Do everything in such a way that it becomes an art unto itself.
Here are the most memorable books that I read in 2025. I read more books this year than last year, and that was a huge win for me. The year's theme seems to be works that are generally "ambient". Lots of books that are light on plot but have dense, real atmospheres. Columbine (2009) by Dave Cullen. Listed first because I think that everyone should read this book. It's so frustrating to see that…
You’re Probably Doing Small Talk Wrong Do the simplest thing that could possibly work Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself and bloom
Fast Slow So You're a Manager Now Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? Try and ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025 shortlist Allow me to introduce the two-sentence journal Brilliant illustrations bring this 1976 Soviet edition of 'The Hobbit' to life
Silence is a Commons (1983) by Ivan Illich Related: The Tragedy of the Commons (1968) by Garrett Hardin Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy I'm rebelling against the algorithm Zen Practice with Serious Health Issues How to increase your surface area for luck What does connecting with someone mean? A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful & walkable places Learn to love the…
This technique's constraint is word choice. We are going to visit the Library of Babel and collect words. This exercise is similar to the previous , but it is more extreme. You aren't allowed to use any words outside the one from your random page. Visit https://libraryofbabel.info/ You can read the "about" page if you want. It's a fun site based on Jorge Luis Borges' The Library of Babel . Click…
This technique's constraint is word choice. We are going to visit the Library of Babel and collect words. Visit https://libraryofbabel.info/ You can read the "about" page if you want. It's a fun site based on Jorge Luis Borges' The Library of Babel . Click "Random" Click "Anglishize" Choose the words you want to use Write a poem using these words You are allowed to add words You don't need to use…
I just had my longest, and also one of my best, seated meditations. The reason it was so lovely was that I finally gave up on using a timer. Instead, I started a stopwatch and left it. I didn't realize how much the anticipation of the timer finishing was interrupting my meditation. One of the common sayings regarding meditation is that you shouldn't meditate toward a goal. Usually this means that…
Daily notes are useless. The value of a note is directly proportional to the number of times it is visited. That value is exponentiated each time a note is shared. Daily notes aren't revisited and they aren't shared. Daily notes look like this: notes/ yyyy-mm-dd.md yyyy-mm-dd.md yyyy-mm-dd.md On the surface, the idea of a note per day seems great. You plan out your day and track your work. You can…
When I changed my major to English, I had a lot of catching up to do. That meant that one of my semesters was all upper-level English classes and one upper-level philosophy class. I had a lot of writing that I needed to do, and not a lot of time to do it. That's when I really fell in love with outlining. Outlines let you move fast One of the best pieces of advice that I heard was, "If you want to…
I was seeing a lot of videos that were being using Whoville by Tyler, The Creator as background music. I thought this was a really pretty and minimal chord progression, so I decided to tab it out. Notation for barre chords: position (roman numerals)/strings. Barring 5 strings on the second fret would be noted II/5 Just these 5 chords on a loop. Cmaj7/A Abmaj7/B Emaj9…