Tyler Fugazzie

Last November, I released a book of poems, short stories, and scenes called The Bronze Age.

It contains more than 100 pieces, split into six major parts, sequenced to flow into one another to form a larger narrative experience that emulates the way internet-users can form narratives through the lateral and ongoing consumption of digital media like emails, articles, listicles, forum posts, status updates, snaps, tweets, and texts.

The subject matter ranges from commuting by train, human-computer interaction, a big mysterious world full of unique characters, a dark personal crisis, and human passions both simple and complex, advanced and primitive.

The second part, Formal Tongues, focuses on how we interact with computers, both in a human-to-computer way in the case of coding and programming, and in a human-to-human way with the support of computers in the case of broadcasting, calling, and messaging.

One of my favorite pieces, and one that I believe best captures the spirit of The Bronze Age, is “Data Graves.”

I wanted to share the piece, along with some of my comments about the piece, AND the earlier versions of this piece so readers can gain some insight into my writing process.

Data Graves

It’s 2032
Most network connections have faded away
But our data remains
Buried in plain sight
Our bits are mummified within the tombs
of blinking, purring servers
In the soft aftermath of a classified digital nuke

These so-called “data graves”
Are invisible yards
containing plots of you and I, scattered around the world
Our half-assed entries growing mold

There’s a kabooming
distribution of deceased names, emails, street addresses
Outdated preferences and quantitative messes
Alphanumerical advice that proves useless
It’s just junk that spontaneously combusted
Data that’s consuming and corrupted
A disturbing terminal corruption
No more manipulating commands
No more metaphors for metadata

The robotic recipes that used to feed us have turned to ghosts
Former inhabitants stuck in barren machines
Looking to scare what’s left of us on these arid lands
But their algorithmic hauntings are predictable and rather easy to avoid

---

What would the world look like if every server and computer making up the internet was destroyed?

This was the central question behind “Data Graves.” Gauging the public reactions to times when Facebook or Gmail’s servers go down, there would probably be mass hysteria that would be hard to detect without the aid of outlets to share the hysteria.

The picture I had in my mind was one of a deserted area, with some survivors walking past servers stuck in mounds of sand like overturned obelisks. I related this “ruins of the internet” to Egyptian tombs that contain the remains of pharaohs, except instead of physical remains concentrated in one spot, our remains would be spread across a multitude of different databases around the world. We also see the internet as something a bit more ancient instead of advanced.

Identity is a subject I enjoy exploring in my creative work. “Data Graves” allows us to see: if identity in the modern world can be largely defined by aggregating personal data (though this misses essential components of what makes us, us), what will happen when the infrastructure storing that data collapses? Part of us would be like mummified pharaohs.

There’s a more sinister interpretation, as there’s an underlying feeling that something that could collapse such a large infrastructure at one time would also likely annihilate most of mankind…

My biggest joy: getting to use and mix language for deserted ruins, computer technology, identity, programming, data science, and ghosts.

My biggest regret: I’ll be 41 in 2032, so I really hope my projection is off…

Previous Versions

You Are a Statistic

Don’t become
A fucking
statistic
Don’t become
A fucking
Statistic
But no matter what you do
You’re a stat from now until you’re blue
No matter what you fuckin do
You’re a stat from now until you’re blue
Don’t become
A fucking
statistic
Don’t become
A fucking
Statistic
You’re measured
You’re valued
You’re sold
You’re studied
Don’t become
A fucking
statistic
Don’t become
A fucking
Statistic
But no matter what you do
You’re a stat from now until you’re blue
No matter what you fuckin do
You’re a stat from now until you’re blue

---

This was the first incarnation of “Data Graves.”

“Don’t be a statistic” is a form of rhetoric that prompts people to behave responsibly and avoid dangerous activities like drunk driving or smoking cigarettes. I was also showing a jaded view on we are often treated in the eyes of data-hungry companies and organizations.

