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Daily log archive for Sep 2024. Go to the current daily log, or browse the archive index.

2024-09-30

Podcasts #podcasts :

Industry S03E08 #tv

Old Man S02E04 #tv - kinda starting to get bored with this.

Neat idea to explicitly allowlist paths and extensions in a .gitignore file, to avoid slop like .DS_Store getting accidentally checked in because it wasn't there. #git

*

!src/
!*.rs
!*.toml
!*.lock

There is also the global gitignore file one could use: An example global gitignore file · GitHub

Update: There is now a blog post about this: https://rgbcu.be/blog/gitignore/

ADHD and Evolutionary Mismatch

This tweet is a pretty interesting take. However it's slightly offbase #adhd #evo-psych #evolution

I discovered the concept of evolutionary mismatch when I was trying to better understand my own struggles with ADHD. Even though this tweet-sized post makes some useful points, I would recommend anyone interested in exploring this further to go directly to this book, which is surprisingly accessible: Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health: 9781316516560: Medicine & Health Science Books @ Amazon.com

For ADHD specifically, Chapter 5 titled Hunter Gatherers, Mismatch and Mental Disorder is especially useful.

The On Humans podcast interviewed Nikhil Chaudhary, which is where I discovered the concept of evolutionary mismatch and the whole field of Evolutionary Psychiatry: Mental Health Bonus | The Origins of ADHD, Anxiety, and Depression ~ Nikhil Chaudhary | On Humans Podcast ~ Science & Philosophy of What It Means To Be Human

There is also this video interview with Nikhil Chaudhary from the Evolving Psychiatry podcast:

Coffee badging: the new flexible work trend #work

Introducing ‘coffee badging’, a new workplace trend that sees people in flexible work environments coming into the office just for their morning coffee, getting a metaphorical ‘badge’ (think Girl Guides or Scouts), before heading off to complete their work for the day elsewhere. 

“Coffee badging is the practice of turning up at your office to show your face briefly before escaping back to your default option of working from home,” explains Liz Villani, founder of #BeYourselfAtWork and the #iAM global movement. “It’s presenteeism in the most fleeting of methods.”

The curse of the cool girl novelist - New Statesman #culture #books

A tad unfair, but it's a funny characterisation.

While the silly novels of the 19th century were “frothy” and “prosy”, their heroines inclined to “rise to a lofty strain of rhetoric”, cool girl novels are uniformly spare, and their depressed protagonists hardly speak at all. If Eliot’s silly novelists forged their prose style in rooms adorned with silk ribbon and taffeta trim, the cool girl novelists of today write from white Scandi-inspired rooms, their prose monochromatically dull.

The anti-heroine of these novels is usually a PhD student (or at least an MA), crucially distinguishing her from the common undergraduate masses. Her knowledge of intersectional theory has left her crippled by a near constant anxiety about power imbalances and inequality. She is also perpetually worried, to the point of exhaustion, nay burnout, about the plight of the individual under capitalism. Her eyes have an unmanned look about them, while her brain anxiously jumps from one devastating indictment of our society to the next. Words like ecocide and patriarchy thrum inside her skull.

2024-09-29

TIL: India’s clothing and textile industry is the third-largest sector by employment, after farming and construction. From: How India can compete in labour-intensive manufacturing #india #clothing #manufacturing

The self-help book began in the land of the stiff upper lip #self-improvement #self-help

The year 1859 was a big one for British publishing. Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was published, as was John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty”. So too was a now largely forgotten book by an author named Samuel Smiles. It was boring, badly written and critically panned: one writer called books of its sort “the silliest ever known”. Naturally, readers loved it. It outsold Darwin, popularised a new term and in the process changed publishing for ever. It was called “Self-Help” and its aim was simple: to teach readers that “with Will one can do anything”. One could certainly sell more books: last year in Britain, according to figures from Nielsen BookData, 3% of all books sold were self-help.

For as long as there have been selves, they have needed help—and books have offered it. The Bible has been called the world’s first self-help book; Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations” still pops up on self-help tables in bookshops. Advice such as Ephesians 4:32 (“Be kind to one another”) and Marcus’s 5.16 (“the soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts”) could sit happily in any modern manual. Other bits of counsel less so: Leviticus 18:7 (“Do not dishonour your father by having sexual relations with your mother”) may be good advice but feels less like a fridge magnet.

…

…If you believe Marcus Aurelius, that hardly matters. Wealth, ambition and achievement are, he wrote, all worthless: we are here for but the briefest moment before entering the “abyss of eternity”. There may be better ways to spend it than reading self-help books.

TIL the origins of the word "woke": After peak woke, what next?

ONE OF THE early uses of the word was by Lead Belly, who sang about the Scottsboro boys, nine young African-Americans in Scottsboro, Alabama, who were wrongly accused in 1931 of raping two white women. They got an unfair trial; all nine later had their convictions overturned or were pardoned. In a recording in 1938, Lead Belly warns black Americans travelling through Alabama to stay “woke”, lest they be accused of something similar. Even the most committed anti-woke warrior would grant that the man had a point.

P.S. - the article is also a good analysis of how woke culture has evolved since it's peak in 2021-22.

What to read about modern feminism #books #feminism

What the history of money tells you about crypto’s future #money #monetary-theory

The study of history may also disappoint crypto enthusiasts who wish to liberate money from government control. Monetary policy—the manipulation of money by the state—is almost as old as money itself. Even when coins were made out of gold or silver, governments fiddled with their weight and purity. The value of coins often departed from the preciousness of their materials. Indeed, governments sometimes diluted the silver content of smaller, more practical coins to prevent shortages.

I wish more crypto bros followed this line of logic, but they seem to be set on having their heads in the sand.

This article also talks about an interesting paper I found elsewhere: Understanding Money Using Historical Evidence

Debates about the nature and economic role of money are mostly informed by evidence from the 20th century, but money has existed for millennia. We argue that there are many lessons to be learned from monetary history that are relevant for current topics of policy relevance. The past acts as a source of evidence on how money works across different situations, helping to tease out features of money that do not depend on one time and place. A close reading of history also offers testing grounds for models of economic behavior and can thereby guide theories on how money is transmitted to the real economy.

Most electric-car batteries could soon be made by recycling old ones

Despite a slowdown in electric-vehicle (EV) sales in some countries, demand for batteries was up by around 40% globally last year, and seems likely to continue at a similar pace. Consequently, the world’s appetite for lithium, the vital ingredient in the lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries that dominate the EV market, is expected to exceed 2.4m tonnes in 2030, more than twice its present level.

Where all this lithium will come from is a thorny question. Although 70% of the world’s reserves of lithium carbonate (from which it is mined) are in Argentina, Australia and Chile, processing it into a form suitable for use in batteries is a business currently dominated by China. As China also commands the processing of other important battery materials, including manganese, cobalt and nearly all battery-grade graphite, there is concern about the vulnerability of supply chains should China begin restricting supplies of certain raw materials, as it has done in the past. As a result, legislators and carmakers in Europe and North America have been trying to establish local supplies for batteries.

These efforts are about to be given a big boost. Recent breakthroughs in recycling, together with a spate of technological improvements, mean that within a decade or so most of the global demand for raw materials to build new batteries could be met by recycling old ones.

This article also has a nice deep dive in how battery chemistry and recycling processes work.

Silicon Valley sleep hackers turn to caffeine pills before bed #sleep

But are any of these supplements backed by legitimate science? A 2021 study by the B Sync folk published in Nature analyzed the effect of time-delayed nighttime caffeine on intentionally sleep-deprived men and found “improved behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and physical levels.”

Conceptually, these pills could be considered a super-extended “nappuccino,” said Cassie Hilditch, a researcher at the Fatigue Countermeasures Laboratory at San Jose State University, referring to the trend of having a cup of coffee before a 20-minute catnap.

How Did Pop Culture Get So Gloomy? - by Ted Gioia

Popular culture always reflects the larger social reality. I’ll even go further, and claim that pop culture is our single best source of information about the psychological state of society. In some odd way, the revolution is televised—it emerges in songs, films, and other forms of entertainment long before the political leaders even notice.

### 2024-09-28

Hanging out at Maya Bazaar today: Namma Maya Bazaar

Podcasts #podcasts :

Some Go web dev notes by Julia Evans #go

Latest NYT Amplifier playlist which has a "musical clowning" theme: The Amplifier: Send in the Clowns #music #playlist

Does anyone have time to be a good friend anymore? | Dazed #friendship #loneliness

The article above ☝🏽 reminded me of the article in posted on 2024-09-19 about the "mainstreaming of loserdom". The same phenomena, but a different take here.

Earlier this month, after a particularly long week and amid a very unserious battle with a pesky head cold, I turned to a friend and asked the question: “Do you ever wish you could take two weeks of annual leave from seeing or socialising with anyone?” She said she thinks about it often. As a usually ‘social person’ (my mum had to pry my hands from the playground at the end of each school day), my longing to spend every spare moment lying vertically at home has been a relatively new but increasing occurrence. I cherish my deeply fulfilling friendships, and I strongly believe in the importance of nurturing my relationships even when I’m tired. Still, I often feel like I have no hours to spare after showing up for all of the week’s commitments. I realised I wasn’t craving space away from loved ones, but the ability to feel energised enough to relish in their company – more time to truly enjoy my friendships.

According to a new study led by Natalie Pennington of Colorado State University, my exhausted friend and I are not alone. Americans have an average of four or five friends (a number that has held steady since the 70s) but now only spend three hours per week with them, compared to six hours a decade ago. In other words, the growing loneliness epidemic is not about people having fewer friends (less than four per cent of respondents reported having no friends at all), it’s more just a byproduct of “having no time” to foster deeper connections.

