought to seize on this activity by buying in areas most likely to be drilled in the near future, ensuring they’d make their money back fast.

In the age of the independents, opportunities abound for money. But what about now, as we’re heading into the age of the majors? What happens to the industry as the majors spend money to make haves of the have-nots, to ensure the big only get bigger?

If Exxon really is kicking off the Great Consolidation, then we can expect to see less drilling in general. We haven’t seen significant sustained exploration of new fields for at least a decade. With reduced drilling, the mineral and royalty buyers will need to alter their business models.

Oil and gas is likely entering a less exciting but more stable era–an era far different from the one that let me start and develop my career. So I lean into this new era with melancholy as I accept that I’m getting old and the world around me is changing. I’m wise enough to know this new era won’t last forever. But I’m not smart enough to know how or when it will change, or what will change it.

In the late ’80s and the ’90s, conventional wisdom said the Permian Basin was dead. But conventional wisdom got bucked by unconventional drilling thanks to the combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking)⁵. Technology may very well again transform the industry, but who knows what those technological innovations will look like, or when they’ll happen. Fracking was discovered out of desperation and experimentation, not because of scientific theory that suggested the process would increase production⁶. Maybe the next great innovation will happen because someone somewhere says Hell, what have I got to lose? and tries something stupid that ends up looking genius in the end.

The industry may also change due to economics. If oil and gas prices go through the roof, fields once deemed uneconomic to drill will then make sense. The Permian Basin will still be the apple of the industry’s eye, but at least there will be more fields to play in and explore.

Yes, Exxon’s acquisition of Pioneer likely signals a shift in the industry. Since the news broke, word has leaked that Chesapeake is mulling acquiring Southwestern Energy⁷. And Devon Energy is also mulling acquiring Marathon Oil Corp. or CrownRock, the latter of which recently announced it was open to being acquired⁸.

One thing is certain: This era too shall pass. But what it shall pass to, we do not know.

Technology doesn’t progress on its own simply because we expect it to.

On a recent episode of Andrew Yang’s Forward podcast¹, Walter Isaacson shared an anecdote he picked up while shadowing Elon Musk for the entrepreneur’s recently-released eponymous biography². In this anecdote, Musk made the point that people take for granted that technology progresses on its own, as if it’s an unwritten law of the universe. As if things just move forward with time.

I haven’t been able to get Musk’s point out of my head after first hearing it. Why? What’s so significant about it? What does it really mean?

To me, it means humans have agency in shaping their future. More importantly, humans have a responsibility in shaping that future.

Too many of us accept that things will just work out. Or that they won’t. Whatever our outlook, we get complacent. We take whatever we can get. We accept the future and consequences we’re dealt. We blame the dealer even though we never acted on our chance to cut the deck.

Technology is not some mysterious force. There is no invisible hand of technology moving it in one direction or the other. Technology is the byproduct of our creations and the norms we create around using those creations.

At the time of this writing, AI is all the rage. I don’t think AI is worthy of being injected into every aspect of our lives, but unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it won’t be injected into every area and situation possible. But this strategy is unforgivably reckless, because, as John Oliver said in his bit about AI on Last Week Tonight³:

The problem with AI isn’t that it’s smart–it’s that it’s stupid in ways we can’t always predict.

On his Substack, Gary Marcus recently echoed this sentiment when he pointed out how DALL-E 3⁴, the latest version of OpenAI’s image generator, had problems showing black doctors with white patients, or a watch showing the time of 1 o’clock.⁵ We still don’t know the ways in which AI has unintentional bias. And we do a disservice by presenting AI as being limitlessly intelligent, when in fact its capabilities very much depend on how it’s trained and what it’s trained on.

At the risk of becoming a broken record, I’ll say it again: AI has potential. We should explore where and how it can help humanity. But we must do so in a responsible manner. We must be thoughtful and deliberate. Right now, we’re being anything but.

Technology doesn’t simply advance just because. It moves along the path we create for it. And I hope more people will start chiming in on which path we set this risky technology on. Just because there are risks involved doesn’t mean there aren’t great benefits waiting. But again, those benefits won’t happen on their own. We must play our part in making those benefits reality.

Can we be mindful in the 21st century?

Introverts make up at least one-third of the population—maybe as high as one-half—yet in so many ways the world feels as if it’s made only for extroverts. How can it be that our social systems benefit one type of person while alienating the other?¹

Pop culture often presents the introvert as being inadequate and odd, a type of person to be fixed or merely tolerated when possible. Introverts are often described as antisocial, but it would be more accurate to say introverts have a different threshold for social interaction. I, as an introvert, recognized this distinction during the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, I thought I’d be fine in isolation. But forced social distancing revealed that I craved interaction. Interaction itself wasn’t the issue—the quality and frequency of interaction were the real questions.

And those questions of quality and frequency have led to my questioning online interactions, mostly via social media. This extroverted world expects us to be everywhere online at all times. Digital tools are available to help us scale, to be present at many places at once. But operating this way leads to the problems of the quality and the frequency of conversation. We’re told to keep the conversation going so that the algorithms favor us and push our content to more viewers in the name of promoting the conversation—conversation we may not even want to be part of.

In her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking², Susan Cain argues that introverts need seclusion to recover after interactions. Introverts tend to perceive more than extroverts, Cain says, so introverts have more to sort through after social situations. This always ‘ON’ world of social media means introverts have an endless wave of interactions to process, all of this in addition to their offline interactions.

But what about the physical world, the one we live in without the need for screens? Where’s the concern about making sure we’re present there, and that we can process all happening around us? How can any anyone hope to process anything when new events are constantly dinging for our attention? We’re constantly connected to the world at all times. But why? Do we want to be? Should we want to be?

Questions like these are the ones that have been floating in my head since I started reading Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now³ by Douglas Rushkoff. What exactly does ‘present’ mean? What is the true present moment? The tangible present, or the virtual present?

Are these questions as concerning for extroverts? Or, do they feel the more presents, the better? If you see an issue, you must then consider the costs, both the costs of being so present and also the cost of not being present. You must find your own balance and determine when and where you want to be present—or have the energy to do so. Some will try to convince you that you must be everywhere. But if you’re everywhere, are you really ever anywhere? This is the same question I ask of those hoping to scale their presence with the help of AI. Doesn’t being everywhere in such fashion cheapen the worth of your time and presence? Isn’t your scarce availability the true value of your presence? Is there any added value in our truly being present? Will anyone know the difference?

The promise of ‘community’ is supposed to be part of the appeal of social media and the modern web. But so many digital platforms seek to be a one-size-fits-all solution for the masses. ‘Community’ and ‘masses’ are often conflicting terms. How often can we have community if we invite the masses? To be noticed on these platforms often requires appeasing to the masses while ignoring your potential true audience, meaning the masses then distract from the true community.

Our presence is more than a simple commodity. Or is it?

By embracing digital extroversion, not only are we giving away our attention and our presence—we’re also giving away data, which recently may have been used to train generative AI models we now fear may take our jobs⁴.

Living as an extrovert introduces noise, both literal and figurative, into your life, which is fine if you’re up for it. But the extroverted web doesn’t want you to slip away to recover and rejoin when you’re ready. The extroverted web says you’re missing out on the endless firehouse of content that will be outdated and irrelevant by the time you learn about it. You’re also missing out on exposure, as the most crucial part of the online growth formula seems to be consistency, meaning you must constantly churn out content so that your audience doesn’t forget you.

