flâneur

Selena Yang

7 followers · 8 following · 521 views

on the atlas — 195

highlights — 107

  • Perhaps the single most beneficial change a gardener can make, Tallamy says, is planting a native tree or shrub.
    I Wanted an Ecologically Responsible Garden. It Was Harder Than I Thought. - The New York Times
  • In reality, reversing the current rates of biodiversity loss, which are inextricably linked to climate change, will require substantial reforms to industrial agriculture, forestry and energy systems, not to mention transcending the vested interests and corrupt politics that have long prevented such change. Gardening with an ecological mind-set can be empowering, rekindling a sense of agency that is all too easily extinguished by the overwhelming pressure of a planetary crisis.
    I Wanted an Ecologically Responsible Garden. It Was Harder Than I Thought. - The New York Times
  • But no gardening movement, however big, can create enough wildlife habitat to avert the extinction crisis. More than half the land in the contiguous United States is devoted not to gardens, parks or golf courses but to farms and ranches. Another 30 percent is managed forest, much of which is logged. Less than 6 percent is occupied by cities, major suburbs and their constituent green spaces. The 20 million acres of grass lawn that Tallamy proposes converting to native plant communities amount to a mere 1 percent.
    I Wanted an Ecologically Responsible Garden. It Was Harder Than I Thought. - The New York Times
  • Tallamy estimates that he and Cindy planted only 10 percent of those trees and shrubs. Most arrived as seeds via rodents, birds and wind. By tipping the scales toward natives, they gave the ecosystem the time and opportunity it needed to regenerate itself.
    I Wanted an Ecologically Responsible Garden. It Was Harder Than I Thought. - The New York Times
  • native plants typically support more biodiversity than introduced species and that gardening can play an important role in restoring wildlife habitat.
    I Wanted an Ecologically Responsible Garden. It Was Harder Than I Thought. - The New York Times
  • All told, Tallamy has now documented more than 1,370 moth species and 62 species of breeding birds on his land, which constitute 44 percent of all moth species and 33 percent of all bird species in the state.
    I Wanted an Ecologically Responsible Garden. It Was Harder Than I Thought. - The New York Times
  • There’s nuance within the functionalist view that can be described with Marr’s levels of analysis, three separate levels of information processing systems: computational, algorithmic, and implementation
    Mackenzie Dion - Computational Functionalism
  • consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons (rather than being a product of neural connections)
    Orchestrated objective reduction
  • physicalists likely think that biological entities are the only conscious entities we know of
    Mackenzie Dion - Can physicalism and functionalism be falsified?
  • Computational functionalism, formalized by Hilary Putnam in the 60s, claims that the processes we observe in the brain resulting from the movement of matter (ion channels opening/closing, blood flow, etc) that are responsible for consciousness can be abstracted away from their lowest-level physical implementation and recreated on digital computers to produce consciousness.
    Mackenzie Dion - Can physicalism and functionalism be falsified?
  • I wish for a future that is more mossy and mysterious than anything we’ve dreamed up lately. I hope its nature displays inexhaustible fruitfulness and enchantments.
    Viscerality - by Simon Sarris - The Map is Mostly Water
  • pressure, temperature, texture, slip
    Humanity's Last Machine
  • OPPORTUNITY Memory as the core of OpenAI’s device ecosystem.
    OpenAI x Hardware | Rachel Chen
  • DO: Gracefully enter someone’s field of view by using longer animation durations.
    How to Design for Transparent Screens - Google Design
  • Solving for additive contrast ratio takes into account display brightness and environment brightness.
    How to Design for Transparent Screens - Google Design
  • additive contrast ratio
    How to Design for Transparent Screens - Google Design
  • instead of a color, we redefined “black” as a container. Our surfaces use black to provide a legible “clean plate” foundation for your content. In addition to surfaces, we defined a new depth system that casts dark, rich shadows to convey a sense of occlusion and space. This approach elegantly establishes hierarchy and depth where traditional shadows simply can’t exist, harmonizing with the display behavior rather than fighting it. Components like buttons can overlap with cards to establish hierarchy and relationships. System elements, like a volume slider, use an exaggerated depth level with …
    How to Design for Transparent Screens - Google Design
  • We quickly discovered another significant problem: halation. Halation is that effect where bright light sources bleed into adjacent darker areas, creating a blurry, halo-like fringe. On these displays, our bright surfaces would bleed into transparent content, making text completely illegible. It was frustrating, but it also informed us we were on the wrong track, which was valuable learning.
    How to Design for Transparent Screens - Google Design
  • Research Distribution: Over last few decades, there’s been a big push for research to be freely available online. This includes the formation of arXiv.org and PLOS, and journal editorial boards resigning to start open-access journals.
    Research Debt
  • Distillation is also hard. It’s tempting to think of explaining an idea as just putting a layer of polish on it, but good explanations often involve transforming the idea. This kind of refinement of an idea can take just as much effort and deep understanding as the initial discovery.
    Research Debt
  • It’s worth being clear that research debt isn’t just about ideas not being explained well. It’s a lack of digesting ideas – or, at least, a lack of the public version of ideas being digested.It’s a communal messiness of thought.
    Research Debt
  • Featured representation
    Cecily Brown - Art & Prints for Sale | Artsy
  • Technology really exists for 2 reasons: Face to face - The point of technology is to enable yourself, and other ppl to show up more fully with the people they love (Eg. Quality of life improvements to not worry about material needs) Shoulder to shoulder - The point of technology is to enable you to have better experiences with people (Eg. Shared awe at beautiful megastructures)