Loving the bedside lamps in the Wirecutter review article: Our 9 Favorite Bedside Lamps of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter #lighting #lamps

fantasy - by Elaine - manners & mystery #relationships

This article is so relatable. The whole thing is worth reading in full, but some quotes below

A big part of my early thirties has been about learning which ladders I have no interest in climbing and accepting the shift in identity that comes with this realization. Next to the corporate ladder is the relationship ladder, with milestones like become exclusive, move in together, open a joint bank account, get married, have kids. The two enable each other, promising the vaunted security of liberal capitalism: your corporate job provides for your family, and your family compels you to work harder at your job so you can earn a bigger paycheck.

…

Attachment theory can be useful for understanding why people behave the way they do in intimate relationships, but over-reliance on it runs the risk of diagnosing any deviation from accepted convention as a problem. For example, if someone doesn’t want to get married, attachment theory might posit a fear of commitment as the culprit, a telltale sign of avoidant attachment. While this may be the case, it’s not the only possible explanation. If we accept, instead, the premise that there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to get married, then maybe the problem isn’t internal. Maybe the system we subscribe to isn’t serving our needs.

…

We all carry wounds, often unrecognized, from our past. No one is a clean slate. When triggered, we resort to coping mechanisms that once served us in childhood but have become maladaptive, even self-sabotaging. When this happens, it can feel like we’re being walloped by the past, caught in the same conflict over and over. But it does get easier. The patterns become more recognizable. You learn how to listen to your emotions. But I don’t think you ever reach a point where you feel like nothing could possibly go wrong. “Secure attachment” as an end goal is a fantasy. The work of being in a relationship with someone is to learn to love each other better as we change, and that’s an unending endeavor.

…

In choosing not to climb the relationship ladder, I’m also giving up the illusion of security that it promises and any claim I might have on another person’s heart. For the first time, I can truly say I’m at peace with it.

Quote from Ester Perel's book Mating in Captivity: #relationships

We seek a steady, reliable anchor in our partner. Yet at the same time we expect love to offer a transcendent experience that will allow us to soar beyond our ordinary lives. The challenge for modern couples lies in reconciling the need for what’s safe and predictable with the wish to pursue what’s exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.

Stumbled upon another amazing article from the same newsletter as the above post: spontaneity - by Elaine - manners & mystery #leisure

I want to spend my days writing, reading, painting, taking long walks, acting, and practicing piano. Basically, I want to live like an 18th century aristocrat. Unfortunately, I lack the means to do so. A life of leisure is a luxury few of us can afford, but that doesn’t mean we can’t spend our time in a way that’s more satisfying.

Taste is Eating Silicon Valley. - by Anu Atluru

The Dangerous Rise of “Therapy Speak” — and Why It’s Not Always Helpful | True You Journal #language #therapy

Sure, the rise in “therapy speak” has allowed many to understand their emotional and mental well-being in a new way. That’s great. But what happens when these words are misused? It not only weakens their impact, but can cause real confusion in those who are seeking genuine support and understanding. Maybe you’re not triggered, depressed or dysregulated at all.

Words discussed in the article:

2024-09-27

In India, Artisan Cheese Finds an Audience - Eater #india #cheese

How To Die Alone S01E08 #tv

Pachinko S01E06 #tv

Installed Drivesync on my Android phone and played around with updating my Obsidian vault from my phone. Next step is to sync this site directly from Google drive instead of from my local filesystem. That way I won't have to depend on having my computer around to update my daily log on the site.

2024-09-26

Podcasts: #podcasts

Fredric Jameson died this month: For the Marxist Literary Critic Fredric Jameson, Reading Was the Path to Revolution - The New York Times #literary-criticism #marxism #critical-theory

If you are a critic, professional or otherwise, the task before you is to make sense of an artifact of the human imagination — a poem, a painting, a dish of pasta, a Netflix docuseries, whatever. What does it mean? What is its value? To find the answers, it helps to know something about where it came from. Who made it? Under what conditions? For what purpose?

Those may not be specifically Marxist questions, but they are historical questions, and they begin a process of inquiry that may lead to Marxist conclusions. That love sonnet or fast-cooling plate of rigatoni is neither isolated nor static: It exists in relation to (for starters) other works of literature and gastronomy, and it changes over time. And so, of course, do you. Reading a Shakespeare sonnet in middle age is not the same as studying it in school, and what it means in the 21st century is not what it meant in the 17th. The noodles your grandmother served on Sunday are not the ones you will order at Olive Garden on Wednesday night.

Mapping that system and tracking its changes is the work of what Jameson calls “dialectical thought.” It’s a lot of work. To historicize your dinner you will need to take account of the voyages of Marco Polo, the European conquest of the tomato, the story of Italian immigrants in America and the rise of The New York Times cooking app. But of course there is, properly speaking, no pasta without antipasto; no primo piatto without a secondo; no dinner without dessert. Those matters will also need to be investigated. And we have not even raised the issue of gluten or the possibility of grated Parmesan. Or, more seriously, the unequal distribution of food in a consumer economy.

Abstract of the vulnerability paper linked above: The politics of vulnerability in the influencer economy

While workers of all stripes are compelled to embrace uncertainty under conditions of neoliberalism, ideologies of risk assume a particular guise in the platform economy, wherein laborers are exhorted to ‘put yourself out there’. Given the attendant harms associated with public visibility – especially for women and other marginalized groups – it seems crucial to explore platform-dependent laborers’ experiences of ‘putting themselves out there’. This article draws upon in-depth interviews with 23 social media influencers and content creators, sampled from across platforms, content niches and subjectivities. Our analysis revealed that vulnerability is a structuring concept in the influencer economy – one that operates at multiple, often overlapping levels. First, the commercial logic of authenticity casts personal vulnerability as a strategy for building community and accruing followers. But influencers’ individual disclosures were often entangled with their social identities (e.g., gender, race, sexuality, ability and body type), which rendered them socially vulnerable to targeted antagonism from audiences. Interviewees experienced a range of harms, from identity-based hate and harassment to concerted take-down campaigns. These personal and social vulnerabilities were compounded by the vulnerabilities of platform-dependent labor: not only did participants identify the failures of platforms to protect them, some shared a sense that these companies exacerbated harms through a commercial logic that incentivizes antagonism. After examining the emotional labor necessary to manage such platform vulnerabilities, we close by reiterating the unique precarity of platform labor, wherein participants lack the social and legal protections typically afforded to ‘vulnerable workers’.

2024-09-25

Slow Horses S04E04 #tv

Ava's latest newsletter post: the true shape of a thing - by Ava - bookbear express

I’ve been meditating on this James Hollis quote a lot lately: “An ability to tolerate the anxiety generated by ambiguity is what allows us to respect, engage, and grow from our repeated, daily encounters with the essential mysteries of life. But the payoff goes even further. Certainty begets stagnation, but ambiguity pulls us deeper into life. Unchallenged conviction begets rigidity, which begets regression; but ambiguity opens us to discovery, complexity, and therefore growth. The health of our culture, and the magnitude of our personal journeys, require that we learn to tolerate ambiguity, in service to a larger life.”

GitHub - zlwaterfield/scramble: Open-Source Grammarly Alternative #tools #llm

Some good points here that are universally applicable, although I do feel it simplifies things a bit too much. No mention of the impact of AI coding assistants and their impact: How to cope with technology FOMO – avdi.codes #tech #fomo

Looks like a useful tool to run side projects on a VPS. Also, it's written in Go: GitHub - MightyMoud/sidekick: Bare metal to production ready in mins; your own fly server on your VPS. #go #tools

GitHub - deckarep/golang-set: A simple, battle-tested and generic set type for the Go language. Trusted by Docker, 1Password, Ethereum and Hashicorp. #go #sets

There is no Black Friday - by Brett Scott

When encountering all the top-down Black Friday ads, I’m always reminded of Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation. It refers to the method of programming ideas into people’s minds by addressing them as if they already agree with what you’re saying. To understand this, let’s look at one of the purest examples of this phenomenon: Black Friday’s sister festival, Cyber Monday.

Cyber Monday was written into existence by a press release from the National Retail Federation (the biggest retail trade association in the world), which said: ‘Cyber Monday Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year’.

All the subsequent commercial slogans, like ‘Cyber Monday is Here’, and ‘Are you ready for Cyber Monday?’, speak at you as if you’re already a person who agrees this thing is a reality. This generates a feeling of a movement, of a whole mass of people somewhere - presumably - who already know about this thing that you’re only catching onto now.

…

Before people say I’m being doomerist, I’m not saying that we don’t still have any organic, bottom-up culture anymore, or that platforms are unable to do anything good. We do, however, need to be vigilant about these incursions from above. We need to consider whether AI hype, Cyber Monday and any other supposedly ‘bottom-up’ upwelling might in fact just be pieces of cultural malware downloaded into our minds from the curators of a holographic mock-up of a global village. We visit, and find this spam projected into us - the stories that are supposedly important, the mood, the next new thing. Today ‘we’ all celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day, but what will we be instructed to care about tomorrow?

2024-09-24

Podcasts #podcasts:

Industry S01E07 #tv

English Teacher S01E05 #tv

The NYT has a cute tribute to the classic Fjällräven Kånken backpack: The Classic Fjällräven Kånken Backpack Is Flawed. I Love It Anyway. | Reviews by Wirecutter #backpack #travel

Imperfect, yes. And yet: Day after day, week after week, year after year, I step out of the house, the city, the state, the country. I change time zones, I change jobs. I go shopping, I go sightseeing, I go to the park, I take a hike, I hop on a bike. I get stronger, I get weaker, I get older, my back disappoints me again. I have a mountain of bags to choose from—chic leather totes and crossbody bags flush with pockets and amply padded backpacks—but if I’m going out for more than two hours and up to a day, I don’t blink an eye. I choose this, my flawed little dream of a backpack.

