BlogmyQuery – BMQ

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has sent the WP community into a frenzy with his latest antics. So what happened?

In a surprise to just about everyone, Matt publicly targeted WPEngine, the largest hosting company in the WordPress ecosystem, by claiming [1] they are not contributing back to WordPress in a satisfactory manner and [2] demanding a $32-million ransom payment for alleged misuse of various WordPress trademarks Webdesign Leave a Comment more...

Sometime during 2023, I started noticing a new trend—videos with green screen effects where a talking head floated over a background. But these videos didn’t look like they involved a lot of post-production, and they were obviously shot on phones Webdesign Leave a Comment more...

Note: This post is adapted from my original viral Twitter thread.

From November 2003 through July 2005, I worked in the prepaid cell phone and phone card industry.

Most of my work was in BFE meth towns and urban ghettoes.

I learned things about the poor in America you won’t want to believe…

But this story needs to be told.

The situation was horrible in 2005.

The opioid crisis was already in full swing in rural Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio.

Back then, small towns in Western Kentucky had nothing going on.

“Commerce” amounted to a Super 8 motel, a few gas stations, and fast food.

If you were in one of the better towns, you might have had the option to feast at Applebee’s.

The social situation matched the commerce—broke and destitute.

Hell, Western Kentucky wasn’t even “rich” enough for meth…

Everybody was on crank, which is basically the same thing, but with lower quality and produced by someone with fewer teeth.

One day, after delivering phones all over Western Kentucky, I decided to have a drink at a titty bar in Christian County (lol).

Keep in mind that Western Kentucky is basically a live episode of “People of Walmart.” In other words, not exactly the place to find beautiful women brimming with the energy of life.

But as soon as I entered that titty bar, this lithe angel—wearing a white lacey thing—floated over to my table like a moth drawn to flame.

She was by far the most attractive woman I’d seen in weeks of working Western Kentucky.

And she sat in my lap and soaked up my attention as if it were the only resource left on this Earth.

Young, beautiful, giving me lots of energy—what the hell was she doing in such a desolate, hopeless place?

After half an hour of conversation, she asked to leave the bar with me!

Well, this set off every internal alarm I’ve got.

The situation went from pleasant-but-strange to “what the hell is going on here?”

I was 23 years old at the time—and not exactly the poster child for self-restraint or giving a f*ck.

But I knew something wasn’t right.

I grabbed the girl’s hand and pulled it close to inspect it.

Her skin was perfect. She was young.

Was this a sting?

I began to suspect this girl wasn’t 18. And what did she want?

She started begging me to leave with her.

I told her there was no way in hell that was gonna happen, and in fact, I had to GTFO because things seemed shady.

That’s when she told me:

“I’m only 15.”

*I blink twice in a moment of stunned silence*

“Please, I’ll leave with you right now and we can go get some crank.”

And there it was.

She was 15. Stripping. And addicted to drugs made by people with 2-digit IQs who never attended a high school chemistry class.

Equipped with this new perspective, I started feeling worse and worse about the work I was doing.

No wonder everybody looks like People of Walmart.

No wonder there’s no commerce.

No wonder there’s no energy.

Small town America was rotting from the inside-out.

When people talk about the opioid crisis now, all I can think is—

It was REALLY F’N BAD 15 years ago.

It’s got to be HELL now.

What happened? Where do we go from here?

Well, now we have fentanyl.

Instead of becoming hopelessly addicted and having their lives slip away slowly, addicts can now enjoy death’s sweet embrace at any moment thanks to a tainted supply.

Do you know where fentanyl comes from?

China.

And now we also have the coronavirus (COVID-19), which has got me thinking about China’s bullsh*t:

• Opioids
• Fentanyl
• Synthetic viruses

All trash.

But one thing is far worse, IMO:

• Chinese manufacturing

Have you ever thought about this?

For most of her life, America has been a rural nation.

When transportation was worse, America’s population was even more spread out than it is now.

Does that make any damn sense?

Many factors play a role here, obviously, but the most important one—and the one that drove and sustained American cities from 1865 through 1960—was manufacturing.

