flâneur

Matviy Kotolyk

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on the atlas — 56

highlights — 368

  • oung age] he’s read everything that he could find about business. The subject that interests him, he’s read newspapers, biographies, trade p
    Curius / Onboarding
  • This countercharge from within the discipline has had three critiques: insight, reliability, and adequacy.
    Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee’s Nobel Prize Is a Cautionary Tale for Economics
  • RCTs grew from strength to strength, celebrated by the media as a clever idea leading to a revolution in how poverty could be addressed; endorsed by politicians, who were often instrumental in enabling trials to be implemented; and receiving massive support from private and public funding agencies. RCTs received very little criticism from within the profession for perhaps a decade and a half.
    Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee’s Nobel Prize Is a Cautionary Tale for Economics
  • Disorder is worse than injustice, since injustice merely means the world is imperfect, while disorder tempts anarchy and the Hobbesian nightmare of war and conflict, of all against all. It follows, then, that order is more important than freedom, since without order there is no freedom for anybody. The fundamental issue in international and domestic affairs is not the control of wickedness, but the limitation of self-righteousness. For it is self-righteousness that often leads to war and the most extreme forms of repression, both at home and abroad. The aim of policy is to reconcile what is ju…
    The tragedy behind Kissinger's realpolitik - UnHerd
  • I treat the quality of my sleep, physical health, and food I eat as top-tier priorities above almost all else. Life and Work are truly marathons, and if you expect to be able to contribute to those compounding curves every day, you need to be well-rested, fit, and energized in order to do so.
    Thirty Observations at Thirty
  • 4. Embracing mimetic desires: Envy is difficult to cut entirely out of your life. If you surround yourself with a phenomenal peer set, mimetic desire can provide a very strong motivation to accomplish incredible things. I feel quite lucky that at age 19 I stumbled into a core set of peers through the Thiel Fellowship / SF that have been my closest friends, but also strongest motivators to accomplish great things, since many of them have accomplished great things already.
    Thirty Observations at Thirty
  • A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.
    How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus - The Atlantic
  • “We all think these are the toughest times,” says Amy Robinson, vice president of the Kresge foundation. “But there are always tough times, and you need resources available to have an impact” in the future.
    Big Foundations Give Little More Than the Law Requires, Data Shows
  • There are signs that policy makers are taking notice. Over the past year, lawmakers have debated measures aimed at getting universities with large endowments to do more with that money. A bill written by Republican Rep. Tom Reed of New York would force the wealthiest colleges to funnel at least 25 percent of their endowment income into student aid.
    Big Foundations Give Little More Than the Law Requires, Data Shows
  • To keep money flowing from endowments to charitable causes, federal law requires foundations to distribute at least 5 percent of their assets each year. In 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, each of those grant makers scored an exact hit, a Chronicle analysis of Internal Revenue Service data compiled by the Foundation Center found.
    Big Foundations Give Little More Than the Law Requires, Data Shows
  • Despite trillions spent on wind and solar, solar panels and wind turbines still deliver just over 3% of global energy, while fossil fuels still account for over 80% of the global energy mix — the same as three decades ago.
    Africa's revolt against Net Zero - UnHerd
  • Meanwhile, across Africa, the Western climate-industrial complex, composed of NGOs and state development agencies, has started pouring vast amounts of money into wind and solar projects. And this combination of carrot and stick was a clear injunction to poor countries in Africa and around the world: if they want to develop, they have to do so in a “green” and “sustainable” manner.
    Africa's revolt against Net Zero - UnHerd
  • As to why I followed the formula despite my criticisms, the answer is simple: I wanted the research to be published in the highest profile venue possible. When I began the research for this paper in 2020, I was a new assistant professor needing to maximize my prospects for a successful career. When I had previously attempted to deviate from the formula, my papers were rejected out of hand by the editors of distinguished journals, and I had to settle for less prestigious outlets. To put it another way, I sacrificed contributing the most valuable knowledge for society in order for the research t…
    I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published | The Free Press
  • So why is this more complicated and less useful kind of metric so common? Because it generally produces larger factors of increase than other calculations. To wit: you get bigger numbers that justify the importance of your work, its rightful place in Nature or Science, and widespread media coverage.
