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Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 8,937 posts.
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Noticing You're Confused
And somewhere in the back of his mind was a small, small note of confusion, a sense of something wrong about that story; and it should have been a part of Harry’s art to notice that tiny note…
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Memories of Kurt Gödel
[This memoir essay appeared in the magazine Science 82 in April 1982, and in my 1982 book Infinity and the Mind. It’s based on the “Conversations With Godel” documented in my previous post. Some of the photos are from a recent trip through the West, others from the 1970s.] [This is a cropped version of
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My Life Offline
Everyone wants to know how my month offline was. They ask it casually, like “How’s work going?” or “What’d you do this weekend?” But it’s not a casual question. It was a huge, incredible, transformative experience. Those 30 days felt like six months. My habits changed, my relationships changed, my identity changed, my…
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The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
Learn how to organize your digital life in seconds. Stop wasting time looking for information and gain greater focus on what matters most.
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Heinlein's Fan Mail Solution
I found this letter in a folder of old correspondence from my days when I was editing at the Whole Earth Catalog. It is from the science fiction master Robert Heinlein. Heinlein engineered his own nerdy solution to a problem … Continue reading →
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Foldable Words
Packing up the household for a recent move, I was delving into shoeboxes, photo albums, and file folders that had not been opened in decades. One of my discoveries, found in an envelope at the back of a file drawer, was the paper sleeve from a drinking straw, imprinted with a saccharine message:
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From Alex’s Family
Alex was with his family when he passed peacefully earlier today, Wednesday, February 27th. We would like to thank everyone across the globe for their love and support. It meant a lot to us and Ale…
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Chesterton's Fence: A lesson in second order thinking (2021)
A core component of making great decisions is understanding previous decisions. If we don’t understand how we got “here,” we run the risk of making things much worse.
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How to get 7th graders to smoke
OR: "fuzzy, wet, and unfalsifiable"
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Learning Ruby: Things I Like, Things I Miss from Python
Thoughts on Ruby from the point of view of a Pythonista, brought to you by Workpath, the strategy execution platform.
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Carl Sagan's Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking
Necessary cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood.
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Maybe comments should explain 'what' (2017)
People say “Comments should explain why, not what.” I feel like starting a flame war today so I’m going to argue that comments should explain ‘what’ too. Please don’t use this as justification to write bad code, okay? Okay. First of all, why shouldn’t comments explain ‘what’? If you need comments to explain what’s…
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I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
“The decline of Stackoverflow” is now trending on reddit, and I started this post as a comment in the thread, but it got too long. I’m in the 0.01% (whichContinue reading
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Driving for Uber and Lyft
About two years ago, I switched from taking my personal car to the airport, to hailing Ubers and Lyfts. The math of it was pretty simple: Uber was cheaper than paying for my driving and parking*. A…
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The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
“The difference between something that can go wrong and something that can’t possibly go wrong is that when something that can’t possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.” –Douglas Adams
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Coursera is phasing out free certificates
Coursera’s free Statements of Accomplisments die a quiet death.
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Alternate clock designs and time systems
A day has 24 hours in it. That's 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds. If you wonder why Americans don't understand the need for using the metric system then ask yourself why you use this inconsistent time measurement system.
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Easy Ways to Fail a Ph.D.
I'm supervising a lot of new grad students this semester, so for their sake, I'm cataloging the common reasons for failure.
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I’ll never be an astronaut
Developing Aortic Stenosis due to a Bicuspid Aortic Valve This is one doctor’s experience as an explainer to friends, family and anyone who has a bicuspid aortic valve or who, for whatever re…
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Why am I here?
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.
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