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The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)
Why is it getting so much worse?
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 7,742 posts.
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How to avoid being a secretary for engineers (2018)
If we just see our task as documenting solutions that engineers have solved, it removes the creativity and critical thinking dimension from tech comm. The creative dimension in tech comm comes into play as we identify and solve tech comm challenges, such as devising ways to simplify complexity or otherwise improve the…
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What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon
You’ve probably heard that the Rust type checker can be a great “co-pilot”, helping you to avoid subtle bugs that would have been a royal pain in the !@#!$! to debug. This is truly awesome! But what you may not realize is how it feels in the moment when this happens. The answer typically is: really, really…
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Advice for academic refugees
Recently I met a new coworker, a now-former professor who left academia.
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Mental Model: Difficult Problems vs. Hard Work
How to model work that interacts with ambiguity
2618
Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
Utopian energy is an imagined form of energy that’s abundant, reliable, inexpensive, and also clean, renewable, and life-sustaining. But utopian energy is as much a fantasy as a utopian society. Seeking the fount of perfect energy allows us to pretend there aren’t real-world tradeoffs between, say,
2619
Potato diet community trial
In French, the word for potato is pomme de terre. This literally translates to apple of the earth. By this logic, potatoes are the lowest-hanging fruit of all. More seriously: We keep getting more …
2620
Observations on 6 Years of Journaling
My thoughts and experiences on how writing a daily journal improved my memory and understanding of myself.
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The Documentation Triangle, or, why code isn't self documenting
These statements can be hard to argue against, especially if they come from someone who is more experienced than you. A lot of the trouble is that they are not wrong – well, they’re not completely wrong.
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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years
It’s been about nine months since I left Mapbox and the circumstances of my exit didn’t offer much opportunity for closure. I feel a combination of gratitude and resentment that I’m still sorting out. Last week was the one year anniversary of the Mapbox Worker’s Union going public, the event that lead to my departure…
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Writing one sentence per line
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
2625
No-one knows what they are doing
When I was a child I assumed that all the adults running the world knew what they were doing. Now that I am an adult, I am under no such illusions. Just look at the current British government. They…
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Two Years of Life with PinePhone
On June 9th, 2020, early into a still raging pandemic, I received my PinePhone UBports Community Edition. It's incredible how fast these two years went by, and how much the PinePhone experience improved in the meantime. This is just a subjective post about what I remember, you may also consider it a
2627
Reasons to tour by bicycle
I recommend a long bicycle tour as one of the best ways to see parts of the world, especially America. There was an article in a recent New York Times about 8 great bike touring routes in the US. These … Continue reading →
2628
Relearning to Learn
Many years ago, I took a test. It was the first step of our “Learning to Learn” class. After answering a series of multiple choice question, the form issued forth a proclomation:
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Construction is life
When I was growing up in the suburbs, I was bothered by all the construction going on in the big city nearby (New York). Whenever I visited, there were detours, cranes, cement trucks blocking the streets, never-ceasing jackhammers, sidewalks closed, … Continue reading →
2630
I'm making drugs for cats
For all the new readers who’ve joined since my post about effective altruism and elections, welcome!
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Tolkien’s Little-Known Original Drawings for the First Edition of “The Hobbit”
A lively new look at one of the most beloved fantasy stories of all time.
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Clarus returns home in macOS Ventura
Did you know Clarus the Dogcow is hiding in the macOS Ventura beta?
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Writing Is Hard
Writing is hard. Especially if you start thinking. Never stop to think about what to write (unless you must), it will ruin the flow. Never stop to correct yourself, to judge or run a spellcheck. Don’t do that; that’s what editing is for. I’ve read the same tips again and again: Write first, edit later. […]
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Luck Surface Area: How to Get Lucky In Life
You can't force luck. But you can increase your chances (by a lot) to get lucky. Here's how to do it with luck surface area.
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Twenty years of my blog
I started this blog on June 12th 2002—twenty years ago today! To celebrate two decades of blogging, I decided to pull together some highlights and dive down a self-indulgent nostalgia …
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Overthinking (2021)
I used to be a pathological overthinker. Everything had to be carefully planned, from the words I would say to the baker to order a baguette to all the insignificant details of any of the projects I worked on. Is it better to tweet at 18:00 or 18:05? Rust or
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Writing better by answering why, what, how
Three documents I write (one-pager, design doc, after-action review) and how I structure them.