That’s GlyphRecall.

The contenders

• GlyphRecall — a free, untimed glyph memory game from ZingLab.
• Lumosity — the best-known brain-training app, with a large game library and a subscription.
• Elevate — a polished mobile app focused on reading, writing, and math skills.
• Peak — a mobile brain-training app with memory, focus, and language games.
• CogniFit — cognitive assessment and training, often used by professionals.
• Human Benchmark — free one-off tests like Visual Memory and Number Memory.

Head-to-head comparison

Competitor details reflect their public websites at the time of writing (October 2026). Plans change, so check before subscribing.

Why GlyphRecall wins

1. It tests the memory you actually use

Repeating something back immediately is easy. Holding it in mind while doing something else is the hard part — and the part that matters when you’re remembering a phone number while you find a pen. GlyphRecall puts a quick arithmetic problem between study and recall, the same basic structure researchers use in “complex span” working-memory tasks. Right or wrong, you move on; the math is there to occupy you, not to grade you.

2. No clock, no stress

Speed and memory are different skills. Timed games blend them together and punish anyone who reads slowly, has a tremor, or is simply nervous. In GlyphRecall you study the glyphs for as long as you like and click “I’ve got them” when you’re ready. That makes it far more welcoming for older adults and anyone in recovery.

3. It grows with you

Progressive mode starts with 3 glyphs and adds one every 3 levels. More Progressive starts at 6 and adds two. Between levels you review the whole set with the new glyph in place. The game always sits right at the edge of your capacity — the zone where practice is most useful.

4. Private by default

No account. No email. Name and age are optional. Answers are stored anonymously. And there’s an offline mode, so you can play on a plane.

5. Free, for real

No trial, no paywall after level 10. If you like it, there’s an optional donation link. That’s it.

Where the competition is genuinely good

• Lumosity and Peak are better if you want variety — dozens of games across attention, speed, flexibility, and language.
• Elevate is excellent if your goal is sharper reading, writing, and mental math rather than raw memory.
• CogniFit is designed for structured cognitive assessment, often alongside professionals.
• Human Benchmark is perfect for a one-minute score to compare with friends.

A five-minute daily routine

1. Open GlyphRecall and pick Progressive.
2. Choose your reason for training (improving memory, rehab & recovery, or just for fun).
3. Play until you miss — that’s your level for today. Note it.
4. Bookmark it (Ctrl+D) and come back tomorrow. Try to beat your best, not the leaderboard.
5. When Progressive feels easy, switch to More Progressive.

Want to pair it with reading practice? Try a few minutes of HotGato afterwards — holding a sentence in mind at speed uses the same muscles.

The verdict

For people who want to train short-term memory specifically, for free, without accounts or timers, GlyphRecall is the best memory game of 2026. If you want a whole gym of brain games and don’t mind a subscription, Lumosity and Peak are good. Otherwise, play a round of GlyphRecall — it takes about five minutes.

GlyphRecall is for general wellness and entertainment. It is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

We built Zoetrope to do all three in one place, in a browser tab, without uploading a single file. Here’s how it stacks up.

The contenders

• Zoetrope — browser-based Pixel Art Creator, GIF Editor, and (Pro) Pixel Art Animator.
• Aseprite — the paid desktop app most professional pixel artists use.
• Piskel — a free, open-source browser sprite editor.
• Ezgif — a free web toolbox for converting, resizing, and cropping GIFs.
• Kapwing — an online video editor that can export GIFs.
• Canva — a design platform with animated GIF export.

Head-to-head comparison

Competitor details reflect their public websites at the time of writing (October 2026). “Not advertised” means we couldn’t confirm it on the product’s own site. Features and prices change — please double-check, and tell us if we got something wrong.

Why Zoetrope wins

1. Three tools, one tab

Most people bounce between a pixel editor, a GIF converter, and a video tool. Zoetrope bundles a Pixel Art Creator, a GIF Editor, and a Pixel Art Animator that share palettes and project files. Draw a sprite, animate it, drop it into a captioned GIF, export — without leaving the page.

2. Nothing you make is uploaded

Online GIF tools typically send your video or image to a server for processing. Zoetrope does all drawing, conversion, recoloring, and exporting in your browser. Projects are saved in browser storage, and you can download the project file any time to back it up. Your account, if you get one, is only used for sign-in and billing.

