flâneur

Yash Dani

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on the atlas — 59

highlights — 65

  • We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running. You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of "just getting by: absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how…
    Calvin and Hobbes at Martijn's - Bill Watterson
  • n dad mode, a minute becomes far more expensive than it was before. When you have a kid, you could theoretically be spending every moment on something more important than yourself. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have any “me time.” I’m just saying that dad mode forces you to consider how you are using each minute and what the benefits of that minute are.
    Dad Mode
  • Belonging is the feeling of being truly seen
    Loneliness: The Epidemic (1/2) - by joss - box.
  • “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days… Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me…So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…”
    “Lightly my darling…” – A Wabi Sabi Life
  • When I first moved to San Francisco at 19 I thought it was for the technology industry, but I’ve since realized that I’m in fact just interested in the type of people who tend to be fascinated with technology, or at least some subset of them. My friends are all pretty anti-authoritarian, willful, dogged, and cheerful—as B said, “The type of people who believe they can fix the world’s problems through sheer force of will.” I think my favorite thing about them is that they’re all very creative
    the friendship theory of everything
  • Compulsive avoidance of embarrassment is a form of suicide. – Colin Marshall.
    Show Your Work! (Austin Kleon) - Book Summary, Notes & Highlights - Ali Abdaal
  • The trick, then, is this. You take the person you think is closest to the person (or type of person) you want to talk to and send what you write to this person
    A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox
  • It is crazy-beautiful to have a stranger arrive in your inbox, and they are excited by exactly the same things as you! You start dropping the most obscure references, and they’re like, yeah, read that, love it.
    A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox
  • The pleasant parts of the internet seemed to be curated by human beings, not algorithms.
    A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox
  • Writing for a general public, you need to be broad and a bit bland. I didn’t want a general public. I wanted a specific set of people, the people who could help me along as a human being obsessed with certain intellectual problems. I didn’t know who these people were. I only knew that they existed. Hence my writing was a search query. It needed to be phrased in such a way that it found these people and, if necessary, filtered others.
    A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox
  • Knowing that there would be a time for focus later made me more willing to try anything and fail. I learned the piano and played around with coding. I wrote a few chapters of a novel.
    Think more about what to focus on - by Henrik Karlsson
  • The amount of exploration that is optimal depends on the complexity of the problem and the time horizon. What I decided to do was this. I would divide the next 30 months into three parts. For the first ten months, I would allow myself to explore freely. After that, I’d switch to exploring 2/3 of the time and using 1/3 to double down on the most interesting opportunity I had found, then I’d do 1/3 exploring and 2/3 exploiting, and so on.
    Think more about what to focus on - by Henrik Karlsson
  • Annie Dillard calls the writer’s life colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. That fits. But, as she also knows, there is another kind of color that can only be discovered three years down a writing hole. It is a subtle, nightly color; your eyes need time to adjust to the dark before you can see them. You wouldn't believe their beauty if I told you.
    Think more about what to focus on - by Henrik Karlsson
  • t seems like our achievement budget is a function of the number of priorities we have. Interestingly, it seems to be a nonlinear function. Meaning that if you go from 4 priorities to 3, you can get, say, 10 percent more done; but if you go from 4 to 1, you get 400 percent more done
    Think more about what to focus on - by Henrik Karlsson
  • To navigate life we create mental models of the world out there, and then we confuse the models for reality.
    Think more about what to focus on - by Henrik Karlsson
  • “A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting things to your inbox,”
    Think more about what to focus on - by Henrik Karlsson
  • The trick is to collide your mental model with the outside world as often as possible. This is what exploring does. You think you know the distribution of payoffs of the slot machines, but you try something new. You discover that you were wrong. You update your model.
    Think more about what to focus on - by Henrik Karlsson
  • It’s impossible to measure future reward/options/impact. Income is something you can measure in the moment, but not something I recommend optimizing beyond your basic needs. If you are fortunate enough to be a talented computer scientist in high demand, then money shouldn’t be a worry. On a personal note, most of my best career decisions involved taking a pay cut to do something I found exciting. So why optimize fun? Fun and excitement are close cousins. Most people can recognize what they find fun and exciting. This makes excitement measurable in the moment as opposed to future reward/impact/…
    The Fallacy of the Perfect Career Path | by Michael Black | Apr, 2024 | Medium
  • Someday, libraries will be fully mechanized. Then, without leaving one’s office, it will be possible to pick up the phone, dial in a code, and have the actual paper one is looking for almost instantly at hand. Something of the sort has got to happen, or our libraries will become buried in the mass of books and articles now being printed, and searching in the old way will become hopeless. -- Pieces of the Action (1970)
    Issue 55: Personal Computing Paves the Way
  • If you are telling a story in a pub, you don’t second guess yourself after each sentence. You don’t utter 5 words, then stop because you didn’t say it quite right, before trying again. Similarly, if someone has annoyed you on the internet, you don’t worry about your turn of phrase — you are too angry, and you need to respond ASAP.