I was kind of saying: don’t act like an idiot and become a brief story in a newspaper, you can do more with yourself and your life, but even if you can avoid doing that, you’ll still be viewed as a number and nothing more to many, many people.

Kind of disheartening.

A Piece of Data Pie (Version 1)

No matter what you do
You’re a stat from now until you’re blue
You’re measured, valued, prodded, dissected, surveyed, interrogated, filleted, instigated, renovated, and sold

If someone can make money from you
They won’t be satisfied with making some
They will maximize their gains

They will squeeze, study, compare, calculate, crunch

But you won’t be a flaccid used-up piece of skin
You’ll just be exploited
Like the land you live on
For your finite resources
For what you can give until you can give no more
Then you’ll be tossed out like an old coffee cup

You’re a piece of data
You are nothing special, not the sum of your parts
You are what you spend and consume and subsume and pause and resume

---

This was the second incarnation of “Data Graves.”

In this version, I took the idea that we are a number and nothing more, and brought it to a greater extreme. I used many words that show what can be “done” to you in a way, almost like torture, but with your information instead of your body.

A Piece of Data Pie (Version 2)

No matter what you do
You’re a stat from here to the clear until you’re blue
You’re measured, valued, prodded,
Dissected, surveyed, charted
Spreadsheet-loggered and skewless scatter-plotted

You’re join your friends in a line, you’re visualized

You’re fed with robotic recipes
That take the data points that make you up, you slice
You slice of numerical advice

You’re the recipient
Of everything you want
We know how to target and we know how to do it well

You’re calculated and compared
And put into bases
But don’t be scared

You’re a sweet old piece of pie
Isn’t that nice?
A scrumptious piece of pie

---

This was the third incarnation of “Data Graves.” I was having more fun with the language of data and statistical analysis, and adding in points about targeted ads, and how the data you provide on the internet will inform algorithms that serve you information and ads. I was reshaping the jaded perspectives into one that was more from the perspective of those who exploit you from your data, of how being used means you’re wanted and special.

Data mining means you’re valuable.

A Piece of Data Pie (Version 3)

No matter what you do
You’re a stat in someone’s eyes from here to the clearing until you’re blue
You’re measured, valued, prodded,
Dissected, surveyed, charted
Spreadsheet-logg-ed and skewless scatter-plotted

You join your friends in a line, you’re visualized
You’re stored in a base, just in case

You feed the robotic recipes that feed you back
Your actions becomes the data points that become your ingredients, you slice
You slice of numerical advice

You’re the recipient
Of everything you want
We know how to target and we know how to do it well

You’re calculated and compared
But this shouldn’t make you scared
You should be aware of how wanted you are
You’re a sweet old piece of pie
People want you
Isn’t that nice?
You’re a scrumptious piece of pie
And people want you

---

This was the fourth incarnation of “Data Graves.”

It’s very similar to the previous version, but in here I was adding more language connected the idea of a pie chart and a delicious piece of pie, and how people are delicious because their data forms the piece of a pie for many organizations and data miners.

1. Buy slippers
2. Buy tupperware
3. Find a book to read

No, no, that’s not right.

1. Perform a “life audit”
2. Review General Assembly classes
3. Buy pasta strainer

No, this isn’t working either. Maybe I need to use an application.

This is an okay list. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a better app to do this. Something that’s more helpful and sends me reminders.

This isn’t it. This is a list, but this isn’t it. I need to try something else.

Here’s a list. This is a list if I’ve ever seen one. A true list. The multiple columns helps with everything. This is a list that can be the list. This is the list that can do what the other lists haven’t been able to. This is the list with the chance.

But.

This isn’t the list. It just isn’t it. There needs to be another list. There absolutely needs to be another list. A list that’s different than the other lists in every way. A completely different list. A list so out of this world, that it puts all other lists to shame, and serves as the precedent for all future lists.

This list needs to be the list. The end-all-be-all list. One list to rule them all, to help guide me life, organize the things in my head in a logical, numerical order. A point-by-point list that I can…that I can…work with in a way I can’t work with these other lists. I need to be able to…to…to cross things off.