    I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published | The Free Press
  • But studying solutions rather than focusing on problems is simply not going to rouse the public—or the press. Besides, many mainstream climate scientists tend to view the whole prospect of, say, using technology to adapt to climate change as wrongheaded; addressing emissions is the right approach. So the savvy researcher knows to stay away from practical solutions.
    I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published | The Free Press
  • This leads to a second unspoken rule in writing a successful climate paper. The authors should ignore—or at least downplay—practical actions that can counter the impact of climate change. If deaths due to extreme heat are decreasing and crop yields are increasing, then it stands to reason that we can overcome some major negative effects of climate change.
    I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published | The Free Press
  • For example, in another recent influential Nature paper, scientists calculated that the two largest climate change impacts on society are deaths related to extreme heat and damage to agriculture. However, the authors never mention that climate change is not the dominant driver for either one of these impacts: heat-related deaths have been declining, and crop yields have been increasing for decades despite climate change.
    I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published | The Free Press
  • The takeaway of this essay is twofold: Calendars should natively differentiate between different types of calendar events. Tasks, meetings, blocked time, and other activities should look and behave differently depending on their respective attributes. This would open the door for a virtually infinite amount of other use cases that could be integrated into the calendar experience in the form of unique calendar layers. These changes would not just make the calendar a stronger center of gravity in the aforementioned productivity stack, but turn into an actual tool for thought, where time serves a…
    Multi-layered calendars « julian.digital
  • My biggest gripe with almost all quantified self tools is that they are input-only devices. They are able to collect data, but unable to return any meaningful output. My Garmin watch can tell my current level of stress based on my heart-rate variability, but not what has caused that stress or how I can prevent it in the future. It lacks context. Once I view the data alongside other events, however, things start to make more sense. Adding workouts or meditation sessions, for example, would give me even more context to understand (and manage) stress.
    Multi-layered calendars « julian.digital
  • Something I never really noticed before is that we only use our calendars to look forward in time, never to reflect on things that happened in the past. That feels like a missed opportunity. While a Spotify layer might seem more like a gimmick than a meaningful productivity hack, the idea of visualizing data from other applications in form of calendar events feels incredibly powerful. What if I could see health data alongside my work activities, for example?
    Multi-layered calendars « julian.digital
  • 1. You have a meeting with Mike A meeting is a multiplayer calendar event. It is not the same as a task. It is simply a reminder for all meeting participants that their presence is required (or desired) at a specific time and place. There is no “to do” here apart from showing up on time. 2. You need to travel to and back from your meeting To ensure that no other meetings are scheduled during those travel times, you added two “do not schedule” blocks (DNS). These are neither meetings nor tasks. Their only purpose is to avoid conflicts with other upcoming events. The DNS blocks appear before and…
    Multi-layered calendars « julian.digital
  • Treating todos as calendar events is helpful because calendars introduce constraints. A calendar forces you to estimate how long each task will take and then find empty space for it on a 24 hours × 7 days grid, which is already cluttered with other things. It’s like playing Tetris with blocks of time.
    Multi-layered calendars « julian.digital
  • You would expect technologists and entrepreneurs to be intensely focused on perfecting such a magical time travel device, but surprisingly, that has not been the case. Our digital calendars turned out to be just marginally better than their pen and paper predecessors. And since their release, neither Outlook nor Google Calendar have really changed in any meaningful way.
    Multi-layered calendars « julian.digital
  • Calendars, on the other hand, cover the entire spectrum of time. Past, present and future. They are the closest thing we have to a time machine. Calendars allow us to travel forward in time and see the future. More importantly, they allow us to change the future.
    Multi-layered calendars « julian.digital
  • Also, cool story, and proof of aforementioned nerdy doofustry: in college, I did an independent study/thesis on Kierkegaardian existentialism in the lyrical of poetry of Bob Dylan. He’s a hero to me, one of those ethereal giants never failing to inspire.
