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Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 913 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
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Cocktail party ideas
You don't have to be at a party to see this phenomenon in action, but there's a curious thing I regularly see at parties in social circles where people value intelligence and cleverness without similarly valuing on-the-ground knowledge or intellectual rigor. People often discuss the standard trendy topics (some recent…
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Who Writes Wikipedia?
Part 1: Wikimedia at the Crossroads Part 2: Who Writes Wikipedia? Part 3: Who Runs Wikipedia? Part 4: Making More Wikipedians Part 5: Making More Wikipedias Part 6: Code, and Other Laws
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How I Cured my RSI Pain (2010)
For two years I suffered from severe hand, wrist, and forearm pain while typing. After spending a lot of money on world-class medical professionals and ergonomic products but seeing poor results, I was ultimately able to cure all my pain by reading The Mindbody Prescription (TMP). Now I can type for as long as I want…
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What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010)
If you regularly read cognitive science or psychology blogs (or even just the lowly New York Times!), you’ve probably heard of something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger e…
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Ranto (JBR Anti‐Zamenhofism)
Esperanto: espèce de conlang
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Cordless Dog: Stay
If you're fastidious about keeping your windows tidy, Stay is for you. Stay ensures that your windows are where you want them, even as you connect and disconnect displays.
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Plato's Argument Against Writing
The people who invent something new, create a new tool or technology are not necessarily the people who are going to understand what the social impact of those inventions are going to be.
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Sick Systems: How to Keep Someone With You Forever
So you want to keep your lover or your employee close. Bound to you, even. You have a few options. You could be the best lover they’ve ever had, kind, charming, thoughtful, competent, witty, and a tiger in bed. You could be the best workplace they’ve ever had, with challenging work, rewards for talent, initiative, and…
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The Queen's Duck
Brian Wigginton
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The Backfire Effect
The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking. The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challeng…
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“I will slaughter you”
You might know that I've posted funny emails I've received on my blog several times in the past. The kind of emails people send me when they experience problems with some device they own (like a car) and they contact me because my email address happens to be visible somewhere. People sometimes say I should … Continue…
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RIP Culture War Thread
[This post is having major technical issues. Some comments may not be appearing. If you can’t comment, please say so on the subreddit.] I. I Come To Praise Caesar, Not To Bury Him Several yea…
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Code is not Literature
I have started code reading groups at the last two companies I’ve worked at, Etsy and Twitter, and some folks have asked for my advice about code reading and running code reading groups. Tl;dr: don’t start a code reading group. What you should start instead I’ll get to in a moment but first I need to explain how I…
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LSD microdosing: a randomized, blind self-experiment
Self-experiment with sub-psychedelic doses of LSD; no benefit
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A Meta-Scientific Perspective on Thinking: Fast and Slow (2020)
2011 was an important year in the history of psychology, especially social psychology. First, it became apparent that one social psychologist had faked results for dozens of publications (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diederik_Stapel). Second, a highly respected journal published an article with the incredible claim…
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Clean Coder Blog
Peter was showing the relationship between age and reputation on stack overflow. The correlation is unmistakable. The older the programmer, the better the reputation, by far. He also shows, in the following graph, that the reason for this correlation is that the older programmers answer far more questions than the…
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A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking
My book, Sous Vide for the Home Cook , came out in 2010. You can order the second edition directly from the US publisher. My book has over 200 delicious recipes for beef, pork, lamb, game, chicken, turkey, duck, fish, shellfish, vegetables, fruits, legumes, ice cream bases, sauces, and yogurt. I first cover the basics…
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Things That Sometimes Help If You Have Depression
Some of my friends have depression and have asked me for some suggestions. These will be inferior to reading official suggestions, but you will probably not read official suggestions, and you may r…
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Cardiologists and Chinese Robbers
I. It takes a special sort of person to be a cardiologist. This is not always a good thing. You may have read about one or another of the “cardiologist caught falsifying test results and perf…
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Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
Packed with evidence-based strategies, Atomic Habits will teach you how to make small changes that will transform your habits and deliver amazing results.
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Lena (first draft)
A note from the author This was a very quick first draft, written in around two hours as part of my 30 More First Drafts project. You can now read the finished short story. This article is about the standard test brain image. For the original human, see [[Miguel A...
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Knuth: The Bank of San Serriffe
(These account balances reflect only the rewards for errors reported since the beginning of 2006. Many reward checks were issued during 1968--2005, too numerous to mention here.)
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Adventures in Depression
Some people have a legitimate reason to feel depressed, but not me. I just woke up one day feeling sad and helpless for absolutely no reason...
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