These days, there’s far too much content to stay current on. And what kind of audience do you have—and what’s your relationship with them—if the volume of your output is exponentially more valuable than the quality of your output?

The tech giants have built their platforms on our content. They’ve simply given us a place to connect, but we do the hard work of creating content that keeps eyeballs on the page or on the app. No wonder the tech giants love the extroverted model.

Eventually, digital extroversion turns into neediness, in the form the need to be liked and accepted, to increase the chances of being watched. A need to be interesting without offending, for fear of having your content demonetized or shadowbanned. This neediness risks becoming a need to fit in, to be like everyone else online—an NPC⁵ in a vast sea of unimaginative homogenization where imitation is often the safest path to success.

For some, this formula may not be a problem, especially if the main goal is to be popular. But the rest of us likely find ourselves sucked into this way of thinking because it’s so prevalent—we don’t even realize we’re influenced by it. So we end up chasing a goal we may not even want. We no longer create only for the sake of it. We create for likes and views and follows, making the internet far less interesting and dynamic.

Offline, introverts often get out of their shells to put themselves out there and meet the world halfway. But to have meaningful sustained discourse with introverts often requires pursuing them to some degree. Maybe this is how it should be online as well. Offline, we have the option to go to so many parties that we never attend. Maybe this is how it should be online too. We can try the parties every once in a while when we feel up to it, but the rest of the time you can find us at our websites and email addresses. Reaching us may take a little effort on your end, but hopefully it’s worth it.

What does convenience cost us in the long run?

Listen on Anchor

As long as there are people, there will be questions about the human condition. How are people doing? What are their greatest struggles and fears and joys? And what does it mean to be a real human being¹ at any point in time?

Odds are good I won’t make it out of the 21st century alive. So considering what it means to be human in the 21st century seems a good place to put my energy for the next version of my blog.

In so many ways, life has never been better for those of us in the first world. We’ve spent most of our lives in unprecedented safety and convenience, thanks at least in part to technology. But, strange as it may sound, might that same convenience bring about our greatest challenges? The world is at our fingertips thanks to smart phones and other mobile devices. But having these remedies to boredom always at arm’s length makes it hard to be present in the real world beyond the screens. We must also fight the temptation to live always in a digital world when tech titans are always telling us what a great option it is. And don’t forget that these same titans have engineered their products and services to be addictive to keep us coming back. As they keep us addicted, they’re harvesting our data and doing who knows what with it. We now know they’re using that same data to train AI with the hope of replacing us. Many businesses will adopt these AI ‘solutions’ haphazardly, putting humans at risk in the name of efficiency.

I grew up enamored with technology, believing it could make life better. I still believe it can, with some caveats. Inserting technology into a process or situation doesn’t guarantee success. And it’s hard to do the right way. Drumming up hype and excitement is easy, but those same elements make it hard to know if the technology is actually useful, or useful to the extent promised.

We’ve reached a point where we need to put this convenience into perspective. Has it really been all that great? Has it served us as users? Even if everything was great in the past, that doesn’t mean we have to go along for the ride in the future. Maybe some people feel the past cost of convenience was fine, but they’re not so sure about the costs of what’s ahead. Or, maybe we don’t have a choice. Maybe certain things are set in motion, meaning the future is already determined and there’s nothing we can do about it. To be clear, I don’t hold this view, but if you do, I hope you’ll agree we should consider what lies ahead as we can best prepare ourselves.

I don’t pretend to have a crystal ball that shows the future. While I ponder our future, I’m no futurist. I prefer to discuss how things can go rather than how they will go. So while I don’t have predictions of the future, I do have concerns and hopes. I’m concerned that certain advances in technology seek to make humans irrelevant². But I hope we can find our way to maintain–and improve–our humanity.

What does it mean to be human in the 21st century? What are our best parts that should be amplified? And which parts should be improved upon? These are fair questions, and there are so many similar questions deserving consideration. So I hope you’ll join me as I do my best to do them justice.

You can follow along via RSS or email. And feel free to drop me a line from time to time. I like communication with a human touch.

The more I learn about nuclear, the more I become convinced it’s the key to solving our energy woes. And Michael Shellenberger’s Apocalypse Never¹ may have pushed me over the edge.

Cover of Michael Shellenberger’s Apocalypse Never Photo credit: Amazon

Why are environmentalists so strongly opposed to nuclear energy? Nuclear is abundant, clean, and energy dense. Yet so-called environmentalists (or, perhaps more appropriately, environmental alarmists) keep pushing for solar and wind, which are proven to be inefficient and terrible for the environment in their own ways.

The dangers of environmental alarmism

Apocalypse Never is not a book about climate change denialism. Shellenberger believes in climate change and also believes humans play a role.

But he argues climate change is not the same as climate catastrophe, and environmental alarmism does more harm than good.

Shellenberger’s case has merit when you look into some details of environmental alarmism.

For one, enviornmental alarmists don’t look at how we can adapt to climate change. They instead repeat the narrative that it’s too late and that climate change can’t be stopped. While climate change may unstoppable, it’s not necessarily catastrophic. And if it’s inevitable, then we should learn to live with the coming changes, which is far more productive than waving our hands in the air and declaring the end. Humans are adaptive and resilient. The sooner we start changing with the times, the better.

Another aspect to consider is the hypocrisy of developed nations pushing developing nations to “leapfrog” straight to renewable energy while bypassing fossil fuels. Never mind the fact that sources of renewable energy such as solar and wind are expensive and not as efficient as fossil fuels.

Rather than focus on holding back the developing nations, those already developed should consider how to responsibly help them progress. Developed nations should lean into alternative fuels where it makes sense, while helping developing nations improve their infrastructure with fossil fuels and then accelerate into alternative fuels. Restricting developing nations from improving their own infrastructure hurts the citizens of those nations. It’s easy for the developed nations to push this agenda when they themselves are not affected by the policies they promote.

The public narrative suggests that fans of renewable energy see the agents of fossil fuels as their enemy. But Shellenberger raises the possibility that these two industries instead have a shared enemy in nuclear energy.

Shellenberger shows example after example of environmental groups and individual advocates (such as Sierra Club and Al Gore) accepting money from fossil fuel companies, which feels like a stark contradiction to their ideology.

But, when you look for the similarities between fossil fuel companies and renewable energy companies, you find a shared hatred of nuclear energy.

Shellenberger then asks the logical question: “[H]ow long, exactly, have oil and gas interests been funding environmental groups to shut down nuclear plants?”

If nuclear is as good as advertised, then how much need would there be for other forms of energy?

Much of the opposition to nuclear energy is simply out of line.

Some point to Chernobyl as a warning. But Chernobyl was more an issue of Soviet neglect than an issue of nuclear power².

But what about Fukushima? Turns out neglect was an issue there as well³:

The tsunami countermeasures taken when Fukushima Daiichi was designed and sited in the 1960s were considered acceptable in relation to the scientific knowledge then, with low recorded run-up heights for that particular coastline. But some 18 years before the 2011 disaster, new scientific knowledge had emerged about the likelihood of a large earthquake and resulting major tsunami of some 15.7 metres at the Daiichi site. However, this had not yet led to any major action by either the plant operator, Tepco, or government regulators, notably the Nuclear & Industrial Safety Agency (NISA). Discussion was ongoing, but action minimal.