This week's NYT Amplifier Playlist: “Willie, Waylon and the Boys: The Ultimate Outlaw Country Primer” track list #music #playlist

2024-09-23

Podcasts #podcasts:

Public Work #art #public #free

csvlens - Command line csv viewer

How streaming LLM APIs work | Simon Willison’s TILs

The following curl incantation runs a prompt through GPT-4o Mini and requests a streaming respones. The "stream_options": {"include_usage": true} bit requests that the final message in the stream include details of how many input and output tokens were charged while processing the prompt.

curl https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENAI_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-4o-mini",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Tell me a joke"}],
    "stream": true,
    "stream_options": {
      "include_usage": true
    }
  }' \
  --no-buffer

That --no-buffer option ensures curl outputs the stream to the console as it arrives.

Git: Cheap Task Tracking | matttproud.com (blog) #tools #git #todo

Neat trick to list all TODOs in a project

$ git tasks
content/posts/something.md:**TODO:** Resume here.
content/posts/plan-9-color-scheme.md:TODO: Consult Tufte's Envisioning Information.
...

Enabled by a script named git-tasks in PATH

#!/bin/sh
git grep -EI "(TODO|FIXME|HACK|OPTIMIZE|BUG|XXX):"

CleanupBuddy - I am always looking for an app like this when I try to clean my macbook screen. Glad this exists #tools #osx

Designing a Protocol to Get out of Slump Mode - Ness Labs - The phrase of the day is Slump Mode #productivity

termshot - Creates screenshots based on terminal command output. #tools

Opinion | Helicopter Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often - The New York Times #parenthood

I recently spoke with an anthropologist named Barry Hewlett who studies child-rearing in hunter-gatherer societies in Central Africa. He explained to me that children in those societies spend lots of time with their parents — they tag along throughout the day and often help with tasks like foraging — but they are rarely the main object of their parents’ attention. Sometimes bored, sometimes engaged, these kids spend much of their time observing adults doing adult things.

The mystery of Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s great disrupter - Great profile in the FT

There is an interesting connection between Son and the show I have been watching recently - Pachinko. Turns out Masa was a son Korean immigrants, and his dad ran a Pachinko parlor.

Masayoshi Son is a quintessential outsider. This may explain his bottomless risk appetite and his desire to prove himself, over and over again. He was born in 1957 to poverty-stricken second-generation Korean immigrants on the island of Kyushu in the western Japanese archipelago. The family home was the equivalent of a cowshed, one of dozens of makeshift dwellings on a plot of unregistered land near the railway station.

Years later, Son confessed to a friend that he suffered from a recurring dream, waking up to the stench of pig faeces in his nostrils. His friend told him it wasn’t a nightmare but a childhood memory. “We started at the bottom of society,” Son told me. “I didn’t even know what nationality I was.”

As Korean-Japanese, the Son family followed tradition and lived under a Japanese name, Yasumoto. (Son later persuaded the authorities to let him combine his Japanese first name and Korean surname — a notable breakthrough.) His father Mitsunori was a bootlegger at the age of 14, later diversifying into pig breeding, loan sharking and pachinko, a form of low-stakes gambling that offered a livelihood to Koreans shut out of the Japanese economy.

More than I want to know about fancy black hoodies (from the FT no less): Why every man needs a smart black hoodie #fashion #hoodies

Tshirts as well: The solution to finding the perfect T-shirt? Design it yourself #fashion #tshirts

Articles about o1 "Strawberry" models from OpenAI

Something New: On OpenAI's "Strawberry" and Reasoning

The new AI model, called o1-preview (why are the AI companies so bad at names?), lets the AI “think through” a problem before solving it. This lets it address very hard problems that require planning and iteration, like novel math or science questions. In fact, it can now beat human PhD experts in solving extremely hard physics problems.

To be clear, o1-preview doesn’t do everything better. It is not a better writer than GPT-4o, for example. But for tasks that require planning, the changes are quite large.

…

Using o1-preview means confronting a paradigm change in AI. Planning is a form of agency, where the AI arrives at conclusions about how to solve a problem on its own, without our help. You can see from the video above that the AI does so much thinking and heavy lifting, churning out complete results, that my role as a human partner feels diminished. It just does its thing and hands me an answer. Sure, I can sift through its pages of reasoning to spot mistakes, but I no longer feel as connected to the AI output, or that I am playing as large a role in shaping where the solution is going. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it is different.

OpenAI just unleashed an alien of extraordinary ability

The key to OpenAI’s breakthrough is a training technique called reinforcement learning, which helped the o1 models to reason in a more focused and precise way. In this article I’ll first briefly explain OpenAI’s approach, and then I’ll give some examples of difficult problems the o1 models can solve—and a few they still can’t.

The whole section on reinforcement learning is worth reading.

The Mr. Beast Memo is a Guide to the Gen Z Workforce

The Mr Beast memo is really important because it’s the first look at how a Gen Z leader operates. And he operates in the confines of a platforms - with all the same drive and passion of Bezos and Jobs, but is skewed toward metrics versus meaning. Controversy is swirling around him - but he has an algorithm to appease.

Jimp | Jimp - Jimp (JavaScript Image Manipulation Program) is a package that makes it easy to load and manipulate images in the browser and Node.js. It aims to run anywhere that JavaScript is supported. Also found out about WASM based libraries to encode/decode webp: Browser & Web Worker focussed wasm bundles derived from the Squoosh App.

Ghosting the Patriarchy: Female Empowerment and the Crisis of Masculinity #marriage #masculinity #feminism #patriarchy

Through my globally comparative research, I identify three key motivations for marriage: love, money or respect:

  1. RESPECT. In conservative communities, spinsters are eyed with suspicion and made to feel like failures. “When are you getting married?” pester a litany of Indian relatives. Chinese singles are derided as ‘leftover women’. In Catholic Ireland, unwed mothers were shamed and sentenced to forced labour in Magdalene laundries. In Mexico’s small towns, divorcees are still alienated. Fear of ostracism motivates widespread conformity.

  2. MONEY. Financial considerations are especially salient for women - if they earn less, lack government support, and expect to mother. Childcare can be deeply fulfilling, but also comes at a hit to wages, so it makes sense to get decent insurance (i.e. marriage). Mothers may then opt to stay put - tolerating abuse and infidelity. To quote a traditional saying in Mexico, “Darlo todo por los hijos” (Everything for the children).

  3. LOVE. If the society enjoys both economic growth and cultural liberalisation, then people only marry for one reason: LOVE! Soulmates join in matrimony to assure each other of monogamous commitment. Family and friends may join the festivities, but this is ultimately a celebration of love. He voluntarily sacrifices sexual variety because he cherishes a woman’s idiosyncratic personality. Companionate marriages are usually based on heartfelt appreciation, adoration and equality.

Reading the quote above ☝🏽, I feel like the concepts above nicely complement the analysis of the origins of marriage in the context of patriarchy in the Gendered Species book I read recently.

Young women are increasingly joining progressive universities, earning on par with male peers, and feeling free to pursue hedonistic pleasure. Singledom is no longer shamed or stigmatised. So why tolerate guys who shirk the washing up, send tedious texts, or otherwise fail to please..?

The age of female acquiescence is waning, supplanted by an era of female freedoms.

Importantly, this shift is zero-sum. Men are losing their patriarchal privileges, and it’s leaving a nasty aftertaste. Dating has become more competitive, breeding frustrations validated by cultural entrepreneurs on social media and podcasts.

Obviously, a lack of matches has major implications for fertility.

Great article on the connections between morality and evolutionary theory: Are Your Morals Too Good to Be True? #morality #evo-psych #evolution

2024-09-22

Podcasts: #podcasts

Speedran this DHH interview which is going around

Spending time at the hsr hacker house today: shippin' hours 02 by hsrhackerhouse · Luma

Notes while adding groq llama 3-1-70b support to podscript

The first thing I did at the shipping hours was to add support for llama-3.1-70b via Groq.

Add support for llama-3.1-70b via groq · deepakjois/podscript@d031623 · GitHub

The change itself was fairly trivial, because I had previously switched to langchaingo to call LLMs. But I did run into a few issues.

convert ytt CLI utility into a library as well

Make ytt a library and an executable · deepakjois/ytt@66f4e0a · GitHub

2024-09-21

How To Die Alone S01E05-06. S05 might have been the best episode so far. #tv

Installing Ubuntu 24.04 on a Dell Inspiron

I wanted to install Ubuntu on a Dell laptop that had a factory reset Windows installation. Ran into two issues even before the installation could begin

Anyway, after those steps I was able to get a clean Ubuntu installation on the laptop.

omakub

Omakub — An Omakase Developer Setup for Ubuntu 24.04 by DHH #tools

Omakub was seriously impressive. I installed it immediately after installing Ubuntu and it was a smooth process, and gave me a desktop which was nearly all the way there in terms of how I would have customised it. The Gnome tiling features have come a long way since I last used them, and I actually had a bit of FOMO.

I am gonna study the repo and copy some of the shell customizations and utlities for my Mac setup as well.

Parenthood and how our brain changes

The sweeping reorganisation of the brain in pregnancy, and why it matters #podcasts

Listening to the podcast above coincided with an NYT article I came across about "Dad brain": Opinion | Fatherhood Transforms Men’s Brains and Bodies - The New York Times

My research lab investigates how the brain changes when men become fathers, and we are discovering that fatherhood can be transformative for their brains and bodies. The brain and hormonal changes we observe in new dads tell us that nature intended men to participate in child rearing, because it equipped them with neurobiological architecture to do so. They, too, can show the fundamental instinct for nurturing that’s often attributed solely to mothers.

Not only that, but men’s involvement in fatherhood can have long-term benefits for their brain health — and for healthy societies. At a time when boys and men seem to be experiencing greater social isolation and declining occupational prospects, the role of father can provide a meaningful source of identity. But the transition to fatherhood can also be a time of vulnerability, which is why supporting fathers should be a priority for policymakers.

