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.
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://medium.com/@vinayakranade/summary-of-extreme-ownership-4396e6a7cd28
A summary of points from Jocko Willink’s and Leif Babin’s “Extreme Ownership”.
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://theoatmeal.com/comics/brain_compliments
A delightful little comic strip about why we resist compliments and how to
more gracefully accept them.
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.
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/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 in his “Donald Trump” music video has contagious youthful energy.
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://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.
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://medium.com/@darynakulya/4-unexpected-lessons-after-y-combinator-bd5f036a1c55
Gotchas for getting a new idea or product off the ground.
Programming
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://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/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://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/
Not sure if it’s effective yet. I’m going to run some experiments based on its
hypotheses.
https://nesslabs.com/self-competition
Evidence suggests that competing with yourself is a better path to performance
than competing with others.
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://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'
behavior.
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://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/io/encrypting_save_games.html
An unexpected story about video games’ relationship to the status quo hidden in
technical documentation for a game engine.
https://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?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tedspread
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://aidungeon.io/
A text-based game where an AI responds to your plot point indefinitely,
generating a story.
https://www.perell.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-writing-online
Describing how writing online is the fastest way to accelerate your career.
https://nesslabs.com/writing-habit
A nice set of criteria for getting off the ground with a new, focused writing
habit.
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://jameshfisher.com/2017/11/08/i-hate-telephones/
This story just resonates with me so well from when I was growing up.
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.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.