This negligence rhymes a bit with the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, which we now know was made worse by faulty levees neglected despite warnings they were inadequate for a major storm.

In each of these cases, humans could have done more to lessen the damage of these disasters. But many choose to scapegoat the disasters themselves rather than look at what we could have done better. Such negligence will only be perpetuated by the narrative that it’s too late and that there’s nothing we can do about our impending doom.

Shellnberger argues that ideology is to blame and calls environmental alarmism the new secular religion.

Many have already accepted our climate apocalypse, so they look only for validation while rejecting the idea of improving our situation. Religious zealots often quote their religious tomes when referencing modern events as proof of the coming Armageddon. Environmental alarmists do much the same, except they quote choice books of science.

When you’ve accepted an outcome, you default to validating it, rather than remaining open to the possibility you may be wrong. So the enviromental alarmists reject any data contradicting their gloomy predictions.

How green is renewable energy really?

When you scratch beneath the surface, you start to see issues with the renewable energy narrative:

1. How green are electric vehicles (EVs) if they’re getting electricity from fossil fuels⁴?
2. How are the materials used for EVs, solar panels, and windmills mined, manufactured, and installed? (Most likely with the aid of fossil fuels and at great damage to their enviornments⁵.)
3. How can we say energy sources such as solar and wind are environmentally friendly when they’re far less energy dense than fossil fuels and require much more land surface area⁶? (Also, windmills are loud and disrupt bird habitats.)
4. How can we call solar and wind green when recycling solar panels and windmills is an absolute nightmare? (We don’t have the ability or capacity to recycle these parts, so they create more waste when they’re retired⁷.)

To be clear, these points do not suggest that fossil fuels are a net zero fuel source. But they do suggest that “green” energy may not be too much better in comparison when considering the whole picture.

Why nuclear is the answer

As the Office of Nuclear Energy points outs⁸, there are three reasons nuclear energy is the way to go:

1. Nuclear is a zero-emission clean energy source.
2. Nuclear energy produces more electricity on less land than any other clean-air source. (It’s energy dense.)
3. Nuclear energy produces minimal waste.

Other forms of renewable energy such as solar and wind likely have a place in the world’s future energy portfolio. But they don’t deserve to be the star of the show. That honor belongs to nuclear.

But even if we universally agreed to adopt more nuclear energy, we can’t just flick a switch and make it happen.

Bringing a new nuclear facility online takes years, sometimes nearly a decade⁹. So we can’t solve our energy woes in the 2020s.

But you know the old saying: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.

The delayed payoff is no reason to abandon building new nuclear plants. Investing in nuclear is an investment in our energy future.

In the meantime, we should continue relying on fossil fuels to keep the world moving until we can hand the torch to nuclear.

In November of last year I wanted a convenient way to carry my jounral, pens, and Kindle together. These items easily fit into my backpack I use for my day job. But sometimes I don’t want to carry my laptop and chargers and everything else I usually carry to and from the office.

I wanted something that would make it easy to keep my writerly items together so I could easily remove them from my backpack in one motion.

So I took advantage of a Black Friday deal and bought the diodrio A5 zipper journal cover.

diodrio A5 zipper journal cover—Image courtsey of product listing on Amazon

This cover isn’t a necessity. But it packs a lot of convenience for what I paid for it: less than $11.

🗒️ Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the product or any of the companies mentioned in this review. I bought this product with my own money and wrote this review by choice.

diodrio A5 zipper journal cover specifications

Below are some highlights featured on the Amazon product listing:

• Dimensions: 6.9" x 9.8"
• Can hold A5 notebook or notepad
• Zipper to keep contents secure
• 2 front pouches to hold pens or other items
• Inside features:
  • 3 card slots
  • 1 mesh pocket
• Water resistant cover
  (I have not tested this feature and have no plans to do so.)
• List price: $22.99
• Price I paid: $10.99

🗒️ Note: This item was listed at $11.99 on January 29, 2023. So it may be on sale, depending on when you’re reading this review.

Use and experience

This cover works as expected. And at a great price.

The cover has plenty space to hold a thick A5 journal. Mine is holding an A5 journal from SAKAEtp, with 368 pages of 68gsm Tomoe River paper. Whether the cover can hold your journal of choice will also depend on what else you hold inside the cover.

The inside of my cover holds a journal and my Kindle Oasis.

And my front pocket holds a few pens and a mechanical pencil.

One of the front pockets can hold an iPhone 7 without a case. (Do what you will with that information.)

Because the cover can hold an A5 notebook or notepad, you can use one of the slots for extra storage. Maybe for a few sticky notes.

Photo courtesy of Amazon product listing

The product listing boasts that the cover includes a strap for easy carrying. But it adds little to no value for me. I prefer to hold and carry the cover like a large hardcover book.

Is the diodrio A5 zipper journal cover worth it?

For the price I paid—$10.99 plus tax—the answer is YES.

Is it worth the list price of $22.99? That question is harder to answer because I didn’t pay full price.

But I’m again leaning toward yes.

This cover includes a lot of storage options in a neat, tiny package.

I can’t yet speak to the cover’s long-term durability. But it’s held up well in my first couple months of use. I haven’t tried to destroy the cover. But I also haven’t been the gentlest with it due to its low price.

This cheap cover has scratched itches I’ve had for more expensive covers such as the zip folios from Galen Leather for $119.

There are certainly nicer (and more expensive) covers out there. But it’s hard to imagine many more practical than the diodrio A5 zipper journal cover on sale.

The Pilot Metropolitan tops most lists of starter fountain pens.

The Metropolitan is a good pen. But it’s not even the best starter fountain pen within its own brand. That honor belongs to the Pilot Kakuno. That’s like naming a college football team #1 in the country when they didn’t even win their conference. I mean, it happens—but it doesn’t feel right.

Image of Pilot Kakuno fountain pen courtsey of JetPens

Pilot Kakuno and Pilot Metropolitan specifications side by side

🗒️ Note: The specifications for these pens were copied or adapted from JetPens and Goulet Pens.

Pilot Kakuno cons

The Pilot Kakuno has some features (or lack of) that may make it less desirable than the Metropolitan:

• Lack of clip on cap
  (But the cap includes a small tab to prevent rolling on surfaces.)
• Plastic body and lighter weight compared to the Metropolitan
• Smiley face on the nib
  (Or this may be a feature, depending on your tastes. I’m not a fan.)

The smiley face on the Pilot Kakuno—Photo courtsey of JetPens

The Pilot Metropolitan is not worth double the price of the Kakuno

You can argue the Metropolitan is a better pen than the Kakuno. For one, the Metropolitan includes a clip on its cap, which the Kakuno lacks. And some users prefer the metal body and heavier weight of the Metropolitan. (I myself am not bothered by the plastic body of the Kakuno. And I love how light it is in comparison to the Metropolitan.)

But the Metropolitan is not worth nearly twice the price of the Kakuno as a starter pen for the masses.

The nib is what makes Pilot pens so great. And with the Kakuno, you get the Pilot nib so many pen hobbyists know and love, at around half the price of the Metropolitan.