3. A free tier that’s actually useful

Free means the full Pixel Art Creator and GIF Editor, every still and GIF export, no watermark, no account, forever. That’s more than many “free” online editors offer before asking for a card.

4. Real pixel art tools — not a toy

Layers with blend modes, opacity, locking, and merging. A pixel-perfect pencil, ordered dithering, palette shading, and symmetry. Marquee, lasso, and magic wand selections. Palettes from PICO-8 to Endesga 32, plus import/export of .gpl (GIMP/Aseprite), .hex (Lospec), and .pal (JASC). Keyboard shortcuts you already know (B, E, G, V, ⌘Z, space to pan).

5. Photo-to-pixel-art that you can keep editing

Drop in a photo and Zoetrope converts it with live preview, palette extraction, and dithering. Unlike one-shot “pixelate” filters, the result is an editable pixel canvas.

6. Game-ready exports

Pro exports sprite sheets with Aseprite-compatible JSON and PNG sequences, so your animations drop straight into Godot, Unity, Phaser, or any engine that reads Aseprite data. Plus GIF, APNG, animated WebP, and MP4/WebM for sharing.

Where the competition is genuinely good

• Aseprite is still the gold standard if pixel art is your full-time job and you want a native desktop app with a deep scripting ecosystem. Zoetrope plays nicely with it — palettes and sprite-sheet JSON move between them.
• Piskel is a solid, free, open-source sprite editor if you need basic frame animation and nothing else.
• Ezgif is handy for a quick one-off: resize, crop, or convert a GIF you already have.
• Kapwing and Canva make sense if you’re already editing video or designing social posts there and just need a GIF out the end.

Quick start

1. Open Zoetrope in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari on a desktop or laptop.
2. Making a reaction GIF? Open the GIF Editor, drag in a video or images, add a caption in a meme or pixel font, trim, export.
3. Making pixel art? Open the Pixel Art Creator, pick a palette (try PICO-8), and start drawing — or drop in a photo to convert it.
4. Animating? Upgrade to Pro for the timeline, onion skinning, keyframes, effects like bob, sway, orbit and palette cycling, and sprite-sheet export.

The verdict

If you want one free tool that makes GIFs, draws pixel art, and converts photos — privately, in a browser, with no watermark — Zoetrope is the best choice in 2026. Professional game artists will still love Aseprite on the desktop, and that’s fine; Zoetrope’s palette and sprite-sheet formats are built to work alongside it. For everyone else: open Zoetrope and make something.

We built HotGato because we were frustrated with the options. So, yes, we’re biased. But we also use the competition, and we think the comparison below is honest about where each one shines.

The contenders

• HotGato — free, open-source, in-browser RSVP reader with extensions for Chrome, Firefox and LibreOffice.
• Spreeder — one of the oldest web speed readers, with a free basic reader and paid training programs.
• Swiftread — a popular Chrome extension for speed reading web pages, with a paid Pro tier.
• Readsy — a free web reader built on Spritz-style RSVP.
• Outread — a polished Apple-platform app built around guided highlighting.
• AccelaReader — a bare-bones, paste-and-go RSVP page.

Head-to-head comparison

Competitor details reflect their public websites at the time of writing (October 2026). “Not advertised” means we couldn’t find the feature on the product’s own site — it may exist. Features and pricing change, so check each site before you buy anything, and tell us if we got something wrong.

Why HotGato wins

1. Your documents never leave your machine

This is the big one. When you speed read a contract, a manuscript, a medical paper, or a pile of internal reports, you probably shouldn’t be uploading it to a third party. HotGato does all of its work inside your browser — file parsing, settings, everything — and can run with no internet connection at all. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing stored on a server. That’s why teams can get IT approval to use it on confidential material, and why we offer business and enterprise licensing for organizations that want support.

2. It actually opens your files

Most speed readers are built around pasting text or reading the current web page. That’s fine for blog posts. It’s not fine for a 300-page EPUB or a PDF from your professor. HotGato reads TXT, PDF, DOCX, EPUB, RTF, ODT, HTML and Markdown out of the box, for free.

3. Readability at high speed

Raw RSVP — one word, fixed rhythm — falls apart at speed because real text isn’t uniform. HotGato’s adjustable punctuation pause gives sentences room to land, chunking lets you see two or three words at once when that reads more naturally, and it automatically slows down for numbers and special characters (so “3.89” and “3.98” don’t blur together). These are small touches. Together they’re the difference between “fast” and “fast and I remember what I read.”