That’s it. I need to cross things off this list. With my hands. Not with my hands, but with as close to my hands as possible. Maybe a pen or pencil. I need to feel the list so it can become part of me.

This isn’t just a to-do list, or a task list, or a wish list, or a grocery list, or an idea list, or a project list.

Well actually it’s a to-do list which is pretty much a task list. You know, I don’t know. I’m not sure if I can try another list. All these sorta-lists and wanna-be lists are wearing me out. But I need something final. I need some closure on this.

I’ve got it. I know a list that combines the best of all the previous list attempts while bringing something completely new.

This is finally it. A whiteboard list. I can erase items and easily replace them. I can use columns. It’s big, can hover over me as the organized authority I need for all these tasks.

Let’s see it.

Eh maybe that isn’t it either.

I returned to the apartment building, stuck the key into the lock, and felt the same frustrating resistance that first brought me out of my apartment on a snowy sleepy Sunday afternoon. I tried it again. And again. And again. If this was the login screen on a certain website, these repeated failures would force me to wait for 30 minutes before I could try accessing the building another time. But it wasn’t, so I didn’t have to. I tried it again. Same result.

Eventually, I found a locksmith who made a copy that works. The previous two keys I had, one the property manager for my new apartment building had made and one I made, were bad copies. I’m used to copying things using a computer, which makes exact clones of data and files, and errors are virtually impossible in this world, so this concept of a bad copy was territory I haven’t encountered in some time.

When I went to nearby locksmiths, I was asked a question I couldn’t answer: where was this key made? I didn’t have that information. Nevertheless, I thought I solved the sourcing mystery by looking at the logo stamped on the key. This symbol must designate where the key was made, right? Actually, it’s the branding for the company that makes the blank for the key.

I don’t know much about keys.

This motivated me to do a little research into how keys are made and some other key facts about keys.

• We can thank ancient Assyrians and Egyptians for keys.
• Here’s how hardware stores make key duplicates with a key cutting machine.
• Apparently key copies can be made in a number of different ways, including with an app and self-service kiosks.
• Locksmiths open 24 hours aren’t necessarily open 24/7.

A little something I enjoyed about my journey was the system I employed for ensuring I didn’t mix up the keys when I was walking home. I compartmentalized the keys by using different pockets: my left jacket pocket held the key my roommate lent me to copy from (the original, working version), my right pants pocket held the copy of the key I was given (the bad copy), and then my back-left pants pocket held the third key (the new and working copy).

I wasn’t mad about the bum copies. I wasn’t annoyed about running back and forth for this chore. Keys are important; they occupy coveted space in my left pocket on a daily basis, yet I’m disconnected from the work that goes into producing them and the challenges this process presents. Bad copies are part of the game. Being temporarily unable to access my apartment building allowed me to unlock some of the knowledge and history hidden within the rattling objects in my pocket, and now I can carry around a greater appreciation for these long-standing, inexpensive emblems of security.

I’ve heard that in an unprecedented move, the US government has agreed to grant each citizen the right to bear another arm. Top government officials and policymakers have collaborated with the world’s top scientists, surgeons, and social, economic, and religious thinkers to arrive at the decision that an investment in another limb means an investment in the future of America, and in humanity as a whole.

This project, dubbed the “Extra Appendage Act,” will begin in 2016. The project has been developed during the past 20 years in secrecy, thanks to generous donations from a group of anonymous philanthropists who care deeply about the future of humanity, and want the next revolution in evolution to be driven by the United States.

As stipulated by the bill, Third Arms are going to be given to every citizen free of charge if they present a short, compelling case about how they will use the extra appendage. These limitations were baked into the bill to prevent people from frittering away an expensive and bold breakthrough in biotechnology on mundane tasks such as moving furniture, multitasking a phone call and meal preparation, and scratching itchy places.

