Substrate

“100 opinions on curiosity thread. I'll initially make it 1 like / 1 opinion”

Some of it is using an RSS reader to change the cadence and depth of my consumption—pulling away from the quick-hit likes of social media in favor of a space where I can run my thoughts to their logical conclusion (and then sit on them long enough to consider whether or not they’re true). ​ Some of it is just letting myself wander, link to link, through people’s personal websites and passion projects, seeing what comes up. ​ A theme of the past year has been trying to disengage from my attachment to what I think other people want or need from me, and to rekindle my working relationship with myself.

Riemann zeta function is a rather simple-looking function. For any number $latex s$, the zeta function $latex \zeta(s)$ is the sum of the reciprocals of all natural numbers raised to the $latex s^\…

This lecture is part of an online undergraduate course on complex analysis. This is the first lecture, and gives a quick overview of some of the topics that might be covered, such as Cauchy's theorem, analytic continuation, the Riemann zeta function, and the Mandelbrot set. For the other lectures in the course see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8yHsr3EFj537_iYA5QrvwhvMlpkJ1yGN

I stop and take pictures on my phone and neither post them anywhere nor show anyone. ​ I was grateful I never found out one way or another. I cherish the opportunity to drop in, and let my imagination do the rest of the work. ​ There are shades of truth in all of these answers, but I think the real answer is nothing.

Ocean Vuong (via jennpelly)

The un-reality of our present is really a consequence of the exponential multiplication of realities. In the not-so-distant past, most of our societal constructs — political bodies, media entities, and the like — helped shape our collective reality, which is an extremely important thing for a society to have if it is to work in a linear fashion.

Dropbox mirror: https://www.dropbox.com/s/26i8mfmdvbsrbuw/2016-06-22%20%E2%80%94%C2%A0Reconnecting%20with%20our%20lives%2C%20%20Tara%20Brach.mp3?dl=0

…the physical world can accommodate emptiness and silence, or at least acknowledge them; online, those voids are just filled by other people’s content, and thus vanish instantly.

Dropbox mirror: https://www.dropbox.com/s/svfu4utazok5asp/Anjunabeats%20Rising%20%E2%80%94%C2%A0S%C3%98NIN.mp3?dl=0

The website of Robin Rendle, a designer and writer from the UK.

I still believe Balaji is frighteningly intelligent, but I would vastly prefer that he use those powers for good than, well, whatever this is. ​ They do not sit around thinking about how they’re going to “get” people they write about, and when subjects think they do, it’s more a reflection of the subject’s self-perception (or self-importance) and, sometimes, a sprinkling of unadulterated narcissism. But mostly, I want them to be more rigorous: to acknowledge that ideas are meaningless in a vacuum that does not include real world material conditions, and that people pursuing innovation are not the only people who matter, or even the people who matter most. ​ There is a huge swath of the tech industry whose only experience of real world inequality is tiptoeing around homeless people on the way to work. And it’s easy for them to continue to live in that bubble and entertain the delusion that absolutist ideas — both good and bad — can be implemented when they can’t. ​ This interprets journalism as public relations, which it is not. Journalists are not supposed to cheerlead the industry; they’re supposed to cover it, and that means writing the good things and the bad with no overriding preference for one over the other. ​ And everyone is an unreliable narrator when they articulate their own experiences.

There’s an implied pedagogy in typical textbook design. The drudgery of textbooks to me is in the repetition of paint-by-numbers mathematics.

I’m experimenting with the idea of giving a monthly update of how I’m doing and what I’m up to. Let’s see if it sticks! And if it doesn’t, then at least you’ve got a snapshot of January 2021. I worry that I do not have the writing skills to convey what I want to convey to a potentially infinite audience. When I speak candidly, I also want to be empathetic and fair. I’m confident I can do that when speaking to individuals because I can adjust to the audience – is this a friend from college? A student looking for advice? Another woman leader in tech who knows? What parts do I need to explain carefully, what parts can I wave off with shorthand language? It’s simpler in small groups. and how sometimes it’s not that they’re being a jerk to me, or vice versa; but we’re operating under different value systems. I’m thinking a lot about something my friend called “toxic positivity,” similar to ruinous empathy – an environment where if one tries to have difficult conversations, it’s viewed as being a bad actor. Conversations around e.g. a strategy not working, someone not having the right skillset for the task at hand, or needing to let people go, etc. being viewed as being vicious, rather than something necessary (and to be done with empathy and care). How unintentional toxicity can come from a person simply being in the wrong role, even when their intentions are pure.

