gdgt Live and Engadget Live are taking place tomorrow night in NYC, and it's free to attend if you register via Eventbrite (assuming it isn't sold out). You should check it out. There are a lot of cool people to meet there.
I was wondering the same myself, but at any rate, neither would pay his rent. However, I am curious because I know a few travel bloggers out there who make a decent amount of money on their blogs, as well as getting lots of trips paid for by companies like Expedia and Orbitz and other travel companies and agencies.
I think it is easier to do, but harder to muster up the commitment. People will come up with all manner of reasons to remain in a job where they are unhappy.
I really have no stance on this (in that I don't side with Aaron or the prosecutors in the case), because I don't have all the facts. Some of you may say that that is a stance, but I just don't see it that way. I am aware, however, that what I'm about to say may be considered controversial given the nature of how this case is being reported--and how it's being responded to.
Whenever we have shootings like the one in Newtown, we talk about gun control and mental health care. There is always that talk about mental health care. But when someone commits suicide, regardless of cause, those same mental health advocates are nowhere to be found. Why?
There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who have it worse than Aaron Swartz did, but they don't go killing themselves. Some people lose their spouses and children in house fires, along with all of their belongings. They spiral into depression, lose their jobs, go back to living with friends or family, see nothing but bleak prospects and they ultimately pull out of it. Others lose their fortunes and things they've spent their lives working for, a few of them do commit suicide, like the ones after the 2008 financial collapse, but some don't. There are people who commit crimes and know they face stiff prison sentences, like life sentences or death penalties, but they don't kill themselves.
I could go on and on about how much worse it is for people in third-world countries, for those who don't know where their food and clean water are going to come from day in and day out. I could go on about the people who are brutally bullied, day in and day out.
Many of these people, some in arguably worse condition than Aaron Swartz was in prior to his death, don't kill themselves. So when we're faced with a case like Swartz's, why are we so quick to find someone to blame?
Yes, prosecutors were overreaching and giving him hell, but they didn't kill him. He killed himself. Hell, there are people who are currently serving long or life sentences in prison who are innocent of the crimes brought against them, but they're fighting and hoping from within their cells. Many of them are not committing suicide.
All I'm trying to say is it takes a lot more than a prison sentence, 6 months or 50 years, to get most people to kill themselves. And yet hardly anyone is talking about mental health care.
I've never heard that quote before, and as sad as it is, it's a pretty damn good one. Honestly, prior to his suicide, I didn't really know much about Aaron Swartz, and I certainly had no idea that the U.S. prosecuted this harshly for what seems like a mild/minor crime.
Understand that "never let a crisis go to waste" was also the mindset that allowed the Bush administration to pivot from 9/11 response to invading Iraq--despite a complete lack of connection between the two.
My point is that while crisis creates opportunity, it does not justify all responses. It does not exempt us from the need to soberly and (as much as possible) objectively consider the merits of what people propose to do.
It's true. We should talk more about mental health.
At the same time, the current top comment, by 'cbs, is an excellent explanation of why we are looking for someone to blame.
Also, many details on the case against Aaron and his legal situation have now been revealed, but unless I missed it, it's not apparent whether, and how, Aaron's depression had been treated. We don't know whether he was on meds, whether he was seeing a therapist, and so on. And if he wasn't, we don't know why not.
Some claim there are stigmas associated with being mentally ill, or with seeking help, and we can certainly talk about that. We have been — a few days ago I participated in a thread on HN where that was discussed.
But, first, with Aaron we really don't know a lot of the specifics, nor is it any of our business.
And second, you may feel differently, but many, including me, are deeply uncomfortable with what we're beginning to see as a clear pattern of prosecutorial overreach. The conversation about mental health should not substitute for asking these very important questions about justice in the United States.
Well, of course it's going to come as a big shock coming from Boston, because I don't consider Boston to be a "big city." I was born and raised in Los Angeles, I lived in San Francisco for a while, and now I live in New York City--Brooklyn, specifically. Much of what you said applies to New York, too.
I don't agree with the weather thing. I've been to Boston where it was 60 during the day and in the low 30s at night, and San Francisco will never, ever get as cold as Boston does during the winter. Hell, it doesn't even really snow in SF except for a few weird flukes in the past.
Rent, cost of living, etc. is the same in NYC, too, which is fast becoming a startup city.
I find it interesting that Boston often gets the rub of being a "small city". It certainly is when compared to New York or LA, but when looking at the metro area it's on par with San Francisco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistica...