Thousands of applications have been coming in by the minute since the announcement was first made. The proposed uses span the many domains of human activity, from emergency workers laying out real cases about the increased numbers of saved lives, to famous bands promising to deliver commercially and critically successful albums, to physical therapists proposing new methods of quickly and effectively rehabilitating patients.

If you are interested in securing a Third Arm, you login to thirdarm.gov and submit an application for your Third Arm, but first you need to think hard about how you’re going to use it.

Generally, I don’t have a good memory for smells unless it tickles from one of the extremes. If someone was sauteing onions in my house, I’ll remember that. If the passenger next to me on the subway needed a shower, I unfortunately remember that too. This makes sense since I don’t rely on smell to make it through my day-to-day activities.

This is also an absolute shame because smell is our most powerful sense.

We can detect at least 1 trillion distinct scents with our noses and skin. Combined with the fact that smell is our oldest scent, one we share with even single-celled organisms, we’re walking around with veritable superpowered-schnozes, yet we waste this gift by reading and writing and speaking and looking at odorless LCD screens for most of the day.

I’ve come to think of written words as fossilized sounds, because characters (abcdef…) serve as placeholders meant to trigger your understanding of the sounds they represent. This is how we can communicate without needing to speak. It’s not news that this is an amazing way to communicate, since it’s asynchronous, meaning I can write this at my own pace and you can read this at your own pace, it hopefully lasts forever, and it also offers a way to more formally organize our thoughts and ideas.

But it seems we can communicate with smell in a much, much, much more impressive way.

Smells have the kind of lasting power of the written word. These would be fossilized smells, and they aren’t words, they’re bacteria. Scientists used bacterial fossils to determine that life on earth 1.9 billion years ago would have smelled similar to rotten eggs. These bacteria provided the necessary smell clues the same way written words provide the necessary clues for sounds.

But is “rotten egg” even a smell? Egg is a type of food and rotten describes that the food is no longer edible. Tom Stafford, a cognitive scientist at the University of Sheffield, addresses how, despite the fact that our sense of smell is worthy of nonstop boasting, the English language makes it tough to do so:

Smell is perhaps the sense we are least used to talking about. We are good at describing how things look, or telling how things sounded, but with smells we are reduced to labeling them according to things they are associated with (“smells like summer meadows” or “smells like wet dog”, for instance). An example of this “hard-to-talk-about-ness” is that while we have names for colours which mean nothing but the colour, such as “red”, we generally only have names for smells which mean the thing that produces that smell, such as “cedar”, “coconut” or “fresh bread”. – @tomstafford

Filmmakers understood this limitation with regards to their visual storytelling, and one pair of men famously failed to overcome it with Smell-O-Vision. Maybe the noises we make in response to smells could be considered the names of smells, which would make the smell for “rotten egg” something like gkkkklll or uggggrrrhhhh. Digital tech is catching up, with text messages that can carry pleasant smells like lavender and coffee as well as an alarm clock that uses bacon to wake its users up.

All this newfound perspective has got me in the mood to start using my superpower more often.

I gotta go smell something.

I have a confession to make.

I’m responsible for every major publicity stunt in recent memory.

Maybe responsible isn’t the right word since I didn’t orchestrate these stunts. I was merely the man with the ability to pull them off in a way that put all the risk on my head and allowed the artist or celebrity to retain all of the credit.

Stunt doubles put themselves in danger to protect the person with the face or assets to draw box office numbers and there’s nothing more dangerous than a publicity stunt.

That’s where I come in.

I was the one who stormed the Grammy’s stage to get close to Beck. Almost broke my ankle on my way up those steps, but I pulled it off because I’m a pro and I’ve done enough of these kind of high-stakes stunts to know what it takes to push through a near-injury. I got this gig because of how pleased Kanye’s people were with my work with Taylor Swift at the VMA’s.

When Red Bull asked me to put on an Evil Knievel spacesuit and rocket up to the edge of the Earth’s stratosphere, I asked them “who’s Felix Baumgartner?” and then I jumped.

