#74: How to make people care

💎 Word gems

The Science of What Makes People Care (Stanford Social Innovation Review / Ann Christiano & Annie Neimand)

This has surprisingly practical insights centered around five universally applicable principles.

Research tells us that people are really good at avoiding information for three reasons: It makes them feel bad; it obligates them to do something they do not want to do; or it threatens their identity, values, and worldview. From lifesaving health information to climate change to mass violence, people avoid information that makes them feel sad, fearful, or guilty when there isn’t a way to resolve those feelings.

Business Dudes Need to Stop Talking Like This (Galaxy Brain / Charlie Warzel)

I’ve previously shared links about how empty the metaverse hype actually is. This one goes a step further and hits on the worst of business jargon.

The article [a McKinsey article about the metaverse] is a phenomenal example of what I’m going to call “business-dude lorem ipsum.” It is filler language that is used to roleplay “thought leadership” among those who have nothing to say: the MBA version of a grade-school book report that starts with a Webster’s Dictionary definition. Advanced business-dude lorem ipsum will convey action (“We need to design value in stages”) but only in the least tangible way possible. It will employ industry terms of art (“We’re first to market or a fast follower”) that indicate the business dude has been in many meetings where similar ideas were hatched. Business-dude lorem ipsum will often hold one or two platitudes that sound like they might also be Zen koans (“That value is in the eye of the beholder”) but actually are so broad that they say nothing at all. In fact, in a previous draft of this newsletter, I had initially gone through the blog post almost line-by-line to point out shining examples of corporate gibberish in action, only to realize that the negative information quality of the writing actually bogged down and leeched clarity out of my own writing like an idea vacuum.

💩 Cool shit

The Exclusive Website - The most exclusive website in the world. Only 1 person is allowed in at a time.

Sound - I’ve shared this site before. The latest post is a fantastically detailed and interactive dive into sound.

Voicy - It’s like YouTube for audio memes.

Developer Roadmaps - Guides to learn a range of developer topics.

Long Stable Diffusion - A Git repository for taking long-form text to generate images.

JS Paint - If you miss MS Paint, someone remade it with Javascript in a browser.

Literature Map - Type in an author and see which other authors people read.

Kilogram - Instagram if every image was 1KB.

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