Space and Place is only about 200 pages of thoughtful prose, but I’ve never finished it; I read a paragraph at a time, and that fills up my brain. and if it was a big day in bonds the fourth floor would be loud, loud; the fifth floor, though, focused on shorter-term investments, would be almost silent. You could hear the economy.

Reassurance and advice-giving aren’t understanding, they are distraction. They are soothing. They are avoidance. They are pats on the hands that say, “this too shall pass” without having actually acknowledged the thing that is supposedly going to pass.

Shared with Dropbox

I’ve begun to instead deeply worry about the power of inertia in our lives. Put simply, I think people are not nearly as intentional as they should be with their lives and how they make decisions. The decisions people make in the short-term and understanding long-term implications, and everything in between increasingly just happen. And we let them. I think the ages of 28-32 really is when inertia starts to take hold strongest. You no longer think you are totally flying blind in life, you are increasingly a little more tired than normal, and the path of least resistance can seem nice after having life beat you down to varying degrees. How much can I or should I attempt to impact or change those close to me and their lives?

Most important things in life are a hassle. If life’s hassles disappeared, you’d want them back.

This particular shapeness of twitter mostly pushed me off of it some time ago and whenever I return it always feels like I’m the wrong shape. I don’t really know what to do there anymore; I can’t capture my voice, my dumb jokes, my weirdness in a way that’s satisfying to me. But, right here on this very website I somehow can. Reminds me of how Ryan used to note how odd it is that dating apps. box us all into the same shape, seemingly for the same “legibility” a timeline can afford.

…the current process de jour does not — despite how many big companies subscribe to it — lead to the best, most innovative products. The actual answer is in prototypes and frequent demos. Those takes always seem to end up as some kind of scaffolding for a pissing contest, an attempt to denigrate someone else’s line of work.

This past week, when I wrote my latest newsletter, the rut had been filled, and the words flowed out of me like the days that taught me how to love writing. There’s that Rilke quote, “if your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches.” When I read it recently, it felt accusatory, but with time, I realized that I’d lost some sense of curiosity, the wow-have-you-seen-this-shit-this-is-so-cool lens that fuels all good art.

Hi. I’m pinging you to see if you respond in a somewhat realtime fashion. […] If you respond fairly quickly, then I’ll respond with my question so we can kick off this little session.

The general rule seems to be this: the more abstract we make an event – that is, the more we see it in terms of its meaning to the mind, rather than how it feels to the senses – the greater the psychological pain that is created. The more we can zoom into the direct experience, and refrain from engaging with the story around it, the less of a pain in the ass it is.

The lesson is simple: We must resist being too clever. Every programmer, or investor, or gardener, or urban planner, etc, must learn this lesson eventually, or else be bit in the bum by hounds of their own making. When complex systems work, they work. But when complex systems fail they fail in complex ways. Often we cannot even spot our disasters until long after we’ve boasted of success. I feel a few weeks ago as if I have had half a thought, and now I sit here waiting for the other half to arrive to me.

Sophocles once said: One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.

I don’t know what this next year has in store – none of us do anymore. But, in the meantime, I’m going to continue to pack in as much as I can before my thirties are up.

Think of this sort of thing as a journal entry you get to read, a taste of what you might get if you phoned me up and let me blather for an hour or so.

Why “looking on the bright side” isn’t great advice - and what to do instead. Here's the blog post: https://www.pamelajhobart.com/blog/dont-look-on-the-bright-side Get my weeklyish emails on living a thoughtful life: https://pamelajhobart.com/subscribe Buy my guide on how to STOP THINKING IN CIRCLES: https://pamelajhobart.podia.com/stop-thinking-in-circles-guide Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/amelapay