    Beliefs
  • Make the decision right, rather than make the right decision
    I Moved Back to a Second-Tier City and Finally Started Living
  • Seoul and Singapore: These cities have emerged as the primary beneficiaries of the trade war. Positioning themselves as “neutral zones” with low duties and stable regulatory environments, they are attracting Western galleries and collectors who wish to bypass the friction of US and EU jurisdictions. Seoul, in particular, is running at a market velocity of “120 kmph,” driven by Frieze Seoul and a robust domestic collector base.9
    Art Market 2026 Exposed
  • Capital is now retreating to “meaningful” assets: rare, historical works with unimpeachable provenance. The days of automatic bidding wars for mid-tier works by star artists are over; boldness has been replaced by “rational discernment”.
    Art Market 2026 Exposed
  • This ergonomic shift in the market is driven by the ascendancy of the “Digital Native” collector—Generations Y and Z—who now constitute a third of the buyer base at major houses.6 For this demographic, value is derived from the narrative velocity of an object rather than its medium.
    Art Market 2026 Exposed
  • The moats here are real: proprietary hardware, physical distribution, regulatory approval, and years of operational data that can’t be scraped. These are categories where the foundation model companies aren’t coming for you…yet.
    Avoiding The Eye of Sauron - by Evan Tana
  • Finding the right footing at the very beginning matters more than ever. In a world where it’s cheap to build almost anything, the real edge is choosing what is actually worth building and staying with it long enough to learn something the market doesn’t know yet.
    Aditya Agarwal on X: "The Fast Lane to Mediocrity" / X
  • lower friction can also mean accelerating false starts and finding yourself in a local maxima
    Aditya Agarwal on X: "The Fast Lane to Mediocrity" / X
  • an ecosystem optimized for perpetual beginnings, but allergic to the endurance required for real breakthroughs.
    Aditya Agarwal on X: "The Fast Lane to Mediocrity" / X
  • The edge is who can get closest to the customer, navigate procurement, and do the messy work of actually getting customers to discover, buy and adopt technology.
    Avoiding The Eye of Sauron - by Evan Tana
  • Steve Jobs has said, “I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”
    Notes on “Taste” | Are.na Editorial
  • Taste is not the same as correctness, though. To do something correctly is not necessarily to do it tastefully. For most things, correctness is good enough, so we skate by on that as the default. And there are many correct paths to take. You’ll be able to cook a yummy meal, enjoy the movie, build a useable product, don a shirt that fits. But taste gets you to the thing that’s more than just correct. Taste hits different. It intrigues. It compels. It moves. It enchants. It fascinates. It seduces.
    Notes on “Taste” | Are.na Editorial
  • Appreciation is a form of taste. Creation is another. They are often intertwined, but don’t have to be. Someone could have impeccable taste in art, without producing any themselves. Those who create tasteful things are almost always deep appreciators, though. Mark Ronson listens to and loves *a lot* of music. Samin Nosrat tries and savors *a lot* of food.
    Notes on “Taste” | Are.na Editorial
  • A faster-spinning spinner makes the app seem to load faster, even when the load times are identical. This improves perceived performance.
    The Easing Blueprint
  • labor substitution is about comparative advantage, not absolute advantage.
    Why I’m not worried about AI job loss - David Oks
  • The emo- tional content of a speech comes not only from its linguistic con- tent but also how it is spoken — from pitch and intonations to non-verbal expressions
    [2409.11531] Leveraging AI-Generated Emotional Self-Voice to Nudge People towards their Ideal Selves
  • We introduce Emotional Self Voice (ESV), a novel system that combines emotionally expressive LLMs with voice cloning tech- nologies to generate speech in various attitudes that sound like the user’s own voice.
    [2409.11531] Leveraging AI-Generated Emotional Self-Voice to Nudge People towards their Ideal Selves
  • Emotion acts as a manifestation of our predictions based on prior experiences
    [2409.11531] Leveraging AI-Generated Emotional Self-Voice to Nudge People towards their Ideal Selves
  • Don’t keep your passions and projects secret, share your work so others know what you’re up to. The more meaningful things you do and the more people you tell about them, the larger your “luck surface” becomes.
    How To Manufacture Luck - Polymath Investor
  • Not every decision is final, so don’t treat it like it is. If a choice is easily reversible, act quickly and keep moving; you can always change course. Save your cautious deliberation for the choices that you can’t undo.
    How To Manufacture Luck - Polymath Investor
  • Fortune tends to favour the ones who do rather than those who endlessly deliberate.
    How To Manufacture Luck - Polymath Investor
  • The more attempts you make, the greater your chances of a win. Instead of pinning all hopes on one big effort, take lots of shots in your career or creative endeavours: each project, idea, or application is another ticket in the lottery of luck.
    How To Manufacture Luck - Polymath Investor
  • The person who finds the ship will seek out the expert because they’re the only person capable of unlocking the value. Your unique attributes act as a magnet.
    How To Manufacture Luck - Polymath Investor
  • Type III luck favours the prepared mind. It involves spotting opportunities that are invisible to others because they lack the specific knowledge or experience to recognize them. T
    How To Manufacture Luck - Polymath Investor
  • Type II luck comes from physical and intellectual motion. It’s the luck of the hustler. By generating a high volume of actions
    How To Manufacture Luck - Polymath Investor
  • But: by effectively communicating that passion, through writing, speaking, building in public, or networking, you expand your catchment area.
    How To Manufacture Luck - Polymath Investor
  • Many years ago, I came across this concept of “luck surface area”1 by Jason Roberts. The larger that surface, the more likely a lucky break has somewhere to land and stick.
    How To Manufacture Luck - Polymath Investor
  • More often, luck shows up because your habits and choices put you in its path
    How To Manufacture Luck - Polymath Investor