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Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health
New global study from Sapien Labs finds consistent links, stronger for girls
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One week of empathy training (2019)
I've spent a week cosplaying as a disabled user. And I hate it. A couple of months ago, I attended a private talk given by a disabled colleague of mine. "Everyone should believe disabled people's stories about accessibility problems," she said. "But, given that people don't, here's what I want you to do. Spend one…
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We overestimate our short-term ability, but underestimate our long-term ability
My way of thinking about long-term habit building
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Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering
As a seasoned software engineer, I've discovered that there's so much more to the field than what's taught in school. From the importance of understanding business needs and the value of soft skills, to the necessity of continuous learning and the reality of dealing with legacy code, my journey has been filled with…
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Cookie Clicker saved my PhD
Or, how I cookie-clicked my way to a doctorate in interaction design. It’s been 5 years since I finished my Ph.D. on user interfaces for machine learning. To celebrate/commiserate, I’m sharing an u…
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The midwit home
Less automation and less agony
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What is the minimal possible UK address?
Postcodes in the UK are pretty specific — a postcode such as “SE1 6AD” will often identify one or a few specific buildings, unlike countries where a postcode represents an entire neighbourhood. This leads to an interesting question: how short can you get an address and still have Royal Mail deliver post there? To…
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Quitting the rat race
I'm leaving a comfortable job in a big city because there's more to life than whatever this is.
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Some insects I found inside dried Turkish figs from Trader Joe’s
During an online wasp identification course I participated in several weeks ago, there was a fun discussion about whether commercially-produced figs contained fig wasps (Agaonidae, in the Chalcidoidea). Opinions varied, plus some asserted, as do many internet pages, that even if wasps were once insi
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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…
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I walked across Luxembourg
A hike from the west to the east of the Grand Duchy
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How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb
How I lost $950 in about an hour on AirBnB by stupidly thinking it worked like a hotel
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Writing summaries is more important than reading more books
One thing I’ve learned over time is to read fewer books but to take the time to write summaries for the good ones. The ROI of spending 2h writing a synopsis is much higher than spending those 2h powering through the next book on your list. Reading is not about page count or speed. What matters is ho
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In search of the least viewed article on Wikipedia (2022)
Wikipedia sure is popular. The most popular articles in a given week routinely get millions of views. But with 6 million plus articles, Wikipedia has plenty ...
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The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review
The Staff Engineer’s Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change is written by Tanya Reilly and published on October 25, 2022, by O’Reilly Media. Favorite Quotes Early in your career, if you do a great job on something that turns out to be unnecessary, you’ve still done a great job. At the…
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Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness
Six propositions for evaluating the evidence.
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Two years of teaching high school CS
(This post is also now also listed on the Pickcode Blog) Leaving Teaching I’m posting this on my last day teaching high school computer science. In the pas...
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Learning needs to be effortful to be effective
Online content makes edutainment the norm among curious and intelligent people, who don't realize that they aren't actually learning what they think they are.
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Critical theory is radicalizing high school debate
New rhetorical tactics are creating a generation of nihilists
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Van Life in Japan
As I got better experience about van life, I published a dedicated website covering tips and tricks to enjoy Japan with a van. Check Camp In Japan for more information and guide on how to enjoy Japan in a van. It’s been already 9 months and 10,000 kilometers we are living across Japan in our […]
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Take more screenshots (2022)
If you do any sort of creative digital work, screenshots and screen recordings are a great way to remember it.
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Managing Kitchen Fruit Flies with a Little Shop of Horrors
I live in Seattle on a fairly wooded property. Every summer since we’ve moved here, we end up with swarms of fruit flies in the kitchen. They congregate around the compost bin and the fruit bowl (where there are always lots of bananas). We aren’t slobbish - I do the dishes and wipe down the counters every night, take…
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Is technical analysis just stock market astrology?
Technical analysis is a part of finance that studies price moves to guide investment decisions.A lot of investors seem skeptical of the use of past price dat...
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Creation happens in silence
It’s Saturday, and I’m enjoying the last sunlight for the day in my studio. The house is silent now; my family is taking a nap downstairs. And I’m here, writing, in silence. There’s a thought that kept coming in the last few weeks. As painful as it is, any creation happens in isolation without any signals or external…
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The fun factor of the video game Uplink
A blog where an obscure indie dev dumps his thoughts sometimes.
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Taxonomy of Procrastination
There’s a little accountant named Jim that lives in my head