Joshua Hou

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on the atlas — 34

highlights — 55

But I do think it is a good idea, generally, and one that I have used—to speedrun relationships by jumping directly to the strange parts. There is really no point in going to a café to talk safely (if you can avoid it). You want to rapidly extract as much information as possible, so you can figure out what you like and so that you can pattern match, and you want to communicate as much as possible, too, so you can filter people who wouldn’t fit you anyway (which is why keeping a blog is good).
Looking for Alice - by Henrik Karlsson - Escaping Flatland
That is perhaps the most solid dating advice I have, by the way—show the inside of your head in public, so people can see if they would like to live in there.
Looking for Alice - by Henrik Karlsson - Escaping Flatland
My answer is that if you tolerate too much half-heartedness, it’s probably because you’re half-hearted. As in: anxious and ambivalent, looking for reassurance. As in: bored, along for the ride, not really sure about your own feelings and opinions. As in: external locus of control vs internal locus of control. You probably don’t have anything in your life that really tethers you to yourself—you don’t have conviction about what you love, so you’re hoping that someone else will provide you that certainty.
how to avoid half-heartedness - by Ava - bookbear express
Those people you end up over-explaining yourself to in an effort to feel seen—only to eventually feel like they simply don’t “get it.”
same wavelength - by Isabel - Mind Mine
I’ve come to understand that being on the same wavelength as someone is some combination of (1) admiring them, (2) sharing deep elements of yourselves (values, interests, principles, current inner context), and (3) being socially compatible (having similar ways that you like hanging out with one another). If you align on any of these, you’re going to connect. If you align on all three, you’re going to click.
same wavelength - by Isabel - Mind Mine
Some people are so afraid and so locked into a place of extreme insecurity that they always feel like they’re giving much more than they are, and getting much less than they are.
Love Shouldn't Feel Bad - by Heather Havrilesky - Ask Polly
Pursue information that makes you more conscious. This information has a higher energetic signature to it; it feels meaningful. It means orienting ourselves towards what we love. But this path requires a high tolerance for dissonance and discomfort. You need to be able to constantly adapt to new information. This pushes us through into the next level of more integrated, complex consciousness.
What’s the Point? - by Tom Morgan - What's Important?
evolution drives us to individuate and integrate.
What’s the Point? - by Tom Morgan - What's Important?
In evolution, we are each being drawn to become a completely unique letter, so that the whole story can become ever more complex. Instead of 26 letters to tell its story, the Earth has 8 billion. The more unique we get, the more complex the world gets. It’s an elegant idea
What’s the Point? - by Tom Morgan - What's Important?
Where we chose to direct our attention is equivalent to how we chose to spend our life
What’s the Point? - by Tom Morgan - What's Important?
The immigrant experience, and specifically the one my parents' generation went through, is under-appreciated. I think we’ve come to believe that because it was common, it wasn’t notable. — me
EchoShadow - by Eli Qian - Nonlinear
Our parents are scrappy and know what it's like to be at rock bottom. They understand what it means to live with urgency and have a unique appreciation for hard work. Family has and always will come first.
EchoShadow - by Eli Qian - Nonlinear
Despite the hardships, my mom considers these parts of her life to be some of the best. There was a sense of optimism and it can only get better from here that permeated daily life.
EchoShadow - by Eli Qian - Nonlinear
I might not ever know what it's like to have to make something work in order to survive.
EchoShadow - by Eli Qian - Nonlinear
My friend's dad has a similar story, except with donuts: there was a period of his life where he lived on three donuts a day, one for each meal.
EchoShadow - by Eli Qian - Nonlinear
It’s just that when my new life comes up with old friends, I feel that sense of unease and change the topic. And when I speak about professional concerns with more recent friends, I likewise feel that sense of unease and become motivated to shift the conversation.
Keep Your Head Up in Some Rooms, and Your Head Down in Others
Put differently, as your association value rises, unless the value of your existing friends also rises, you might increase your chances of finding better friends than them. If your social prospects increase, you might begin to neglect existing contacts in favor of newer friendships.
Keep Your Head Up in Some Rooms, and Your Head Down in Others
This brings us to the zero-sum nature of friendship. We have a limited amount of time and resources. If someone is your friend, it means they value you more than they value others. They would help you over someone else.
Keep Your Head Up in Some Rooms, and Your Head Down in Others
Association value refers to the abstract value that people have for each other. In short, it asks, “how valuable of a friend would this person be for me (and vice versa)?”
Keep Your Head Up in Some Rooms, and Your Head Down in Others
Henrich writes, “Americans sometimes see behavioral flexibility as ‘two-faced’ or ‘hypocritical,’ many other populations see personal adjustments to differing relationships as reflecting wisdom, maturity, and social adeptness.” (Here’s my review of this excellent book).
Keep Your Head Up in Some Rooms, and Your Head Down in Others
people who are from WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democracies) countries believe that people should be the same with everyone. They expect people’s personalities and dispositions to be consistent across social interactions. In contrast, non-WEIRD people believe it is perfectly appropriate to adjust one’s behavior and demeanor depending on the situation and the person with whom they are interacting.
Keep Your Head Up in Some Rooms, and Your Head Down in Others
activism is “a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.”
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update
Artists want to differentiate themselves from what’s been done before and what others are currently doing. And so do the affluent.
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update
The elite want to differentiate themselves from the rabble with their visible badges of luxury. But then then the class below tries to emulate the elite, and the stratum below that as well, until the style has trickled down to the rest of society.
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update
Only the affluent can afford to learn strange vocabulary because ordinary people have real problems to worry about.
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update
What’s important is making more than others
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update
We feel pressure to build and maintain social status, and fear losing it.
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update
The affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and re-attached it to beliefs.
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update
Being unafraid of writing things down — even if you don’t share your writing with anyone anytime soon — records our human experience, with all its messy, painful complexity. We have a duty to do so for future generations.
Advice for writer’s block - by Lauren Wolfe - Chills
The more you write, the less you feel self-conscious.
Advice for writer’s block - by Lauren Wolfe - Chills
As journalists, we are communicators and translators of what we observe and learn. Start with what stands out to you — it likely will stand out for your readers too.
Advice for writer’s block - by Lauren Wolfe - Chills
The Fama and French model has three factors: the size of firms, book-to-market values, and excess return on the market. In other words, the three factors used are small minus big (SMB), high minus low (HML), and the portfolio's return less the risk-free rate of return.
Fama and French Three Factor Model Definition: Formula and Interpretation
The Fama French 3-factor model is an asset pricing model that expands on the capital asset pricing model by adding size risk and value risk factors to the market risk factors.
Fama and French Three Factor Model Definition: Formula and Interpretation
“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”
Don't Major in Computer Science - by Varun Shenoy
I strongly believe the purpose of a university education is to put yourself in uncomfortable situations
Don't Major in Computer Science - by Varun Shenoy
“To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back—I know you won't hurt me, even though you can.”
friendship - trike harder by @katiewav
Young people in particular love to seek out intensity, whether that intensity is derived from a new person, a new place, a new feeling. It’s a difficult craving to ignore.
friendship - trike harder by @katiewav
The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
It’s the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
“the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.”
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education–least in my own case–is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualise stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street