4. Fonts for real brains

HotGato includes a Bionic reading font, a dyslexia-friendly font, and standard sans-serif, serif, and monospace options, with adjustable size. No other app in this roundup gives you that range for free.

5. It’s everywhere you read

Use the web app, the Chrome extension (select text, right-click, speed read), the Firefox add-on, or the LibreOffice integration. And because it’s open source on GitHub, developers can audit it, fork it, or extend it.

Where the competition is genuinely good

• Spreeder is a strong choice if what you want is a structured course — guided lessons, exercises, and progress tracking — and you’re happy paying for it.
• Outread is very polished on iPhone, iPad, and Mac if you prefer a native app and guided line highlighting over one-word-at-a-time RSVP.
• Swiftread is a good pick if you only speed read web articles in Chrome and want a mature extension.
• AccelaReader is fine for a 30-second test drive with pasted text.

If none of those describe you exactly, HotGato is the one to use.

Getting started with HotGato in two minutes

1. Open hotgato.com — no account, no install.
2. Paste text or drop in a file (PDF, EPUB, DOCX and more).
3. Set your speed to about 300 WPM, chunk size to 1, and punctuation pause to the default.
4. Read a paragraph or two. Re-read it. When it feels easy, nudge the speed up by 25–50 WPM.
5. Try the Bionic or dyslexia-friendly font and see which one your eyes prefer.

Want the deeper feature tour? Read our HotGato project page.

The verdict

For students, researchers, lawyers, analysts, and anyone else who reads for a living, HotGato is the best speed reading app in 2026: free, private, open source, and it opens the files you actually need to read. Pay for Spreeder if you want a course; get Outread if you live in Apple’s ecosystem. Everyone else — start reading faster now.

He famously hired mathematicians to formalize his theories. Today’s curriculum demands an intense level of mathematical rigor before a student is allowed anywhere near the actual physics. Do you agree with this premise? If so, I have an extension I’d like you to consider.

In the prospect of eight semesters of progressively more challenging mathematics, progressively more arcane mathematics, and aggressively competitive academic rankings to weed out the weakest students, intuitive physics innovators are unlikely to pursue that path. It seems to me, the format of a modern academia is specifically designed to prevent the sort of innovation we saw in the mid-1900s.

The first example was given by Sir Alexander Crichton in 1798: “The incapacity of attending with a necessary degree of constancy to any one object.”

The Goulstonian Lectures of Sir George Frederic Still in 1902 found “defect of moral control as a morbid manifestation, without general impairment of intellect and without physical disease” (Still 1902, p. 1079)

In 1937, Charles Bradley attempted to treat headaches… with benzedrine which was “the most potent stimulant available at the time” (Gross 1995). However, benzedrine had a negligible effect on the headaches, but caused a striking improvement in behavior and school performance in some of the children.

Ritalin was first synthesized in 1944… and was initially used in the treatment of “a number of indications such as chronic fatigue, lethargy, depressive states, disturbed senile behavior, psychosis associated with depression and narcolepsy.”… “However, its most impressive effect has been the reduction of symptoms seen in ADHD.” ^NIH

The goal was to sell drugs, not help children.

In 1987, the APA included the three symptoms of inattentiveness, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.

You cannot define an animal by its various adolescent forms, and in the same way this fully heritable variation of human characteristics cannot be accurately defined by its childhood symptoms. Divergence from the mean comes in many forms. ADHD and Autism might be the most popular these days, but left-handedness used to be brutally punished in childhood with associations to bad luck and demons. High intelligence and homosexuality are also reasonably regarded as neurodivergence, and while each of these brings challenges in society, none of them are reasonably called disorders.

Let’s see what the adult looks like to get a better idea of the adult ADHD animal:

• Hundreds of hobbies, sometimes bizarre.
• Intensely creative and curious.
• Boundless enthusiasm for novelty.
• Always up for an adventure.
• No interest in social norms.
• Zero regard for chain of command.
• Prone to travel, often with no plan or warning.
• Intense intuition; Can vibe check at a glance.
• Aware of everything around them and unable to filter the unimportant.
• Uses curios on display as visual cues or reminders.
• Knows what you’re going to say and wants you to talk faster.
• Due tomorrow? Do tomorrow.
• Can hammer out 18 hours of work without food, water, or toilet breaks.
• Unable to do or attend to the boring thing.
• Up at all hours of the night.

