Substrate

“Whenever I perform a save or equivalent preservation action, I stop and spend a second determining the context that needs to be associated with this artifact. Every single artifact has a bit of context.”

“Of course, I still have work to do on finding healthy ways to cope when something triggering happens while I’m out at dinner. But I also envision a world where those in eating disorder recovery don’t need to sidestep landmines whenever they enter a restaurant, where our stomachs are filled with only hunger or fullness, not anxiety. By shelving the practices above, managers and servers could help create that reality, and make eating at a restaurant the carefree experience I’d always hoped to have — not a test to be passed.”

“When you talk to someone on FaceTime, there is a little square of your face in the corner that gives you a self-awareness you would not get on a date. It’s as if you’re holding up a tiny mirror in front of yourself during the entire conversation.” “We have so many options that we throw people away with our fingertips. We reject potential soul mates within seconds and then cry over three glasses of wine to our best friends about how there is nobody out there.”

“In my limited experience what you find in the wake of exercising your honor is not fanfare or recognition, but the silent satisfaction where you know that had you not taken action the outcome would have been far worse for others.” “Learn to see the inner child within each person”

In the years I worked at a sex shop, I saw how the pressure to have great sex — in a world that will never be a level playing field — can inflict its own kind of damage.

Focus is one of your most valuable resources. It acts as a multiplier on the value of your time. An hour of absorbing focus can be worth ten times that of a distracted one. Unfortunately, focus is also hard. Distractions are everywhere. Even when they aren’t, it can often be difficult to get into a

“The trick, therefore, is to allow for some types of changes to be fast and fluid, while requiring others to be slower and more deliberate. Some changes should require nothing more than a quick chat, while others need a stakeholder meeting, and others need an all-hands company meeting.”

As a company scales the number of meetings initially grows faster then headcount. With more people comes more coordination. Most companies ...

“it’s precisely because such fervent competition exists that these companies and so many others have been pushed to build their best-in-breed products: Kindle is better because of iBooks, Spotify is better because of Apple Music, and iOS is better because of Android. This list goes on and on and on”

I’ve been talking myself out of building this app for three years. That’s how long I’ve been logging my caffeine intake with my iPhone and wishing there were a better way to do it. Over the years, I’ve tried just about all the caffeine apps. Most

“Edgar Schein’s writing on organizational culture, via Erik Hollnagel”

“‘There’s something you need to know,” she said in a low voice, “and I don’t want you to forget it. When you’re writing code, you need to think of the drivers. Never forget that these are real people who have no benefits, who have to live in this city, who depend on us to write responsible code. Remember that.’”

“I will never be prouder than when I end a contract because I’m simply no longer necessary.”

“Patreon’s mission is to fund the creative class” Such a succinct description of Patreon

Ryan Smith's personal web page

Ryan Smith's personal web page

“Like the oak tree, a good friendship takes time to grow. However, opposite to the oak tree, friendships do quite well with scotch.”

“I want to have [ten] years of experience. I do not want ten [one] year experiences.”

Ryan Smith's personal web page

“Finally, have fun. Software is amazing.”

2FA, SMS, and you

Most people are pretty good at keeping promises to others. When I make an appointment with a busy person, even just for something as simple as a call, they almost never cancel on me. If they do have to, they almost always apologize and work to reschedule. This is true even if I don’t know

We have talked the 5-year-old into keeping a casual diary of sorts, and, while it’s so fun to see his days summarized in his little hyphenated paragraphs, it’s also really surprising, too. For instance, we’d thought that he had a terrible time on the day mentioned above! He moped around and complained about the heat

Developing a coherent content policy that addresses the challenges of today without actually suppressing free speech or tilting the scale towards any preferred political party is really hard. No one has figured it out. And no one will figure it out if they continue to do it in the dark. These companies want to look like they know what they're doing, so they periodically release adjustments or major shifts in their policies based on whatever major news event is taking place. These new policy proposals tend to fail miserably in meeting the actual needs of users and protecting the community that should represent that company’s most valuable asset.