I remember reading an article when I was about 12 years old, I think it might have been in Scientific American, where they measured the efficiency of locomotion for all these species on planet earth. How many kilocalories did they expend to get from point A to point B, and the condor won: it came in at the top of the list, surpassed everything else. And humans came in about a third of the way down the list, which was not such a great showing for the crown of creation. But somebody there had the imagination to test the efficiency of a human riding a bicycle. Human riding a bicycle blew away the condor, all the way off the top of the list. And it made a really big impression on me that we humans are tool builders, and that we can fashion tools that amplify these inherent abilities that we have to spectacular magnitudes, and so for me a computer has always been a bicycle of the mind, something that takes us far beyond our inherent abilities.
Budapest. Sometime around 1978. It's past 1am and all the lights in a high-rise apartment are out, except for one. A Hungarian girl — not yet 10 years old — sits on the cold bathroom floor balancing a chessboard on her knees. Her father opens the door and finds her there, crying, "Sofia! Leave the pieces alone!". The girl looks up at him. "Daddy," she says almost desperately, "they won't leave me alone!"
Better to be the oldest person in the gym than youngest in the nursing home.
When you remove a man’s tongue, you do not prove him wrong. You prove you are afraid of what he will say.
Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamn page.
When you feel it, you know. The feature makes you smile when you use it. It fits right in, like it was always meant to be there. You want to use it again. You want to tell people about it.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers. That perches in the soul. And sings the tune without the words. And never stops - at all.
It is so good for the soul to be in NYC. it is good for you to be forcibly ejected from the story you are telling yourself about your own life.
Evolution is just RL with survival as the reward function.
Robin: I'm no VIP. I'm not even an IP. I'm just a lowly little P sitting out here in the gutter. Lily: I'll take a P in the gutter over Julia Roberts any day.
New York, New York - so bad they had to name it twice.
As I am about to enter the ranks of those who disobey / ever more brightly shines / the moon of the summer night.
What does good system design look like? I’ve written before that it looks underwhelming. In practice, it looks like nothing going wrong for a long time. You can tell that you’re in the presence of good design if you have thoughts like “huh, this ended up being easier than I expected”, or “I never have to think about this part of the system, it’s fine”.
You are alone against a coordinated system that is exceedingly effective at packaging problems you should never have with solutions you should never need. A symbiotic loop.
Almost all startups are fragile initially. And that's one of the biggest things inexperienced founders and investors (and reporters and know-it-alls on forums) get wrong about them. They unconsciously judge larval startups by the standards of established ones. They're like someone looking at a newborn baby and concluding "there's no way this tiny creature could ever accomplish anything."
Startups are built on small wins.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Years may wrinkle skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
If you need a witness, be your own
A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are built for
Musubi is the old way of calling the local guardian god. This word has profound meaning. Tying thread is Musubi. Connecting people is Musubi. The flow of time is Musubi. These are all the god's power.
If you want a rainbow, you have to deal with the rain.
I'm begging you, Prince Zuko! It's time for you to look inward and begin asking yourself the big questions: Who are you? And what do you want?