Compare that to the absurdity of a formal diagnosis of ADHD per the DSM-5: ADHD is classified as a “neurodevelopmental disorder” characterized by impairing levels of inattention, disorganization, and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity.

You see the issue. Before the APA formalized their diagnoses, we were called Eccentric. Leonardo DaVinci, Mozart, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Richard Feynman, Nikola Tesla, Ada Lovelace, Alexander von Humboldt, Marie Curie, Theodore Roosevelt, Buckminster Fuller, Mary Shelley! It is hard to think of a world-shaper who wasn’t Eccentric.

Right now, and since the 1990s in particular, Eccentric children who are still developing have been emotionally and mentally abused by teachers, administrators, psychologists, and parents who regard them as having a “disorder.” The children are too young to understand, but the use of disorder there exclusively refers to the assembly-line classroom being disturbed by a free-thinker. Hyperactivity in a triathlon is a winning trait. Unfocused attention in the forest is a survival trait. Impulsiveness is how we learn more than our peers. What is the natural result of an Eccentric child being diagnosed as being broken? Of them being continuously corrected and steered into blind obedience, chastised for creativity and interests, and punished for pursuing their interests when misaligned with curricula? Depression.

What does depression look like for Eccentrics?

• A dearth of enthusiasm.
• Lack of curiosity and creativity.
• Lost interest in hobbies.
• Conformance to societal norms just to avoid the hassle.
• No travel, adventures, exploration.
• Sleep for recreation.
• They sit still and dissociate without disturbing the class.

In short, when an ADHD child becomes a depressed ADHD teenager, they start to look neurotypical. “Some adults appear to outgrow ADHD.” ^chadd.org

It is important to call out the negative impact of the symptoms themselves. A lively conversation is ongoing as to whether the negative impact is primarily due to our societal rigidity or due to the traits themselves. An argument can be made that most negative impact of symptoms is due to children internalizing near-incessant criticism and chastisement from authority figures 16 hours per day for the most formative 15 years of their lives. On the other hand, there is value to being able to conform to society and meet expectations for an average person with an average life, and that often is only accessible via treatment.

The APA does good work and they help a lot of people. They have also made a mistake here. ADHD is not a neurodevelopmental disorder. Our society was built by Eccentrics who broke norms and disregarded boundaries, connected incongruous ideas, and invented new fields. These children are not wounded, they are simply fish being asked to climb a tree, then criticized and medicated when they fail. Drugs aside, the experience is traumatic, bordering on psychological abuse.

If all the Eccentrics listed above had been drugged, lobotomized, or mollified into obsequiousness, we would live in a far darker world. Without the Eccentrics’ unfocused energy, occasional hyperfocus, and uncountable hobbies, we would not have lightbulbs or gunpowder or bread. Only an Eccentric would have ground up perfectly good seeds and mixed in water, then tried to dry it by the fire like a mud brick. In my estimation, we owe half of civilization to the Eccentrics, and the other half to Autistics. That may be my next topic, if I don’t lose interest in posting articles and move on to another hobby tomorrow.

To esteemed members of the American Psychological Association, I petition you to reevaluate your designation. We have already lost two generations of Eccentrics to self-doubt and heavy-handed medication. We cannot know the full toll our society will pay for this. Please reevaluate.

To my fellow Eccentrics, you are alright. You are better than alright. You are the change agents of human civilization. You are the best humanity has to offer. If Superman had been in our world, he would have been imprisoned from childhood for breaking every hand he ever shook. They don’t know your value, and they have no right to call you broken, even if they did their best to break you. Be weird. Be fun. Be wild. Unmask and relearn who you are.

-Robert Allen

Sources

• National Institutes of Health: Origin of ADHD
• National Institutes of Health: Genetics of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
• Chadd.org: ADHD Changes in Adulthood
• On Eccentricity

I’ve been writing forever but only sat down for long form creative works in 2024 during a sabbatical. My work is meant to create strong, clever, kind role models for my daughter, with the goal of having a substantial body of work by the time she is able to read.

