flâneur

Steve Nguyen

17 followers · 12 following · 1569 views

on the atlas — 39

highlights — 40

  • The framework put forward in this essay offers a way past this debate: in a moderate-cost city, housing reaches those at the margins of homelessness primarily through family members and friends willing to double up.
    Why housing shortages cause homelessness - Works in Progress
  • Market efficiency is a central issue in asset pricing and investment management, but while the level of efficiency is often debated, changes in that level are relatively absent from the discussion
    The Less-Efficient Market Hypothesis
  • But in many ways, his vision and undertakings on the campaign represent the ideals of Works in Progress: to see possibility where others see despair, to persuade with reason and evidence, and to push the boundaries of global welfare with human ingenuity.
    The story of Viktor Zhdanov - Works in Progress
  • Our technologies simply make certain paths of action easier and exacerbate our will; they don’t inevitably make us less human.
    To be a Technologist is to be Human - Letters to a Young Technologist
  • qualitative evaluation of Sora’s capabilities and limitations
    Video generation models as world simulators
  • (1) our method for turning visual data of all types into a unified representation that enables large-scale training of generative models, and
    Video generation models as world simulators
  • Friendships are, by their very nature, made of friction. To know what is going on in someone’s day-to-day life, to make plans with them, and then reschedule those plans when someone inevitably gets sick, and then bring over Calpol or soup or an extra laptop charger. To water their plants while they’re away, to ask them to take your kids when you’re feeling sad, or for help getting rid of mice in your house. To show up for the walk you planned even when you’re a vulnerable anxious mess — this is all friction.
    The friendship problem - by Rosie Spinks
  • If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste.
    Is There Such a Thing as Good Taste?
  • This text was slightly modified in 1989 and again in 2021, but the upshot remains the same. The rule imposed a speed limit on US airspace. Not a noise standard, which would make sense. A speed limit.
    50 years of silence - Eli Dourado
  • Geopolitics What happens with China? With Russia? What is the likely "Taiwan event", and what would be a leading indicator for it?
    AGI Trades
  • I have very explicitly avoided trying to define my taste of pottery in terms of specific styles or potters. I know that if I did feel that pressure, I would have spent a lot more time learning and reading about various pottery techniques, the names of different forms, and what glazes have been popular on social media rather than actually going and working with clay. My actual experience of pottery would be with the intention of being able to emulate what has been done before. I would think about the shape of the walls and type of glaze insofar as it produces the right thing that I see other pe…
    Taste is a guide for what is worthwhile
  • If you ever feel tempted to give up on the real world, remember that this is where we have water gun fights, breathe forest air, eat awesome sandwiches, go dancing, and are brought to tears laughing with friend
    World-building IRL - by Joss - box.
  • Our kitchens and other eating places more and more resemble filling stations, as our homes more and more resemble motels.
    The Pleasures of Eating – Wendell Berry
  • very day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm.
    Paris Review - The Art of Nonfiction No. 1
  • Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with.
    Paris Review - The Art of Nonfiction No. 1
  • The idea of finding real edges, as contrasted with “eking out wins by grinding harder than everyone,” first clicked for me when I started playing poker
    How to be More Agentic - by Cate Hall - Useful Fictions
  • DIDION What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you've laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone. INTERVIEWER The first is the gesture, the second is the commitment. DIDION Yes, and the last sentence in a piece is another adventure. It should open the piece up. It should make you go back and start reading from page one. That's how it should be, but it doesn't always work. I think of writing anything at all as a kind of high-wire act. The minute you start putting words on pape…
    Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction
  • INTERVIEWER Are you conscious of the reader as you write? Do you write listening to the reader listening to you? DIDION Obviously I listen to a reader, but the only reader I hear is me. I am always writing to myself. So very possibly I'm committing an aggressive and hostile act toward myself.
    Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction
  • What would I do with my life if I could start all over again?
    What you should be working on
  • Maybe one day I’ll make something charming-enough, beautiful-enough, and peculiar-enough to be in someone else’s collection.
    11 Years of Inspiration
  • To more fully use the parallelism TPUs offer us, and to avoid bottlenecking on data transfer, we've stored our input data in TFRecord files, 230 images per file.
    TPUs in Colab - Colaboratory
  • The worst outcome is not having written anything at all; it is failing to help someone who could have benefited from it. I have found that writing is a great way to help others while helping myself exorcise the thoughts from my mind and make room for new ones.
    Advice to Young People, The Lies I Tell Myself - jxnl.co
  • You need to sacrifice relationships, break some fingers, go through an ACL tear, and even get a concussion before fighting for the Olympics. You have to endure injuries and wonder if your career is over. You have to get the flu right before nationals and fight through it. And if you lose, you have to refrain from making excuses. That's incredibly challenging, and it's perfectly acceptable to choose not to pursue that path.
    Advice to Young People, The Lies I Tell Myself - jxnl.co
  • I find the most effective way to get someone's attention is to simply give, just like in dating. Hey, I noticed that you read this book on your website. I think you'd like this book too; it's pretty short, etc. Oh, I noticed some tests were failing in your repository. I fixed them for you. Hey! I've added some examples to the codebase. Do you have any feedback?
    Advice to Young People, The Lies I Tell Myself - jxnl.co
  • People who want to create co-working spaces that feel more like medieval guilds than a marketplace for exchanging favors.
    cities and purpose - by Patricia Mou - wellness wisdom
  • What we really need is to do something about it.
    cities and purpose - by Patricia Mou - wellness wisdom
  • Reflecting on our college days, we may marvel at the beautiful libraries and student halls, but our nostalgia runs deep for the social programming that animated them: the frenzied participation of well-run clubs, myriad of social schelling points planned by college heads, heaps of philosophical debates and discussions, racket of stories exchanged to the backdrop of a bustling cafeteria, and the ceaseless parade of parties, music, and seasonal celebrations that unified us in collective effervescence.
    cities and purpose - by Patricia Mou - wellness wisdom
  • Paradise on earth is to work all day alone in anticipation of an evening in interesting company
    cities and purpose - by Patricia Mou - wellness wisdom
  • once I've done the laundry and bought new shoes and finished the grocery shopping and fixed the bugs in my code and finished the big refactor, everything will be in order, and I'll be able to rest.
    Rest in motion
  • Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing tha…
    Advice
  • then 80% of the battle is finding the right thing to focus on.
    What I Learned In 2023 - by Alexandr Wang
  • The conceit of an expert is a trap. Strive for a beginner’s mind and the energy of a novice. Experience can often be a curse—the past is only mildly predictive of the future, and every scenario requires new techniques and insight. In novel situations, the novice tends to be at an advantage—their vitality and beginner’s mind lend themselves to faster adaptation.
    What I Learned In 2023 - by Alexandr Wang
  • Refusing to view something as means to an end, being so devoted you’re thrust outside the usual calculus of value and optimization. That’s love: not expecting a return on your investment.
    you like books and think they are your friends - by Ava
  • I think the ultimate act of love is to be able to describe someone very specifically. And of course you can usually be more coherent and articulate in writing than you are in conversation. So in that way love on the page is more genuine than love in real life.
    you like books and think they are your friends - by Ava
  • Sometimes you’re so enamored that you want to read everything they’ve ever read just to be a little closer to them.
    you like books and think they are your friends - by Ava
  • You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discovered it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky.
    you like books and think they are your friends - by Ava
  • I expect 100 people in our social scene living nearby in one year. (And one day, I expect 1000 people).
    How to Live Near Your Friends - by Priya - offscript
  • Tip #2: Enable Short-Term Stays
    How to Live Near Your Friends - by Priya - offscript
  • I used my standard Python backend + Oak/Torus frontend template. I’ll probably deploy it on Modal.
    Better interfaces for dialogue
  • This expands recursively upwards and downwards, as a tree.
    Better interfaces for dialogue