…

 Men also lost gray matter volume in new fatherhood, in some of the same regions that changed in women. But volume reductions for dads were less pronounced. The findings for mothers had been so striking that a machine-learning algorithm could tell mothers and nonmothers apart by their brain scans alone. The picture was noisier for fathers. My hunch is that men’s brain changes looked less clear-cut because fathers vary so much in their levels of engagement in parenting.

GitHub - charmbracelet/mods: AI on the command line #llm #tools - This is a great tool which is kinda similar to llm tool by Simon Willison, except it is written in Go and can be downloaded as a single binary.

Onam

Came across this interesting piece of trivia from Nayantara Menon Bagla on Twitter

The real significance of Onam: The Story of Maveli - Mavelinadu

It was a man named Sahodaran Ayyappan – a disciple of Narayana Guru, an Ezhava poet and anti-caste activist, who revived the story of Maveli in Kerala. He penned a version of the Onapaattu (song of Onam) that is a critique of the brahmanism that has burgeoned in Kerala since the 8th century CE. He calls for a return to the time of Mavelinadu, before the feudal Hindu system infiltrated the land and created notions of purity and pollution.

To people belonging to marginalised castes in Kerala, especially avarna people, Mahabali remains a symbol of a past that was untainted by the disease of brahmanism. There have been a number of attempts to sanitise this story of its revolutionary importance, and to appropriate Onam into a Hindu festival, even rebrand it as “Vamana Jayanti”. This is an insult to the cultural legacy of Maveli, and we must reclaim this story, passed on to us through generations of oral tradition. We assert that Maveli is a symbol of our historical struggle against caste, and an egalitarian shramana tradition that lingers in our memory.

A 25 yr old moves to a place in the UK where the median age is 48: I moved to a sleepy town with few people my age. My new friends – some elderly – have changed my life | Adele Zeynep Walton | The Guardian

Growing these intergenerational connections hasn’t only showed me the vast possibilities of the human experience, it has also allowed me to get out of the social media bubble of cyclical trends that is easy to get stuck in as a gen Z person. It has shown me there is more to life than the talking point of the news feed that week. As someone who has grown up online, I often make the mistake of replacing offline community with online interaction, but I’m learning that this can never be truly fulfilling.

Making friends with people of different ages has also shown me that while your 20s are scary, they’re not as serious as we often make them feel. There is always time to change our mind and start again. Learning that from my community of older friends, and knowing that they are learning from me, has helped me to get some relief from the idea that my life has been on the clock since I hit 25.

2024-09-20

Life Admin Day

Romantic Love - by Rob Kurzban - Living Fossils

I like the way that Dorothy Tennov discussed it, using her term “limerence.” When you feel limerent, you crave the object of your affection. You can’t think of anything else. You feel elated if they show signs of returning the affection. You are dejected by signs that they don’t. You neglect other parts of life in your pursuit of your beloved. You might, if lifted by the muses, compose poetry, music, or other art. (This last bit is an interesting clue.)

Meet the people using ChatGPT as their therapist | Dazed #llm #chatgpt #therapy

Podcasts #podcasts:

2024-09-19

This is good advice from Shreyas Doshi on Twitter #mediocrity

There’s a Robot Warren Buffett ETF - Bloomberg

Today's Money Stuff has Matt Levine opining on using AI for investing.

And, again, people do that; there are a lot of investors who fancy themselves the next Warren Buffett. But that takes work — you have to read all the letters and apply them with a certain amount of trial and error3 — and with modern technology it does seem like there would be a shortcut. The shortcut is:

  1. You feed all the letters into ChatGPT.
  2. You ask it “recommend me a stock in the style of Warren Buffett.”
  3. It picks a stock that Buffett would pick, and writes up the thesis for the investment in the way that Buffett would.
  4. You go buy the stock, because Warren Buffett — refracted through a model of his mind based on his writings — recommended it to you.
  5. It goes up, because Warren Buffett is good at picking stocks, and his writings provide a good model of his mind, and ChatGPT is good at building that model from those writings.

…

Stock investing is so obviously a domain in which it makes sense to apply artificial intelligence:

  1. There is a ton of data.
  2. Humans have pretty well-known weaknesses in dealing with it — limited memories and processing power, emotions, biases, lunch breaks — and a computer could avoid those weaknesses.
  3. Everything happens on computers anyway. You don’t have to, like, avoid pedestrians in a self-driving car; you just generate buy and sell orders that get routed by computer to an exchange’s matching engine.
  4. If you get it right you make a ton of money.

And when you put those things together, it is so natural to think “yes, I will build a robot that is better than people, that is more rational and logical and data-driven and calculating than people, that finds signals that people miss, that can do things that no human investor can do.” Your computer takes the raw information of financial markets and turns it into buying signals, free from the biases and weaknesses of human intelligence.

This is not that! This is the other, more soothing approach: “Surely no computer can be better at reading the spirits of the market than a 94-year-old guy in Omaha, or for that matter a charming and roguish day trader who died 80 years ago, so what we need to do is to program a computer to think like those guys.”

The Mainstreaming of Loserdom - by Tell the Bees #loneliness

Putting all of this together, I do think a combination of loneliness, social anxiety, unlimited internet access and economic crisis are possibly combining into something. We have viral TikToks of saying “people think I’m depressed because I’m always in bed” and a viral tweet of people clamoring for an oddly shaped couch bed, promising they’d never leave their house if they could own it (“96,000 of you are Jack Russell terriers” made me laugh out loud). I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility. If someone is saying the only thing they want to do is sleep, it’s not strange to wonder if something else might be going on. As Buffy once said, “I didn’t jump to conclusions. I simply took a step and there conclusions were.”

I promise I’m not attacking: I’m questioning. I do think an over-identification with the introvert label (as both Millennials and Gen Z are wont to do) and the rise of bed rotting and the ease of opting out of society has created an illusory community around… not doing anything. I don’t think these people need to be shamed (I’m sorry for the title of this post, but it’s too good to change) but I wonder if they need to be brought into community. People aren’t going to church, they aren’t joining civic groups, they think posting online is activism, they aren’t making friends, or their friends live too far away, or their friends are married, etc. When I wrote about situationships, I came to the same conclusion: loneliness makes us do strange things. Whether staying with someone who treats your heart like garbage or creating an online campaign to make us believe being home is the answer, I think a lot of posting is a genuine cry for the warmth of other people. 

If you need me, I’ll be outside.

Really awesome lightning talk by Mitchell Hashimoto about why ghostty is really fast (video starts at the 50m mark)

2024-09-18

Podcasts #podcasts:

How Netflix won the streaming wars - Good account of how Netflix turned it around after losing milliions of subscribers in 2022, and then going on to make changes such as capping production costs, cracking down on password sharing, introducing an ad-tier and exploring other forms of programming.

GitHub - schollz/progressbar: A really basic thread-safe progress bar for Golang applications #go #tools #tui

GitHub trick to find the commit that deleted a file - The Old New Thing #git #github

A common problem in git is finding the commit that deleted a file. The mechanism for doing this in a local repo is well-known:

git log -- path/to/deleted/file

There are variations on this command to control how hard you want to look, and which branch you want to look in, but that’s the basic idea.

But what if you want to do this on a hosted repo?

For GitHub, you can ask for the history of a file in a branch, and the secret is that GitHub doesn’t mind when you specify a deleted file.

https://github.com/⟦user⟧/⟦project⟧/commits/⟦branch⟧/⟦path/to/deleted/file⟧

Switching nvim configs using NVIM_APPNAME

I have always wanted to experiment with exotic nvim configs without disturbing my current config. Turns out it is really easy to do by setting the NVIM_APPNAME environment variable which automatically changes the subfolder under ~/.config that nvim looks for to read the config. Here is a video which walks through the feature in details #nvim

Top 10 LLM Risks

LLMRisks Archive - OWASP Top 10 for LLM & Generative AI Security

  1. Prompt Injection
  2. Insecure Output Handling
  3. Training Data Poisoning
  4. Model Denial of Service
  5. Supply Chain Vulnerabilities
  6. Sensitive Information Disclosure
  7. Insecure Plugin Design
  8. Excessive Agency
  9. Overreliance
  10. Model Theft

‎Open Scanner: PDF Scanning on the App Store #apps #scan #ios

Finally finished reading Amazon.com: Gendered Species: A Natural History of Patriarchy: 9798327856271: David-Barrett, Tamas: Books #books

You Were Born To Run - Podcast notes

I got around to reading the transcript of the podcast, to get a bit deeper: You Were Born to Run - The Art of Manliness Some notes below

Ethnography and ethnohistory support the efficiency of hunting through endurance running in humans - PubMed

Humans have two features rare in mammals: our locomotor muscles are dominated by fatigue-resistant fibres and we effectively dissipate through sweating the metabolic heat generated through prolonged, elevated activity. A promising evolutionary explanation of these features is the endurance pursuit (EP) hypothesis, which argues that both traits evolved to facilitate running down game by persistence. However, this hypothesis has faced two challenges: running is energetically costly and accounts of EPs among late twentieth century foragers are rare. While both observations appear to suggest that EPs would be ineffective, we use foraging theory to demonstrate that EPs can be quite efficient. We likewise analyse an ethnohistoric and ethnographic database of nearly 400 EP cases representing 272 globally distributed locations. We provide estimates for return rates of EPs and argue that these are comparable to other pre-modern hunting methods in specified contexts. EP hunting as a method of food procurement would have probably been available and attractive to Plio/Pleistocene hominins.

Snippet from the podcast about why we continue to run despite our modern lives not requiring endurance pursuits like in our evolutionary past.

Speaker 1: Almost it's almost there. But I think what I would say is so these sort of culturally defined sources of meaning are created by society. So it's no longer specific to the action of running. It's not that like we were born to have that cultural experience. So there are lots of ways to obtain meaning and and some people get that from, you know, lifting weights or, you know, climbing rocks or whatever the case may be.