America is where sh*t got made (at least version 1.0).

When that started to change, America changed with it.

As America became more of a regulatory state, pressure to keep prices down (while remaining compliant) became a primary animating force for manufacturing companies.

And as a result, low-skilled labor got outsourced to countries where abuse and exploitation were tolerated.

From the 1970s through the present, China has been more than happy to absorb the manufacturing that floated every small American town through the first half of the 20th century.

Worker abuse? Human rights?

Meh.

China got what it wanted—a foothold for economic growth.

With the western world relying on China for manufacturing, China had an economic insurance policy that would cause short-term chaos for any nation that wished to untether itself from them.

It’s fair to blame American companies for moving manufacturing to China.

I’m more likely to blame the regulatory climate, but I concede that worldwide imbalances in cost of living will inevitably shift manufacturing centers to wherever is cheapest.

But I look at this whole situation, and I think about:

• the way small American towns worked when manufacturing happened here
• that 15yo girl, stripping and addicted to crank
• the destitute feeling of small-town America in the 21st century

God damn.

In a way, we are all complicit.

We want nice stuff at low prices.

We want to feel like we operate in a humane, high-brow way.

But in reality, we’ve just moved the really bad “sins” to places where we don’t have to feel like we’re accountable (like China).

And we are blind.

We mortgaged America’s small towns and her children to achieve these goals.

I cannot look at COVID-19 or iPhones or opioids or anything without thinking about China and how America has hitched her wagon to this rotten death spiral.

In hindsight, what was that 15yo girl supposed to do?

In 2020, there’s no social anything in Bumfuck, America.

There are few factories where men—her potential suitors—could have stable jobs.

There’s no energy moving into those communities; nothing new is on the horizon.

We cannot continue down this path.

It’s time to move manufacturing back to America.

All of it.

It’s immoral to do business the way we have, especially since it’s all in the name of cheaper goods and more socially-acceptable PR.

But nobody talks about the American human cost.

We have paid enough.

Although we can get stuffed animals for $0.86 apiece and iPhones for $1000, we haven’t done a full accounting of the cost of shifting manufacturing to China.

What’s the cost of dissolving America’s network of small towns, leaving only urban centers?

What about the people?

To me, this is a lot like the mental vs. physical balance we all must strive for to be effective players in life.

America has focused on one thing—the physical, in this case—at the expense of the mental.

We are out of balance.

And we have leaned on China to get here.

It’s simple—I don’t like recurring payments.

And I don’t know about you, but with most recurring payments, I feel anxiety around this need to “get my money’s worth.” In other words, I often feel like I under-utilize the product and thus overpay to some extent.

So why do I sell my software under a recurring payment model? Seems a bit hypocritical…

Here’s the deal:

A recurring payment model better describes the actual experience of delivering software, which requires constant input over time—compatibility updates, new features, bug fixes, etc.

(You’re reading this. You’re nodding along. You’re still salty about recurring payments. I get it!)

Let’s look at this through a different lens: Video games.

Most games have had a one-time payment model since the 1980s. Heck, this was the only way they could sell games back then; automatic updates didn’t even become a thing until the late 90s.

But by that time, the gaming public was already accustomed to the one-time payment model.

And game studios grew into big businesses under that model. Everything they did—seasonal releases, development cycles, you name it—was built around the yearly cash injection they’d receive from releasing a hot new game.

Note: For you OGs out there, the Madden NFL franchise was one of the first games to really develop its entire identity around these yearly releases.

But these yearly development/release cycles are unnatural, especially as games grow more and more complex.

Instead of simply shipping when a game is truly finished, development studios do everything they can to shoehorn their efforts into the thirsty trap of the annual release cycle.

And this is where things get interesting:

Over the past 20 years, various game studios have rolled out recurring payment models, but almost every one of them has ultimately abandoned the practice in favor of one-time payments.

Why? Was the consumer conditioning from the previous era just too strong? Were customers unwilling to accept this new paradigm?

No. Not even close.

