Links

TODO: Recategorize some of these, now that the list has grown a bit.

Culture

https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/
A lecture delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009.

https://www.ted.com/talks/frances_frei_how_to_build_and_rebuild_trust
Frances Frei describes the three pillars of trust, including ways to build it. Excellent emphasis on being your authentic self.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/02/hiking-ideal-structure-friendship/618066/
A discussion amongst friends about how their relationships with one another flourished through a regular monthly hiking routine together.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp68_FLety0O-n9QU6phsgw
Colin Furze bleeds enthusiasm for what he does, which is basically whatever gets his blood pumping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km-d7RM0U7s
Naughty Dog articulates how a game designer makes a good fit with their company and culture.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/movies/tom-hanks-mister-rogers.html
Tom Hanks inspires a journalist by just being a decent human being.

http://chadfowler.com/2013/04/09/who-i-want-to-hire.html
A great, subjective list of qualities that Chad looks for in people he wants to work with.

Behavior

https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/annie-duke/
Packed with insights about how people get in their own ways when looking to succeed in uncertain environments.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/brain_compliments
A delightful little comic strip about why we resist compliments and how to more gracefully accept them.

Relationships

https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-emotionally-intelligent-people-build-better-relationships-develop-trust-employees-family-friends.html
A countertraditional take on “quality time” and how what really matters is “garbage time”.

Dance

https://youtu.be/TmzVBGf6uKk
Shawn Mendes’s “Lost in Japan” has such a cool, smooth feel to it, and the dancers make it pop really nicely.

https://youtu.be/H0COqXVRIs4
Chris Brown “Back To Love” at the Justjerk Dance Academy. The first couple are genuinely enjoying themselves.

https://youtu.be/qMcvBeM-kEg?t=97
Ciara “Thinkin Bout You” at Millennium Dance Complex. The first three groups enjoy themselves and exhibit extraordinary physicality.

https://youtu.be/aBTDuMfFD1Y
Olivia Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back” has fun energy. Some of the dancers really hit flow with it.

https://youtu.be/J9Hb4eidDB4
Bruno Mars “Uptown Funk” being danced to by an enthusiastic festival-goer.

https://youtu.be/GA8z7f7a2Pk
Santigold “Unstoppable” at Sasquatch Music Festival in 2009. One guy perseveres and starts a dance party. Same event from a different angle.

https://youtu.be/74TFS8r_SMI
Mac Miller has contagious youthful dance energy in his music video.

Entrepreneurship

https://sivers.org/a
“Anything You Want” by Derek Sivers is his one-hour take on business and how it should be a vehicle for delivering something that would exist in your perfect world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1lz_hqW-0g
A short documentary-style video featuring the eFoil motorized surfboard and the company behind it. The owner’s love for the people and lifestyle his company supports is infectious, as well as his eagerness to experiment and imagine the future he wants to live in.

https://themakingof.carrd.co/
How AJ conceived of, planned, built, and launched Carrd.

https://clearfounder.com/originality-is-overrated-the-case-for-copying-business-ideas/
An interesting take on sourcing viable business ideas.

http://paulgraham.com/nov.html
Heresy can indicate areas where valuable ideas lie. Being thankful for difficult things helps to illuminate these opportunities.

https://anvaka.github.io/map-of-reddit/
Really neat discovery tool for popular topics on Reddit and how they relate to each other based on where their users participate the most.

https://personalmba.com/10-ways-to-evaluate-a-market/
A formula for evaluating the attractiveness of a business idea.

https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/
Today’s unicorns essentially globalize distribution and then produce their own content after.

https://bankstatementconverter.com/book/
Angus details his mix of successful and unsuccessful projects over the years, including a profitable bank statement converter. I appreciate the level of detail he goes into working with collaborators and customers along the way.

https://medium.com/@darynakulya/4-unexpected-lessons-after-y-combinator-bd5f036a1c55
Gotchas for getting a new idea or product off the ground.

Effective work practices

https://basecamp.com/shapeup/
A process for committing to work with unknown risk, scope, and upside.

https://twist.com/remote-work-guides/
A pretty comprehensive collection of resources around running a company that works remotely.

https://www.range.co/blog/ways-our-brains-trip-us-up-at-work
A list of situations we find ourselves in when working with other people.