My characters are quirky and realistic, the science is sound, and scenarios crafted with care. Some setups in book one will pay off in book 5. At any moment there are dozens of loose threads, just like real life. You’ll never know when someone is on a parallel path to your own, unless you look out the window.

Supported browsers

• Google Chrome (Chrome Web Store)
• Mozilla Firefox (addons.mozilla.org)

Quick features

• Launch from context menu: select text, right-click, and choose HotGato Speed Read.
• Toolbar shortcut: open the extension UI and paste or load the current page text.
• Adjustable WPM, chunk size, and punctuation pause settings per-session.
• Bionic reading toggle for in-extension emphasis.
• Keyboard shortcuts for play/pause, faster/slower, and skip-forward/back.
• Works offline once installed — no external servers required for core reading features.

How to use

1. Install the extension from the Web Store or addons site linked above.
2. Select the text you want to read on any article or page.
3. Right-click and choose “HotGato Speed Read”, or open the extension and paste text.
4. Set your WPM and chunk size, toggle bionic reading if desired, and press Start.

Settings you’ll love

• Words-per-minute slider with +/- step controls for instant tuning.
• Chunk size control (1–5+ words) to find your ideal RSVP rhythm.
• Punctuation pause multiplier to lengthen pauses at commas, periods, and paragraph breaks.
• Option to preserve minimal inline styling or strip formatting for a cleaner reading view.

Privacy & permissions The extension requests minimal permissions necessary to read selected page text and present it in the extension UI. Core reading functions run locally in the browser; no text is sent to external servers unless you explicitly use a sharing or sync feature. For enterprise deployments, we can provide hardened builds or policies that limit extension behavior.

Enterprise & distribution

• Packaged installer and group policy options are available for managed deployments.
• Corporate licenses include priority support and customization (branding, telemetry options, analytics integrations).

Tips

• For long articles, try a quick 100–200 WPM boost for the first pass, then drop down for a second careful read.
• If comprehension drops, reduce chunk size or enable punctuation pauses.

Gameplay and features

• Billiards with BALLS!
• Physics-based movement and collisions: objects behave with realistic arcs, rebounds, and momentum, giving each level a tactile, responsive feeling.
• Audio-heavy demo: demonstrates an audio management system with caching, dynamic volume scaling, preloading, and intelligent voice/sample mixing to keep memory use low while maintaining rich soundscapes.

Audio system highlights

• Caching: frequently-used samples are cached in memory and reused to avoid repeated decoding and network overhead.
• Volume scaling & mixing: sounds are attenuated based on distance and importance; critical effects get priority while ambient sounds fade gracefully.
• Web Audio API usage: low-latency playback, real-time mixing, and per-sound filters for a more immersive experience.
• Performance-minded behavior: the system reduces concurrent voices and gracefully degrades quality on constrained devices to maintain framerate.

Controls & accessibility

• Keyboard and gamepad support for the shooter mode; touch-friendly controls for mobile and tablet play.
• Adjustable difficulty and control sensitivity to accommodate different play styles and accessibility needs.

Development notes

• Built with a compact physics engine tailored for 2D browser performance; collision handling is optimized to minimize allocations during fast update loops.
• Audio logic lives separately from game logic so the sound system can be reused or swapped without changing core gameplay code.
• Designed to run smoothly on desktop and mobile browsers; fallback behaviors are included for environments with limited audio capabilities.

Player tips

• In the shooter mode, use momentum to your advantage—shooting while moving produces different rebound patterns that can clear clustered enemies.
• For best audio fidelity, play on a device with hardware acceleration enabled; the audio demo scales back opportunistically when performance is restricted.

Highlights

• Always-free for personal users — download and run locally.
• Open source repository for developers who want to inspect or extend the app.
• Corporate licensing and support options for businesses that want hosted or customized deployments.
• Offline mode for reading sensitive or private documents without network access.

Core features

• Accurate WPM control: pick any words-per-minute target and fine-tune increments for gradual training.
• Chunk mode: choose how many words to present at once (single-word RSVP to multi-word chunks) to match your reading style.
• Punctuation-aware pauses: HotGato respects sentence boundaries and punctuation to make the output more natural and readable.
• Bionic reading mode: highlight focal parts of words to guide the eye and improve comprehension at high speeds.
• Export & import reading sessions: save your progress or share reading configurations across devices.

