To me, that is a modern marvel. I don't want people to buy things that they don't need, and I also don't like the crowds, but I can't help but feel grateful for a stocked grocery store that is accessible to basically everyone—isn't that the dream?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koku

At a previous company, we were forbidden from using translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the performance cost of blending. There are debugging tools we'd use fairly often to confirm that all layers were opaque.

- Seneca, Letters

I was surprised to learn that the temptation to read too many things was also a problem 2,000 years ago. This inspired me to work on a short list of books that I know deeply.

Since then, we've hosted a "progressive" Thanksgiving dinner, which moves from house-to-house on the block for different courses. We shut down the street one day each year and set up bounce houses for the kids. I've made pint glasses with the name our street engraved in them, and given them to my neighbors. It's shown me that there really can be something valuable outside of your immediate family and circle of friends.

In America and Europe, restaurants and shops are basically all zoned to be on the ground floor, with residential or office units above. This gives the density a different feeling, because commercial/dining space extends upward.

Has anyone made the switch from digital to physical and loved it? What kind of notes are you taking, how did you get it to stick?

For all of the apocalyptic AI sci-fi that's out there , Banks' work stands out as a positive outcome for humanity (if you accept that AI acceleration is inevitable).

But I also think Banks is sympathetic to your viewpoint. For example, Horza, the protagonist in the first novel, Consider Phlebas, is notably anti-Culture. Horza sees the Culture as hedonists who are unable to take anything seriously, whose actions are ultimately meaningless without spiritual motivation. I think these were the questions that Banks was trying to raise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueTCjpNXing

Among other things, it compares the Idirans—who have what we consider a more traditional, modern-day culture—with the Culture. For example:

"The war between the Idirans and the Culture is peculiarly asymmetrical, since the Culture is not an empire, or even a “polity” in any traditional sense of the term, it is simply a culture. It has no capital city, or even any “territory” in the conventional sense."

I also love Heath's criticism of Dune (I appreciate the series, but now can't help but notice how often sci-fi series use regressive social structures).

"In fact, modern science fiction writers have had so little to say about the evolution of culture and society that it has become a standard trope of the genre to imagine a technologically advanced future that contains archaic social structures. The most influential example of this is undoubtedly Frank Herbert’s Dune, which imagines an advanced galactic civilization, but where society is dominated by warring “houses,” organized as extended clans, all under the nominal authority of an “emperor.”"

Maybe it's because elision is so common in French? e.g. "j’aime l’hiver". I find it hard to decouple those things quickly enough in my head. Most words in German, on the other hand, are spelled exactly as they are pronounced.

Curious if folks have had other experiences with these two languages.

50-500 is also large enough to where you, ideally, don't have to worry about the company's runway, have work-life balance, get decent compensation and benefits. There's typically opportunities for upward mobility as the company scales if you want it.

I think I've finally come to peace with idea that's it's okay to be in tech and never work for FAANG.

An example the author gives of this is car problems: people with low incomes often have older cars that are more likely to have issues. If their car breaks down, there's a chance they can't afford repairs, which means they're unable to commute to work. Perhaps because of this, they choose to stop making water bill payments or buying as much food while saving for repairs. Everything is very precarious—you're essentially one or two unlucky incidents away from ruin. That, to me, is what it means to "be poor" in the US.

https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/on-the-experience-of-be...

Fortunately, if you hover over the relative date, it will expand to show the exact date time, but it would be nice if this were swapped.

Harvard average GPA was a 3.0 in 1967, now it's a 3.45 [1].

There are some universities that have tried to actively prevent inflation (e.g. Purdue with a 2.73 average in 1986 to 3.09 in 2012 [2]).

[0] https://www.gradeinflation.com [1] https://www.gradeinflation.com/Harvard.html [2] https://www.gradeinflation.com/Purdue.html

The field of spam-prevention is fascinating because it's essentially an arms race between companies deploying tactics to detect spam and sophisticated spammers using increasingly complex methods to avoid detection.

So there's an advantage gained by companies if spammers believe they don't need to evolve their methods.

The US is launching things into space about 20 times as frequently compared to 10 years ago [1]. Now, most rocket launches don't make mainstream news—I only keep up with things by subscribing to a niche newsletter [2].

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...

[2] https://orbitalindex.com

Relatedly, I'd recommend watching the documentary The Year Earth Changed [2] which is about several environmental systems that recovered to some degree during COVID.

I don't think we should necessarily aim to restrict commuting to protect the environment, but now there's evidence that WFH + transitioning to cleaner energy sources can make a significant impact.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/himalayas-visible-lockdow...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XswV_yqPq28

This makes me feel a bit old and out of touch—when I came to the city ~10 years ago, I remember knowing a few larger houses (e.g. Negev). But haven't heard of any since then—beyond private houses set up by friends with a smaller number of people. Are the larger houses still a thing?