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/a-team-where-everyone-is-a-leader/
A collection of materials for facilitating a team of leaders in a software engineering environment.

https://async.twist.com/decision-making-flat-organization/
“Not the best solution” is different than “fundamental flaws”.

https://smallbigideas.substack.com/p/no-more-misunderstandings
A case for mirroring and paraphrasing what others tell you in order to help people clarify their intentions.

https://www.range.co/resources/meeting-manual-guide-to-running-effective-meetings
A pretty comprehensive resource of how to conduct effective meetings that optimize for collaboration and actionable takeaways.

Programming

https://web.archive.org/web/20220322110230/https://homepage.cs.uri.edu/~thenry/resources/unix_art/ch01s06.html
The unix philosophy. I aspire to adhering to these principles moreso in my own programming and life.

https://www.michaelfogleman.com/
An amazing portfolio of work, neatly and simply presented.

https://ciechanow.ski/
A blog of highly-interactive and intuitive explainations of otherwise opaque machines.

https://schollz.com/software/
Another super collection of simply-presented projects.

https://www.pcmaffey.com/roll-your-own-analytics/
A take on saving your own analytics without any third parties on static hosting like Netlify.

https://gnupg.org/gph/en/manual.html
A practical walkthrough of gpg.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-route-web-traffic-securely-without-a-vpn-using-a-socks-tunnel
How to browse from another trusted server’s ip address.

https://sharats.me/posts/shell-script-best-practices/
Some sane defaults to make bash behave more strictly and consistently.

https://www.mail-tester.com/
Tool for evaluating the spaminess of your email (and therefore its deliverability).

https://gregable.com/2010/09/why-you-should-know-just-little-awk.html
A great, simple introduction to awk.

https://hackernoon.com/im-harvesting-credit-card-numbers-and-passwords-from-your-site-here-s-how-9a8cb347c5b5
A cautionary tale about loading unvetted depencencies into your projects.

http://www.olioapps.com/blog/the-lost-art-of-the-makefile/
How to run babel javascript via a Makefile.

https://layerci.com/blog/postgres-is-the-answer/
Postgres can fill the role of a pubsub server and more. Details on packages and other nice use-cases available on the Hacker News thread.

https://www.revsys.com/writings/quicktips/ssh-tunnel.html
Simple examples of using ssh tunnels to a trusted server to bypass local firewall restrictions.

https://www.sandimetz.com/blog/2016/1/20/the-wrong-abstraction
A case for preferring duplicate code over abstractions that make code more confusing. Also a hacker news comment that talks about optimizing code according to state, coupling, complexity, and duplication.

https://tech.gotinder.com/geosharded-recommendations-part-1-sharding-approach-2/
Talks about how hilbert curves can be used to shard data geographically.

https://github.com/schollz/howmanypeoplearearound
A utility that uses wireshark to listen for the existance of people’s cell phones nearby!

https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/running-a-flask-application-as-a-service-with-systemd
Setting up processes as services with systemd.

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SS6PEW_10.0.0/com.ibm.help.security.dimeanddare.doc/security/t_security_settingupluksencryption.html
Encrypting a partition on a hard drive on linux.

https://watchyourhack.com
A layman’s terms approach to good personal security on the internet.

https://gomox.medium.com/google-safe-browsing-can-kill-your-startup-7d73c474b98d
Outlines how browsers can blacklist your domain name and proactive measures to take to reduce the consequences.

