If you are like me you subscribe to many RSS feeds and you find them accumulating articles faster than you can read them. What do you do when MetaFilter has 500 unread articles?
Use the glance and scroll method. Look at an article and read it if it looks interesting. But if it doesnt then don’t keep browsing. Give a hard flick on your mousewheel, trackpad, phone screen whatever and scroll rapidly past a large number of articles and glance at the next one you land on. Repeat.
The point is that all articles, regardless of their position in the feed are equally likely to be interesting, other things equal. So if you can only read a fraction of what’s there you can’t do any worse than this. But in fact other things are not equal.
The quality of articles is endogenously serially correlated. Because any blog runs the best material available that day/couple of days/week. If you landed on a lame article then chances are you landed on a lame day. Scroll your way out of that trough and hope you land on a peak.
Cheap Talk 
5 comments
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May 6, 2013 at 1:50 pm
ricardo
Hello There. I discovered your weblog the usage of msn. That is an extremely well written article. I will make sure to bookmark it and come back to learn more of your helpful information. Thank you for the post. I’ll certainly return.
June 10, 2013 at 11:38 am
Sevgi
Hi Michael,Thanks for stopping by.Just out of ciuorsity, howold is your Vitamix machine?Is it a Vitamix 5200?The warranty I list is for theVitamix 5200.I will copy your response toVitamix and see what theysay.Sorry, if I misled you. I onlyspelled out what was told tome. Hi Dave,Thanks for responding.I bought my Vita Mix (a Model 500) from a demonstrator on the boardwalk in Atlantic City in the mid 1960s. He dumped all sorts of vegetables into it then some eggs – in the shells, explaining that the eggs would provide calcium. I tasted the result, and it was good.My not-yet-wife thought that I was nuts to buy what at the time was a fairly expensive product from this smooth talking guy, but she eventually married me anyway.I could certainly buy a new model (Vita Mix, that is – not wife) but I have too much sentiment invested in the original (Vita Mix and wife).I think that it would be to Vita Mix’s advantage to maintain the mystique of Vita Mix by helping folks like me. I don’t expect them to carry parts forever (although that would be nice), but they could be more helpful to us true believers by at least providing helpful information. I have machinist friends who could make the part, but Vita Mix did not respond to a question about how to remove the old part.So you might want to expand your statement from “if at any time” to “if at any time during the 7 year warranty period.”Mike
June 10, 2013 at 10:54 pm
valcje
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October 17, 2013 at 8:15 pm
Tuthy
I stayed at a hosetl in San Francisco for two weeks and made delicious chicken marinara sandwiches pretty much every day. They’re very easy to make it you pick up some basics at the supermarket: wheat bread, a whole pre-cooked roasted chicken, Newman’s Own Spicy Red Pepper tomato sauce (this is key), mozarella, and then I add some crushed red pepper. Serve it with a salad or greens, and you’re good to go.
June 21, 2014 at 8:45 am
display digital media
Awesome blog! Do you have any helpful hints for aspiring writers?
I’m planning to start my own site soon but I’m a little lost on everything.
Would you recommend starting with a free platform like WordPress
or go for a paid option? There are so many options out
there that I’m completely overwhelmed .. Any suggestions?
Cheers!