Hank Green has an interesting take on the scientific method: We advance because scientists work to persuade others that they’re correct. Every paper, statistical analysis and experiment is nothing but an argument designed to persuade an intelligent critic. The method of argument … | Continue reading
The folks at TryAI put Fable to the test in directing a music video. The AI glitches show up from the start and continue. But it’s even more unsettling than this. When AI tries to create and direct joyous human dancing, it fails. The dancers look like retired accountants at a wed … | Continue reading
The nearest lightning was 1,200 miles away. At least that’s what the weather site reported. When lightning is that unlikely, we don’t worry about it much. It turns out that this is the best time to install a lightning arrestor on your home, though. The urgency of the moment might … | Continue reading
There are lots of things you can do, but it’s not clear you should. OpenAI has virtually unlimited resources. And in addition to building a chat-based AI, they chose to launch pretty good image generation, a basketball, a meme video generator (since cancelled), an upcoming speake … | Continue reading
The right words in the right sequence create information. Ideas that change our world. The first kind of word salad allows the writer to hide. Fancy words, carefully juxtaposed, saying nothing. This can serve a valuable function for politicians, academics and bosses–but there’s n … | Continue reading
Even though it’s invisible, easily transported and weightless, software used to stick around. It took years to architect and build a complex bit of software, and thousands of people to help maintain it. Even a complex website could be seen as a durable technical asset. Now, with … | Continue reading
The meeting is now broken. Even if you were actually engaging with the attendees before, it’s over. You took a new medium and stuffed an old one into it, changed the dynamic and ruined it. Zoom is a device that eliminates physical distance and enables a synchronized conversation. … | Continue reading
When we upgrade something in our lives, the thing we used to be satisfied with is no longer satisfying. That’s the nature of an upgrade. After a certain point, the only thing we’re buying is the way the upgrade makes us feel in the moment, not our satisfaction going forward. Ster … | Continue reading
This is a useful term. It helps us understand a topic or theory that can be considered from multiple points of view by people engaging with good intent. “Pluto is a planet” was a controversial statement among some people who study the solar system. On the other hand, it’s not con … | Continue reading
Last year, the recording session I did with Mel Robbins was going so well that her producers asked me to stick around–four hours later, we had recorded enough for two episodes. One never knows how these things will feel until after the fact, but part 2 is live now. I hope you get … | Continue reading
The moment you start treating your customers as captives, they begin to make other plans. It might take a while, but they always end up leaving. The first step is warning away their friends. On the other hand, when we treat our customers like the free agents they are, they often … | Continue reading
More than 345 riffs, worthy of a calendar, all in one place. They don’t fit in a blog post, so I made a page of them. Hit the refresh above to see another one, or see them all, and vote on your favorites, at sethsriffs.com On the riffs page, you can click the ? icon […] | Continue reading
The professionals you have the most in common with may be your competition. They wrestle with similar problems and have similar goals. And you can offer value by sharing what you’ve learned and what you know–and that value will often be reciprocated. I met Tom Rielly when was run … | Continue reading
What’s this idea (book, meme, song, TV show, marketing campaign) for? Perhaps you want to reach the largest number of people. Or make the most sales. Or generate the most word of mouth. Or be notorious. Or change part of the culture. Or get good reviews. Or have people actually f … | Continue reading
A hundred and fifteen years ago, Christian Larson wrote one of the first popular self-help manifestos. The Optimist’s Creed argued that it was a choice, and a useful promise. Not to promise the world, or the boss, or the market. To promise ourselves. Optimism is not a mood. It’s … | Continue reading
The world is like this and therefore I feel like that. That seems right. It’s raining, so I’m sad. The person cut me off in traffic and so I’m angry. Ford makes better cars, so I like them more than Chevys. Occasionally, this cause and effect is what happens. But more often, it g … | Continue reading
The more often we succumb to the urgency of the moment, the more urgency we create. The next minute is probably not the last minute, but when we treat it this way, it will be soon followed by another last minute. | Continue reading
Freedom is responsibility with a sexier name. 250 years in, democracy still matters. Click to upvote the ones that resonate and please share. | Continue reading
“I blame myself.” Said no one, ever. At least not the consumers I know. When a careless woodworker loses a digit on a table saw, they almost certainly blame the design and instructions of the device, not their lack of care. On a less gruesome note, the user who fails to read the … | Continue reading
It’s difficult to ride a bicycle in the pitch darkness. We need to see where we’re going to avoid obstacles. And it’s hard to maintain our balance. When we choose to avoid the conversations that make us uncomfortable, we’re pedaling in the dark. Talk about it. Turn on the lights. | Continue reading
The standards have changed a lot in the last few millennia: The big man said it. The book said it. The newspaper said it. I saw a photo. I saw it on TV. I read it on the internet. That’s what the AI said. There has always been room for doubt. But the last century […] | Continue reading
Everybody eats. And, now and then, it’s fun to find something better. In the scheme of things, fancy foods are a bargain, a chance to have the best in the world for a few dollars. Here are some persistent (and new) favorites. For those outside the US, I hope you can find even bet … | Continue reading
A simple 7-question test helps us realize how diverse a population is. On this quiz, the highest possible score is less than 7%. No matter how common you think your answers are, no matter how normal you feel, you’re actually in sync with just 7% (at the most) of all citizens of t … | Continue reading
The backlist are the products already in the marketplace. Built earlier, still sold. The frontlist is the new. Restaurants have regulars (backlist) and new patrons. Broadway shows are attended by people who see three to ten shows a year, as well as folks going to their very first … | Continue reading