Not that there's anything wrong with being a small city!
I think it's because most people don't really consider the metropolitan area to have anything to do with the city itself. For New York, parts of Jersey and Connecticut count as the metropolitan area, but you'd never say New York and mean New Haven.
With that in mind, Boston is 600k or so people, which is tiny in city terms.
That has nothing to do with the actual size of Boston. That's a political artifact more than anything else, as neighborhoods around Boston didn't want to get annexed around the turn of the century. Boston's continuous urban population, which includes Cambridge, Brookline, etc. is over 4 million.
Having lived in Atlanta, Boston is a much bigger city despite Atlanta having a population of 4 million within it's proper city limits. That's why you never use city population over metro area or continuous urban population statistics to determine actual city size.
4 million? That seems like a lot. As a New Yorker formally from Boston, I tend to think of the city as the places that the subway can get you. Coming from wikipedia:
Actually, there's quite a few, if you you by what you get get to via the subway. That means Everett, Braintree, Quincy, Newton, Medford and several others.
But there's a more systematic way city size is measured: MSA and CSA. Boston's MSA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston-Cambridge-Quincy,_MA-NH_... ) is 4.5 million, with 4 million being defined as "urban" population. These are all places served by MBTA (which claims to serve 5 million).
Now, the main issue in the way you're looking at it is that those of us from the northeast have an entirely different view of what "urban" is. There are places in the center of Atlanta that have laughable density compared to any northern city, and the Atlanta subway system serves maybe half a million people. And yet Atlanta has a metro population of 5 million with an urban population of 4 million. The threshold for urban is very low compared to what we're used to.
The truth is that the vast majority of American cities feel like they're mostly suburban sprawl. Yes, Boston is dwarfed in size by NYC, LA and Chicago, but Boston is also roughly the same size as SF, DC and Miami. And no matter what the statistics of city-limits population say, it's has more people and is more densely populated than most other cities in the country, including San Diego, Minneapolis, Charlotte, Detroit and Seattle.
As I recall, it's the 5th largest CSA, 10th largest MSA and 4th most densely populated city in the country.
Yeah, it probably has to do with what we consider urban, or feel to be urban.
The MSA for New York includes places no one would ever consider parts of NYC -- if I'm out on long island or in connecticut I'm not in the city. Just like if you're out in the Boston suburbs you're not really in Boston/Cambridge.
If it really is technically 4 million that's cool, but when I'm in Boston it doesn't feel like a city of 4 million. Just like NYC doesn't feel like a city of 19 million, even if that's what its MSA is.
Boston feels like a small place, just like SF. Nothing wrong with that, it just is what it is.
It's my opinion that you can't make the assertion that the Nexus 4 is faster than the iPhone 5 by feel. Some people feel like their cars or motorcycles perform better after an oil change and a car wash, but it's psychological. Otherwise, I guess the rest of the article is interesting because it just proves that these "Why I switched" articles are never going to die for whatever reason.
In 2008: "Why I switched from BlackBerry to iPhone"
In 2009: "Why I switched from iPhone to give webOS a shot"
In 2010: "Why I switched to Windows Phone from iOS"
In 2011: "Why I switched to Android from iPhone"
In 2012: "Why I switched from X to X because it doesn't even matter anymore"
I get that it gives perspective on the differences between platforms and devices, but these pieces can only be so narrow because it's only one person's perspective.
I happen to like Eric Barker's work, so I'm going to defend it. Judging by your response, you just read the subheadings and not the supporting text that accompanied them. If you did, you'd see links to the research that supports these "generic" pieces of advice.
It's not enough to know that exercising and laughter will improve your health, but you need to know why--the stuff that Barker puts on his site or on Wired is research-based. It isn't just garbage from link bait sites like pickthebrain.com.
Why do I need to know why laughter improves my health? This is a serious question. Do people laugh because humor helps cope with stress, which leads to better immune systems, reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, less pain during dental work and a longer life? Or do they laugh because they find something funny? I would posit that there is not a single person who read that blog post and thought "gee, I should laugh more often because it has all these health benefits!"
Perhaps that's the problem with the post in general: it is not practical. For example, instead of (or in addition to) saying that exercise is good for you, it could say "here are some exercise programs for beginners" and post links to P90X or Couch-to-5K. That way, the post could become a useful resource for people who actually want to improve their life, rather than a regurgitation of commonly-known facts.
