More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Very cool! Expert model builder. Used to make models as a kid (airplanes, naval ships, rockets, monsters, etc.) so I appreciate experts like this (plus interesting aviation history). (HT Paull Graham)

- Socialists living under capitalism.

- SpaceX launches satellite for Hughes for faster broadband for rural Americans. Reminder that EchoStar is a competitor to Starlink yet SpaceX does this anyway. 

- Cool story of when PayPal was almost accidently put out of business. And now I know what RTFM stands for. (HT Patrick Collison)

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want." -Naval Ravikant

 "If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime." - David Leinweber

"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do." - Andrew Carnegie

"We can dance if we want to." - Men Without Hats

Programming vs Demon Summoning

Sometimes you have to execute a child.

Via

Life Advice from the Industrial Revolution

"The Industrial Revolution was based upon two grand concepts that were profound in their simplicity: Innovators came up with ways to simplify endeavors by breaking them into easy, small tasks that could be accomplished on assembly lines. Then, beginning in the textile industry, inventors found ways to mechanize steps so that they could be performed by machines." - Walter Isaacson The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

The paragraph struck me because it made me wonder if there's anything in our lives today we could apply those two "grand concepts" to? The second of which is a very good reason for even ordinary folks like ourselves should learn to code.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime." - David Leinweber

"The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." - Horace Walpole

"Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end." - Scott Adams

"Very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves." - Naval Ravikant

"Devote the rest of your life to making progress." - Epictetus

"The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding." - Ariel Durant

"When the universe has crushed him man will still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and of its victory the universe knows nothing." - Pascal

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- The US Air Force's radical plan for a future fighter could field a jet in just 5-years. I like this boldness and innovation.

- How to build good habits. The quality of your habits do determine the quality of your life.

- Interesting - IBM's new 53-qubit quantum "mainframe" is live in the cloud.

- This was cool - "Live Coding". I think this is what (not too distant) future resumes will look like.

- Calvin "Megatron" Johnson doesn't regret a thing. Interesting interview/profile.

- A chemical plant explodes in China. More questions than answers.

- Things are getting a whole lot better. We live in an age of abundance. Your life and your mindset get so much better if you just acknowledge this simple fact.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

I think the people who developed the Guitar Hero game should come out with a Pan Flute version. You could play real music and maybe become the next Zamfir master of the pan flute. Of course the slobber all over the flute would make sharing something of an issue... Chore for today... I know "Learn to Code" has become a punchline to some but I want to do it. My current job doesn't require it but I feel it is something every adult should know how to do - like knowing how to drive a standard transmission...  In Hong Kong the American flag is a symbol of freedom while to some in the US the flag is a symbol of oppression. I think this is a case of some people don't know how good they actually have it... Interesting take on Trump and impeachment from a proud lefty.... The protests in Hong Kong have gotten a lot of attention (and rightly so) but don't overlook the protests in Moscow over how elections are run. Moscow recently saw their largest protest in a decade... The word for today is "matronolagnia" - think of it as the thinking man's way of saying MILF. The power of words!...

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Interesting - 10 things I learned while teaching myself to code.

- Heh Heh

- The difference between behavior and intention

- Turns out that sound waves carry mass. "It is simply a fraction of the total mass of the system that travels with the wave, being displaced from one place to another." Sounds like Pilot Wave Theory on a Newtonian scale.

- How not to be stupid. It is helpful to constantly remind yourself that stupidity is "overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information." Put another way - if you are not consciously present in the moment you are greatly increasing your chances of being stupid. (I know I've posted this article before but this is one of those pieces of advice that should be revisited from time to time)

- And speaking of stupidity

- Bruins Noel Acciari delivered a pummeling last night