    How to Make Your Writing Stand Out | Better Humans
  • If you are going to use a big data system for yourself, see if it is faster than your laptop. If you are going to build a big data system for others, see that it is faster than my laptop.
    Scalability! But at what COST?
  • The data sets above are certainly not small (billions of edges), but still run just fine on a laptop. Much faster than the distributed systems, at least.
    Scalability! But at what COST?
  • Future Vision products that fail to find PMF are often described as being “too early.” For instance, 11 years after Google Glass launched, augmented reality still hasn’t gone mainstream. This is precisely why finding pit stops with commercial traction along the way is so critical. Assuming your vision is correct and you can find a viable path, time is on your side with the Future Vision archetype: You can amass an insurmountable headstart while the world comes around to your paradigm. But finding the right pit stops can be difficult. You must act with imperfect information—“live looking forwar…
    The Arc Product-Market Fit Framework | Sequoia Capital
  • In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: they don't work on important problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don't. They keep saying that it is a matter of luck. I've told you how easy it is; furthermore I've told you how to reform. Therefore, go forth and become great scientists!
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • Let me summarize. You've got to work on important problems. I deny that it is all luck, but I admit there is a fair element of luck. I subscribe to Pasteur's ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' I favor heavily what I did. Friday afternoons for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not important. I found in the early days I had believed `this' and yet had spent all week marching in `that' direction. It was kind of foolish. If I really believe the action is over there, why do I march in…
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • Along those lines at some urging from John Tukey and others, I finally adopted what I called ``Great Thoughts Time.'' When I went to lunch Friday noon, I would only discuss great thoughts after that. By great thoughts I mean ones like: ``What will be the role of computers in all of AT&T?'', ``How will computers change science?'' For example, I came up with the observation at that time that nine out of ten experiments were done in the lab and one in ten on the computer. I made a remark to the vice presidents one time, that it would be reversed, i.e. nine out of ten experiments would be done on …
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • Great scientists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them. Let me warn you, `important problem' must be phrased carefully. The three outstanding problems in physics, in a certain sense, were never worked on while I was at Bell Labs. By important I mean guaranteed a Nobel Prize and any sum of money you want to mention. We didn't work on (1) time travel, (2) teleportation, and (3) antigravity. They are not important problems because we do not have an attack. It's not the consequence that makes a pr…
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work. It's perfectly obvious
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • . Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down every piece of evidence which appeared to contradict his beliefs because otherwise they would disappear from his mind. When you find apparent flaws you've got to be sensitive and keep track of those things
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • The steady application of effort with a little bit more work, intelligently applied is what does it. That's the trouble; drive, misapplied, doesn't get you anywhere. I've often wondered why so many of my good friends at Bell Labs who worked as hard or harder than I did, didn't have so much to show for it. The misapplication of effort is a very serious matter. Just hard work is not enough - it must be applied sensibly.
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard …
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • One of the characteristics you see, and many people have it including great scientists, is that usually when they were young they had independent thoughts and had the courage to pursue them. For example, Einstein, somewhere around 12 or 14, asked himself the question, ``What would a light wave look like if I went with the velocity of light to look at it?'' Now he knew that electromagnetic theory says you cannot have a stationary local maximum. But if he moved along with the velocity of light, he would see a local maximum. He could see a contradiction at the age of 12, 14, or somewhere around t…
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • Newton said, ``If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.''
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • Now, how did I come to do this study? At Los Alamos I was brought in to run the computing machines which other people had got going, so those scientists and physicists could get back to business. I saw I was a stooge. I saw that although physically I was the same, they were different. And to put the thing bluntly, I was envious. I wanted to know why they were so different from me. I saw Feynman up close. I saw Fermi and Teller. I saw Oppenheimer. I saw Hans Bethe: he was my boss. I saw quite a few very capable people. I became very interested in the difference between those who do and those wh…
    You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - Sam Altman
  • Plato’s epistemology was an attempt to understand what it was to know, and how knowledge (unlike mere true opinion) is good for the knower. Locke’s epistemology was an attempt to understand the operations of human understanding, Kant’s epistemology was an attempt to understand the conditions of the possibility of human understanding, and Russell’s epistemology was an attempt to understand how modern science could be justified by appeal to sensory experience.
    Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • I make sure to leave enough time in my schedule to think about what to work on. The best ways for me to do this are reading books, hanging out with interesting people, and spending time in nature.
    Productivity - Sam Altman
  • Communities don’t die at scale when you “dilute all the good people”, they die when you stop believing in levelling-up the people around you.
    World-building IRL - by Joss - box.
  • Instead, focus on the experience of the people who did show up, and have so much fun that the people who skipped feel FOMO for not being there. In your post-event marketing, show people laughing and having a good time, and set it to fun music. Don’t beg, stay winning. This is how you get returners coming back again and again, and this is how you get people to prioritize showing up next time.
    World-building IRL - by Joss - box.
  • If you have a disappointing turnout, don’t focus your energy on the people who aren’t there. Don’t lecture the people in a call about how attendance is important, and don’t spend the first 40 minutes waiting for people to trickle into your event. Everyone in attendance will feel their time is wasted, and that will probably be the last time they attend.
    World-building IRL - by Joss - box.
  • In my life today, I see the manifestation of the “there are no good people here” attitude most prevalently with Waterloo students and Canadians in general flocking to the United States. New York and San Francisco are ✨where the pretty people are ✨ — shiny, better, smarter, and cooler — moving to these places will make all your problems go away. While I can’t deny the magic of being surrounded by awesome people, the problem with everyone constantly chasing the hype is that it essentially turns us all into leeches — if 100% of people are focused on “finding where the best party is”, none of the …
    World-building IRL - by Joss - box.
  • Build combinations of competencies that are not usually found in one person. At this stage of your career, your advantage will never be depth of context. You can however build unique context at the intersection of fields that rarely touch. Build and own your own niche. Understand which fields and areas require extreme technical competence, and which are hackable. Respect fields where you are incompetent and where years of experience and expertise are king. Learn to identify fields that seem like they are this way, but are actually hackable/learnable with effort and diligence.
    Advice for Early Career — Celine Halioua
  • Being a hacker is lots of fun, but it's a kind of fun that takes lots of effort. The effort takes motivation. Successful athletes get their motivation from a kind of physical delight in making their bodies perform, in pushing themselves past their own physical limits. Similarly, to be a hacker you have to get a basic thrill from solving problems, sharpening your skills, and exercising your intelligence.
    How To Become A Hacker
  • The Hacker Attitude 1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved. 2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice. 3. Boredom and drudgery are evil. 4. Freedom is good. 5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.
    How To Become A Hacker
  • There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker. The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture.…
    How To Become A Hacker
  • I did everything humanly possible to get these researchers up and running with project pages they were proud of. I promised the scientists I would do everything in my power to get them funded. I had no idea if I could keep this promise, but I knew I would do this or die trying. I take promises very seriously.
    why y combinator made all the difference
  • We felt the interview went terribly. Denny and I drove back to our new home in East Palo Alto and started drinking. We had visited Whole Foods the night before and walked by the granola aisle. If you’ve never been to Whole Foods before the granola aisle is this aisle in the grocery story with a couple dozen kinds of granola all priced between $4.99 per pound and $15.99 per pound. We knew we couldn’t afford the granola, so Denny and I made a deal that if Y Combinator invested we would come back to buy all the granola. At 5pm we get a call from an unknown number. Denny picks up. It is PG. He say…
    why y combinator made all the difference
  • Most of my friends think of ambition as this very structured thing. Like, I have a 30-step plan for how to take over the world. But I’ve always loved the Feynman quote about studying hard “what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.
    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. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important.
    you like books and think they are your friends - by Ava
  • It’s no exaggeration to say that reading is how I became a person. I was a horribly awkward six-year-old, the only Chinese kid in my class, when I first began to read my way into the world (Lorrie Moore: There was the usual dreaminess, I suppose. Also a shyness that caused me—and others—to notice that I could express myself better by writing than by speaking. This is typical of many writers, I think. What is a drawback in childhood is an asset to a literary life). That first year my mom took me to the library and I checked out 30 books at a time, hardcover children’s books about caterpillars a…
    you like books and think they are your friends - by Ava
  • Do things without recipes more often. Trod the unbeaten path more often and take note of how things feel. Do you find yourself noticing something that wasn’t there before? That perhaps after a certain number of hours of obsessing over how to get a good tone on the guitar, you can tell how the temperature of the room affects the sound of the strings? Maybe for the first time, you realize that the songs the birds sing are all a little different, the robin sounds different from the chickadee and so on .
    Taste is a guide for what is worthwhile