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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 465 posts.
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Sysop Chat
Back in mid-90s before anyone I knew had an Internet connection, a few of us had modems and would use them to call bulletin board systems via the phone line. On these systems what to me seemed the main thing was discussions and chat. For the first time I could talk to other like-minded people, and just being able to…
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My Year in Review: 2019
Here are some of the things I’m most proud of from 2019, and some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned.
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Under-Investigated Fields
Nominations for fields that are not being researched as much as they should be
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The APA Meeting: A Photo-Essay
The first thing you notice at the American Psychiatric Association meeting is its size. By conservative estimates, a quarter of the psychiatrists in the United States are packed into a single giant…
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Dating: A Research Journal, Part 1 (2016)
My journey to finding love using science and data. Part 1 – how to own online dating.
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Digital pollution
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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How to Build a Pyramid
Exactly how did the Egyptians build the Pyramid of Khufu and its two great successors on the Giza Plateau? That question has been debated at least since the time of Herodotus. Many a person has looked upon what the Egyptians are alleged to have wrought, compared it with the early date which historians assign to it…
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Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?
The open-plan office fad took off as a dream for a more collaborative and egalitarian workplace. Tear down those walls! Ditch the soul-crushing...
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Chickens Are Bullies – Can Their Behavior Teach Us About Our Own?
When I was growing up in a suburb of Austin, Texas, the neighbor across the street had a small flock of backyard hens that were a…
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Where Has the Magic Gone?
A big change that I’ve realised during undergrad is that engineering doesn’t feel ‘magical’ anymore.
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Highlights from “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande
1. In the 1970s, the philosophers Samuel Gorovitz and Alasdair MacIntyre published a short essay on the nature of human fallibility that I read during my surgical training and haven’t stopped...
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Tickling (2018)
Before our kids learned to talk, I would play tickles with them. I would make tickling gestures as I moved towards them, they would start giggling a little, then I would tickle them and they would laugh. We'd continue until they seemed to be done with the game, and then we'd move on to something else. As they got…
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Hexagonal Cross Stitch
At least year’s Bridges Conference in Stockholm, I attended a short presentation by Susan Goldstine about “self-diagramming lace” . As motivation for the new work she was presenting, Susan referenced her paper from the year before on what she calls “symmetry samplers” . Samplers are an old tradition in fibre arts. A…
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When Having Friends Is More Alluring Than Being Right
“There’s this flat-earther documentary called BEHIND THE CURVE,” my wife said. “We have to watch it!” Of course we did. My wife will occasionally get into huge debates…
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Bandersnatch Shows You What Depersonalization Disorder Feels Like
Can a new interactive movie shed some light on a strange disorder?
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