    My approach to writing, these days - by Alex Olshonsky
  • The fire needs room to breathe. I already know what happens when I try to smother it. I end up running laps around the Tenderloin, crazy-eyed, ripping cigs like there’s no tomorrow.
    My approach to writing, these days - by Alex Olshonsky
  • One of the benefits of stepping away from my traditional publishing aspirations, at least for now, is that I no longer give a fuck about appealing to a “sufficiently” broad audience. I cannot hide who I am, a nerdy surfing doofus into dharma and wide-legged sweatpants that don’t choke my ankles with those hateful strips of elastic at the bottom.
    My approach to writing, these days - by Alex Olshonsky
  • I still have a handful of essays on addiction and the future of recovery I’m working on. But even Bob Dylan couldn’t help but eventually pick up the electric guitar and try something new, even though he knew his fans would never tire of his singularly acoustic sound. (Indeed, many felt betrayed by his decision.) Audience capture dynamics like this can reciprocally narrow a writer’s focus, and thus perhaps, his enjoyment and impact.
    My approach to writing, these days - by Alex Olshonsky
  • Hemingway, another good drunk, once said: write the truest sentence you know. I’ll try that, I thought, and go from there.
    My approach to writing, these days - by Alex Olshonsky
  • The authors of the U.K.-based study reported that diabetic patients on metformin monotherapy were found to have lower mortality than non-diabetic controls, despite the obvious baseline health bias favoring the control group. This remarkable finding suggests that this drug has benefits for lifespan beyond management of diabetes – benefits which could improve longevity for anyone, diabetic or not. The results certainly grabbed popular attention and have come up a number of times on The Drive (for instance, in my first and second interviews with Dr. Nir Barzilai).
    A recent metformin study casts doubts on longevity indications
  • One other thing I’ll say about sleep compression: if you’re going to do it, try to actually commit to it 100% for as long as you can. If you only sort of commit you will got the worst of both worlds: weeks of bad sleep without fixing anything at all in the end. During my program I adhered absolutely to my 12-6:30 AM bed allowance during the two weeks I did it. The effect of this, which I began to notice almost immediately after, was that I began naturally waking up at around (or slightly before) 6:30 AM every day. Which brings me to my next point.
    How to sleep
  • Sleep hygiene is basically all of the things that you know you’re supposed to do in order to sleep well but don’t. The biggest pieces for CBTi are: not getting into bed until you’re tired, only using your bed for sleep, getting out of bed if you wake up/can’t fall asleep and doing something else until you’re tired again, and sticking to a regular sleep schedule.
    How to sleep
  • “Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.” -Augustine of Hippo
    Suffertember: Like Regular September But More Suffery
  • When you don’t drink coffee, you don’t have to spend time making it and (once you acclimate) you feel awake as soon as you wake up. Cold showers have a wonderfully abbreviating effect on average shower duration (and also help with the waking up thing). We all know that we spend too much time on social media, but it never really hits you just how much time you waste until you go a month without.
    Suffertember: Like Regular September But More Suffery
  • “Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?’ It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself to deal with the difficult time; while fortune is bestowing favours on it then is the time for it to be strengthened against her rebuffs.” -Seneca
    Suffertember: Like Regular September But More Suffery
  • High-performing companies are the opposite. They do the simple things right. Commitments are kept, repeatedly. When deliverables are late, people communicate. When things go wrong, the blame is owned, not deflected.
    Own It Mentality - David Perell
  • I want to do the same. Practically, the best change I’ve made to my own working habits is scheduling time to respond to messages every day (inbox zero, Slack zero, Twitter DM zero, text message zero).1 I used to wait a long time to respond to important messages because “it’s good to think about things,” only to never reply because so much time had passed that my message now had to begin with an apology, which made things even more ominous — until the whole situation turned into a monster that I was too terrified to confront.
