flâneur

Dorothy Chrisman

3 followers · 12 following · 605 views

on the atlas — 45

highlights — 52

  • The alternative is already visible: autocomplete for life. Not just help with expression, but the slow outsourcing of judgment itself. That is Bildung’s antithesis.
    You Are Not a Function - by Brendan McCord
  • A person is a self-developing being whose worth is not exhausted by function
    You Are Not a Function - by Brendan McCord
  • I make sure to always have an open loop concerning my writing. And I close every other loop—by wrapping it up as fast as I can, or by writing it down on a list, or, preferably, by not opening the loop at all.
    Think more about what to focus on - by Henrik Karlsson
  • Perform experiments. By this I don’t mean do random things. I mean, STATE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS and FIND WAYS TO TEST IF THEY ARE FALSE.
    Think more about what to focus on - by Henrik Karlsson
  • This is the explore/exploit trade-off.
    Think more about what to focus on - by Henrik Karlsson
  • The problem is if you create in a vacuum, you'll have no way to improve.
    You should probably post more | aadil pickle
  • But this duality is the beauty of linear algebra! Matrices are transformations of points in space and graphs and state machines all at the same time. So let’s take a look at the Fibonacci transformation, applied to arbitrary points in R2:
    The Fibonacci Matrix
  • We can use this fact to calculate arbitrary matrix powers, by breaking the problem up into products of powers of two: F21 = F16F4F1 And by doing that, we can calculate the nth Fibonacci number in only log2(n) steps.
    The Fibonacci Matrix
  • This makes the following invariant interesting to consider: The number of I's in the string is not a multiple of 3.
    Invariant (mathematics) - Wikipedia
  • It reminds us of the difference between static and mobile, between energy and solidity — why dear old clubbable, sedentary and generally contented “set” has at long last been outstripped by sweaty, muscular, fitness-obsessed and six-pack-muscled “run.”
    Opinion | ‘Run,’ a Verb for Our Frantic Times - The New York Times
  • Doing practical stuff with VimTeX
    A VimTeX Plugin Guide | Vim and LaTeX Series Part 4 | ejmastnak
  • One 2004 paper by Princeton political scientists concluded that rainfall swung the 2000 election for George W. Bush. If you find a slobs-vs.-snobs theory of voter preferences farfetched, you have an opportunity to articulate the first convincing argument that Americans vote based on rational self-interest.
    Trump vs. the Democrats: A Slobs-vs.-Snobs Theory of American Politics - POLITICO
  • From cutting taxes for the wealthy to slashing regulations for corporate America, his policies reinforced the positions of those already in power, i.e. the snobs. But his rhetoric, demeanor and attitude toward the mythic Washington establishment has been pure slob.
    Trump vs. the Democrats: A Slobs-vs.-Snobs Theory of American Politics - POLITICO
  • Every being cries out silently to be read differently.
    Mathematics for Human Flourishing | The Mathematical Yawp
  • On day n = 1, 2, 3,... extend lake n mod 3 (= 0, 1, 2) so that it is open and connected and passes within a distance 1/n of all remaining dry land. This should be done so that the remaining dry land remains homeomorphic to a closed unit square.
    Lakes of Wada - Wikipedia
  • Hence, by organizing our instinctive beliefs and their consequences, by considering which among them is most possible, if necessary, to modify or abandon, we can arrive, on the basis of accepting as our sole data what we instinctively believe, at an orderly systematic organization of our knowledge, in which, though the possibility of error remains, its likelihood is diminished by the interrelation of the parts and by the critical scrutiny which has preceded acquiescence.
    The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell
  • Since this belief does not lead to any difficulties, but on the contrary tends to simplify and systematize our account of our experiences, there seems no good reason for rejecting it.
    The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell
  • Thus the behaviour of the sense-data which represent the cat to me, though it seems quite natural when regarded as an expression of hunger, becomes utterly inexplicable when regarded as mere movements and changes of patches of colour, which are as incapable of hunger as a triangle is of playing football.
    The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell
  • Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.
    The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell
  • For most practical purposes these differences are unimportant, but to the painter they are all-important: the painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the colour which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.
    The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell
  • The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it. I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler, problems until you find some you can really solve easily, no matter how trivial. You will get the pleasure of success, and of helping your fellow man, even if it is only to answer a question in the mind of a colleague less able than you. You must not take away from yourself these pleasures becau…
    Productivity advice | Zhengdong
  • Even 50 years earlier, Leopold Mozart had railed at the indulgences of virtuosi, especially those who couldn’t keep an even tempo and insisted on embellishing everything in a tasteless manner)