Both the Kakuno and the Metropolitan come with ink cartridges. So both requiring buying a converter if you prefer converters over cartridges.

The Metropolitan may be a better pen for some people. But the Kakuno is the better choice for broad recommendations—like any list about the top starter fountain pens.

Let’s kill title case once and for all. Except for in one specific situation—when writing titles.

But for everything else, kill title case and use sentence case instead.

Title case has no place in:

• Blog headings
• UX/UI
• Calls to action (CTAs)
• Sentences

Title case is a pain to read.

Switching between capital and lowercase letters makes readers uneasy. Too many capital letters make reading confusing. Readers ask themselves if the capitalized words are proper nouns or important words. Title case makes readers think too much. And that’s a no-no. (Steve Krug wrote a whole book about why that’s a bad idea.)

While ALL CAPS may come across as rude, they’re actually more considerate because at least they’re consistent.

Unless you’re writing a title, capitalize only the first letter and then any proper nouns that follow.

Just say no to title case. Choose sentence case.

Let’s be real: Your readers likely won’t thank you for using sentence case over title case. But your writing will be easier to read.

And, really, ain’t that what this whole writing thing is all about?

Writing is easy. All you do is string together a bunch of words.

Or so some would have you think. Never mind the fact that so many of us are terrible at saying what we mean.

Writing is much harder than some give credit.

Because writing is more than words.

Writing is research

Finding the right words is much harder when you don’t know what you want to say.

The words flow more easily if you’ve researched your topic. If you’ve read up and immersed yourself in related matters. If you’ve taken notes in your own words.

You gotta make deposits before you make withdrawals. And in writing, those deposits come in the form or research.

Writing is empathy

Readers are more likely to remember writing that speaks to them. That speaks to their struggles and fears. That speaks to where they’ve been, where they are, and where hoping to end up.

Writing is more powerful when it comes from a writer who is human. Someone with empathy.

🗒️ Note: The advantage of empathy is one of many reasons AI writers like ChatGPT won’t replace quality content writers.

Writing is visual

Most writers don’t think of themselves as visual artists. But the visual aspects of writing still matter.

There’s a reason we break our text into paragraphs or lines rather than crapping our words into one big block.

There’s a reason bloggers use headers in their posts to join related sentences.

And there’s a reason we should use title case only when absolutely necessary.

The reason? Writing is visual.

So, the next someone asks why you’re making such a big deal about writing. That it’s just the act of putting a bunch of words together, one after the other. Just send them this post and tell them to STFU.

So many of us, over the last couple years, have been rethinking our relationship with social media and the internet at large.

My own wonderings about technology have seen me dabbling into using only open source operating systems and software. But I’ve recently realized that while I appreciate open source and like the idea of all technology being open source, I am not an open source purist or absolutist. Like so many digital citizens, I have concerns about privacy and security. But in these areas, again, I am not a purist.

If I feel this way about technology at large, it only makes sense that I have similar concerns about social media. And I imagine I’m not alone.

So if I’m correct, then it makes sense to ask:

What’s the problem with social media?

Social media used to be a way to stay in touch with friends and family and random weirdos you found in various corners of the internet. But now it feels like this thing we do out of habit, even though it drives us crazy.

The problem with social media overwhelmingly seems to be the engagement algorithms. The efforts to keep us coming back for more to boost ad revenue, even if that increased engagement results in angrier users.

What’s so bad about social media engagement algorithms?

Angry users—a side effect of these engagement algorithms—is definitely a problem. But I think there’s another factor that doesn’t get enough attention: These engagement algorithms lead to an illusion of choice.

Users put effort into finding and following relevant and interesting voices, only to have another factor—the abstract yet opaque engagement algorithms—determine their experience on a social network.

When we don’t know how these algorithms work—or when they’re working—how can we be confident in our ability to build or curate own digital experience? Where is the line between being responsible for our own experience and being manipulated by mysterious forces we’re ill-equipped to fight?

As Cal Newport has pointed out, social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram built their services through network effects. People joined these sites to connect with others they knew or were interested in. And the fact everyone they knew was already on these established sites was enough to keep them there. Leaving behind your connections and starting over was too costly.

But these social media giants gave up the advantage of network effects when they started using engagement algorithms. They threw away the main reason people used their services. And in so many ways, the move from network effects to engagement algorithms felt like a bait and switch.

Why aren’t engagement algorithms on TikTok a problem?

While concerns about security and privacy on TikTok appear valid, this post will ignore, but not discount, those concerns to stay on one point.

While users may have concerns about the types of content the TikTok algorithms serve, most users are not bothered by the presence of algorithms themselves on the service. Unlike the case with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, engagement algorithms are part of the appeal of TikTok. On TikTok, the algorithms are a feature, not a bug.

TikTok can get by with using algorithms because TikTok doesn’t give users the illusion of control. TikTok doesn’t pretend to deliver content based on whom you follow. It’s common knowledge that TikTok’s engagement algorithms, aided with data from your views, likes, comments, and shares, decide what you see in your main feed. You have to choose the Following feed for the hope of seeing content from those you follow. So while keeping up with those you follow is an option, it is not the default. TikTok is made for finding engaging content, not for keeping up with those you already know. TikTok kind of gives you the option to follow individuals, but it doesn’t put much effort into that angle.

While TikTok may be worthy of criticisms in some areas, the service deserves credit in terms of algorithms. While parent company ByteDance may not be transparent about how TikTok’s engagement algorithms work, it has at least been transparent in the fact TikTok operates through engagement algorithms.

Users are aware of the presence of algorithms when they sign up for TikTok. They know what they’re getting into. And they’re mostly fine with that because they’re not signing up to keep in touch with friends and family as they did on other sites.

Can social networks have any value once engagement algorithms are present?

The network effect seems to persist only as long as social media services steer clear of engagement algorithms. A couple such examples include Mastodon and micro.blog.

Networks on LinkedIn once had value because the connections were likely to be genuine, in that you either knew the person you connected to, or you had an interest in that person. But now, many connections are made only for the intent of increasing who sees a member’s content, AKA engagement.

And once users figure what gets engagement, it’s only natural that many would start creating content in the tried-and-true formula. So users see the same types of content over and over. Originality exists on these platforms. But it goes unseen, unrecognized, unappreciated. And so mainstream social media becomes the digital suburbs, full of cookie cutter houses lined with the same bushes and political signs.

What’s the answer to social media engagement algorithms?

While web3 promises to solve all our digital woes, I find the solution to be a simple and old technology: RSS.

Watch the video below if you’re unfamiliar with the wonders of RSS:

🗒️ Note: This video is 15 years old, so it doesn’t address that Google Reader is now dead. At only $15 a year, Miniflux a great alternative. Or check out Reeder 5 or NetNewsWire if you’re on Mac/iOS/iPad OS.

How does RSS fix the illusion of control?

RSS is the obvious choice for one simple reason: It doesn’t give the illusion of control—it instead gives actual control.

With RSS, you decide what to subscribe to. You decide what’s important to you. You decide what you pay attention to.

You are once again responsible for your online experience.

Sure, curating your experience takes a little more effort than relying on social media engagement algorithms. But it’s worth it.

