How does anyone sustain interest in a single thing for years at a time?

I recently watched “Free Solo,” the National Geographic documentary about Alex Honnold’s world-record-setting climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

In spite of the knowledge that he succeeds and doesn’t get permanently injured or die, watching it was very emotional for me. I can’t readily describe the mix of feelings I had while watching his solo ascent. Some combination of awe, fear, and confusion.

The awe and the fear are obvious enough; it was an incredible physical feat with the possibility of certain death, my hands were sweating the entire time just watching it.

The confusion comes up when I think about the discipline and devotion to the act that made it possible. What does that feel like? It’s completely foreign to me.

As a devoted listener of the Decoder podcast, I’m no stranger to the topics of content moderation and social media algorithms, but ever since that one certain rich guy bought that one certain bird website the internet has been abuzz with hot takes on these subjects.

It seems clear that algorithmic content recommendation is the source of real world harms, but at least some people think it’s actually pretty OK.

It’s a nuanced topic, and in my opinion, the right answer will be equally nuanced. Maybe there is a reasonable middle ground?

Let’s say you want your workers to be more productive. As the leader of a large and complex organization, there are numerous levers that you could pull… But which ones will improve the work output?

As it turns out, the answer is none of them. Or all of them.

I usually post about technology stuff, but since so much technology stuff happens (or, happened) in offices, and because I’m increasingly obsessed with urbanism, let’s talk about the “office apocalypse.”

It’s not really an apocalypse.

Elon taking over Twitter and the rise in subscription everything, paired with a renewed fear of surveillance capitalism has caused a ton of folks, myself included, to think a little harder about what services we use, or, maybe more accurately, depend on.

My buddy Chris and I even talked about subscription art programs on our podcast (with some surprising results).

But there is something else going on here, something beyond just “paid vs. free” or “monolithic vs. distributed.”

Could this be the rise of the indie web?