The Swyx Mixtape

An interesting idea I heard on the StackOverflow Podcast - locking open source code to contributions, and then having an open plugin ecosystem where people can do whatever they want.

- Sara Chipps and Paul Ford on StackOverflow Podcast
- Litestream closed to contributions for self preservation
- Simon Willison's datasette project

Today I feature a clip from Elon's recent Clubhouse interview, just after he bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin. It mostly just has a funny story, rather than anything insightful. But the action speaks volumes.

- Original Elon Bitcoin Tweet
- Elon Clubhouse Interview Audio Source

Corey Haines (https://www.coreyhaines.co/) was most recently Head of Growth at Baremetrics and just went fulltime on SwipeFiles.com.

I interviewed Corey for the Creators group that I run. I figured I could strip out the audio of our Zoom chat for a surprise Weekend Drop!

It was full of inspiration on indiehacking (11 minute mark), the sunk cost fallacy (16 minute mark), cold emailing (18 minute mark), his work on Swipe Files (23 minute mark), his work on SavvyCal (32 minute mark) and marketing (46 minutes).

The full show notes and discussion is available in our private Circle community — it's a paid membership, but it's one-time, lifetime membership :) check it out here. 

Let me know if this sort of thing does or doesn't work for you, I'm still trying to figure out what my Weekend Drops are going to be like. swyx @ hey.com or https://twitter.com/swyx

The Onion TV was darkly hilarious.

- Today Now! Interviews The 5-Year-Old Screenwriter Of "Fast Five"
- Political Talk Show Host Suddenly Very Interested In Manslaughter Law Loopholes

It's a good idea to have toolmakers use their own tools, and a good idea to learn to do it the hard way.

- Kelsey Hightower on the Sourcegraph Podcast
- Build Your Own X

More on Empathy Sessions:

- "It's like people who work on an assembly line but don't have a driver’s license. I want to get you, the engineer, in that car. I want you to understand what it feels like when you hit a bump so you know how to work on that suspension." - Kelsey on Gun.io
- Photo of Empathy Sessions
- Impact of Empathy Sessions on GKE
- Empathy Sessions and Anthos

Listen to the full chapter of the Data Detective audiobook and check out Tim Harford's podcast, Cautionary Tales.

Because of course you shouldn't take Tim at his word — The Yale study cited is here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41511108 (free pdf here)

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"They Saw a Protest": Cognitive Illiberalism and the Speechconduct Distinction

Dan M. Kahan, David A. Hoffman, Donald Braman, Danieli Evans and Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Abstract

"Cultural cognition" refers to the unconscious influence of individuals' group commitments on their perceptions of legally consequential facts. We conducted an experiment to assess the impact of cultural cognition on perceptions of facts relevant to distinguishing constitutionally protected "speech" from unprotected "conduct." Study subjects viewed a video of a political demonstration. Half the subjects believed that the demonstrators were protesting abortion outside of an abortion clinic, and the other half that the demonstrators were protesting the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy outside a military recruitment center. Subjects of opposing cultural outlooks who were assigned to the same experimental condition (and thus had the same belief about the nature of the protest) disagreed sharply on key "facts" — including whether the protestors obstructed and threatened pedestrians. Subjects also disagreed sharply with those who shared their cultural outlooks but who were assigned to the opposing experimental condition (and hence had a different belief about the nature of the protest). These results supported the study hypotheses about how cultural cognition would affect perceptions pertinent to the speech-conduct distinction. We discuss the significance of the results for constitutional law and liberal principles of selfgovernance generally.

Hampton is the most wholesome and motivating person on YouTube in under 1 minute!

- Hybrid Calisthenics on YouTube
- Free bodyweight workout routine on his site
- Pushup video
- Elbow lever video

This is the audio version of a blogpost I published today. Comments on Dev.to and Twitter.

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Trust me, I tried to make the Clubhouse bear case.

The original title of this post was "Everything Clubhouse Did Right — and Why It Will Fail Anyway". The exercise forced me to list the reasons why it wasn't worth $1 billion - why live conference calls are inferior to existing formats like podcasts and Discord.