I was the Left Shark. I had the wardrobe malfunction. I was kissed by Madonna, twice.

These are my most notable accomplishments.
There are many more I can’t remember right now. I’d leave my details so you could hire me, but the nature of my work is to remain undercover and always maintain an element of misdirection and surprise.

I will leave you a hint for my next act: pay attention to the floats at this year’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

Scenario: I wake up at 4 AM, bundle up in warm clothing, and walk to a nearby McDonald’s to get food. When I get to this McDonalds, I finish my meal and refuse to leave. For an entire week. I go on Amazon to buy a book at the end of the week. I decide I’m unhappy at 5 AM and contact their customer support. I want to cancel the order. The management at the golden arches restaurant realize how long I’ve been there without eating, leading me to question how they can call themselves fast food with such slow reaction times.

I drag my feet returning home, using the extended time to visit reddit and look at content to cheer myself up. I browse this website for two weeks straight, without running out of things to look at or running into foreign objects along my walking path. It’s a feverishly good self-imposed blindness. At the end of my journey I stop into a convenience store to grab a cigar and coffee. Next to this convenience store is a gym. I check in, grab a towel, throw the towel into the collection bin, and then hop on a treadmill while smoking the cigar and chugging the coffee. Fueled by caffeine, nicotine, and adrenaline, I run, literally run, to my bank and withdraw all my money. All of my money. I let my greed run wild and try to withdraw someone else’s money too.

Someone calls 911 and police officers arrive.

End of scenario.

This series of events is not probable, but it is entirely possible because of an amazing thing known as 24/7.

When we think of 24/7, we most readily think of stores that are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The first store to become widely recognized for staying open 24 hours, influencing operational changes in other businesses, was 7-11. The story goes: a 7-11 located near the University of Texas got a rush of customers after a football game, and due to this impromptu yet overwhelming demand, the store remained open past the time they were supposed to close in order to serve all the customers. This incident served as the first successful pilot of a 24/7 model for the convenience store chain.

For consumers, 24/7 means there are places to go whenever they want or need to buy something. For those who work atypical hours, it’s a lifesaver. For the right businesses, it’s a profit-maker.

For media, 24/7 was a gamechanger. Created by an ambitious Ted Turner as a cable offering, CNN helped usher in a 24 hour news cycle in which news could be broken at any time during the day, not just at 6pm or 10pm or the next morning. And just as the advent of cable opened the way for CNN, internet and social media opened the way for even shorter and shorter news cycles. Some people say we’re at a 2 hour news cycle. I would say it’s about 2 minutes.

This is possible because the web created by the interaction of millions of networked devices is running 24/7. The internet is so 24/7, it’s “real time,” and since no one wants to be denied a dose of on-demand digital dopamine, the machine keeps running at a blistering pace. Below are three pieces of evidence that illustrate the extent of the internet’s 24/7ness.

Exhibit A: realtime.info

Exhibit B: http://pennystocks.la/internet-in-real-time/

Exhibit C: http://www.internetlivestats.com/

You can watch these all day and all night if you wanted to. Maybe one 24/7 cycle. Maybe one and a half.

The internet has allowed businesses such as Amazon, which only exist because of the internet, to provide support around the clock to customers from all over the world through forums, documentation, contact forms, and the more traditional call centers. The world is running 24/7 after all. And when the world runs 24/7, people need access to their money whenever they want (24/7 ATMs and online banking) and society needs access to emergency workers capable of putting out fires, saving lives, and arresting criminals (like the bank-robbing me in my opening scenario).

The most fascinating thing to realize is that 24/7 is not limited to systems, or industries, or organizations, or immaterial things (nonthings?) like information. Humans are 24/7 too.

You’re probably thinking – no we aren’t. We can’t run 24/7, otherwise we would fall asleep or die if we didn’t fall asleep. This is also what puts a damper on my scenario that I can browse a website while walking for two weeks straight without any issue.

