Links

on fragmented attention span and inability to wait

Kurzgesagt inspired by the Wait But Why post.

Has changed my writing; been doing this and writing much shorter sentences.

Other tips on hn

bunch of recs for books about music

I think one reason many people feel a crisis of meaning is they feel commoditized—and they are! You’re one among millions, not one in a million. Your classmates took the same courses and extracurricular activities. Your friends consume the same podcasts, books, and TV shows. Your co-workers are trained to replace you if you leave.

But we’re human beings, we do not want to be replaceable. We desperately want to be valued for who we are. Becoming disentangled from your web of mutual commitments, shared history, and collective responsibility is to be rendered into a transaction, a slave.2

This was a fun discovery, from soundcloud suggesting the tag #bhangra. Also this

I like the idea, kinda agree with “this cheat sheet is likely to be come your weakest link in your security threat model” - where should you keep it?!

via hn

this made me kind of miss painstakingly tagging and organising my music collection

Mentioned in Don’t be that open source user

good collection of tips on focus, time management, people management, communication, learning, maintenance, estimates, planning

lowering a building on jacks a floor at a time. 90% less dust!

Interesting that the generated drawings often have strange faces/hands. Is it because they are more complex shapes? Because we notice issues with them more?

first 3 were more interesting to me

1. Define the problem. Be as specific as possible (boundaries and constraints).
2. Break it down. List possible solutions, list assumptons (gaps). Then fill the gaps.
3. Prioritize solutions. Look for high impact, high influence
4. Plan
5. Analyze
6. Synthesize
7. Tell the story

On length and style and cycles and narrative.
If you need to know anything about a piece before hearing he (he thinks not).
On the high/low division people make about pop music being silly.
Example of Vespertine by Björk, music that can exist in many different contexts and not seem out of place.

the things of nightmares

Tips from Kevin Kelly :

Accept compliments with thanks.
Getting cheated occasionally is a small price to pay for trusting the best in everyone
When invited to something in the future, ask yourself, Would I do this tomorrow?
The thing that made you weird as a kid could make you great as an adult.
It’s not an apology if it comes with an excuse.
Ignore what they are thinking of you because they are not thinking of you.
If you think you saw a mouse, you did, and if there is one, there are others.
The biggest lie we tell ourselves is, “I don’t need to write this down because I will remember it.”

so keep a dream journal!

The windshield phenomenon (or windscreen phenomenon) is the observation that recently fewer dead insects accumulate on the windshields of people’s cars. It has been attributed to a global decline in insect populations caused by human activity.

real-time, controllable deepfakes ready for virtual cameras injection. The future is terrifying

Amazing writeup.

1. install all updates
2. use a password manager
3. Turn on disk encryption. Replacing a laptop is preferable than leaking data
4. SSH keys in secure enclaces. Private key never leaves device. Public keys on github
5. Block ads. “when third-party ad platforms started becoming attack vectors, I got religion on this.”
6. Use MFA, prefer physical keys

If you wouldn’t let someone pull up a folding chair in your bathroom to Learn and Be Curious while watching you poop, don’t let them have access to your email.

Invention is overrated, implementation underrated. Both in difficulty, and importance.

In her own entry from 1965, Wolf wondered whether the diary would become “the only art form in which a person can still remain honest, in which one can avoid the compromises that are otherwise necessary or becoming unavoidable everywhere.” Reimann never put such trust in the form. “In essence, everything that’s written in a diary is a lie—or it’s all just a half-truth,” she wrote in 1956. “And half-truths are lies too.”

I don’t know about this theory, but damn all the giant screens are annoying when looking for a new phone

huh, weird that I already had a tag for smoking

Importantly, it helped me overcome my fear that if I quit smoking, I wouldn’t be able to write anymore, since I’d always done the two activities together (today I tell writing students not to smoke at all, but if they must, not to smoke while writing, lest they prolong their addiction to protect their artistic production).

But what really helped me kick was Alan’s advice about motivations: “You’re 33 years old. You might smoke for 40 more years before you get sick. Not getting sick in forty years won’t be much of a motivation next week when you’re craving a cigarette. You need a motive for next week, not forty years from now.”

The next-week reason he came up with was “I spend two laptops per year on smokes”. So he now buys a laptop each year.

I love how this ends up at “I won’t be needing a dome”

I think some people have lost the point of my question, just wanted some advise on how to lower road noise whole not spending $20,000. I don’t expect to block out all the noise and won’t be needing a dome.

Accounting for scribal and other potential errors when translating texts

If your hourly rate gets too high, how to justify doing anything that isn’t billable?

More links and suggestions in comments

A beautiful writeup of some of the many issues of touchscreens.

mirror of referenced video

Some good work/life balance suggestions and options in the comments

Another text-to-image model. This stuff is getting crazy

Generate 3d fern models in browser

A history of plastic recycling, mostly on economics of it, and the symbol being put on plastics.

sidenote: the excerpt and title from Medium was better than for this link.

Some good advice on finding ways of enjoying work or life or both, and being wary of taking advice from entrepreneurs - they’ve gambled and won.

a “streaming replication tool” for SQLite databases. Copies the log file continuously

A love story in music lessons

tldr pay too low, work too high. Lot of hiring and prep work and other things during “holidays”

I know many of you like to say “No worse than the common cold!” Well, the thing is…the common cold imposes considerable costs on the world. Imagine a new common cold, which you catch a few times a year, with some sliver of the population getting some form of Long Covid.

Couple of test searches gave lots from early 2000s. Will be interesting to see how bitrotten it is

More crypto bullshit from people trying to sell something that they have heavily invested in.

For such an intelligent and successful firm, they really seem to be struggling with the basic task of presenting logically-coherent evidence to support their claims.

excerpts from The Art of Controversy