Changing state policy is like repurposing parts of a warship to build a sewing machine.
Cheap non-ugly ULID combining time and a random number using radix 36.
Date.now().toString(36) + Math.random().toString(36).replace('0.', '') // something like lulgjvgkc5mk5sbmfaf
Classes stolen from MasterClass, republished as wikiHow articles.
Controlled vocabulary schemes mandate the use of predefined, authorised terms that have been preselected by the designers of the schemes, in contrast to natural language vocabularies, which have no such restriction.
Choices of authorized terms are based on the principles of user warrant (what terms users are likely to use), literary warrant (what terms are generally used in the literature and documents), and structural warrant (terms chosen by considering the structure, scope of the controlled vocabulary).
The terms are chosen and organized by trained professionals (including librarians and information scientists) who possess expertise in the subject area. Controlled vocabulary terms can accurately describe what a given document is actually about, even if the terms themselves do not occur within the document’s text.
Let’s talk about books to read….
[Types of books you might want to read: 1. a religious text (other than your own if you have one); 2. the perspective of any subculture; 3. making the monster human; 4. a political ideology; 5. your childhood hero or strongest memory memory; 6. the hero of your enemy; 7. favourable about someone you don’t like; 8. critical of war; 9. critical of your heroes; 10. about ancient or indigenous peoples (if they were oral, imagine what might have gotten lost by writing); 11. a distopia; 12. about a character you can’t relate to at all.]
Literature exposes you to things you wouldn’t experience in real life.
[Grief is to be carried, not fixed.]
Inflation means: after working to earn money, you need to work again so that “your money works for you”.
SCAMPER is a procedural idea generator
S: Can I substitute a material? A key ingredient? A process? What happens if I substitute an emotion? Can I substitute the packaging for something else?
C: Can I combine different components to create something new? Can I bundle things in a new way? Can I combine different use-cases, such as author and reader, or seller and buyer?
A: Can I adapt a process from somewhere else? A component from something else? Can I adapt it to existing infrastructure? Can I adjust something just 3% to create something new?
M: Can I modify the form factor? Shape? Color? Can I magnify the key idea? What happens if I magnify an attribute beyond all reason? Or minify it?
P: Can I put a component to other uses? A mechanism? A process? An idea? A set of rules? Can I transform a waste product into an input? Can I put it to use in another context? Can I translate it into another medium? Create spinoffs?
E: Can I eliminate a rule? Can I simplify it? Make it compact? Eliminate a feature? Remove a complication?
R: Can I reverse a relationship? An assumption? What happens if I reverse my point of view? Can I rearrange the sequence? The layout? The structure? Can I rearrange the components to create something new?
[Run AI LLMs locally on your computer]
Yancey Strickler on Metalabel and Post-Individualism
[Revolutions inspired by Catholic church forbidding intra-family marriage gave rise to cities, universities, guilds as ways for people related by blood to meet eachother.]
A Fediverse, if you can keep it
Companies might serve as on-ramps, but at the end of the day this is a network of people sharing things with other people. You’re not blocking Meta; you’re blocking countless people who would otherwise stand to benefit from the open nature of the network. And the cruel irony here is that preemptive blocking is what will ultimately destroy the Fediverse as we know it. People want to connect with one another, and they’re going to do it one way or another. (And we’re right back to WhatsApp again.)
How do we evaluate people for their technical leadership?
Programmers’ chief value does not come from producing code. It comes from knowing enough about the situation to solve automation and scaling problems. Code that doesn’t solve those problems is worthless to the organization. If code that doesn’t solve those problems gets deployed somewhere, it’s worse than worthless because it incurs maintenance costs in addition to being worthless.
Perhaps even more importantly, though, they ensure that the wrong thing does not get done. And that is what makes them look worthless: their chief outcome is the absence of something. […] It’s the breaches that didn’t happen because someone double-checked what this SQL did. It’s the multi-server failure that did not occur because two separate engineers saw the warning signs and one responded to the other in a messaging channel. It’s the disaster feature that got killed because someone who understands inclusion demonstrated how it might be used to attack a marginalized constituency.
It’s all about appearing nice so they never have to be kind.
Make time for flowers.
[Disagree without getting them defensive with phrases like “I see it differently”, “I have a different way of getting there”, and “I lean towards the opposite”.]
[Having to argue for equality reveals that the situation is already failed.]
[If that’s the best you’ve got, I can see why you’re so eager to use it.]
[There’s a difference between agreeing and choosing agreement as your ‘move’ in a specific context.]
[Combine baking soda with glue to strengthen the bonding.]
Spreadsheets are like functions with built-in visualization of meaningful inputs and outputs.
What incentivizes a business to treat existing customers better than new ones?
Let’s talk about what a concept of Japanese art can teach us about masculinity….
[Masculinity embodies effortless perfection, and a giveaway that someone’s pretending is to see them trying.]