Like most other things in business, it was all about the bottom line.

You see, recurring payment models suffer from a phenomenon known as churn rate, where customers stop making payments and drop out over time.

After bumping into this reality, game studios learned they could generate a lot more revenue if they stuck to a one-time payment model paired with annual releases.

But this isn’t a free tradeoff. It costs a hell of a lot more to manage annual marketing and release cycles, and when things get rough, the first thing companies are willing to sacrifice ain’t revenue—it’s product quality.

Let’s look at an example.

One video game franchise that has resisted the recurring payment model—with occasionally disgusting results—is Call of Duty.

Given the way the gameplay engine works, there is absolutely no reason why Call of Duty couldn’t charge customers something like $70/yr and roll out incremental updates—new game maps, new modes of play, weapon upgrades, etc.

But they know their retention rate wouldn’t be as potent as the sales that come from cranking out an “all-new” game every year.

And thus, in order to maximize profit, they slave away on the yearly release cycle to ensure they capture an average of $70 per customer per year.

The downside? Some years, their games are trash. Other years, due to extreme marketing pressures, they re-use parts from older games and try to pass them off as new (or “remixed”).

In other words, when a game studio lives and dies by the annual release cycle, you start to see a lot of cheap shortcuts over time.

If the Call of Duty franchise switched to a recurring revenue model, they could focus on incremental improvements. This would massively increase the quality of their games, but of course, they would lose out on that predictable injection of revenue that comes with highly-anticipated annual releases.

So it’s a tough call!

• Maximize revenue with one-time payments, but lock yourself in the soul-sucking hamster wheel of new releases on a consistent schedule, or
• Maximize quality and sustainability through a recurring payment model, but sacrifice the huge cash injection and sexy hype that only accompany new releases.

I’m not sure there’s a right or wrong answer here, as it depends on how you’re wired.

If I were to switch to a one-time payment model with my software, I would end up right back in the place that made me lose enthusiasm for my projects—needing to release “new stuff” just to capture attention and revenue.

But I don’t want to release new stuff. I want to refine my work and continue to build on top of the leverage I’ve already created. My goal is to develop the most useful software on the planet.

This is a DEEP venture, not a shallow one based on capturing profits. The pricing structure for my products now better reflects this type of input.

It is what it is.

This year, my golf tournament performances have been mostly terrible through August.

While my handicap has stayed in the 1-2.5 range for most of the season, I’ve played closer to a 5 in tournaments and haven’t shot better than +3 (once) and +4 (twice).

With only one exception, I’ve been absolutely terrible in all 2+ round events with decent fields. As a result, I’ve accomplished very few of the goals I set for myself at the start of the season.

On September 16, I showed up for a 1-round event at a course I almost never play and proceeded to hit a few balls on the range.

After 20 lackluster swings with a pitching wedge and 7-iron (and very little practice leading up to the event), I was desperate—poor contact, weak misses to the right, and a few deep pulls.

With a 7-iron still in hand and 20 minutes to go before tee time, I had a bit of an epiphany about releasing the club face. To make it happen, I simply had to allow myself to pull the snot out of the ball (my brain hates this).

Flush city.

And here’s the thing—I wasn’t pulling the ball very much at all. I had to aim a few yards farther right than I’ve grown accustomed to, but after finding the center of the club face with the 7-iron, it only took a few swings with other clubs to get everything dialed in.

I capped off the warmup with some drives that were absolutely punished, and I headed to the first tee with ball-striking confidence like I’ve never had before.

As expected, I found the center of the club face all day and proceeded to shoot an even-par 71 (73.4/130) with 4 birdies, 14 GIR, and 10 FIR—a bona fide ball-striking bonanza.

Although some a-hole beat me by shooting a 70 with consecutive birdies coming in, I felt like I had operated on a new plane all day. I knew I could knock my ball around with some control and confidence, and I knew I could score.

Despite the high of finally playing well in a tournament, the ensuing days weren’t great. It rained a ton; I worked the whole time; and then, on Thursday (Sep 20), life kicked my butt.