    Own It Mentality - David Perell
  • The idea will give cold sweats to any investor familiar with Theranos Inc. That company, too, aimed to run large numbers of tests on small amounts of blood. It didn’t work, and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, is currently serving 11 years in prison for fraud after the company rode a $9 billion valuation down to zero. Vital Biosciences and its backers are aware of the parallels. “In some ways, it makes it more intriguing,” said investor Lachy Groom.
    Sam Altman, Valley VCs Bet $48 Million on Blood-Testing Startup - Bloomberg
  • The core of being earnest is being intellectually honest. We're taught as children to be honest as an unselfish virtue — as a kind of sacrifice. But in fact it's a source of power too. To see new ideas, you need an exceptionally sharp eye for the truth. You're trying to see more truth than others have seen so far. And how can you have a sharp eye for the truth if you're intellectually dishonest?
    How to Do Great Work
  • And that is what you're aiming for, because if you don't try to be the best, you won't even be good. This observation has been made by so many people in so many different fields that it might be worth thinking about why it's true. It could be because ambition is a phenomenon where almost all the error is in one direction — where almost all the shells that miss the target miss by falling short. Or it could be because ambition to be the best is a qualitatively different thing from ambition to be good. Or maybe being good is simply too vague a standard. Probably all three are true.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Everyone knows to avoid distractions at work, but it's also important to avoid them in the other half of the cycle. When you let your mind wander, it wanders to whatever you care about most at that moment. So avoid the kind of distraction that pushes your work out of the top spot, or you'll waste this valuable type of thinking on the distraction instead. (Exception: Don't avoid love.)
    How to Do Great Work
  • The trouble with exponential growth is that the curve feels flat in the beginning. It isn't; it's still a wonderful exponential curve. But we can't grasp that intuitively, so we underrate exponential growth in its early stages.
    How to Do Great Work
  • One reason per-project procrastination is so dangerous is that it usually camouflages itself as work. You're not just sitting around doing nothing; you're working industriously on something else. So per-project procrastination doesn't set off the alarms that per-day procrastination does. You're too busy to notice it.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Similar techniques work for starting new projects. It's ok to lie to yourself about how much work a project will entail, for example. Lots of great things began with someone saying "How hard could it be?" This is one case where the young have an advantage. They're more optimistic, and even though one of the sources of their optimism is ignorance, in this case ignorance can sometimes beat knowledge.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Ideally those hours will be contiguous. To the extent you can, try to arrange your life so you have big blocks of time to work in. You'll shy away from hard tasks if you know you might be interrupted. It will probably be harder to start working than to keep working.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Even when you've found something exciting to work on, working on it is not always straightforward. There will be times when some new idea makes you leap out of bed in the morning and get straight to work. But there will also be plenty of times when things aren't like that. You don't just put out your sail and get blown forward by inspiration. There are headwinds and currents and hidden shoals. So there's a technique to working, just as there is to sailing.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Obviously the most exciting story to write will be the one you want to read. The reason I mention this case explicitly is that so many people get it wrong. Instead of making what they want, they try to make what some imaginary, more sophisticated audience wants. And once you go down that route, you're lost.
    How to Do Great Work
  • The nature of ambition exacerbates this problem. Ambition comes in two forms, one that precedes interest in the subject and one that grows out of it. Most people who do great work have a mix, and the more you have of the former, the harder it will be to decide what to do.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Boldly chase outlier ideas, even if other people aren't interested in them — in fact, especially if they aren't. If you're excited about some possibility that everyone else ignores, and you have enough expertise to say precisely what they're all overlooking, that's as good a bet as you'll find.
    How to Do Great Work
  • If you are a B2B company, put your hypotheses and a short three to five slide pitch deck you can share in hybrid pitch/research calls with your target personas. These calls are set up to get feedback from your ideal customer profile with a brief pitch included. You can iterate as you go and at the end of your conversation, you should be asking the direct question of how interested they are in purchasing and aiming for them to say I’d love to continue the conversation.
    The Six Ps of lean product—and how to implement them effectively - Bessemer Venture Partners