Life and times of Jason since 2001
It’s crazy to think how seemingly unrelated things came together and led to the creation of the world’s most-read history publication with millions of monthly readers. Civilization was one of the last gifts my father ever bought me, and it was a true gift for my path in life. No item that I own from my past has had more impact on my trajectory.
— Read on civfanatics.com/2026/08/04/diskettes-that-made-world-history-encyclopedia/
What makes a journaling game a game and not just journaling prompts?
There are plenty of people out there that would look at even the most gamified journaling game and say “It’s just prompts.” How do I ensure that there is still a game in there? (For the sake of this thought experiment, I am ignoring the answer “You don’t need to. It can just be prompts.”)
If I think that the act of losing, it is probably less fun than the act of winning. However, losing is still more fun than playing a game that guarantees winning. This leaves the possibility of losing as being the key. If I can keep the threat of losing in a game, but still have it be a game that the player will probably win, will that create the most fun for the most players?
In 2005, when the studies began, the average number of words that each participant spoke in a day was 16,632; in 2019, when the research concluded, the average was 11,900. Each year, the participants spoke about 338 fewer words a day than they did in the previous year, amounting to a decline of about 28 percent over the entire time period.
— Read on www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/07/talking-less-reasons/688074/
How magnificent
the funeral song our children or contemporaries
will write for us, a song they will make by
taking our obituary and Facebook posts,
plus random quotes from our algorithm,
and feeding them into Chat
or Gemini
or Claude.
The tears that will fall in the face of such
sanitary sweetness!Be sure to use AI
“We believe a well-functioning society should have abundant, free and unbiased access to high-quality information,” Mr. Page said.
Google fulfilled that responsibility by acting as a gateway to the internet. It answered people’s search queries with lists of hyperlinks, pushing users out to what is known as the “open web” — the millions of websites run by merchants, publishers, universities and others — for more information. In the ensuing decades, Google became one of the planet’s richest and most powerful companies by directing people to the vastness of the open web.
Now in the age of artificial intelligence, Google appears to be shrinking back from the open web — and may be imperiling it.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/google-ai-open-web.html
The idea that more choice is better is baked into Western culture, but research shows that having more options can make people anxious, indecisive and, paradoxically, less happy with what they pick, said Barry Schwartz, an emeritus psychology professor at Swarthmore University and author of “The Paradox of Choice.”
“There have been hundreds of studies showing that there can be too much of a good thing,” Schwartz said.
To minimize the mental noise, he said, limit the number of choices you make, and your brain will thank you for it.
— Read on apnews.com/article/too-many-choices-making-decisions-8ae0bfaac1d51cc5fc7b2e59336ff0dd
I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.
– Thomas Edison
Long-tenured workers like Barzar are Costco’s secret weapon. They are reliable and experienced, able to speed shoppers through a checkout line and serve as mentors to newer workers, passing down the company’s unique culture, Costco executives say. Barzar’s pay and benefits reflect his value to the company. He earns $32.90 an hour, and the holdings in his 401(k) have boosted his retirement savings to over $1 million, he said. His Costco-sponsored healthcare has a regular visit co-pay of $15, and a specialty visit co-pay of $25, well below the national average. In 2009, Barzar’s family bought a three-bedroom, two-bath house with a pool, and they have been able to travel to Europe twice over the past decade.
He Earns $33 an Hour as a Costco Cashier. Now He’s a Millionaire. – WSJ
For decades, publishers have done everything in their power, from the legal to the not-explicitly illegal, to rank as highly in Google Search as possible. For many websites, traffic from the search engine was their single greatest source of audience and, as a result, revenue.
Now though, a handful of influential players in the digital media ecosystem have begun moving in the opposite direction, laying the groundwork for what was once unthinkable: removing themselves from Google Search.
— Read on www.adweek.com/media/publishers-opt-out-google-search/