If you can swap your slogan with a competitor’s without changing the meaning of either brand, then your slogan is meaningless. For example, “You belong here” is not a positioning statement for a college seeking new students. It’s just noise. It also doesn’t help to mix weasel wor … | Continue reading
One of the nicest thing you can do for someone you care about is point them to an idea, a book, a talk or a tool that will amplify their work and help them get to where they’re going. It’s not easy. It means you understand their goals, see them for who they are and […] | Continue reading
They keep getting fancier. But you would benefit from investing in better lighting instead. It’s tempting to upgrade your computer processor, your frying pan or your sneakers as well. The thing is, once the foundational tools are good enough, technique and training outperform har … | Continue reading
Look around the room you’re in. There are dozens of electrically powered devices, each waiting for you to request their assistance. A toaster, six lights, an oven, the ice maker, stereo, TV, microwave… It’s a very long list. Silent and ubiquitous. Of course, electricity didn’t st … | Continue reading
Focus groups and informal feedback offer a trap: Asking someone in the target audience if they like something might get you useful feedback. But most of the time, the people you’re asking aren’t actually in the group of early adopters that are going to make your rollout work. The … | Continue reading
Promotion, activation, and conversation come together when the early adopters have a tool to share a new idea. My new book is out a few months, and it’s a chance to create a share package with swag. There are only 1,000 sets. Each includes 10 first-printing copies of The Knot (wi … | Continue reading
I asked Google Gemini about the last decade of Google’s relentless push to make blogs less popular. It wrote: Your timeline is spot on. The systematic destruction of the independent web’s infrastructure didn’t start with modern AI; it began directly with the death of Google Reade … | Continue reading
Birthdays are a little overrated. I’ve never met anyone who was more than a passive participant in their birth, but anniversaries represent a choice. Every year, we can commemorate a commitment we made and then decide to recommit. Anniversaries aren’t just romantic. The day you t … | Continue reading
Thirty years ago, Cory Doctorow did an interview showing primitive inklings of the internet future (music, videos, etc.). At the time, it was easy to dismiss it as an irrelevant toy, and most people in power did just that. Around the same time, I wrote an article for Direct Marke … | Continue reading
A 100-foot long boat that’s 99% complete is going to sink before it leaves the dock. That gaping hole is more than enough to do it in. On the other hand, a baked ziti that’s 99% as good as the best baked ziti ever made is exactly good enough to serve in any setting. Mediocrity [… … | Continue reading
We have more agency and choice than we know. And sometimes, when the awareness of our freedom arrives, it’s too late to reclaim the opportunities we missed. Some of the walls around us are real—built by people who have no right to build them, who profit from our staying put. And … | Continue reading
[A long riff on book publishing with (perhaps) wide applicability to your work as well.] Publishing is different from writing—it’s the hard work of creating the conditions to help people get in sync, move forward, and get to where they’re headed. The best reason to publish a non- … | Continue reading
It’s pretty astonishing how far people will go to announce various forms of status: The list has little to do with money spent or money in the bank. Humans care about status and affiliation. We’ve spent our lives being very good at noticing both. | Continue reading
There are more than a million podcasts. The good news is that it’s easy to start one. The top 1% of all podcasts account for 99% of all downloads. That means that if your goal is reach, the long tail isn’t going to help much. The short head, even in a medium as wide open […] | Continue reading
When tech shows up, it offers a shortcut and convenience. You can use Google Maps to direct you somewhere without paying much attention to the surroundings. You can use Claude to write your marketing copy and get a better-than-mediocre result the first try. You can look for a gif … | Continue reading
No one cares about it as much as the person who’s planning it. Some folks waited in line for the first iPhone, but not many. It’s tempting to try to bend the curve and put the ‘grand’ into ‘grand’ opening. But that usually creates disappointment. In any population, only a few fol … | Continue reading
There have always been trolls. Hecklers, jesters, and class clowns. The troll lives under the bridge and invents nonsense grievances in order to get attention. But, until recently, there wasn’t much of a business model to support this career choice. It’s said that William Randolp … | Continue reading
Every day, about 16,000,000 hours of tennis are played. The percentage of that devoted to tournament play approaches zero. So why is informal tennis built on a zero-sum model? In a game, every shot is designed to have the opponent fail. The goal is to have your opponent miss the … | Continue reading
When culture pushes us to measure things that don’t matter to us, our values are captured. Once the metrics turn a profit for corporations and those in power, they are amplified, and almost overnight, begin to matter to us, even if they run contrary to what we originally set out … | Continue reading
What’s the structure of your project? Here are three paradigms to consider: Video game development is expensive and risky because you’re on two frontiers at once. The tech frontier, trying to do something with hardware that hasn’t been done before, and the game mechanics frontier … | Continue reading
Steinbeck points out that the stars shine in the sky, regardless of the drama here on Earth. Perspective fools us into believing that our point of view is primary, but it’s not difficult to imagine a more distant (or closer) one that would change everything. The service at table … | Continue reading
If a machine makes a painting that no one ever sees, it might be well-crafted or match some objective form of beauty, but it’s not art. Art changes the creator and the viewer. Art requires participation. Art is a verb. Decoration is important. Beauty matters. But decoration and b … | Continue reading
Bookkeepers do important work. But a bookkeeper is not the head of accounting. Marketers are responsible for anything the organization does that touches the market. But many people with ‘marketer’ in their title simply go to meetings and do tasks after the real work of marketing … | Continue reading
Real artists do all the painting themselves, not like Rembrandt Real artists use brushes, not technology like Cartier-Bresson Real writers write it out by hand, not like Jack Kerouac Real musicians record it live, not like Steely Dan Real singers sing without processing, not like … | Continue reading