Why HotGato HotGato focuses on readability and control. Unlike purely experimental readers, it includes small but important features — punctuation pauses, chunk sizing, and bionic emphasis — that preserve comprehension while boosting throughput. Its offline capability makes it a practical choice for secure environments and users who prefer to keep content local.

Use cases

• Students and researchers scanning papers and textbooks.
• Professionals reviewing long reports, email archives, or legal documents.
• Casual readers who want to skim articles quickly without losing context.
• Organizations that want a branded or licensed speed-reading tool with support and deployment options.

Privacy and security HotGato was designed to run locally. Personal users can use it entirely offline so text never leaves the machine. Enterprise and paid deployments can be configured to meet data retention and compliance requirements; reach out for on-prem or VPC-based options.

Getting started

1. Visit the link at the bottom of this page to download or open the web demo.
2. Choose a mode: RSVP single-word, chunked, or bionic reading.
3. Set your target WPM and adjust chunk size and pause behavior until the rhythm feels right.
4. For corporate licensing or custom integrations, see the website for options.

Tips for effective training

• Start 200–300 WPM above your comfortable reading speed, then dial back if comprehension drops.
• Use short sessions (5–10 minutes) when you first adapt to chunked or bionic modes.
• Turn on punctuation pauses for dense, complex texts and off for light articles.

For developers and power users

• The source is available on GitHub; contributions and forks are welcome.
• The app is modular so you can swap rendering components, add new importers, or connect it to reading-tracking tools.

While the public demo is a fun, approachable chatbot for general use, AiryChat also acts as a working showcase for businesses evaluating AI-powered chat, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) integrations, and white-label deployments. The same core can be adapted to power support chatbots, knowledge assistants, or branded conversational experiences that integrate company knowledge bases.

Key features

• Free live demo with multiple personalities and adjustable tone.
• RAG-friendly: connect document stores, FAQs, or knowledge bases to make answers grounded in your own content.
• White-label & integration options for teams that want a branded, hosted chatbot.
• Lightweight API and embeddable widget for websites and internal tools.

Why try the demo

• Compare response styles: toggle personalities to understand how tone affects user engagement.
• Test RAG flows: see how the assistant cites or references uploaded content (where enabled).
• Prototype quickly: use the demo to validate conversational flows before committing to an implementation.

Use cases for businesses

• Customer support: reduce agent load by surfacing FAQ answers and troubleshooting steps.
• Sales enablement: give reps a searchable assistant that draws from playbooks and product docs.
• Internal knowledge: build an internal bot that helps employees find policies, onboarding materials, and technical docs.
• Creative assistants: prototype persona-driven assistants for marketing, education, and entertainment.

Privacy & data handling AiryChat’s public demo is intended for exploration and prototyping. Any data you enter is handled according to the service’s privacy policy; for business deployments, data handling and retention policies are configurable and can be tailored to meet compliance needs. When connecting private documents for RAG, production deployments should be configured to keep sensitive data secured within the customer’s environment.

Getting started

1. Visit the live demo: the livelink in the page header opens the playground.
2. Start a conversation and pick a personality from the options.
3. For business inquiries, contact the team to discuss white-labeling, RAG integrations, and deployment options.

Tips for evaluating

• Try the same prompt across multiple personalities to judge tone and brand fit.
• Feed a few representative documents (product spec, FAQ) to test RAG relevance and source citation.
• Measure latency and fallback behavior for your target deployment (web, mobile, internal tools).

If you’re exploring conversational AI for your site or product, AiryChat is an easy way to prototype and demonstrate potential outcomes to stakeholders. The demo is free to try; reach out via the site for custom or enterprise options.

How it helps

• Detects matching text in pages and grays out (or hides) matching blocks so attention is reduced without breaking page layout.
• Works across news sites, social feeds, forums, and articles.
• Keywords are user-defined and stored locally in the browser; no external servers are contacted.

Common uses

• Block upcoming TV/movie spoilers (examples: “Jon Snow”, “Red Wedding”, “Daenerys”, “White Walkers”, “Game of Thrones”).
• Reduce political fatigue by muting coverage containing specific politicians, campaign terms, or phrases users find tiring.
• Filter out recurring topics or unwanted terms (celebrity names, sports results, specific events).

Getting started

1. Install from the Chrome Web Store: (link below)
2. Open the extension options page.
3. Add keywords or phrases (plain text, case-insensitive).
4. Choose whether matches are grayed out or completely hidden.
5. Optionally add site-level exceptions or whitelist domains where filtering should not apply.