The end of the year is a great time to look at what lies ahead. Because I prefer asking important questions over making bold predictions, I’ve lately been wondering: What will digital marketing on a post-Web2 internet look like?

When people think of Web3, they likely think of the blockchain and crypto and other related technologies. I’m not so sure that’s where we’re headed. But maybe those details aren’t so important.

What did digital marketing on Web2 mean?

When I think of digital marketing on Web2, I think of easy metrics.

Google was free to collect and report seemingly endless data points via Google Analytics and other platforms. Siloing social media into a few major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter made reaching the masses easier than in the early days of Web1.

It was easy to know where to find your customers. And it was easy to collect data and create reports to see if your marketing efforts are paying off.

Slowly but surely, those days seem to be coming to an end.

What will marketing on Web3 look like?

As data collection practices improve by legislation and other platforms lose their appeal as users tire of engagement algorithms and senseless internet drama, the web seems destined to fragment more in the coming years.

Metrics and data will still be crucial going forward. But what metrics and data will we focus on as the landscape changes and information we once took for granted is now harder to come by?

How will we define success if we’re getting fewer results from more channels?

Will fragmentation require businesses to be more thoughtful in their marketing? To invest more in building more genuine communities? Might sites like reddit become more important in the future of digital marketing?

The original hope of the web

I recently re-read Tribes by Seth Godin to see how it stood up fourteen years after its original publication. Re-reading the book reminded me of the techno-optimism so many of us shared in the early 2000s. Fast forward nearly a decade and half later, and many of the tools we once loved now seem like our worst enemies.

Maybe Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight was talking about the big dogs of Web2 when he said:

Either you die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

As I’ve already said, I’m not in the prediction game. But my questions give some insight into my hopes.

And with that, bring on the new year.

What if Web3 isn’t an evolution but a move to something like the web’s original form? Not an arrival but a return. A regression of sorts. A devolution in the most positive context.

These are some of the questions I’ve been asking about Web3 over the last few months. And these questions hint to my hopes—but not my predictions—for the future of the web after the apparent falls of Twitter and Meta.

What would a return to the early days of Web1 look like?

Noah Smith recently wrote what I had previously only spoken:

When I first got access to the internet as a kid, the very first thing I did was to find people who liked the same things I liked — science fiction novels and TV shows, Dungeons and Dragons, and so on. In the early days, that was what you did when you got online — you found your people, whether on Usenet or IRC or Web forums or MUSHes and MUDs. Real life was where you had to interact with a bunch of people who rubbed you the wrong way — the coworker who didn’t like your politics, the parents who nagged you to get a real job, the popular kids with their fancy cars. The internet was where you could just go be a dork with other dorks, whether you were an anime fan or a libertarian gun nut or a lonely Christian 40-something or a gay kid who was still in the closet. Community was the escape hatch.

Smith’s recollection of the early days of the web sum up what many of us are aiming for: A return to a special kind of community, rather than another opportunity to interact with those we already get enough of offline.

The technology of Web2 will not disappear. But how we use such technology may—and should—change.

And so Web3 may not be the next release number but instead a matter of simple math:

Web 3 = Web1 philosophy + Web2 technology

What exactly is the philosophy of Web1?

The philosophy of Web1 basically the promise of Web3: Decentralization. Fragmentation. An internet that’s harder to silo into a few sites and services.

write.as founder Matt Baer has often criticized Web3 and made the point that decentralization is already possible through technology we take for granted or may have long forgotten, such as email and RSS.

Molly White, creator of Web3 is Going Just Great, has often branded Web3 and its related technologies as solutions in search of a problem. She’s also made the point that technology on its own rarely solves problems. Change is often aided by other forces such as regulation.

In this case, the change we need must be aided with philosophy, which will then change how people use technology.

This moment in time brings up another point: More technology is not always the answer, especially when we’re not properly using the features we already have. So better philosophy and better usage are better paths to seek and take.

What’s so bad about Web2 anyway?

Web2 has not benefitted users nearly as much as the few corporations who have used their network effects to consolidate power into a handful of services. This model needs to fall. And I hope—but do not predict—that it will soon.

But Web3 of the crypto/blockchain kind is not the answer. If anything, it will only further complicate the digital landscape.

The technology for decentralization already exists. All we have to do is use it the right way, something we haven’t been doing for the last decade or so.

“It’s like putting together a puzzle.” That’s how my buddy explained oil and gas abstracting. “Does that sound like something you’d be interested in?”

Yeah, I told him. I’ll give it a shot. I still had no idea what “abstracting” and “chain of title” and “runsheet” and “mineral ownership report” meant, but it all sounded better than selling cars in the middle of the financial crisis.

It didn’t take long to see what he meant by saying that my new job was like putting together a puzzle. And it didn’t take long to figure out that I liked the job. And now, all these years later, I’ve found myself asking why exactly title research resonated with me, because it wasn’t something I wanted to do before February 2008, when I first moved to Texas. Before then, title research wasn’t something I realized was even an option.

With oil and gas abstracting, the desired scene of the completed puzzle is always the same: You’re trying to get to 1. No matter how many owners under one tract of land, no matter how fragmented the interest—the final report should be whole. Complete. Like a jigsaw puzzle.

Through the lens of puzzle-making is another way to look at writing. Whatever we’re writing, we’re always checking to make sure that we have all the pieces. If we ever feel as if we do have all the pieces, then we have to worry about putting them in the right places. But when we do so, maybe we discover that we’ve put together a puzzle different from the one we had in mind when we started. Maybe the final picture doesn’t match the one on the box.

Complex title and mineral ownership necessitates a flowchart. I think of flowcharts as roadmaps that show where ownership began—usually with a patent from a state agency to the original grantee of the land—and the path it took to get to its current state. Writing is a bit like a roadmap too, starting readers at one place and then leading them somewhere else at the end.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this analogy is that our writing most likely never has all the pieces to make everything whole. Something is always missing. And if something’s not missing for one reader or audience, that doesn’t mean something’s not missing for another. Our projects will never be perfect. And we may reach the point of doing more harm than good if we keep cramming in more information at the expense of the flow or of our readers' attention spans and patience.

But still, we have to try to get enough pieces. And we have to lay down the roadmap to show the proper order in which each piece needs to be experienced.

We have to write the puzzle as best we can.

So many of us have this habit of romanticizing great writing.

We dream of the genius writers sitting alone at their desks, sipping on a cappuccino as the perfect words flow from their minds through their hands and onto the page.

And so, when we sit down for our own writing, this is the image we’re seeking to emulate.

Romanticizing great writing is harmful for a couple reasons:

1. It makes us feel as if we can’t write great works because we’re not the same kind of genius.
2. We’re set up for failure because we think great writing should come so easily.

Great writing is hard. Great writing is work.

And great writing is iterative. It comes in steps.

Study the habits of great writers enough and you’ll probably read or hear the point that the secret to great writing is rewriting. That’s right: Your first draft is probably not going to be on par with the idea of the genius writer in your head.

So you’re going to have to write and write and write again. AKA rewrite.

Structuring for iterative writing

I recently started a new job as a marketing specialist at an IT support firm. Our first order of business is to revamp our website.

We’ve already established a basic framework for our new website. But now we need some copy.

Time to put on the writer hat.

I don’t want to let perfectionism get in the way of good ideas.

So I’ve started with a scrap file.