When I was done, I went for a walk to think about it. By the time I came back, I had done a complete 180. (Note - this was even before I heard about the Elon event)

I still dislike the Clubhouse experience. I wouldn't recommend it to you. But all the reasons I dislike it are the same reasons it will work:

• Clubhouse is exclusive. You have hoops to jump and gates to open every step of the way. It's iOS only. Invite only. Requires your phone number for no goddamn reason. And once you're through all of that you gain the privilege of being in the voiceless audience hoping senpai will notice your raised hand and puffed up bio.
• Clubhouse is ephemeral. Conversations aren't recorded. Your work doesn't compound and isn't searchable. This is horrible for ROI on your time as a content creator.
• Clubhouse is live-only. If all the convos are happening in Pacific Time and you live in Europe, tough luck. If you came in halfway and have no idea what was said, tough luck. The only way to be fully involved is to turn on mobile notifications and track scheduled chats. Causing more — not less — distraction and work for you.
• Clubhouse enhances existing privilege. Because automated recommendations aren't possible, Clubhouse mostly relies on a Twitter-like follow graph. To gain a following you mostly already have to be famous off-platform or well-connected to people who will bring you up on stage ("second-degree famous"). Choosing a Status as a Service model (Twitter) over a Sorting Hat model (TikTok) sacrifices discovery for establishment.
• Clubhouse is a terrible listening experience. There's no audience chat or polling. Obnoxious speakers can dominate the conversation. Trolls and harassment abound. You can't play at 2x or rewind an important part. Podcasts were trending towards better audio and editing, Clubhouse regresses to shitty phone mics with feedback and connection issues. Signal is scarce, noise is rampant.

In my original write up I listed the many better offerings in every dimension. Want to listen to interviews with great audio and show notes? Podcasts. Want ultrascalable livestreaming? Twitch. Want livestreamed audio with recording and submitted questions? Capiche. Want to do an audio webinar? Use Zoom with the camera off. Want voice with text chat? Discord. Just want a Clubhouse clone with less friction? Twitter Spaces.

When I was done listing the alternatives, I knew I had made a mistake. They checked more boxes on a feature comparison basis. But social media doesn't work like that. I was trying to be logical in a socio-logical domain.

I had conclusively PROVED, with my big brain and fancy words, how profoundly inferior Clubhouse was. No compounding creator should prefer it, and no self respecting listener should enjoy it, compared to alternatives.

But the majority of people don't work like that:

• Some people are turned off by exclusivity and friction. But most people take it as social proof of something cool.
• Some creators are turned off by ephemerality. But more people will start trying precisely because it's easy and doesn't matter. The Elon Musks and Vlad Tenevs of the world will be less guarded, despite clearly knowing anything they say will be recorded, because the medium is the message.
• Some people are turned off by demands on their time. But most people leave mobile notifications on and the live nature of chats creates some of the most urgent notifications you'll get on your phone, second only to a call from your mother. The synchronicity creates an event — a clear Before and After where you can excitedly gossip and feel superior to people out of the loop. This is a rarity in an everything-async world.
• Some people are turned off by stacked decks. But most people just want to follow celebrities and experts and aren't interested in the challenging, messy work of finding people on the way up.
• Some people are turned off by the listening experience. But Clubhouse is Good Enough, especially if content is created sooner and in bigger quantity than available anywhere else.

Clubhouse should've died in July when the VC and Media abuse cases erupted. Instead it came back stronger than ever, standing at 2 million weekly active users. If any of these negatives mattered, the app should have seen extreme churn. Instead, Andrew Chen, Ryan Hoover, and Sahil Lavingia — who do this for a living and have insider knowledge of metrics — value it above $1 billion dollars, six months after it was valued at $100 million.

People. Aren't. Churning. No matter how much you may hate the app — usage is going up. This is scary and worth taking note. Clubhouse is already showing signs of successful expansion in Asia (read: non-English Clubhouses).

Instagram had 30 million MAUs when Facebook bought it for $1 billion. Whatsapp had 450m for $19 billion. By Whatsapp metrics, Clubhouse is wildly overvalued (lets say it has 10m MAU right now). But audio isn't text. Alex Danco says that texting is a cold medium, while audio is the hottest medium of all. He was mildly wrong — podcasting is still kinda lukewarm — but live, ephemeral audio is so hot you will literally drop everything and stay up late and ignore your partner to go listen to Elon.

Worse is better. The exact reasons you hate Clubhouse — the kind of thing that drives you to read an article like this to the end — are the exact same reasons it is going to win.

A great tip I learned from Cal Newport's Podcast, Episode 66, which I highly recommend.

- Distraction Free YouTube Chrome Extension

CEO of Patreon, and a damn good musician. Inspiration of the day!

- Jack Conte TED Talk - How Artists can Finally Get Paid
- Scary Pockets YouTube Channel