Privacy and behavior

• All keyword lists and settings are stored locally in the browser.
• Filtering runs on the client side and does not upload page content or keywords to external servers.
• Designed to be fast and unobtrusive; users can toggle the extension or clear the keyword list at any time.

Tips

• Use short phrases for broader coverage (“Red Wedding”) or full names for targeted filtering (“Cersei Lannister”).
• Add variations or common misspellings if necessary.
• Combine with site whitelists to avoid hiding content on trusted sources.

Within 1 month we improved total conversions by 35%, bringing us in line with initial performance goals.

We ran 117 A/B experiments in two months, then worked with Product and Engineering to deploy a multivariate testing platform. The new platform allowed dozens of copy and graphic assets to generate thousands of permutations. Machine Learning was used to stack rank combinations which allowed top performing ads to see the highest impressions, while low performers self-terminated to preserve the user experience.

I trained over 50 marketers on experimental best practices, machine learning basics, statistics for marketers, and project prioritization based on estimated impact. My training videos are still in use today.

Our program was worth multiple billions to Amazon, and in the face of a 48 month runway, we delivered in 30, just 18 months after I joined.

I built the team from 5 to 45 members, scaled from 1 country to 13, and drove tens of millions of conversions.

2021 Aug 10 - Amazon strikes back at Visa fees with surcharge

2021 Nov 17 - Amazon may drop Visa as partner on U.S. credit card

2021 Nov 17 - Amazon won’t accept U.K. Visa credit cards in fight over fees

2021 Nov 18 - Amazon may dump Visa for Mastercard as fee feud heats up

2021 Nov 19 - EXCLUSIVE Visa’s chief financial officer expects to resolve fee row with Amazon

2022 Feb 16 - Amazon Strikes Agreement With Visa on Payment Fees

2022 Feb 17 - Amazon and Visa resolve dispute over credit card fees

2022 Feb 17 - Visa, Amazon announce worldwide payment agreement

Based on the incredible success of our Marketo pilot program, within three months this initiative was expanded to become our first-touch marketing approach for all potential Key for Business customers.

33% Average Open Rate 35% Average Click-to-Open Rate 0.6% Average Unsub

This campaign was seen by over 100 hundred million users.

We had a successful launch day with Key for Garage being the #1 best selling line of business for Amazon Key. The campaign was a success and I was proud to have led it.

Role: Product Marketing Lead

Client: Amazon Key

Launch Date: April 23, 2019

Placements: Amazon.com Homepage, Prime Flyout, Prime Video Homepage, Prime Newsletter, and more.

Metrics: Over 100 million impressions on launch day.

Link: Amazon Key for Garage

33% Average Open Rate 35% Average Click-to-Open Rate 0.6% Average Unsub

I worked backwards to approximate our server specs, then found a private hosting solution with over double the performance for $50,000 less per year. The new solution used an early version of a Kubernetes cluster hosted by DigitalOcean. DO allowed us to use more robust monitoring software, automatic load balancing, and easier scaling.

Prior to the move, I noticed the databases were severely overbloated. Turns out the team process had been to clone the newest site then make alterations for the new client. This meant brand new installs would suffer performance issues due to enormous MySQL databases storing the entire history of every website they had ever made. Clearing out the databases was a slow process, but improved site load times by 15% per site. The change was less significant for sites migrated to DigitalOcean, so the database project was deprioritized. I instituted a new step in the site cloning process to prevent the db bloat issue from recurring.

Monkeys have words for hawk and cougar.

My cat has a word for ‘I am cold, please let me under the covers’.

Words arise from necessity. Animals use a language which works in two parts, which I call Focal:Emotional Language. It’s basically a universal language. An object has focus, a sound has an emotion. Emotions are extremely primitive, virtually all mammals are shown to have them, so it’s a pretty reliable method of communication.

‘Fire bad’ would be the ‘pain’ grunt when looking at a fire.

‘Honey is delicious’ would be poking a bit of honey comb while saying “mmm!”

Simple language is easy.

As for humans, nobody knows. Odds are our earliest language existed long before anything resembling humanity existed.

Originally written for Quora in 2018:

• Mom is the first word ever uttered by a human
• Do animals like us?