Originally I started writing in Notepad on Windows. Then I moved to using Markdown in Visual Studio Code.

Then my boss said he wanted to see my ideas and collaborate, so I migrated the scrap file to Microsoft OneNote.

All of that to say you can structure for iterative writing in a variety of apps. Doing so doesn’t require any technical ability. Instead, doing so requires the proper mindset.

I have three main topics I’m juggling and trying to write copy for.

So I’ve structured my scrap file as follows:

• Unorganized
• Topic 1
  • Subtopic 1.1
  • Subtopic 1.2
• Topic 2
• Subtopic 2.1
• Subtopic 2.2
• Topic 3
• Subtopic 3.1
• Subtopic 3.2

As ideas pop into my head, I simply sort them underneath the appropriate topic or subtopic.

“Unorganized” is just what it sounds like—that’s where I keep the ideas I can’t quite find a home for yet. Or maybe they pertain to parts I’m not writing for yet.

This is not the time to focus on one thing and one thing only.

This is the time to let ideas flow. I don’t want to reject what may be a good idea because it doesn’t fit at the moment.

Don’t worry too much about structure and the final product. Save formatting for the end.

Besides, finding the perfect font before you start is not going to help your writing.

This is not the time to be precious about your writing.

Why iterative writing works

Iterative writing sets up more realistic expectations.

By demystifying the writing process and seeing how it really works, I can acknowledge that anything I put into my scrap file will likely need a ton of polish to have any chance of making it onto the launched website.

I now know that my writing needs to start with an ideation phase, where I’m free to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

And from there, I’ll work through a series of rewrites until I feel I have something worthy of publishing.

Writers often worry about word count. Now that writing has gone digital, many also worry about character count, especially on platforms like Twitter.

The problem with word count

Is word count really what we should be worried about when character count is not an issue?

Word count tells only part of the story.

One word equals one word. But word count alone doesn’t give clues about how difficult a sentence or piece of work is to read.

That’s why we should also consider syllable count.

The case for syllable count

There’s no point in having fewer words if they’re a mouthful to say.

Copywriters in particular can fall into the trap of excessive syllables. (Hello, jargon and business speak.)

You’ve likely seen ads for products and services promising to maximize profitability. A simpler promise would be to increase profits.

Let’s do some quick maths:

Increase profits = 4 syllables

Maximize alone = 3 syllables

Maximize profitability = lol, I ain’t counting that mess.

One more for the road

Another example is fundamentals vs. basics.

Fundamentals = 4 syllables

Basics = 2 syllables—and it basically means the same thing.

Fewer syllables amount to less information to take in, interpret, process, and act on.

In some situations, focusing on syllables is more efficient than focusing on word count.

Feel free to argue. Or altercate. Whichever fits your syllable preference.

Job interviews suck. There’s no denying it.

You never know what you’re walking into. An interview may be a one-on-one affair, or it may be you seated across from six other people all staring at you like a jury eager to convict.

Or maybe you go through multiple interviews back to back. And there’s always the chance someone will join the interview late and ask questions you’ve already answered. Of course, the latecomers always ask the questions you had the weakest answers for.

As you’re doing all you can to impress the decision maker(s), you’re also deciding if this song and dance is worth it—if the job and the company are a good fit for you.

The worst is when you’re an hour into an interview and you realize you don’t want the job.

While you can’t eliminate these interviews, you can at least identify them quickly. Then you can cut the interview short, or at least not work to extend it. Or, if you can’t save yourself from wasting any more time, you can at least save yourself from wasting any more emotional energy.

One job interview question you must ask

There is one question you should be sure to ask in all future job interviews:

What about my credentials made you want to interview me?

Feel free to ask this question in your own words—don’t worry about asking it verbatim.

Why this question is crucial

Job interviews are not only about satisfying the needs of the employer; you need to know your value is recognized as well.

Never forget: You’re interviewing them just as much as they’re interviewing you.

You need to know they understand the skills and experience you offer. You need to know they’ve invested time in getting to know you, just as they need to know you’ve invested time in getting to know them.

Job interviews are a two-way street.

The potential employer’s answer to the question gives insight into what they’ll be like to work with. If they can’t appreciate your past work, there’s a good chance they won’t appreciate your future work either.

But if they answer in a way that shows they’ve paid attention, then you might be on a good path.

Don’t just assume they’re paying attention

Don’t be surprised if interviewers ask questions that show they haven’t been paying attention.

Recruiters in particular are notorious for reaching out because they saw one keyword on a résumé and thought they’d found their guy or gal. And then when they slow down and start thinking critically, they quickly realize you’re missing 90% of the crucial qualifications.

This question reveals whether they’re paying attention or are just hoping they’ll stumble upon the perfect candidate.

The credentials interview question in action

I asked a variation of the credentials questions during my most recent job search.

A little background:

I was interviewing for a content manager position after spending nine months as a marketing specialist. Before breaking into marketing, I had spent nearly 14 years as a petroleum landman.

My version of the credentials question went something like this:

I don’t have the traditional marketing background.

So what did you see on my résumé, or what feedback from the recruiter made you think I could be a good fit for this position?

My future boss said he had looked over my portfolio pieces and he found my writing to be simple and clear.

This feedback gave me confidence when completing an assessment, and also for my final interview.

Quickly qualify or quickly disqualify

Asking this question also tells you what you should focus on when selling yourself for the job. You will have identified what your potential employer sees as your most desirable assets.

On the flip side, if the interviewer values traits you don’t value—or traits you want to get away from—then the job may not be a good fit for you.

The unfortunate truth is that most jobs will not be a good fit. Too many factors go into finding the right job: timing, the company and its culture, your team and leadership, the responsibilities of the position itself.

Your goal in an interview should not be only to get a new job. Your goal should also include identifying the jobs that aren’t a good fit so that you can move on to those that may be worth the trouble.

I’ve been rethinking my relationship with technology since I started reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

After mentioning this book is usually when a blogger tells his audience he’s deleted his social media accounts and can now be reached only by smoke signal.

But this is not that kind of post, dear reader.

I appreciate that Digital Minimalism is not a book of prescriptive, one-size-fits-all advice for living with technology in the 21st century. While Newport himself is no fan of social media, he leaves it up to individuals to define their own relationships with the tech they use regularly. Newport’s most important message is that you think about where technology fits in your life, not that we all reach the same conclusions and use or avoid all the same services.

Digital Minimalism is not a how-to guide. It is instead a guide calling its readers to develop their own philosophy about where technology fits into their lives.

After I started reading the book, I deleted from my phone nearly every app not related to calling, texting, or navigation.

Newport suggests suspending use of any problematic apps for a month. He refers to this time as the “decluttering” period. Once the decluttering period is over, you re-introduce the temporarily banned tech back into your usage and observe whether you think it still has a place in your life. Newport claims that often people realize they no longer need the tech, making their decluttering periods permanent.

I made it a week before I reversed my declutter, because I’m lacking in moral fiber. But I have kept most social apps from my phone this go round.

And though I have deviated from Newport’s recommendations, I have started creating distance between myself and my phone. I’ve started leaving it behind in other rooms of the house. And my short break does seem to have made putting my phone down much easier when I know I need to.