But consider this: your heart beats 24/7. An electrical system allows the heart to cycle between relaxation and contraction to pump blood. Your not controlling this. This happens when you’re unconscious too. It’s running 24/7. A respiratory control center at the base of your brain (another 24/7 powerhouse) controls your breathing. This center sends ongoing signals down your spine and to the muscles involved in breathing. Once again, you don’t willingly control this. Even your circadian rhythm dictates your 24-hour day, determining when you’re tired and when you’re alert and when you’re hungry. So long as you aren’t screwing it up by overindulging in the 24/7 businesses or 24/7 media menu items.

Me and you and everyone we know are as 24/7 as a busy 7-11, an up-to-the-minute news cycle, and a never-leave-your-side internet.

If we weren’t 24/7, we wouldn’t be alive.

Why are pennies still around?

The US government loses money producing pennies, and by the US government, I mean the average American taxpayer. As reported by the Washington Post, it costs 1.8 pennies to produce one penny.

There’s a lively debate happening, coined 😉 the “Penny Debate,” regarding whether or not the US should pull the little Lincoln from circulation since it’s produced at a loss.

Despite this controversy, pennies are still around. In fact, there’s a lot of them around.

According to the US Mint, there are currently 666.4 million pennies in circulation as of 2015, between the production from their Philadelphia and Denver facilities, which accounts for around 43% of all circulated coins. This not-so-lazy research, combined with my own always-superior-and-never-peer-reviewed anecdotal and observational evidence, means that pennies are the form of denomination you’re most likely to find on the ground.

Maybe all these pennies on the ground are the result of the sheer volume in circulation. Maybe it’s a form of protest by anti-penny advocates. Thanks to xkcd, we know that picking up pennies is a possible financial loss, so maybe people are losing them and don’t care enough to retrieve them. Maybe there are those people out there, like me, who intentionally throw pennies on the ground as a positive anonymous act to spread good luck.

There’s an abundance of these pennies and when I see one I pick it up, and I know I’m not alone in doing this. My older brother said he picks up every penny he sees, though he says he spends them instead of saving, with the exception of an exceptional 1943 silver penny and one with an unstamped reverse side. Longtime MSN Money contributor Donna Freedman also picks up pennies and knows all the other good spots to find them. Lifehacker conducted a poll in which the largest percentage of votes indicated people are willing to pick up pennies.

Lots of people pick up pennies on the ground. One reason, as in the case for my brother and Ms. Freedman, is because pennies still rock value in our economy, making you a little richer and increasing your spending power. Another reason, which is the reason I pick up pennies, is because of the superstition that they’re made of copper-plated zinc and luck.

Fuzzy history says the whole “pennies found on the ground are lucky” thing descended from the notion that metal was a gift from the gods to protect us from evil. I don’t know. I’ve collected pennies and never received any good luck, even though I continue to pick them up.

Maybe pennies aren’t lucky because they bring us luck; maybe they’re lucky because they manage to survive and live for less-than-free everywhere on the ground while doing their best to disappear by the billions in a society where a large chorus of people want them to die out.

Pennies are lucky because they persist. At least until 2026.

in honor of friday the 13th

This past Sunday, I was walking to my local diner to grab a 3 PM breakfast when I saw a small tree branch resting atop a neighbor’s car. In a quick act of neighborliness, I removed the branch from the car and threw it on the sidewalk.

Before you praise me, or demand that the federal government institute a National Tyler Day to honor my heroism, I must keep myself honest and note that this isn’t something I regularly do. I’m not on the lookout for ways I can help my neighbors, in fact, I’m usually knit into my own world of thoughts or reflection or mobile media consumption when I travel by foot around my town.

Nevertheless, this moment got me thinking about “positive anonymous acts,” the acts of kindness we do when no one is watching. My act was pedestrian, in the sense that it wasn’t profound (and also that I performed it on foot). It’s entirely possible I only saved my neighbor three seconds of inconvenience, or the wind would’ve blown the branch away and he or she would have never even noticed it.