But for some people for for many people running is or or for everyone running is one way that we can try to find meaning within our larger society and connect with something that that I think it's not just about, oh, you know, my sweat glands are so good at this. I need to do this. I think for most of us today, the meaning is cultural more than evolutionary, but our body is well equipped to then step into this task that when we do it, all of a sudden there's certain brain chemicals that are produced that that are probably a legacy of this Born to Run idea, you know, the the running high kind of stuff, which is so that's an that's an interesting I guess we haven't talked about that it's like if you look at when you go for a run or when you do any exercise your brain produces endocannabinoids, which is the brain's internal version of cannabis, and it makes people feel good. But it's the specific production of these endocannabinoids tends to peak at a sort of moderate sustained intensity. You don't get a ton if you're just, like, walking.

You don't get a ton if you're sprinting. But if you're at this sort of persistence hunting pace, then there's this feeling of well-being that you may get. And animals that are also well adapted to run long distances like dogs, they also get these endocannabinoids, whereas other animals, like, in one of the studies, it was ferrets that aren't good at running long distances, they don't get this endocannabinoid basis. So there there are these holdovers from our evolutionary past that conspire to make running and activities like it feel good because we've evolved to have that cue to tell us you're doing the right thing

2024-09-17

Podcasts #podcasts:

Automation, Ageing & Men's Loss of Status - by Alice Evans #sociology #gender #masculinity

Behind the blog | Redowan's Reflections - found out about oxipng which seems like a nice tool to reduce image sizes. #tools #images

English Teacher S01E04

FT Review of ‘Want’, an anthology of sexual fantasies collected by Gillian Anderson What do women really want? #books #sex

sex is — as it has ever been — big business, and no doubt Want will fly off the shelves. We seem to be in a mini-boom of sex-positive books written by women, aimed at women, that show women attempting to redefine the boundaries of permission within what is still the patriarchy. Among those published this year are Miranda July’s novel All Fours, about a middle-aged woman’s erotic reclamation; Molly Roden Winter’s memoir of her open marriage, More, and Marianne Power’s Love Me! One Woman’s Search for a Different Happy Ever After. Go for it, girls, is the message. No need for any inhibitions.

Love the phrase swaddlesque sensibilities

The first chapter of the AI Snake Oil book is free to read online: AI Snake Oil | Princeton University Press #ai #books

If Everyone was a Billionaire - by Brett Scott - Another great article diving deep, unpeeling the layers and explaining how money actually works. Highly recommend going back and reading earlier posts in this newsletter - very dense and rewarding.

Ellie Anderson on Beauvoir and Non-Monogamy

Ellie Anderson, Beauvoir on Non-Monogamy in Loving Relationships - PhilArchive - Ellie Anderson is my favorite philosopher online, and she also has a great podcast. #love #non-monogamy #ethical-nonmonogamy

The whole paper is worth reading. But the section Beauvoir's Critique of Monogamous Marriage is especially worth reading. A multi-paragraph quote below that I especially liked.

Yet she also occasionally writes positively about the possibilities of authentic monogamy and marriage. In The Second Sex, she writes that men might accept women as equal partners rather than expecting the woeful asymmetry of heterosexual marriage at her time of writing. She thinks this will likely involve both partners working outside the home so that the wife is 'self-sufficient' (Beauvoir 2011: 733). If this is the case, and 'the man is scrupulously well-intentioned, lovers and spouses can attain perfect equality in undemanding generosity' (Beauvoir 2011: 733). This passage, then, suggests that she thinks an authentically loving marriage can be achieved.

It may remain in question, however, whether this conclusion is consistent with other aspects of Beauvoir's critique. One might say that monogamy is inauthentic because it restricts freedom: namely, one's freedom to pursue multiple relationships at once. Yet there are two problems with concluding from her account here that monogamy is necessarily inauthentic because it restricts one's freedom to explore other relationships. For one, Beauvoir's existentialism recognizes that humans have limited time and resources to devote to various projects: we must always choose, and choosing involves closing off possibilities. Thus, from an existential perspective, it seems that one could state that monogamy, when freely chosen rather than consented to out of an uncritical respect for established social norms or fear of being left alone, is merely one of many valid ways to choose authentically for oneself.

Additionally, part of Beauvoir's problem with monogamy is its failure to account for the changing nature of the self over time. But this arguably only holds for lifelong monogamous commitments, such as marriage. If one makes a short-term commitment that one freely renews over time, this would seem to be no more inauthentic than a renewable commitment to non-monogamy. Moreover, on a practical level, Beauvoir's own pact with Sartre shows that one may be monogamous in practice while committing to the value of non-monogamy. In the same way that one can be single and living an authentic life, one may find oneself in just one relationship at a time while open to other relationships in principle. Beauvoir's account of agreeing to the 'two-year lease' with Sartre is suggestive on this point. Recall that, though they agreed not to prevent one another from pursuing other relationships, they treated it as self-evident that they would not pursue other relationships for the initial period of their 'pact' (Beauvoir 1992: 24). While she does not elaborate on this point, the idea of giving themselves completely to their relationship initially sounds like what polyamorists describe as 'new relationship energy' (NRE), or the experience of infatuation early in relationships that incentivizes lovers to spend maximal time and emotional resources on one lover. While remaining committed to the principle of non-monogamy, Beauvoir and Sartre recognized that establishing their relationship involved practising monogamy for a time.

2024-09-16

Lots of TV #tv :

Podcasts #podcasts:

SVG Circular Progress Bar

Neat trick! #css #html #svg

Summary of Wirecutter Podcast on Bedsheets

Major Themes #bedsheets #wirecutter

  1. Types of Cotton Sheets:
    • Percale vs. Sateen: These are the two primary weaves in cotton sheets. Percale is a lightweight, airy weave that’s crisp and often likened to hotel sheets, while sateen is a denser, silkier weave that drapes over the body, offering more warmth.
    • Long Staple Cotton: Jackie explains that long staple cotton fibers are preferable for durability and comfort. Look for labels indicating "long staple" or "extra-long staple" for higher quality sheets.
  2. Thread Count and Fabric Quality:
    • Thread Count Myth: High thread count is often used as a marketing gimmick. The ideal range for percale sheets is 250-300, and for sateen, it’s 400-600. Anything above these ranges doesn’t necessarily translate to better quality.
    • Cotton vs. Synthetic: Cotton is favored for its breathability and softness. Synthetic fibers, although sometimes finer, can result in denser, less breathable sheets.
  3. Other Materials:
    • Linen: Made from flax, linen is breathable but can feel scratchier than cotton. It's known for being cool and airy, making it suitable for hot sleepers.
    • Flannel: Flannel sheets are brushed cotton that traps heat, making them ideal for winter use. However, they tend to pill over time.
  4. Label Reading and Certifications:
    • Look for terms like "100% cotton," "long staple," "Pima," "Supima," or "Giza" on labels for quality assurance.
    • Oeko-Tex Certification: Indicates that the sheets have been tested for harmful substances and are safe for direct skin contact.
  5. Marketing Myths:
    • Egyptian Cotton: Not all Egyptian cotton is high quality. The label simply indicates the origin, not the quality of the fiber.
    • Cooling Sheets: Claims about sheets being "cooling" are often marketing ploys. Actual breathability depends on the weave and material.

In the podcast, Jackie Reeve mentions "swoveralls" during the final question about the last thing she bought that she absolutely loved. Swoveralls are overalls made out of sweatpant material.

Some critical takes on Founder Mode

Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech | Ian Betteridge

Tech has become all Jobs and no Woz.

Paul Graham and the Cult of the Founder - by Dave Karpf

"Founder Mode" is such garbage.

It occurs to me that Aaron and Altman represent two archetypes of what Silicon Valley might value. Sam Altman embodied the ideals of the founder. He so impressed Paul Graham that, even though Altman’s company (Loopt) was a failure, Graham named him the the next President of YCombinator. Say what you will about the guy, but he has a remarkable flair for failing upward.

Aaron, meanwhile, was a hacker in the classical sense of the word. He was intensely curious, brilliant, and generous. He was kind, yet uncompromising. He had a temper, but he pretty much only directed it toward idiots in positions of power. When he saw something wrong, he would build his own solution.

This is all of a piece with Andreessen’s techno-optimist manifesto and Balaji Srinivasan’s batshit bitcoin declarations. A small, cloistered elite of not-especially-bright billionaires have decided that they are very, very special, and that the problem with society these days is that people keep treating them like everyone else.

‘Founder mode’ is the latest Silicon Valley buzzword telling toxic bosses they’re great

/etc/synthetic.conf on OS X

Found out about it in Siver's post: How to sync Mac and Linux /home | Derek Sivers #osx #files

The synthetic.conf file on macOS (OS X) allows system administrators to create "synthetic" file system objects (files, directories, or symlinks) that appear to exist at the specified paths, but are actually stored elsewhere on the system.

For e.g. - let's say you're a developer working on multiple projects, and you want to organize your work in a specific way without changing the actual file locations. You could use synthetic.conf to create a virtual project structure.