Learning

https://commoncog.com/blog/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/
Article about tacit knowledge (knowledge that cannot be made explicit) and its role in developing expertise.

https://ciechanow.ski/sound/
Hands-on, interactive explanation of how sound works.

https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
Hands-on, interactive explanation of how a mechanical watch works.

https://fs.blog/2021/02/feynman-learning-technique/
A simple and effective process for learning by filling in your knowledge gaps as you try to explain a subject to a sixth-grader.

https://notes.andymatuschak.org/
Someone’s “thinking” published as networked notes. Andy seems to write in a way that makes his thought process transparent and easily-followable, but he also stacks topics horizontally instead of vertically, which seems to make the surrounding context inherently more accessible.

https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/how_to_take_smart_notes_org/
A note-taking system Jethro uses to make what he’s learned more accessible and available days, weeks, and years into the future.

https://fs.blog/2021/03/avoid-bad-decisions/
A concise list of points where decisionmaking breaks down.

https://www.swyx.io/writing/learn-in-public/
Argument for the many benefits of publishing what you learn publicly.

https://www.economicprinciples.org/
Ray Dalio explains how economics works to the layman.

Perspective

https://ncase.me/
Nicky Case hosts a wide range of deep, thoughtful interactive experiences and posts. Content largely surrounds the idea of how people function and interact.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220307201847/https://normanvr.com/
A tool for 3D drawing and animation.

https://doist.com/blog/enneagram-and-work/
A boiled-down version of Enneagrams, articulated from each one’s core belief and explaining outward. The framework can be useful for understanding others’ behaviors.

https://scienceplusstory.com/white-space-for-opinion-pieces-a-simple-definition/
Spaces in the conversation that are yet untouched offer an opportunity to pose a fresh opinion.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210302140300/https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/io/encrypting_save_games.html
An unexpected satire about video games’ relationship to the status quo hidden in technical documentation for a game engine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210817013429/https://www.lengstorf.com/magic/
Jason Lengstorf talks about magic’s place in everyday life, as well as how prioritizing your personal well-being is good for everything in your life in the long-term.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-dark-core-of-personality/
The author poses that if a person exhibits one particular dark behavior strongly, they’re very likely to also exhibit a collection of other dark behaviors.

https://www.ted.com/talks/aj_jacobs_my_journey_to_thank_all_the_people_responsible_for_my_morning_coffee
A writer takes on thanking everybody who contributed to him getting his morning coffee.

https://vimeo.com/140968827
A video about a reclaimed wood furniture builder who sees his work as a small part in the much bigger purpose of the wood’s history and the furniture’s purpose and longevity.

Writing

https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_Basic_Shit
The circular story structure humans are naturals at telling.

https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/
A method for developing character-driven fiction novels.

https://uxdesign.cc/storytelling-in-games-as-compared-to-film-how-cinematography-interaction-and-narrative-design-f8280ba2b309
Commentary on the spectrum of storytelling styles between films and video games, mostly focusing on the latter.

https://medium.com/@travisbaldree/self-published-book-launch-a-z-39ec6f9257e1
An author’s end-to-end self-publishing journey from a successful NaNoWriMo.

https://susandennard.com/for-writers/
Collection of articles all about the novel writing and publishing processes.

https://aidungeon.io/
A text-based game where an AI responds to your plot point indefinitely, generating a story.

https://tjcx.me/posts/consumption-distraction/
An article about being a creator instead of being a consumer that had me laughing throughout. I like how clearly the author’s personality shone through the writing.

https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/
A (probably) fictional story about a corporate prodigy who ultimately peaks as a professional do-nothinger.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/41453043
Written in the second person. Does a great job gripping reader interest from the get-go.

https://jameshfisher.com/2017/11/08/i-hate-telephones/
This story just resonates with me so well from when I was growing up.

https://www.artstation.com/tos
At time of writing, this had the legal version on the left with much simpler, friendlier blurbs on the right. Also Codepen.

Art

https://www.netflix.com/title/70291121
“The Garden of Words” is a 46 minute anime movie that completely triggers my love for the rain (and for a good cry).

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YKy5aK
These doodles are simple but capture energy in poses and details.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8b2gBn
A 360 degree panorama of Attack on Titan mid-battle in one of the towns. It feels like there’s so much to discover just in this one image, with the 360 view enabling that discovery experience.

https://linear.app/readme
This nails a feeling and experience I’d sort of forgotten about but love and valued again once I rediscovered it (through this piece).

https://www.orlagartland.com/
At the time of writing, it’s a wonderfully-nostalgic Windows XP-esque desktop that gives the impression of Orla’s live, work-in-progress desktop.