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Life, Learning & Writing

The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 7,743 posts.

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3932

Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

When John Titor first showed up on IRC chat in October of 2000, he was enjoying a neat kind of double billing - as his 38-year-old self sat downstairs in the kitchen, typing away, a two-year-old version of himself lay sound asleep upstairs in bed. The elder Titor had been sent back in time by the U.S. Army, which…

3939

My Favorite Liar (2008)

[the following recounts an exceptionally powerful teaching technique employed by an economics professor of mine at university; teaching fact-checking and skepticism by salting it into the content of his delivery]

3941

Read the masters

Some time ago, I came across the Wikipedia article of Niels Henrik Abel , and something there burnt its way into my mind. Abel changed the face of mathematics, despite dying at 27. And here comes the thing – I give the mic to Wikipedia now:

3946

Leaving in a Huff

One thing you may not know about me is that I am a writer. More specifically, I'm a freelance writer. This means I can have several clients at once, work from home in my underwear, and set my own hours. It is basically like being a prostitute, but with less stringent hygiene requirements.

3953

I have quit my job

Several years ago, I decided to quit freelancing and do a day job. The job would pay much less but I was struggling with mental health (ADHD). On my therapist's suggestion, I decided to give the job thing a try. It worked wonderfully, my struggles with discipline are a thing of past. Or so I believe.

3958

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…