# Virtual project structure Projects/WebApp
/Users/developer/work/client_a/webapp Projects/MobileApp
/Users/developer/work/client_b/mobile_app Projects/API
/Users/developer/work/internal/api_project

Sally Rooney is working on a new book about two brothers: Sally Rooney: ‘Falling in love when I was very young transformed my life’ | Fiction | The Guardian #fiction

12 Obvious (and 12 Not-So-Obvious) Tips for Living Better - Scott H Young

  1. Fitness
    • Obvious: Exercise 150 minutes per week.
    • Not-so-obvious: Exercising daily can be easier than a few times a week.
  2. Productivity
    • Obvious: Track your tasks.
    • Not-so-obvious: Happiness in work boosts productivity.
  3. Money
    • Obvious: Save 10% of your income.
    • Not-so-obvious: Simple, low-effort investing often yields better returns.
  4. Food
    • Obvious: Eat more vegetables.
    • Not-so-obvious: Healthy eating relies on planning, not deprivation.
  5. Reading
    • Obvious: Always carry a book.
    • Not-so-obvious: Reading more helps you read faster.
  6. Outreach
    • Obvious: You need to ask.
    • Not-so-obvious: Persuasion is more about listening than talking.
  7. Sleep
    • Obvious: Avoid screens before bed.
    • Not-so-obvious: Spending less time in bed can improve sleep quality.
  8. Reflection
    • Obvious: Writing reinforces your goals.
    • Not-so-obvious: Writing enhances your thinking.
  9. Connection
    • Obvious: Prioritize time for people you care about.
    • Not-so-obvious: Save important dates like birthdays to maintain connections.
  10. Focus
    • Obvious: Track deep work hours.
    • Not-so-obvious: Meaningful projects drive deep work.
  11. Organization
    • Obvious: Assign a place for every item.
    • Not-so-obvious: Store less than you can fit to maintain order.
  12. Service
    • Obvious: Giving is rewarding.
    • Not-so-obvious: Focusing on others reduces self-centered thoughts.

2024-09-15

Podcasts: #podcasts :

Neofetch is no longer being maintained because the maintainer "took up farming", and fastfetch, NerdFetch and hyfetch are good alternatives. This article is a good overview: Neofetch is over, but many screenshot system info tools stand ready | Ars Technica #tools

6 Techniques I Use to Create a Great User Experience for Shell Scripts (and corresponding HN Discussion) #shell #bash

This resource from the a16zcrypto website is an excellent way to get started with zero knowledge related stuff: Zero Knowledge Canon, part 1 & 2 - a16z crypto #crypto #zk

It seems like the best way to work with Google Drive synced Obsidian vault simultaneously from the desktop and my Android phone is to use the FastSync app. Details in this Reddit comment: Can't access Google Drive via Obsidian app - how can I sync my vaults using Drive? : r/ObsidianMD #obsidian #android

Looking for a wasm project to try this out: Notes on running Go in the browser with WebAssembly - Eli Bendersky's website #go #wasm

Binge-watched Perfect Couple all episodes. It's a mid show.

2024-09-14

Back to Bengaluru

Not of lot of time on the computer because of travel, but lots of podcasts!

2024-09-13

Podcasts: #podcasts

Finished ytt refactor: Rewrite internals · deepakjois/ytt@c3fd030 · GitHub

Speedran this video interview with Karpathy #ai

social media microlabels are coming for your identity

How the Pursuit of Perfect Sleep Can Backfire

Even though sleep attitudes have shifted, experts say the basic recommendations have stayed the same: at least seven hours, at around the same time, with as few interruptions as possible. What’s different is the number of people for whom sleep has become a fixation. Online, such people — sometimes referred to as “sleepmaxxers” — proudly display the extreme lengths they will go to in pursuit of better sleep.

2024-09-12

Podcasts #podcasts:

Listening to this reader picks playlist on the latest Amplifier newsletter: The Amplifier: Readers Pick Their Songs of the Summer

Amazing relatable read on a lonely man in his late 30s finding friendship in a spin class: The Salve of Spin Class: How a Lonely Man Found Connection on a Bike #loneliness #friendship

There’s a tweet I wish I’d written about how the real miracle was Jesus having a dozen friends in his 30s, and as someone who has now outlived Jesus, I can testify to the divine work it takes to have friends. With few exceptions, all my friends are married, having kids, and buying houses in the ’burbs. Achieving domestic bliss has really started to cut into my friends’ hangout time.

…

My 30s have been weird: isolating and demoralizing, a depressing gnarl in my stomach. A bone-deep, soul-swamped loneliness I can’t seem to text or swipe my way out of. Days alone in a crowded gym, nights alone on my couch, scrolling and hoping for connection and washing down hope with a handful of IPAs instead. I’m ashamed to be lonely, ashamed to ask for friends in the first place. Needing someone? How embarrassing.

…

For men like me, spin is hard. Not just the workout, but the vulnerability: letting go of competition and leaning into the group, a dying of self so the room can revive. It requires a purging of entire realms of my shitty male points of view, from shaming self-talk to the latent homophobia I encounter within myself when the instructor tells us to dance, to “make it cute.”

…

On the way out of class the other day, I stop and hover on the outskirts of a conversation. Great playlist! and That sure was a sweaty one, huh? Somebody mentions heading to a taco spot. I’m orbiting on the fringes of the group, neither invited nor not invited. I know these people, kind of—Karson and Rileigh and Steven and Kaitlyn. We chat until the group dissolves, and I say my farewells. Halfway home, the clarity pierces me: Invite yourself. Go. I want to say I don’t know what got into me, but I do know: I want friends. Walking into the restaurant, I feel like a kid again, approaching the cool table at lunch. I’m nervous, but tenuously confident—it’s almost as if showing up and flinging my body and practicing the act of being welcomed in spin class has prepared me for this. 

From across the dining room I can see them, laughing, hands reaching for chips like communion. When I walk up, there’s an empty seat. They saved it for me. I’ve been welcome all along.

BMTC Bus Hacks: BMTC Bus Hacks : r/bangaloretransit #transportation #business

With all the shit that BMTC buses and Namma Metro (and autos too, lbr) get, I've decided to make a post on points to note/ hacks to help you navigate our beloved B'luru better using buses.

Stumbled upon this repo which contains ffmpeg and related video tools written in Go: asticode (Quentin Renard) · GitHub

Your Boyfriend Isn't Your Camera Man

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with your partner taking occasional photos of you. I can see how it might make people feel more connected to each other’s lives. But I think there is something wrong, there is something worth talking about, with this compulsion to get pictures. There’s something wrong with a compulsion that can ruin the moment; with judging every experience in terms of likes, leaving it joyless, and with demanding your partner document you, over and over. Of course, we don’t all behave this way, but many—_more and more of us—_do. Not just girlfriends either—friends demand it of friends; family members demand it of each other; it’s happening all the time.

How Go Tests "go test" | Atlas | Manage your database schema as code - didnt know about testscript which is a cool tool. #go #testing

Summary of "What do therapists do with problems they can't solve? Convert them into ones they can" by Josh Zlatkus

What do therapists do with problems they can't solve?

Every time I read Living Fossils, my personal convictions around whether therapy will help (or probably, will help me) reduce further and further.

#ai #prompting

Actionable Takeaways:

  1. Iterate with Purpose: Keep refining prompts, paying attention to how the model reacts to different phrasing. Iteration is key to prompt engineering.

  2. Leverage the Model’s Knowledge: Don't be afraid to give the model complex inputs or detailed context. Today's models can handle much more than in the past.

  3. Test for Edge Cases: Always consider how your prompt might fail, especially in less common scenarios, and try those cases to ensure robustness.

  4. Use AI to Help with Prompts: Consider using AI models to help generate or refine prompts, making the process more efficient.

Google API Auth Dance

Here are the steps so that I don't forget later.

For a regular bearer token style API key, this might be sufficient:

ctx := context.Background() apiKey := "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
service, err := youtube.NewService(ctx, option.WithAPIKey(apiKey))

For APIs that only support OAuth creds- first create OAuth cred and download client_credentials.json from the Google Developer Console

This go code below reads from the file and then generates a link to authenticate and download a token. The token can be copied from the URL bar once auth is complete

func getClient(config *oauth2.Config) *http.Client {
	tokFile := "token.json"
	tok, err := tokenFromFile(tokFile)
	if err != nil {
		tok = getTokenFromWeb(config)
		saveToken(tokFile, tok)
	}
	return config.Client(context.Background(), tok)
}

func getTokenFromWeb(config *oauth2.Config) *oauth2.Token {
	authURL := config.AuthCodeURL("state-token", oauth2.AccessTypeOffline)
	fmt.Printf("Go to the following link in your browser then type the "+
		"authorization code: \n%v\n", authURL)

	var authCode string
	if _, err := fmt.Scan(&authCode); err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Unable to read authorization code: %v", err)
	}

	tok, err := config.Exchange(context.TODO(), authCode)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Unable to retrieve token from web: %v", err)
	}
	return tok
}

func tokenFromFile(file string) (*oauth2.Token, error) {
	f, err := os.Open(file)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	defer f.Close()
	tok := &oauth2.Token{}
	err = json.NewDecoder(f).Decode(tok)
	return tok, err
}

func saveToken(path string, token *oauth2.Token) {
	fmt.Printf("Saving credential file to: %s\n", path)
	f, err := os.OpenFile(path, os.O_RDWR|os.O_CREATE|os.O_TRUNC, 0600)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Unable to cache oauth token: %v", err)
	}
	defer f.Close()
	json.NewEncoder(f).Encode(token)
}

func main() {
	ctx := context.Background()
	b, err := ioutil.ReadFile("client_secret.json")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Unable to read client secret file: %v", err)
	}

	config, err := google.ConfigFromJSON(b, youtube.YoutubeForceSslScope)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Unable to parse client secret file to config: %v", err)
	}
	client := getClient(config)

    // … rest of the code
}

youtube-transcript-api

GitHub - jdepoix/youtube-transcript-api: This is a python API which allows you to get the transcript/subtitles for a given YouTube video. It also works for automatically generated subtitles and it does not require an API key nor a headless browser, like other selenium based solutions do!

Went down the rabbit hole of how YouTube transcripts are downloaded. I need to modify ytt to handle requests as in this library.