That morning, my dog—Mr. B, 5 days shy of his 15th birthday—woke up in a lot of pain. He’d had a tumor on his right foreleg for many months, but it “breached” this week and really became a problem.

He was having trouble moving, and the tumor started bleeding and leaking pus all over the house.

I knew he’d had cancer—or at least a bunch of internal tumors—for at least 5 years. The thing is, his energy always remained pretty high, and his mobility was excellent until the last couple of weeks.

After putting it off for a couple hours, I made an appointment at the vet and loaded Mr. B into the car. I was prepared for this to be our last ride together.

(Whenever stuff like this is happening, you just sorta float through the experience because it’s all too heavy.)

We arrived at the vet, got some blood work done, and then waited for the results.

Twenty minutes later, the vet came back with unsurprising bad news: Mr. B had advanced cancer, and he would likely die if we tried to remove the tumor because his body didn’t have the white blood cells necessary to repair damaged tissue.

He was in so much distress over the tumor that I knew it was over.

This was our last moment together.

That night, I didn’t sleep a wink.

I’m sure I was a little bit heartbroken, but honestly, I just felt so strange. When you lose a companion like this, the things you begin to notice are all little things you probably never gave an ounce of conscious thought to before:

When I got up to pee, no one stirred in their beds to see what I was doing.

At 8am, I didn’t have to fill a food bowl.

When I went upstairs to my office, I didn’t have to worry about anyone else’s knees.

Just a bunch of little stuff that gives you big feels when you start sorting it out after a loss.

The next day, Friday, was just a weird “readjustment” period. The relentless September rains continued, and I finally got the energy to hit a few balls on the sim that afternoon.

I hit about 60 balls—my first swings of the week—and didn’t feel like I was finding the club face the way I had the previous Sunday.

But who cares? Golf felt really unimportant, and my mind was somewhere else.

Even so, I was scheduled to play in a 2-round tournament that started the next morning. I was hopeful I could at least get some sleep and not go embarrass myself.

I woke up the next morning sometime before 6am to the sound of relentless, heavy rain. My thoughts: “Great, I get to go slog through the rain and mud for 5 hours, shoot 80, and be super disappointed about everything in life.”

A+ mentality, obviously.

But over the next 4 hours, the rains broke, and I managed to find the center of the club face on the sim.

Suddenly more upbeat, I headed to the Bluebonnet Cup (which has a pretty strong field by Austin amateur standards) and began my warmup.

By the time I reached for my driver, I had this weird “vision” that hit me out of nowhere—I felt like I was going to shoot an under par round in this tournament!

I had ZERO reason to think this was even a remote possibility.

I had never shot under par before in any round, tournament or casual.

My previous best 36-hole score in a tournament was 153. In at least a dozen tries, I had never finished in the top 50% of the field in one of these higher-tier Austin events.

And I almost never play the host course.

As I headed to the first tee, I thought about Mr. B. I thought about the fact he’d sort of “come in second” in a lot of ways during his life.

There had been times where I’d favored other dogs through the years. Beyond that, Mr. B was quirky as hell, and some of the girls I had been with found him annoying.

I let that stuff affect me from time to time, and like I said—I felt like he “came in second” to other concerns too often.

As I got ready to hit that first drive, I thought to myself:

“I’m gonna play this thing for Mr. B. I’m gonna keep that consideration at the forefront above all other concerns, and he’ll come in first—with me—today.”

After a couple of solid pars to start my round, that little “vision” hit me again, but stronger—I was going to remain in control and actually do this thing for Mr. B.

I proceeded to make 4 birdies and an eagle, but two short misses left me at even-par 72 (70.7/114).

After making birdie on the final hole, I was thrilled with a solid round but a little disappointed that I didn’t break par the way I had “seen” in my “vision.”

But I had one more round to play, so I guess it was still possible.

Either way, I had now shot even par in consecutive tournament rounds, and I felt pretty good about keeping my friend in my thoughts and following through with a strong performance.

And I finally had a great night of sleep on Saturday.