    B:01.VLA
  • To yank everything from your current location to the end of the line: y$. To delete from your current location to the beginning of the next word: dw. To change from your current location to the end of the current paragraph, say c}. Motions also accept count number as arguments (I will discuss this in the next chapter). If you need to go up 3 lines, instead of pressing k 3 times, you can do 3k. Count works with Vim grammar. To yank two characters to the left: y2h. To delete the next two words: d2w. To change the next two lines: c2j.
    Learn-Vim/ch04_vim_grammar.md at master · iggredible/Learn-Vim · GitHub
  • Before sending it, I try to predict what they’ll say. Then I go back and update what I wrote to address these obvious points in advance. Finally, I try again to predict what they’ll say to this, based on what they’ve said in the past and what I know of their philosophy. Then, after this whole process, I realize I don’t need to bother them because the answer is now clear. If anything, I might email to thank them for their continued inspiration.
    How to ask your mentors for help | Derek Sivers
  • We are so trained by our accomplishment-driven culture to believe that our deeds are what make us worthy of honor or respect. To fight this, you have to surround yourself with grace-givers, people who are good at it. All the best teachers in my life have been grace-givers. Think of that teacher whom you knew was busy, but still made you feel like you were the most important person in the world. Think of those people whom you can be authentic with---those who, even if they know all the rotten things about you, would love you anyway. The ones around whom you feel you have no shame. Sure, good in…
    The Lesson of Grace in Teaching, by Francis Su
  • If we fully understand the lesson of grace, then we’ll understand: since my performance doesn’t define me, I don’t have to be the center of attention in my classroom. I can do experimental things, and fail. I can get out of the way of my students... I can open up the classroom for things like inquiry-based learning. I don’t have to be in control of everything. I don’t have to worry about what people will think of me.
    The Lesson of Grace in Teaching, by Francis Su
  • Xavier had been a source of pronunciation controversy, so it was decided to break the alphabetical pattern and move to the next letter.
    Street Naming Controversy--1909 - FoundSF
  • The scheme called for First Avenue to become Arguello, Second Avenue to become Borcia, Third Avenue to become Coronado, continuing for all 26 letters of the alphabet. Starting with Twenty-seventh Avenue, the streets would be designated by male or female saints, starting with San Antonio and ending with Santa Ynez at Forty-Seventh Avenue. Unable to find Spanish saints with names beginning with K, Q, W, X or Z, they chose first Alcatraz, then Ayala for Forty-eighth Avenue and La Playa for Forty-ninth Avenue.
    Street Naming Controversy--1909 - FoundSF
  • It’s easy to say why someone is wrong, Putnam said. The hard part is figuring out why they’re right. And everyone is right. Everyone has some central insight, hard won by the consistency-making mechanism of the brain, built of past experiences, cast as motor predictions, a pattern that repeats, sustains itself in the chaos. Our job is to pan for it like gold, sift it into our own nervous systems, reconcile the resulting contradiction, become something new.
    Finding Peter Putnam - Nautilus
  • a system that could perceive, learn, think, and create ideas through induction—a computer that could program itself, then find contradictions among its programs and wrangle them into better programs, building itself out of its history of interactions with the world. Just as Turing had worked out an abstract, universal model of the very possibility of computation, Putnam worked out an abstract, universal model of the very possibility of mind. It was a model, he wrote, that “presents a basic overall pattern [or] character of thought in causal terms for the first time.”
    Finding Peter Putnam - Nautilus
  • When physicists study the world, how can they tell which of their findings are features of the world and which are features of their net? How do we, as observers, disentangle the subjective aspects of our minds from the objective facts of the universe?
    Finding Peter Putnam - Nautilus
  • And that’s why I like real time discourse so much — if I talk like this, most of the time you’ll know what I mean. And when you don’t, you can ask, and I can just explain. So I can use language how it should be used, and I express my ideas in a way that makes intuitive sense without having to construct a massive rigorous foundation. But when I’m writing an essay like this, I actually have to define all my terms. I don’t know what makes sense to you, so I have to assume nothing does.
    Linguistics
  • You ask yourself: What would have made me jump off my chair if I had read it six months ago (or a week ago, or however fast you write)? If you have figured out something that made you ecstatic, this is what you should write. And you do not dumb it down, because you were not stupid six months ago, you just knew less. You also write with as much useful detail and beauty as you can muster, because that is what you would have wanted.
    A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox
  • This is an amazing algorithm: do interesting things and magically arrive at a complex understanding of the world.
    A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox
  • Here’s a basic rule: a mate­rial is healthy to the degree that, when you see how it’s made, you don’t say “ugh” but rather “right on”. Plastic fails this test, obviously: the refineries in which these chem­i­cals are born are pure “ugh”.
    Double pulse
  • But looking through windows at dusk in Paris you can see that people there actually care what paintings look like. Visually, Paris has the best eavesdropping I know.
    Cities and Ambition
  • A city speaks to you mostly by accident — in things you see through windows, in conversations you overhear. It's not something you have to seek out, but something you can't turn off. One of the occupational hazards of living in Cambridge is overhearing the conversations of people who use interrogative intonation in declarative sentences. But on average I'll take Cambridge conversations over New York or Silicon Valley ones.
    Cities and Ambition
  • The people you consider eloquent may be otherworldly wordsmiths, but chances are they’ve just thought about it before. There is already a repository of preconceived ideas they remix into a response.
    look what the cat brought in - by Anson Yu
  • Being ok with being confused because it will eventually work itself out.
    sparkly people and how to find them - by Anson Yu
  • The worst thing that can happen is nothing changes. That’s a pretty asymmetrical bet.
    finding the right people - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • Surround yourself with people who look like magicians to you. Then imagine yourself as one, older and wiser, in great detail. Imagine yourself as the person you would be afraid to say you want to be out loud to others (because it seems so ridiculously impossible right now). Write it down in great clarity and detail, then forget it. And let the part of your subconscious mind that still remembers lead you to becoming the things you want, and maybe, years later, check if it did.
    Becoming a magician – Autotranslucence
  • Concrete steps I take to find them include asking my most interesting friends to introduce me to their most interesting friends, going down similar rabbit holes with the bibliographies of books that excite me, and generally living in ‘explore’ mode at various points in life, while recognising that not every avenue will lead to a jackpot.
    Becoming a magician – Autotranslucence
  • as the speaker scribbled absolute nonsense in chalk, i thought about the alcoves that euclid must have sat in while trying to convince a group of soon-to-be mathematicians of the concept of a line. i imagine how the caricature of “mad scientists” were based off of people like the speaker; his sparse hair stood up as if it was its own living being, emanating static electricity in every moment. he spoke softly, then loudly, then softly once more. he stops and ponders before laughing to himself and continuing, with not a second thought given to the room of PhDs patiently awaiting his next sentenc…
    here's my number | arielle lok
  • Disposal: *Certified compostable. Go back to the beach when it’s time, you tell him. Tell him, you can try and prevent everything from happening, you can read the labels and warnings, and still it just unfolds and wind-slaps you. Tell him it’s not a slap but an unfurling—the baby’s sigh like she’s figured out how to be awake in the world. Tell him her days will unfurl into his. Tell him to collect them.
    The Requirement of Adequacy – Guernica
  • Conversely, when writing math exposition, I really value good examples. So I know that I should spend a lot of words on examples, and spend fewer words on formal definitions or proofs that I want to de-emphasize.
    Words Spent – Power Overwhelming
  • In other words, all relevant information about a word such as "red" is contained in the entirety of expressions that contain that word.
    Language, Statistics, & Category Theory, Part 1
  • In short, sub poena is a noun only in English, not in Latin, so the only way to make it plural is the English way: sub poenas
    Language Log: More Pseudo-Latin Plurals
  • Hypocrisy had weighed on this man for thirty years. He was evil and he had shackled himself to goodness. He hated goodness with the hatred of a mismatched spouse. Underneath, he was a monster; the skin of a good man concealed the heart of a bandit. Virtue was for him a stifling thing. To be a hypocrite is to be a patient in both senses of the word: he waits for his triumph, and he suffers torture. The eternal premeditation of the cruel stroke, the constant need to put people off the scent, the impossibility of ever being oneself — these are exhausting.
    The hypocritical octopus | Haquelebac
  • t the present time, prospective scholars aim simultaneously for a certain class status and a certain kind of work. In the scheme I’m proposing, some who of those who do not gain the class status will continue to do the work. (I might also say that it’s already true that some who do gain the class status cease to do the work, and just use their positions to finance their other activities more rewarding to them.) Forced to choose, most less-successful humanists will probably decide to attain middle-class status through some other kind of work, and forget about scholarship. In some cases this wil…
    Érudits Maudits | Haquelebac
  • The ‘beigeness’ of the Universe is because there are slightly more regions that produce red, yellow and green light than those that produce blue. Averaged over the entire sky, however, this beige colour is diluted and appears almost, but not entirely, black.
    The Universe has an average colour – and it’s called cosmic latte - BBC Science Focus Magazine