Oliver Burkman - Meditation for mortals

Oliver burkman’s new book came out today in the UK. Here is a chapter excerpt https://ckarchive.com/b/zlughnh4mk033c7qrr9qehw08xn00t6

The challenge, then, is simple, though for many of us also excruciating: What’s one thing you could do today – or tomorrow at the latest, if you’re reading this at night – that would constitute a good-enough use of a chunk of your finite time, and that you’d actually be willing to do?

…

So you just do the thing, once, with absolutely no guarantee you’ll ever manage to do it again. But then perhaps you find that you do do it again, the next day, or a few days later, and maybe again, and again – until before you know it, you’ve developed that most remarkable thing, not a willpower-driven system or routine but an emergent practice of writing, or meditating, or listening to your kids, or building a business. Something you do not solely to become a better sort of person – though it may have that effect, too – but because whatever you’re bringing into reality, right here on the rapids, is worth bringing into reality for itself.

ytt refactor

managed to refactor ytt to incorporate the logic in youtube-transcript-api (see above). Basically, used Cursor to transform this code into Go.

2024-09-11

Off to Mumbai

Travel means a LOT of podcasts 🙃 #podcasts:

Slow Horses S04E02 #tv

English Teacher S01E03 #tv

High Modernism made our world - by Henry Farrell #culture

James Scott is goated, enough said.

So what does this have to do with modern information technology? Quite straightforwardly: if you read Scott, you will see marked similarities between e.g. the ambitions of 1960s bureaucrats, convinced that they can plan out countries and cities for “abstract citizens” and the visions of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, convinced that algorithms and objective functions would create a more efficient and more harmonious world.

…

Scott suggested the value of metis - “the kind of knowledge that can be acquired only by long practice at similar but rarely identical tasks, which requires constant adaptation to changing circumstances.” This is the kind of tacit knowledge that peasants come to build about their land and the weather, or that people in less regimented societies accumulate about how to live with others in tolerable peace. Scott - an anarchist - greatly preferred this latter kind of knowledge, and the societies that valued it more, to the kind of world we live in today.

Romantic Love is an Under-Rated Driver of Gender Equality #love #feminism #patriarchy

On International Women’s Day, I’d like to highlight a hugely important (but widely overlooked) driver of gender equality. In fact, this mechanism is so powerful that it is actively suppressed by many patriarchal societies.

Snippet from ChatGPT summary

Historical Europe: From Patriarchy to Celebrating Love

Christianity and Marriage Reform

Protestant Reformation and Romantic Love

Link to Book: Amazon.com: Barista in the City: Subcultural Lives, Paid Employment, and the Urban Context (Routledge Critical Beverage Studies) eBook : Moss, Geoffrey, McIntosh, Keith, Protasiuk, Ewa

Well, cities used to be much less expensive places to live. That kind of bohemian lifestyle, was very much a thing for many people. But in in the US context, health care and college costs have risen dramatically. Gentrification has increased dramatically. The bohemians of old, they used to survive in the city by working maybe 1 or 2 days a week.

They they had time to develop a more intense subcultural experience and set up neighborhood enclaves such as New York's Greenwich Village and San Francisco's North Beach. But today's alternative subcultural participants, whether hipsters, bohemians, or punks, must normally work full time or nearly full time to survive. The baristas we interviewed, worked about 32 hours a week, almost full time. So their place of employment just limits their subcultural activities and becomes a more substantial part of their lives. Bohemians hardly ever talked about their day jobs.

They just weren't that important to them. For baristas, when you're working 32 hours a week, your day job's important. And we need to carefully investigate it if we're to ascertain the extent to which hipsters, baristas are able to live lives that are thoroughly hip and alternative.

Host: How would you describe the book's central thesis? Were you really able to draw any firm conclusions about the about the future of urban baristas?

Speaker: Although we focused a lot on the work and lives of, baristas, our central concern in the end was about their ability to lead subcultural lives, an alternative to having a regular mainstream, job and plenty of time to do alternative stuff like art and music and hanging out in cool places and going to thrift shops, etcetera. But the realities of their city, their country, their coffee shop employment often conflicted with this endeavor. They faced rude customers, tired feet, and strained wrists during their typically 32 hour work week. Gee, is this really an alternative? They lived in neighborhoods that conflicted with their progressive orientation.

Also, coffee shops, they're expensive, they're busy, and serve predominantly white customers. And most of the baristas who attracted to the coffee shop are white as well. So for that reason and many other reasons, their lives are not alternative to mainstream existence. Your neoliberal policies and structures of class, race, gender, gentrification, it intersects with their employment in ways that diminish the extent to which their lives are thoroughly compatible with their hipster subcultural ethos. And they don't even have adequate income for subcultural consumption.

Most couldn't afford the expensive coffee drinks they're serving, you know, and it's expensive even living in neighborhoods that are gentrifying.

If this bears out in real world usage, I will yet again attempt to switch to Linux:

2024-09-10

Podcasts #podcasts:

Childless - by Satya Doyle Byock - Self & Society

The truth is that I’ve bit my tongue about Lisa Marchiano’s work for years, just as I have about Jordan Peterson’s, two people who use their platforms to equate “archetypal” and stereotypical perspectives of gender with psychology. I’ve bit my tongue because I’m not seeking a public fight. But there’s no doubt that much of their work is causing harm. Their anti-trans rhetoric and regressive ideas about women and men, and the masculine and feminine, are genuinely dangerous, drawing on people’s worst hunches and instincts, not the forward movement of psychic life. It’s hard to watch Jung’s work being used in such damaging ways; not for the sake of liberating people to live their individual lives as intended, but to reinforce the prisons of sex and gender as defined by others, equating genitalia with one’s psychological life just as eugenicists have, for centuries, equated skin color with intelligence.

…

Childless women have always existed. Just as trans people have always existed. The increased awareness of these populations today is not a result of social epidemics or wrong-headedness. Nor are the books and support groups around to attract people to a new “lifestyle choice.” No, the visibility is increasing because those who have historically lived with shame and grief outside of the standard white, colonial, hetero-normative, Christian images of “man” and “woman” are advocating for themselves, creating communities, and living less and less in the shadows.

In an era when gender apartheid is on the rise worldwide and gender-nonconforming people of all stripes are fighting for their lives, anyone with a platform would do well to resist fueling right-wing rhetoric with biological essentialist arguments and outdated notions of sex and individuation. Simplistic ideas about how men and women “should be” carry real-world power, cause disorientation and self-doubt, and ultimately threaten lives. This is true for cis men as much as cis women, as it is for non-binary and trans people. Biology is not archetypal. Motherhood is not for everyone. Sex is not destiny.

The journey of individuation is not universally defined.

5 Ways to Increase Your Learning Throughput - Scott H Young

  1. Schedule large chunks of uninterrupted time.
  2. Be aggressive about using fragmented time.
  3. Make each iteration more efficient.
  4. Make learning more enjoyable.
  5. Decide what you’ll do less of, in order to learn more.

Language Log » Berber, emic vs. etic

When my Uber driver told me last Sunday in Philadelphia that he was a Berber, I told him that he must be proud of his heritage, he responded, "Actually, we don't like that name.  It was imposed on us by Arabs, and it means the same thing as 'barbarian'.  We prefer to call ourselves 'Amazigh'."

Isaiah Berlin on Pluralism

That is why pluralism is not relativism -- the multiple values are objective, part of the essence of humanity rather than arbitrary creations of men's subjective fancies. Nevertheless, of course, if I pursue one set of values I may detest another, and may think it is damaging to the only form of life that I am able to live or tolerate, for myself and others; in which case I may attack it, I may even -- in extreme cases -- have to go to war against it. But I still recognize it as a human pursuit. I find Nazi values detestable, but I can understand how, given enough misinformation, enough false belief about reality, one could come to believe that they are the only salvation. Of course they have to be fought, by war if need be, but I do not regard the Nazis, as some people do, as literally pathological or insane, only as wickedly wrong, totally misguided about the facts, for example in believing that some beings are subhuman, or that race is central, or that Nordic races alone are truly creative, and so forth. I see how, with enough false education, enough widespread illusion and error, men can, while remaining men, believe this and commit the most unspeakable crimes.

Why do we do things that are bad for us? The ancient philosophers had an answer | Well actually | The Guardian

To achieve your goals, it can be more effective to put into place a defined plan that doesn’t let you reconsider. The psychologist Peter Gollwitzer called this an implementation intention: come up with a specific if/then statement that helps you achieve your goal. If it’s Tuesday, then I will go to yoga class; if I buy spinach, then I will make this smoothie for breakfast the next morning.

Kalis added that changing your environment might be a better way to resist akrasia than trying to improve your willpower. These changes are called commitment devices: they don’t allow you to change your mind. As an extreme example, when Victor Hugo wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he told his assistant to lock away all of his clothes so that he was forced to stay inside and write.

Words on Founder Mode – Rands in Repose

Graham hints at some of the attributes of Founder Mode but mostly says it’s not a well-defined. It is. Founder Mode is the culture of a company and a culture is defined by the character of the founders. Here are the values I’ve discovered over and over again working with these humans:

And finally, hire leaders, not managers.

Need to go buy this book now. Looks amazing: An American Affordable Housing Crisis, Built By Local Democracy - Bloomberg #books

On The Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy is a collection of reported essays by Demsas that explores the role that democratic structures play in perpetuating a housing shortage. Writing with plain yet authoritative language, she tackles the difference between such thorny economic concepts as shortage denialism and supply skepticism, showing how they manifest in real communities. Yet she also writes from the ground level to explore the toll of hyperlocal overdemocracy, connecting rational decisions by neighborhoods to reject development to an irrational picture of a country that can no longer build.

“Americans are aware by now that the housing affordability crisis is acute, but many don’t understand what’s causing it,” Demsas writes in the introduction to her new book. “All too often, explanations center around identifying a villain: greedy developers, or private equity companies, or racist neighbors, or gentrifiers, or corrupt politicians. These stories are not always false, nor are these villains imaginary, but they don’t speak to root causes.”

