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Jason Snell, former editor of Macworld, posted a link on Mastodon to a story he wrote on his own site, Six Colors, about automations. So far, nothing abnormal here.

When I went to read the story, a newer one had been posted in the interim, about how the soon-to-be-defunct news app Artifact had one killer feature, as summed up in the headline of Jason’s story:

Jason: “…what I loved about Artifact was that you could take a meaningless clickbait headline and have the app read the story and write a new headline based on its contents.”

Also Jason: “…in the era of the web and news aggregators, headlines that give away pertinent information have become a lost art. Whole generations of editors have been trained to write coy headlines that will earn a click, even if the people who are clicking will be immediately disappointed by the truth of the story.”

Scroll a little down from this story, and you’ll find another piece linked from Macworld that Jason wrote. The headline on Macworld is a bit different, but essentially the same:

That’s right–it’s a classic clickbait headline, posted on the same day that Jason was complaining about…clickbait headlines. I guess writing good headlines truly is a lost art. 🙂

Amazing list of personality attributes to have or avoid for job interviews

I’m not going to link to the article but if you use your favorite search engine, you should have no trouble finding CNBC’s article on how personality matters more than things like education or appearance when it comes to job interviews.

This may seem obvious to you. It seems obvious to me. The purpose of an interview is not to assess a person’s education–that’s presumably listed on their resume. Nor would appearance be a factor, unless the candidate showed up dressed in a bunny outfit (assuming they were not applying for a position as a bunny, of course). What else is left at an interview, then? Personality. I mean, anyone can answer the mind-numbingly dull, rote interview questions that always get asked (“Tell us about a time there was a conflict at work and how you handled it”), it’s all in how you handled it (driven by your personality) that matters (“I smashed a chair over his head and said next time it will be an axe. We got along great after that.”)

Here’s the list of the least and most desirable personality traits provided by some experts or something. Are you ready? This list will blow you away.

The takeaway here is to not start the interview with, “I am the best person you will interview today, I have already had a thousand other jobs where I excelled, deserve top pay from Day One, will promise to show up almost all the time and will dictate all of my own working conditions, do what I want when I want and will ignore all requests by management.”

Obviously, say the opposite of the above and you’ll be hired. It’s just science.

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Clickbait secrets revealed #1

The world is a busy place and the internet is part of the world, so it’s also a busy place. I’m here to help.

Instead of having to click on a clickbait link and then read an actual article and junk to glean the valuable pearls of wisdom within, just read below for the actual clickbait content*. Save time, save money!

Clickbait title: Self-Made Billionaires Like Warren Buffett and Elon Musk Prove If You Don’t Make Time for These 6 Little Things Every Day, You’ll Never Be Successful

Clickbait secrets revealed:

  • Eating
  • Sleeping
  • Breathing
  • Pooping
  • Not getting run over by a bus
  • Dumb luck

* not actual clickbait content