A positive anonymous act differs from a random act of kindness, in that there is no direct interaction between the actor and benefactor.  When I think of random acts of kindness, I think of someone picking up a dropped hat and returning it to a stranger, or helping an older woman cross the street, whereas a positive anonymous act has something of a “there’s an angel looking out for you” quality except instead of an angel its a regular ol human bean lending a hand to another human bean.

Parking meter fairies are practitioners of positive anonymous acts. Cleaning up random trash left on a table near your eating spot is a positive anonymous act. Leaving a penny face up on the ground so someone else can get some good luck is a positive anonymous act.

Positive anonymous acts are tricky because there’s no way I could praise someone for doing them; its very nature means I’ll have no clue it happened or who did it and vice versa. If someone else told me about a positive anonymous act, it kind of disqualifies them, unless they share it with me in confidence and not with the people they helped. I’m kind of disqualifying myself because of this very post, but I’m willing to do that since all I did in this instance was remove a stick from a car hood.

There is, however, a way we can gauge how many positive anonymous acts are happening in the world: looking at anonymous donations.

I conducted some, not-so-lazy research into Philantrophy.com‘s directory of $1 million+ gifts made by individuals to charitable institutions, which includes hospitals, museums, and colleges and universities. I filtered for the donor “anonymous” and found that between 2005 and 2015, there were 620 anonymous donations made for a total donation amount of $5,404,517,484, with the average donation equaling $8,716,963.

We’re talking about $5.4 billion in positive anonymous acts these past ten years.

Generous donors may remain anonymous for practical reasons, and they occasionally don’t remain anonymous forever, but there’s scientific evidence suggesting that anonymous donations have a more influential effect than public ones.

Enrico de Lazaro of Sci-News.com shared a study in which researchers at the University of Bristol’s Center for Market and Public Organization found that anonymous donations to the 2010 London Marathon outweighed public donations, and also prompted larger donations from subsequent donors:

“The Bristol scientists studied the anonymous gifts from 70,000 donations made through a website to fundraisers running in the 2010 London Marathon, the biggest single fundraising event in the world.

They found that anonymous donations made on behalf of runners in the London Marathon account for the majority of larger gifts than public ones. Furthermore, anonymous gifts rather than public ones induce larger donations from subsequent donors who give around four per cent more.”

So maybe you don’t have millions or thousands or hundreds or even singles to give away, but maybe you know you can secretly do something positive that’s more impactful than removing a stick from a car, and if that’s the case, then I encourage you to do it.

I decided to do a little half-assed analysis into the articles I’ve recently read from around the internet.

This is not a typical “hyperlink list of articles I’ve read on the internet.”

Reading List:

1 – Internet Companies
2 – Mobile Payments
3 – SMS Time
4 – Job Work
5 – Mission Personal
6 – Equipment Skills
7 – Leg Exercise
8 – Energy Feel
9 – Strength Stronger
10 – Work Love
11 – Version Grow
12 – Pattern Behaviors
13 – Meditation Workshop
14 – Minimalist Training
15 – Training Strength Week
16 – Made World
17 – Happy Happens
18 – Technological Humans
19 – Work Life
20 – Meditation Company
21 – About Interview
22 – Million Company
23 – Bowl Super
24 – Time Phone
25 – Work Apply
26 – Genius Baggage

The words that appeared more than once in this list are: work, time, strength, meditation, training, company.

Conclusion:

I should spend my time working to train a strength company in meditation. Or I should spend time strength train instead of working for a meditation company.

Methodology:

Curiosity and laziness.

I pulled articles I had easy access to (clipped Evernotes, recently read section of Feedly), applied a word count with WriteMonkey, then picked the top keywords for the articles.

Notes:

These sound and look like song titles.

I cheated with 15 because “Strength Week” made me giggle.

“Happy Happens” might be my favorite.

“Technological Humans” is my second favorite.

This was way more fun and slightly more insightful and actually much less lazy than a typical list than I expected.