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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 669 posts.
The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
Why did mental health fall off a cliff at the same time and in the same way in the USA, The UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand? Part 1 of 3.
How to draw dotted lines on chalkboards, MIT style (2021)
Archived MIT Admissions blog post 'how to draw dotted lines on chalkboards, mit style,' published May 20, 2021. Preserved for historical context; not maintained as current admissions policy.
Carl Braun on communicating like a grown-up (2016)
Industrial genius Carl Braun believed that clear thinking and clear communication go hand in hand. Here the guide on writing productively to get things done.
Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket
I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that you, like me, have a large pile (or digital equivalent) of books or articles you've been meaning to get around to reading, plus maybe a long queue of podcast episodes to which you'd love to listen, if only you had the time. It's the archetypal "first-world problem", I…
I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one
I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one.
An interview with Steve Wozniak by Jessica Livingston cured my AI anxiety
Note: there's no hidden knowledge contained in this post, it's just a reflection on how reading someone's reaction to an analogous situation...
The Anti-Productivity Manifesto
After a barrage of recommendations on my twitter, I finally ended up reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks. The central premise of the book is simple: everyone has got about four thousand weeks to live, and spending that limited time chasing efficiency is wrongheaded. The message seems old. The entire…
And yet It Understands
In high-dimensional vector spaces, numerical optimization is omnipotent.
Things I’ve Learned from Charlie Munger about Moats (2015)
1. “We have to have a business with some inherent characteristics that give it a durable competitive advantage.” Professor Michael Porter calls barriers to market entry that a business may have…
Call yourself titles
We constantly question ourselves when attempting anything new for the first time, which is daunting. And what’s worse, it prevents us from doing anything new, so we can’t change who we are. If you’ve always been terrible at sports and want to start working out, the natural reaction after a few attempts is to stop and…
Engineers Need to Write
I hated writing in high school.
Why take a compiler course? (2010)
[…] Embedded in Academia : Why Take a Compiler Course? – Seconded, or whatever – my compiler course was briefer than I'd have liked but many of my peers didn't take it and I spent ages explaining what I thought where simple concepts to them when working on group projects and the like. […]
A cyberpunk bathroom in the middle of nowhere
Advertisements straddle 48,756 miles of asphalt like 60-foot weeds. US billboards are windows into America's soul: strip clubs, bible verses, casinos, lawyers, and fast food.
Shields Up
Years and years ago, I helped the Weekly World News make a book. While their periodical was weekly, it certainly wasn’t news. They were just four people in a small office in Florida. They gle…
How I came to write “Tidy First?” tl;dr it took 18 years
Taking a software design course in college (Go Ducks!), we used Ed Yourdon (RIP) & Larry Constantine’s book Structured Design as a text.
MIT’s Barry Duncan demonstrates the power of writing in reverse
Barry Duncan, a staff member at the MIT Press Bookstore, boasts a unique talent: writing palindromes, or prose that reads the same forward and backward.
Lessons from a Pessimist: Make Your Pessimism Productive
On the topic of life lessons from a born pessimist.
Anki-fy your life
Creating a subconscious problem-solving framework.
Thoughts on Video Editing (2022)
I’ve been thinking about editing for the last 5 years. Not just thinking, also editing. Trying out what works. You may have noticed different editing styles in the 65 videos I have posted to …
Shoshikantetsu
The other day I was visiting my family in Hawaii when I complained to my mother about not wanting to do a planned run that afternoon. I told her that I was tired and was dreading physical exercise. Despite that, I explained to her that I was going to do it, even if it meant I ran a lot slower than my regular pace.
Just Write
I listened to a podcast about Lena Dunham. I knew nothing about her, had never seen any of her work, and probably never will. But the episode ended with thes...
Kottke.org is 25 years old today
I realize how it sounds, but I’m going to say it anyway because it’s the truth. When I first clapped eyes on the World Wide Web, I fell in love. Here’s how I de
Building a second income stream by writing a book
Spoiler: It’s quite possibly the hardest way to build a passive income stream.
Losing Signal
Losing Signal par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.
Things I learned after getting users
last month, i posted about my website basement community on hacker news and it sorta blew up. you can view the post here. it blew up so much, i was totally u...
Punctuation Matters: How to use the en dash, em dash and hyphen
It's easy to use the hyphen, em dash and en dash to make your writing flow better. Let's look at some examples of the en dash...