Sunday morning arrived with its typical calmness, and I was really looking forward to the second round of the Bluebonnet Cup.

I warmed up on the sim before heading to the course, and I was awesome—piping shot after shot right down the middle with authority.

Once I arrived at the course, I started thinking about my “vision” again. If I was going to make it reality, I had to go out today and shoot my first-ever under par round.

And if I did that, I’d probably finish top 10 in the tournament, which would be phenomenal given my record, my year, and my crazy week.

Fortune seemed to be on my side.

My playing partners were a 15yo kid (lil b*stard shot 68!) and a guy who I knew but had never played with. He works at the course near my house, and we always shoot the sh*t on the driving range and talk about the tournaments we play (which is the same rotation, basically).

Bottom line: Good vibes.

But after a couple of opening pars (one of which was on an easy par 5), I made a double bogey after fatting a wedge into water on the tricky third.

I was +2 through 3 holes, and when you’ve never broken par before, you really like to keep things on the happy side of par rather than forcing yourself to overcome some slop like that.

Normally, a double bogey in a tournament really bums me out. I am just not “clean” enough to get through a round without mistakes, and dubs are the one thing I focus on avoiding above all else.

But this time was different.

I knew I was going to make some birdies, so I focused on that and didn’t worry about the dumb stuff.

After a meh tee shot on the par 3 4th, I lipped out a curling 35-footer for birdie.

On the par 4 5th, I stuffed a wedge from 91 yards that almost went in. Boom—got one stroke back!

On the par 3 6th, I hit a gorgeous pitching wedge from 147 to 4′ and drained the putt. And just like that, I was back to even par.

I was still E on the 9th tee (a par 5), and I made a killer up and down for birdie to go -1 on the front.

The “vision” was still in play with 9 holes to go.

Naturally, it was a roller coaster.

After a par on the 10th, I made a weak bogey on 11 after a punch shot hit a puddle in the fairway and didn’t roll out the way I expected.

The 12th is a very gettable par 5 that was made a little more tricky by a headwind, which brought water and bunkers in play off the tee. While everyone else appeared to be laying up, I knew a 2-putt birdie was my best chance to recover from my mistake on the previous hole.

So I pulled the big stick and absolutely crushed one. I’m not sure I’ve hit a ball that hard all year. My ball waved to the water and bunkers as it went soaring past, and my playing partners were like, “wtf just happened?”

After that triumphant drive—and with only 160 yards remaining—I hit an awful shot and short-sided myself. With no good options at my disposal, I took my medicine, chipped it 18′ past the pin, and proceeded to bitch to my playing partners about how I had wasted that prodigious tee shot.

My look at birdie was not a good one: A downhill left-to-right slider, which I basically never make.

Naturally, I put it right in the center.

If you’ve played a lot of tournament golf, you know about the key shots that either keep a round together or propel you to a great performance.

As soon as that putt dropped, I knew what was up. This was my time, my opportunity.

The hardest hole of the day, the 204-yard par 3 13th, was the next challenge. And apparently, I’m into drama because I hit a terrible tee shot and short-sided myself once again.

But this time, I was 12 feet below the hole, and a 20-yard flop shot was my only hope of getting it close.

I’ll do damn near anything to avoid hitting a flop shot in a tourney, but I had no choice here. As I went to swing, disaster struck—I thinned the frickin’ thing and unleashed a laser that appeared to be soaring across the green.

Miraculously, the ball hit the FLAG (not the pin) and dropped to the ground, 12 feet from the hole.

Everything on the other side of the green—where my ball was heading—is out of bounds. If that ball doesn’t hit the flag, my day is over.

Although I missed the ensuing par putt, I considered what had just happened over the last two holes: Unlikely birdie, miracle flag save.

And the next hole, the par 5 14th, is where I had made an eagle the day before. Let’s do this!

Once again, I uncorked a bomb that left me only 196 to a front left pin. I tugged the approach ever so slightly, leaving me on the fringe with about 20 feet to the hole.

My eagle putt stopped dead in the jaws, one revolution short. Easy bounce back birdie, though, and still at -1 for the day despite a dub and two bogeys.