Perfect Couple S01E01

2024-09-09

Podcasts #podcasts :

Nice thread to mine some tips on using LLMs

Yet another interesting way that Russia is busting sanctions, this time featuring India: Russia built covert trade channel with India, leaks reveal

Random video that covers facts about flying - cabin pressure, cellphone usage, food/drink

Woke up to a bunch of newspapers talking about how the Tulu script was included in the Unicode standard. As a Unicode nerd, I couldn't get much out of the actual articles, so had to look up the actual proposals: ScriptSource - Entry - Unicode Status (Tulu-Tigalari)A

Industry S03E05

Deep dive into the how lazy.nvim is configured with options: GitHub - folke/lazy.nvim: 💤 A modern plugin manager for Neovim

2024-09-08

Was feeling restless and anxious today morning, so decided to binge a bunch of podcasts:

There’s a Non-Speculative Crypto Use Case That’s Actually Taking off - Bloomberg

☝🏽 is a podcast transcript of an episode from Odd Lots about stablecoins. Some insightful quotes below.

It's so funny. How much the narratives shift and are often very much at odds with each other. But the reason that can happen is because some people might argue that Bitcoin is kind of this weird postmodern thing. That it's just a token. Like it's just a symbol and people aren't really using it for anything other than betting.

…

Because the big contrast by putting them on a blockchain is if I have a bank account at say JP Morgan and I wanna send money to somebody at Bank of America — simplifying away a lot of the details here — JP Morgan has to essentially take money out of their accounts, whatever they were invested in, send it over to BofA, who's gonna reinvest it. In token world with a stablecoin it just sort of sits at rest being invested the whole time.

And the token represents an ownership interest in that, moves around on a blockchain, which is also a very open access platform. It really is in many ways a bifurcation of rights that were not possible in the traditional system and changes how you can move money around and at what velocity.

…

Where now there appears to be a decent body of people who are using stablecoins for I will generically wrap it in the basket of ‘something else.’ And that ‘something else’ mostly seems to come in two forms. One is a lot of peer-to-peer transfers of stablecoins. So that's people probably using it for things like business payments, individual payments like settlement of, call it, “real world activity,” where one leg is in crypto.

And the other part that they seem to be using it for significantly is just dollar access because something we take for granted in the United States because our banking system, you know, for all our criticisms is pretty good and largely works, it's easy for us to get dollars and more importantly it's easy for us to get dollars in a way that we feel good about being safe and secure.

But if you live in, like, Argentina, if you live in Venezuela, if you live in Southeast Asia, it can be much harder to get your hands on dollars. And this is definitely a tool where people are using that.

2024-09-07

Podcasts: #podcasts

Pachinko S02E03

English Teacher S01E01 and S01E02 - It's one of those shows that is really really funny, but also quite sophisticated in its humor. Loved it!

Playing around with different configuration options with dashboard-nvim: GitHub - nvimdev/dashboard-nvim: vim dashboard

GitHub - ibhagwan/fzf-lua: Improved fzf.vim written in lua #neovim #fzf

What I really liked was that I provided a way to run the plugin in a sandboxed environment:

sh -c "$(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ibhagwan/fzf-lua/main/scripts/mini.sh)"

Skimmed the video of this podcast. Would love to get my hands on the speedrunning ideation prompt that was displayed partially (at the 4m mark). #claude #ai #prompting

2024-09-06

Podcasts #podcasts

Checked out Kind Roastery in Indiranagar. The ambience is nice, the coffee is mid: maps.app.goo.gl/TLyvPhTC88t1A1aM7

Walked around Defence Colony in Indiranagar, on the way from Kind to Third Wave, and it was a vibe!

Nice graphic of the upcoming Yellow Line metro stations. Unfortunately, it appeared alongside an article talking about how things are delayed and it's not gonna open anytime soon.

/images/metro_yellow_line.png

Large language models will upend human rituals

Still, things might get awkward if everyone suspects that everyone else is inauthentically using an LLM. As Erving Goffman, a sociologist, argued, belief in the sincerity of others—and the ritualistic performance of that belief—is one of the bedrocks of social life. What happens when people lose their faith? A bad performance evaluation is one thing if you think the manager has sweated over it, but quite another if you suspect he farmed it out to an algorithm. Some managers might feel ashamed, but will that really stop them for long?

Richard Dawkins has a new book out: The Genetic Book of the Dead. Came across a review which seemed to rate it well.

2024-09-05

Podcasts #podcasts

Full Scale IQ Test - Looks interesting #iq

Postgres as a search engine #rag #postgres

In this post, we’ll explore how to use Postgres to create a robust search engine. We’ll combine three techniques:

  1. Full-text search with tsvector
  2. Semantic search with pgvector
  3. Fuzzy matching with pg_trgm
  4. Bonus: BM25

Some very interesting illustration of Postgres plugins and SQL, a lot of which I glazed over for now.

Tried this watch alternative and I am gonna switch to it: GitHub - sachaos/viddy: 👀 A modern watch command. Time machine and pager etc. #tools

YC Backed AI Code Assistant: Melty — open source AI code editor #tools

Luxury Beliefs:

2024-09-04

Podcasts: #podcasts :

Slow Horses S01E04 #tv

Neat app that can log how we feel throughout the day: How We Feel #wellness

GitHub - sachaos/viddy: 👀 A modern watch command. Time machine and pager etc. #tools #watch

Episode 48: Alcohol - by Stuart Ritchie and Tom Chivers - did not bother to listen to the podcast, but the show notes have some useful links to dig into. #alcohol

Came across a couple of links to build TUIs w/ BubbleTea: #tui #tools

Why I'm unreachable and maybe you should be too #productivity

What I am interested in

Spending time with people I love.

Spending time with people that spark my curiosity.

Spending time on my health like cooking nice food, doing fitness, sports, etc.

Traveling to new places and exploring them alone or with my girlfriend or friends.

Hacking on creative projects, reading about stuff I'm curious about, or working on new businesses I'm passionate about.

Inspiring people to create stuff by sharing what I make and writing about it on here and Twitter.

Sharing stuff with my followers that sparks my curiosity.

How pour-over coffee got good - Works in Progress - This is a really long article, and it's not just about the pourover. A lot of the article is a deep-dive into coffee culture, before it actually gets to the pourover.

One chapter of Gendered Species: A Natural History of Patriarchy 1, David-Barrett, Tamas - Amazon.com #books

The core idea behind this book is that the relationship between women and men is not random. Gender rules are not random. Patriarchal institutions are not random. Tough norms about sex are not random. Marriage is not random. And not only patriarchal practices are not random, but even the existence of the patriarchy is not random. Instead, there are six factors, four ecological and two social, that together determine the rules about women and men. The key to this book is the idea that there are reasons why we live in a matriarchy, a patriarchy, or a gender-equal society. Six reasons. … These examples above each stand for one of the six factors. In more scientific terms, they are the four ecological factors: (1) the distribution of the resources, (2) the stability of the resources, (3) the scarcity of the resources, and (4) the exploitability of the resources, together with the two societal factors: (5) the society’s technology set it uses the access the resources, and (6) the population’s fertility. Among these six factors, no single one drives gender rules and norms. It is the interaction of the six factors that matters. It is together that they determine the way societies regulate and guide the relationship between women and men.

The hunter-gatherers of the 21st century who live on the move | Aeon Essays Summary of key cultural and evolutionary contributions of non-sedentary humans throughout history:

It also links out to a really interesting paper in the journal of Human Evolution: Variability in the organization and size of hunter-gatherer groups: Foragers do not live in small-scale societies

Speedran this video interview of Daron Acemoglu by Alice Evans:

Was reminded today of this cute single binary fully featured editor, written in go: Micro - About #editor #go

2024-09-03

Podcasts: #podcasts

🫶🏽🥺: The Rumblr — “I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You” written by... #friendship #love

My friend Viveik's notes from Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals : Burkeman, Oliver: Amazon.in: Books

/images/oliver_burkman_8000.png

Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods – Something Similar #systems

An LLM TUI: Anatomy of a Textual User Interface - Textual #llm #tui

React microphone component: Making a simple React microphone component #react #javascript

Kubernetes, the harder way: GitHub - ghik/kubernetes-the-harder-way: A guide to setting up a production-like Kubernetes cluster on a local machine #systems

Sunscreens don't cause cancer, they protect AGAINST skin cancer #sunscreen #wellness

Kimchi no more? Climate change puts South Korea's beloved cabbage dish at risk #climate #food

Napa cabbage thrives in cooler climates, and is usually planted in mountainous regions where temperatures during the key growing summer season once rarely rose above 25 Celsius (77 Fahrenheit).

Studies show that warmer weather brought about by climate change is now threatening these crops, so much so that South Korea might not be able to grow napa cabbage one day due to the intensifying heat.

Give me Instapoetry — and something more substantial too #poetry

It's cute when the FT discovers the term "raw-dogging" and fumbles to really explain it 😂: Ask Shrimsley: Should I try ‘raw-dogging’?

Put simply, raw-dogging on planes is flying without making use of any of the usual distractions of in-flight movies, music, computer games or books. You simply sit upright staring at the seat in front of you or, if you are lucky, the flight map.

2024-09-02

Podcasts

Came across this thread, and lowkey plugged podscript to one of the thread replies 🙃.

Found a couple of useful tools for audio in the thread: #transcription #audio #stt

2024-09-01

Went to the AI demos at HSR Hacker House. Good vibes. May apply for the next round to work more on podscript.

Really nice note taking app by one of the guys who works on Cursor: Type Here | App. The cool thing is how it uses the browser's localstorage and IndexedDB to persist notes on the client. One of the things I wanna do is explore a seamless way to periodically backup from the browsers local storage to something more durable in the cloud.

First Onam Sadhya of the season. Hope to end up in at least 1-2 more ✌🏽.