Ashwin Reddy

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on the atlas — 56

highlights — 36

In his book on Spinoza, Expressionism in Philosophy, Deleuze makes reference to Spinoza's Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae ("Compendium of the Grammar of the Hebrew Language"). There we find the following passage (this translation is from Giorgio Agamben's essay "Absolute Immanence"): "Since it often happens that the agent and patient are one and the same person, the Jews found it necessary to form a new and seventh kind of infinitive with which to express an action referred to both the agent and the patient, an action that thus has the form of both an activity and a passivity
Deleuze on Becoming: An Introduction
But literature should not have explicit boundaries: the confines of the subject are internal and may remain elusive and hard to express in words. Nor should literature have institutions formalizing and commoditizing things. And I wanted to do my own version of what is called literature. Literature must be idiosyncratic.
How I write. (Preface to the 15th year Italian… | by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | INCERTO | Oct, 2022 | Medium
The official “subject” (an essay is not supposed to have such a constraint as a subject) was a random mixture of autobiography, philosophy (of probability), mathematics, inductive logic, musings on historical events and financial markets.
How I write. (Preface to the 15th year Italian… | by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | INCERTO | Oct, 2022 | Medium
All problems should be viewed through the lens of “How does this hinder the companies goals?”
My Personal Creed of Employment
The purpose and objective of work is to collect a paycheck by doing honest but comfortable work, enjoy the time and effort spent with your team, and not work too much overtime.
My Personal Creed of Employment
Don’t seek personal satisfaction through company projects. This leads to frustration. Be professional, take satisfaction in helping the company achieve its own goals, not my own. Personal projects are for personal satisfaction.
My Personal Creed of Employment
A why question can seem like a direct assault, like a detective shining a light into the face of a suspect
Book Summary – How to know everything by Elke Wiss | Mark Greville
ask downward questions to establish the facts of a situation. Then move upwards to understand the beliefs and concepts that influence the person’s thinking.
Book Summary – How to know everything by Elke Wiss | Mark Greville
A question is an invitation. An invitation to think, explain, sharpen, dig deeper, provide information, investigate, connect.
Book Summary – How to know everything by Elke Wiss | Mark Greville
Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.
The Value of an Undergraduate Degree | Pearl Leff
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats | Poetry Foundation
Those are pearls that were his eyes
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot | Poetry Foundation
Oed’ und leer das Meer.
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot | Poetry Foundation
Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du?
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot | Poetry Foundation
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot | Poetry Foundation
Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: άποθανεîν θέλω.’
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot | Poetry Foundation
For philosophers neither atheism nor the death of God are problems. [… ] It is astonishing that philosophers still take the death of God to be tragic. Atheism is not a drama but the philosopher’s serenity and philosophy’s achievement.
Deleuze, atheism, and belief in God. Extract from my forthcoming book on Deleuze and theology – Thinking Through The Bible
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert… | Poetry Foundation
As a result, Web pages have to employ scannable text, using highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others) meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones) bulleted lists one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph) the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion half the word count (or less) than conventional writing
How Users Read on the Web
People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences.
How Users Read on the Web
Nought may endure but Mutability.
Mutability ["We are as clouds that veil the… | Poetry Foundation
We rest—a dream has power to poison sleep; We rise—one wandering thought pollutes the day;
Mutability ["We are as clouds that veil the… | Poetry Foundation
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
Mutability ["We are as clouds that veil the… | Poetry Foundation
“But I like it “Because it is bitter, “And because it is my heart.”
In the Desert by Stephen Crane | Poetry Foundation
But having good social skills confers life-long benefits. So, don't write them off. Get good at making a good first impression, being funny (if possible... this author still working on it...), speaking publicly.
Advice · Patrick Collison
In particular, try to go deep on multiple things. (To varying degrees, I tried to go deep on languages, programming, writing, physics, math. Some of those stuck more than others.) One of the main things you should try to achieve by age 20 is some sense for which kinds of things you enjoy doing. This probably won't change a lot throughout your life and so you should try to discover the shape of that space as quickly as you can.
Advice · Patrick Collison
The ancient war between obsession and responsibility will never finish and has been the same
Sea Grapes by Derek Walcott | Poetry Foundation
and the blind giant's boulder heaved the trough from whose groundswell the great hexameters come to the conclusions of exhausted surf.
Sea Grapes by Derek Walcott | Poetry Foundation
The classics can console. But not enough.
Sea Grapes by Derek Walcott | Poetry Foundation
Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention. Lovemaking is not a third thing but two-in-one. John Keats can be a third thing, or the Boston Symphony Orchestra, or Dutch interiors, or Monopoly.
The Third Thing by Donald Hall | Poetry Magazine
In a boy’s rage for a name, the myth of race begins.
Ovid on Climate Change by Eliza Griswold | Poetry Magazine
A technologist makes reason out of the messiness of the world, leverages their understanding to envision a different reality, and builds a pathway to make their vision happen. All three of these endeavors—to try to understand the world, to imagine something different, and to build something that fulfills that vision—are deeply human.
To be a Technologist is to be Human - Letters to a Young Technologist
Technologists intervene in our present realities and forge the future, and in doing so, choose how best to model the world and impress their will upon it. The public must insist that technologists are responsible for thinking about the human implications of their work. This ongoing ethical cultivation should be a core activity in the technologist identity.
Value Beyond Instrumentalization - Letters to a Young Technologist
Humanism is about the passion of thought and the will to understand, about Darwin sailing for the Galapagos or Dostoyevsky in trouble with the police, about Condorcet dying in a garret and hunted by agents of the guillotine, writing his outline of human progress so that he might hearten mankind by his vision of its possible perfections.
Merlin’s Owl | Lapham’s Quarterly
The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
Merlin’s Owl | Lapham’s Quarterly
A mistake to think of the humanities as luxuries or as a decent appearance that must be kept up, like the country club membership or the house in Palm Beach. Necessities. I can think of no other set of studies more relevant to our present circumstance. Our technologists bear comparison to the sorcerer’s apprentice, producing continuously improved means toward increasingly ill-defined ends. Unless we look to the humanities to clean up the mess, we stand a better than even chance of killing ourselves with our new toys.
Merlin’s Owl | Lapham’s Quarterly