The 15th hole is a tricky little par 4, and I did the one thing you really don’t want to do—go long with the approach, because all putts and chips from up top are downhill and very slippery.

My approach putt from the fringe trickled 4 feet past, leaving an uphill right-to-left putt for par.

I addressed the putt, felt weird, and backed off—something that’s taken me 50 tournament rounds to force myself to do.

As I addressed the putt again, I felt a little less wonky, but I admit I was damn concerned about the implications of another bogey.

With that weak mindset in play, I failed to hit the putt hard enough, and it lipped out on the left side.

Now back at even par, I was pissed. Another 72 wasn’t going to do it. My “vision” was to shoot under par for Mr. B, and now I had no choice but to find a birdie on the final 3 holes, two of which are tough with difficult greens.

I ripped a long iron off the 16th tee, leaving 128 to a back right pin. With water short and right, I took a slightly conservative line left of the flag, leaving 19′ of downhill left-to-right break for birdie.

Although I had made a similar putt on 12, this one had more break, more speed, and was just not a great look. Simply put, it’s not a putt you expect to make.

Of course, I hit a perfect putt and watched as the ball died on the pro side and dropped into the cup.

Unbelievable. That was my 6th birdie of the day, matching a feat I’ve only ever accomplished twice before (and never in a tournament).

The writing on the wall was clear: I HAD to close this thing out.

The 17th is a par 3 that plays entirely over water to an undulating green, and on Sunday, it played 170 yards into a moderate wind.

I hit a solid shot pin high, but it came to rest in a spot where I’d have to carefully negotiate speed and a huge, swinging break (like 8 feet).

With surprisingly calm nerves, I struck a beautiful approach putt and cleaned up my par from inside 3’—followed by a MASSIVE sigh of relief after getting out of there with a 3.

The 18th is an easy, short par 4 with out of bounds left, and I aimed my tee shot at a fairway bunker 10 yards right of the fairway to avoid blowing up my round and my tournament on the final hole.

The drive was successful and left me just 66 yards away from the pin, but I now had a new challenge to overcome because I was starting to lose my focus.

Tiger Woods had just won the Tour Championship—his first victory after spinal fusion surgery—and our group was talking about it and watching the action on our phones.

I failed to lock in mentally before my next stroke, and I hit an indifferent shot that left me 21′ from the hole.

After a poorly struck putt and a bit of a misread, I was looking at 4.5′ for par and my first-ever round under par.

I had missed 3 similar putts over the previous 35 holes, and none had more on the line than this one.

I told myself to step up and “just knock this f*cker in,” and that’s exactly what I did.

Boom.

As we walked off the 18th green, the skies opened up, and it started to rain. As we continued up the hill toward the clubhouse—with the rain falling gently all around—I reflected on the week I’d had.

And I started to cry. (I am about the furthest thing from a “crier” you’ll ever see.)

Somehow, the “vision” had come true! It almost felt like it had been true all along, and I just had to walk the path.

I couldn’t break par for me, but dammit, I did it for Mr. B. I was so overwhelmed by the sheer perfection of the moment that it took me a few minutes to realize the totality of what had happened:

I had never broken par before.

Obviously, I had never shot under par in a 2-round tournament before. Hell, I hadn’t shot better than 153 in a 2-round tournament.

I had never finished in the top 10 of a “big” amateur event with a field of more than 40 players.

With 10 birdies and an eagle over 36 holes, I crushed those glass ceilings.

Right now, it feels like a miracle.

As I write this today, I feel nothing but absolute gratitude.

I am so grateful for every missed 4-footer, every bogey on the 18th, every stupid double bogey, and every little failure that ever caused me to shoot over par before this past weekend.

The final round of the Bluebonnet Cup was a microcosm of all those things—a dub early, a short miss for par, an extremely difficult 17th hole, and a knee-knocker to close the thing out—and I overcame it all to post a number that had eluded me for over 500 rounds.

I know there’s a ton of great golf in my future, but I doubt it’ll ever get any sweeter than this.