My declutter has made me realize how much I prefer the desktop (or laptop) experience over the mobile experience in most situations. I’m an elder millennial, so I’m better with a traditional keyboard and mouse than I am with an onscreen keyboard.

I recently got a couple used (or “previously enjoyed”) laptops through my job. The laptops are nowhere near the latest and greatest specs. They can’t upgrade to Windows 11, but they run Linux just fine (currently Solus).

Still, these laptops are thin and powerful enough for everything I need. Ten or fifteen years ago, it would been impossible to think of how I could ever need anything more. Especially when you consider the near ubiquity of public wifi.

But now, in the age of smartphones, we want the same conveniences once reserved for laptops at our disposal through these devices many of us keep in our pockets at all times.

Perhaps it’s easy to gush over tech like laptops when propping it against the smartphone. Perhaps the smartphone is a scapegoat, the villainous flavor of the week.

I do not believe eliminating smartphones will fix everything. We would find a substitute for distraction, perhaps laptops and desktop computers.

But that’s a problem we can address when we’ve improved our relationships with our smartphones. This acknowledgment makes us better prepared in the war for our attention.

While Newport doesn’t say everyone should delete all social media, he doesn’t hide his opinion that social media holds little to no value. These days it’s fashionable to jump on Newport’s side and crap on social media while ignoring any benefits.

The reason I fell in love with the Internet way back in the late ’90s is the same reason I stick around on social media and related platforms in 2022: The potential for connection that’s harder to find offline.

Connections made over the Internet are not a substitute for connections with my family and other people I see offline. While I can get along with almost anyone I meet face to face, there are very few I can nerd out with on anything that truly interests me. Or at least not to the depth I want to go.

Also, I tend to hop from interest to interest. It’s always nice to know I can find other parties interested in the same things, on the Internet, often in the form of social media.

Perhaps I would feel differently if I were part of some sort of establishment I could fall back on.

But I would be disingenuous to gloss over my gripes with social media, which relies on sloppy algorithms to decide which content is worth promoting. (I’m looking at you, Meta, LinkedIn, Twitter . . .)

When I think back to my favorite times in online communities, they were often in communities that hadn’t yet been adopted by the masses. And while that may make me sound like an idealistic hipster who wants to keep his hangouts under the radar so that he can have them all to himself, I find my defense more practical than that.

The simple truth is that, in most cases:

Mass adoption = commoditization.

And once you start catering to everyone, you end up serving no one. And, at some point, the experiences all run together, as the users and their avatars do. And you get an experience similar to what you likely find offline, in which few of the experiences stand out above the rest.

Before reading Digital Minimalism, I was becoming convinced that a return to smaller online communities was the best path forward. I still believe that in theory, though I haven’t begun practicing it as well as I should.

I’m not sure of the exact limits of this practice either. Obvious candidates include places like micro.blog and niche Mastodon servers. Maybe even the smaller subreddits. I suppose you can create an insular experience on Twitter if you follow the right people.

While I would like to see a break from the worst of Web 2.0, I’m thinking Web 3.0 is most likely not the answer.

Does that mean Newport’s preference for walking away from social media is the answer?

I’m not ready to jump on that train. But I can’t blame anyone who does.

I hope this essay shines some light on the need for philosophy in all aspects of our lives, even in technology.

Part of succeeding in the real world is unlearning what school has taught you. This is especially true with writing.

So what are some of the lessons writers need to unlearn?

Forget minimum word counts.

School teaches us to drag out our writing, to string audiences along as we inflate our writing to meet some arbitrary minimum word count.

Enforcing a strict maximum word count would be far more effective. Teachers should ask the impossible of students. Require students to argue for or against organized religion or capital punishment in 200 words. Or 100 words.

But that doesn’t give me enough to work with, to make my point, students may complain.

Welcome to the real world, kid. Take your best shot with the parameters you have.

Get to the point.

Perhaps you’ve heard the joke about the formula for academic writing:

1. Tell them what you’re going to tell them.
2. Tell them.
3. Tell them what you told them.

No.

Tell them—and while you’re telling them, tell them why they should care. Make sure the why is woven throughout your writing.

Your teachers will read whatever you submit because they have to. That’s their job. That’s what they get paid for.

Most people outside the classroom do not have to read your writing. So don’t assume you’ll keep their attention just because you showed up.

Don’t be a grammar purist.

Writing is about communication and connection. It ain’t about having the rightest sentences.

You can start sentences with conjunctions. And you shouldn’t feel bad about it.

Don’t beat yourself up about ending a sentence with a preposition. There are more important things to worry about.

Fragments are fine. Really.

Just be sure it works for your context and audience. (That last bit is good life advice, not just writing advice.)

Study copywriting.

Copywriters are writers who consistently get paid for their writing. The best can turn a few everyday words into phrases that stick in an audience’s mind for decades.

How do they do it? What can you learn from studying copywriting? How can you bring those lessons to your own writing?

That ain’t all.

This is hardly a comprehensive list.

But it’s somewhere to start.

If you’ve ever sought advice to combat writer’s block or to rediscover inspiration, you’ve likely stumbled upon the advice to go on a walk. And if you’re in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, I would amend that advice by recommending you take a walk on the Rock Art Tail in Grapevine’s Parr Park.

The Parr Park Rock Art Trail is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a path lined with painted and decorated rocks. The rocks come in all sizes, shapes, and flavors.

Unsurprisingly, many works professed the creator’s love of the Great State.

Some rocks celebrated alma maters or cartoon and comic book characters. Some were pieces of larger works.

Some rocks were products of their time.

Some rocks were intended to be inspirational.

Some sought to give practical advice.

And some were pure silliness.

But collectively, the rocks filled me with wonder. I marveled at the work that went into creating some of the rock art. The effort to paint the scenes. The time spent to find the perfect rock. How many people poked out their chests as they boasted about their participation in a Guinness record?

The trail served as a reminder of our desire to be a part of something, and a reminder that, regardless of what some people or outlets may make you believe, there are still beautiful somethings to be part of.

If you had to sum up in only a few sentences the WeWork debacle to someone unfamiliar with the situation, how would you do so? The following quote from The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell would be my candidate.

But prior to the prospectus becoming public, bankers and other advisers had continued to shower [Adam] Neumann with praise–giving him criticism too infrequently and too meekly. These advisers either ignored or danced around the company’s obvious warts and red flags.

Now, at the eleventh hour, they finally spoke up. But the IPO was already on life support.

If you have any interest in investing time reading about business train wrecks rather than investing your money into them, then pick up a copy of The Cult of We. Throughout the book, I often found myself shaking my head in disbelief, amazed at how many smart and successful people overlooked what should have been obvious red flags, such as CEO Adam Neumann’s selling too many shares too soon, Neumann’s constant power grabs, a private company buying a $63 million private jet even though it was hemorrhaging cash despite having had plenty time to find a path to profitability–the list goes on.

WeWork’s business model was simple. They leased up office buildings, prettied the spaces up to attract Millennials, and subleased the space at a premium. Their plan was hardly unique, as Regus had done the same a couple decades earlier. No matter how you cut it, WeWork was a real estate company. Yet many viewed it as a tech company, which justified the crazy valuations it had received before its IPO. WeWork would not have been valued so high if it were seen as a real estate company, since real estate companies are unable to scale as well as tech companies. It was the era of the visionary founder, and if the founder said WeWork was a tech company, then it must be a tech company.