Having an explanation of why helps our bullshit detector, and lets us re-evaluate claims if the explanation's basis falters later. If someone says, "X is bad for you because of Y", that may sound plausible. If they say that "Study Z shows that X causes Y, so don't do X", it's VERY much more plausible.
More importantly, if study Z turns out to be a hoax, we can look at the claims that used that as their basis and re-evaluate them.
You make a pretty good point about ways to make the blog posts more useful, though.
As another commenter says, it helps the bullshit detector. Why know why anything works? If we just follow advice blindly, it may do us no good.
Your line of questioning is all wrong. You said, "I would posit that there is not a single person who read that blog post and thought 'gee, I should laugh more often because it has all these health benefits!'"
Therein lies the flaw in your thinking. You don't read something like this and think you should laugh more just for the sake of laughing and its health benefits. Instead, you'd read something like that, understand WHY laughter has those benefits, and then make an effort to put yourself in situations where you'd be more relaxed and open to laughter, like hanging out with funny friends or taking a date to a comedy club.
In fact, you answered your own question: Why do we need to know why laughter improves health? Is it because laughter helps cope with stress?
BOOM. You answered your question.
Maybe that's one of the reasons, but if you dig deeper, maybe there are more. Then once you begin to understand how and why certain behaviors and situations affect our lives, you can adjust accordingly. Maybe you don't need to laugh all the time if you understand that laughter is primarily a coping or stress-reduction mechanism. Maybe you can go do other activities that have the same effects.
It seems the author either doesn't know what a humblebrag is, or he is very insecure or unhappy with his own life. Many of his examples don't seem like humblebrags at all--like the Dina Manzo example about hot weather. Really??
Secondly, perhaps the reason humblebragging is so frowned upon is because we discourage just straight up bragging. That's fine and all, but for Christ's sake sometimes we work really damn hard for what we have that we should all be allowed to brag a little every now and then. If you busted your ass building a product and you lost so much sleep over it, and the product itself rocks, wouldn't you want to brag a bit? If you bust your ass at the gym and exert enough discipline to stick through a tough diet over the course of a year, wouldn't you be tempted to show off your results?
One of the main reasons bragging is a faux pas, in my opinion, is because too many jealous and insecure people become butt hurt. That's the truth. I've never understood why you can't show off once in a while. You hit the gym really hard and diet, but if you post a photo of your results on Facebook--assuming the results are amazing (i.e. you're really ripped and you look great)--you're suddenly vain. You spend countless hours of practice and frustration over an instrument and show your results on Twitter - someone is bound to call you a show-off.
The reason I'm so tired of humblebragging is because I feel like people should just own it. Are you talented? Did you work really fucking hard for what you have or what you've accomplished? Did you suffer blood, sweat and tears to get to where you are now? Then show off a little. I encourage it. If you earned everything you have, if you've paid your dues and are now fit/successful/talented, fuck what everyone else thinks and screw all the jealousy. They're haters.
While we're at it, I'd like to clear up what a hater is: A hater is someone who is jealous and insecure and probably isn't very good at doing much. However, let's be absolutely clear on this: If your products/efforts/skills/knowledge are piss-poor or not up to snuff, the people who criticize you aren't haters, they're simply telling you the truth and you just can't accept it.
This actually isn't extremist or crazy, it's common sense. Multitasking is a myth and you really can only focus on one thing at a time. By adopting this philosophy, you'll probably get a lot more done, quickly. Once your one task or goal is accomplished with that hyper focus, you move onto the next one. It's really the best, and arguably the only way, to work. Again, our brains don't do more than one task at once with any efficiency.
I think you're correct at a low-level, but reducing an entire person's thought process on the long term to a single focus? That is extremist. In any sufficiently complex system or company, you will have multiple inputs driving multiple results. You will be dealing with multiple people. Your work will touch the work of others. This may work in an extremely rigid, top-down authoritative structure, but personally I don't believe extremely rigid top-down authoritative structures are effective. Your opinions may differ from mine, but I think autonomy, mastery, and common purpose are far, far more powerful tools.
Absolutely refusing to handle anything but that #1 priority is also its own cage. What if the #4 priority suddenly catches fire? If you change your focus to #4, isn't that just multitasking?
Multitasking is a myth on one level, but so is this hyperfocus. There must be room for task switching, for thoughts, for interrupts, and for breathing.
> If you change your focus to #4, isn't that just multitasking?
No, because you have to question which should be the new #1 priority: the old #4 or the old #1? You can still only do one thing at a time; we only have one body and one brain[1].
