Category: Reading

Books, & links to all kinds of stuff I found interesting

2023-06-25 Links

Robin Hanson: Defy Your Neck-Hairs

Rob Walker: Never again, in a good way. I’ve toyed with the idea of a gratitude journal, never successfully.A learning journal (or a never-again journal) is more enticing, but again this particular user is not consistent 😉

Xinyue Wei: Delight in the everyday

I resonate with the lessons in this video about football strategy  in a non-football context

“People like to say that feelings aren’t facts, which is true BUT one thing I have come to understand is that other people’s feelings are facts to them. The irony of the ‘facts aren’t feelings’ crowd is that they spend all this time trying to argue other people out of their feelings… as if that has ever worked. As if that’s not a super emotional and irrational thing in and of itself. The sooner you accept that a person feels a certain way and meet them there (or just let it go), the sooner you can come to a resolution and an understanding (or just move on with your life).” Ryan Holiday

All success is a lagging indicator. – also Ryan Holiday. I remember this often at work.

Rands in Repose: Ask questions, repeat the hard parts, and listen

Sara Canaday: How do you measure your effectiveness as a leader?

David Perell: How Learning Happens

David Epstein: Pour out lesser ideas to get greater ones

Henrik Karlsson: Podcasts and the age of enlightenment

Five thoughts of a dying professor, University of Waterloo

2023-06-14 Links

Andy Matsuchak on VisionPro.  (ps: I like his note-taking style, and despite previous ham-handed attempts at creating my own, have given up on this mode.)

Jim Nielsen makes a very good point in Minute Rice, Minute Text, Minute Websites “If anybody can spin up a website in “3 easy steps” then what’s the differentiation? It’s everything after the three easy steps that counts; everything after the “website in minutes” that separates you from the rest.”

Seth Godin wonders how did we end up here, using the story of bicycles!

 

 

2023-06-12 Links

The surprising reason why there are so many Thai restaurants in the US

Singapore’s GenAI primer is a splendid read for a discussion paper.

Some of the best blog posts of all time. Stewart Brand’s origin story of the Whole Earth

Tyler Cowen’s Lecture at LSE on Economics, Hayek, & Large Language Models

Danilo Campos makes the case for AR, with the relevant appropriate skeptical cautions.

ChatGPT and jokes – the same 25 jokes repeated

2023-06-11 Links

JBTD: Bob Moesta does a live interview of “progress”

From science fiction to reality. Contrast that with Ted Jiang in the FT “ultimately, what makes our lives meaningful is the empathy and intent we get from human interactions — people responding to one another. With AI, he says: “It feels like there’s someone on the other end. But there isn’t.”

Julia Evans: Some blogging myths

Luke Burgis: Podcast heroes

Economist: The Pitfalls of Loving Your Job a Little Too Much

 

 

2023-06-10 Links

Stowe Boyd: Blinded by the illusion of control

Sketchplanations: Be Spontaneous: “The tremendous liberation, fear and confidence that comes with believing that you will do the right thing in the moment without knowing what it is beforehand.”

Getting back to the idea of a better future: “We may not be in control of what the future holds or able to predict it, but we should rediscover the hope that it will be better.”

Wonky. This is a fascinating article using sound, instead of mere text or video.  “When you learn music, you’re trained to think [in terms of a] “right way” and a “wrong way.” It’s all just made up. You have to find your own way. And so often [in making music], the things that are deemed wrong, or unconventional, or strange — those are the things that work the best and move people the most, because people are moved by things that aren’t perfect.”

John “Cougar” Mellenamp: “I’m going to quote Bob Dylan to you. Bob and I were painting together one day, and I asked him how he wrote so many great songs. In all seriousness, he said, “John, I’ve written the same four [expletive] songs a million times.” I’m going to get in line with Bob on that. It’s always the same song, just more mature or with a different angle.”
“I’m good friends with Stephen King. I said, “Steve, why are we such hypochondriacs?” He said it’s because we make stuff up — a song, a story, a painting — and when we’re not doing that, we turn it on ourselves. You think, “Oh, I can’t breathe.” And even though you were breathing fine, all of a sudden you can’t, because you focused on it.

Mortimer Adler: How to speak, how to listen +100

3Blue1Brown: How to send a self-correcting message

A lecture on Learning to Learn by Richard Hamming, who invented those  ‘parity checks’ in the video above.