Neumann and Masayoshi Son, the head of SoftBank, had convinced themselves that WeWork was a $10 trillion company, basically because they dared to dream so. The authors point out that, in 2018, the entire value of the U.S. stock market was $30 trillion. (Take a moment to let that sink in.)

Neumann and Son laid out a plan to reach the ambitious valuation while never acknowledging all the obstacles they would face. Neumann believed he could change the world in myriad ways: from how people work and live to how they educate their children.

Neumann and his wife Rebeka had convinced themselves they were environmentalists despite riding freely on the aforementioned private jet and even taking an abundance of WeWork’s unused couches to landfills. Rebeka had described the family as minimalists despite having at one time owned at least eight homes.

In summary, the delusions ran far and wide.

The story was a reminder of a crucial life lesson: Don’t be afraid to question the herd; just because the herd buys into the same narrative doesn’t mean they’re right. And you’re not wrong to question the herd.

The story also reminded me of similar moments I’ve experienced in thirteen years as a petroleum landman.

The first such moment came early in my career, when I was working in Dallas-Fort Worth’s Barnett Shale play. In the shadow of the Great Recession, the natural gas play was a bright spot and a boost to the local economy. Everyone involved in the industry was in high spirits, some even claiming the boom times could last 20 years. I remember raising an eyebrow at that declaration. I couldn’t make a convincing case for why the boom wouldn’t last 20 years, other than a feeling in my gut that such good times are unlikely to last so long. Within 13 months, my employer had closed its Fort Worth office and most of the former occupants were looking for jobs, as natural gas crashed from all-time highs and is only now, over a decade later, showing signs of significant recovery.

The second such moment came when I moved to West Texas in 2012. The Permian Basin is no stranger to boom-and-bust cycles, so the narrative wasn’t exactly the same as the Barnett Shale in 2008-2009. Instead, the collective wisdom was: This boom is different, whatever that meant. While the Permian Basin does not appear to be at risk of going the way of the Barnett, the area has still seen fluctuations in the near-decade since. The cycle of booms and busts is more frequent than in past decades, but the cycle still exists.

The Cult of We is not just a business book or a biography of a company that went from rising star to laughing stock in the blink of an eye. The book is also a warning: Never underestimate someone’s ability to be out of touch with reality.

I entered college knowing only that I wanted to write for a living.

I had accepted that I wasn’t going to support myself on the paperback royalties of novels I would never write. Technical writing sounded unimaginative, and I’m not sure my university offered such a program anyway. Therefore, journalism seemed my only option, so I stepped onto campus as a journalism major. By the end of my first quarter, I had switched to Undecided, as I then had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but journalism was not part of those future plans. Fast forward to 2021, and I doubt anyone would say with a straight face that I made the wrong decision. But I can say with the straightest of faces that I made the right decision for the wrong reasons.

I don’t remember much of my time in Journalism 101 other than I got an A for the course. In terms of writing, the most practical takeaway was to lead with a hard-hitting point and then follow with the details and backstory. I didn’t immediately realize how this method could also apply to fiction, the best example I can think of being the opening of Choke by Chuck Palahniuk:

If you’re going to read this, don’t bother.

After a couple of pages, you won’t want to be here. So forget it. Go away. Get out while you’re still in one piece.

Save yourself.

There has to be something better on television . . .

Those opening lines may not have given me many concrete details about the story that followed, but they gave me enough to get the feel. And I was immediately hooked.

In my journalism course, I quickly discovered I did not want to engage in strictly fact-based writing with no obvious way to inject at least a part of myself into my writing. (I never claimed to be a selfless writer.) I had not yet discovered the likes of Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, or Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, though I doubt these discoveries would have made much difference, because I also left journalism for more practical reasons.

As I’ve already stated, I don’t remember much of the lectures from Journalism 101, but I do remember something I never experienced in any other entry-level course, which highlights one of the failings of higher education.

Every couple weeks or so, Dr. Blick welcome journalists to share with the class their experiences in the field. The topics ranged from the humorous, as in the case of a now fellow alum whose typo in the school paper made its way to Jay Leno’s Headlines segment (She referred to a play version of Lean On Me as Leon On Me), to groundbreaking, as in the case of Leesha Faulkner, who uncovered the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state agency dedicated to derailing the Civil Rights movement.

Despite the diversity in perspective and experience, I heard the same things repeated:

You work really hard.

You have no security.

You never see your family.

You make no money.

But it’s great.

I didn’t need to take on student loans just to be broke. After accepting I had no clues what I wanted to do, I tried my hand in computer science, only to crash and burn and then settle on a marketing degree.

In the name of being a real adult, I mostly abandoned writing, save for a handful of short-lived blogs here and there over the years. Within the last three years, I’ve started focusing on writing again, starting with dipping my toes back into fiction. I’ve studied the craft as I never had before, with a more open mind.

I’ve now read books on screenwriting and have marveled at how much a screenwriter must convey with so few words. Previously, I didn’t realize how much the writer directs certain details, holding everyone’s hand in the process.

Studying copywriting is another study in communicating efficiently. The best slogans are simple. They require no explanation. They’re like jokes: If they require explanation, then they’re not effective. You remember effective slogans because they slide off the tongue and have a certain rhythm. These are some of the reasons the most nonsensical song lyrics can lodge themselves into our brains.

From studying technical writing, I’ve learned the values of knowing when to holds readers' hands and when to squeeze tightly. I now see that a career of explaining complex issues in oil and gas title has taught much of the same. And I’ve also learned that most people who say they don’t have the time to hold someone else’s hand through an issue most likely lack the knowledge and awareness of how to do so and also have no desire to learn how.

I’ve been asking myself recently what is the strand that ties all writing together. What is the one similarity? The unifier, other than a need to communicate?

And, as we speak, my answer is: persuasion.

The angle of persuasion is obvious for some fields, such as legal writing, in which briefs are intended to persuade a judge to rule in a client’s favor. Sales copy aims to persuade you to make a certain purchase. Business emails persuade recipients to act–or maybe they persuade that no action is needed. Even research papers should aim to persuade, as we don’t have to look too hard around us to see that facts alone are not enough. If nothing else, I have to persuade you that my facts are more accurate than your facts.

But what about fiction? Where’s the persuasion there?

In fiction, authors are trying to persuade readers that this fake world with these fake people in these fake scenarios contains some sort of truth worth their time. Authors want to convince readers that this person in this situation would act or feel a certain way.

And sometimes the persuasion takes a different angle, such as in the case of some of the best tellers of tall tales, the ones who stretch the truth–or, in some cases, discard the truth completely–and leave us doubled over, hoarse from laughing through the tears. Sometimes writers persuade us not to care about reality so much.

In the past, I abandoned writing because I failed to see the similarities among the separate disciplines. I also failed to see that there is no down side to being a better writer. Even if you never make a penny directly from your writing, the thought and effort required to improve as a writer likely benefit you in less obvious ways.

Now, if I read something as mundane as the back of a shampoo bottle, I no longer brush it off as an irrelevant form of writing. Instead, I wonder why certain things were done certain ways and then ask if or how my own projects could benefit from those methods. This way of thinking makes me a more open-minded writer than I was when I set foot on that university campus all those years ago.