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learningerrday

22 karma · joined January 8, 2020

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learningerrday··on To write a great essay, think and care deeply (2015)
Larry Mcenerney's lectures on how to write effectively are gold for getting better at writing. There's a lot packed in his lectures, but a big core idea is that you should use writing to help you do your thinking. With complex subject matter, writing is thinking. The thing that we've been taught is writing is more akin to publishing (i.e. the editing you do to share your thoughts with other people after you've finished writing and thinking for yourself).

Link to snippets of his talk if you're short on time: https://twitter.com/LBacaj/status/1668446029610352641

If you've got more time, you should watch the whole thing, it's a masterclass in understanding what writing actually is, and what it does for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

learningerrday··on Stable Diffusion 3
I hope the safety conversation doesn't die. The societal effects of these technologies are quite large, and we should be okay with creating the space to acknowledge and talk about the good and the bad, and what we're doing to mitigate the negative effects. In any case, even though it's repetitive, there exists someone out there on the Interwebs who will discover that information for the first time today (or whenever the release is), and such disclosures are valuable. My favorite relevant XKCD comic: https://xkcd.com/1053/
learningerrday··on Proof you can do hard things
This reminds me of a powerful post I read a while ago with the charter to "Half-ass [your projects] with everything you've got!". Pre-commit to what level of quality you're looking to achieve and then strive to do just what is necessary to get there: https://mindingourway.com/half-assing-it-with-everything-you...
learningerrday··on Show HN: Beekeeper Studio – open-source, cross-platform SQL client
This is amazing! And SSL option right off the bat too? Well done. Feature request for Postgres: it looks like this version mostly displays tables in the 'public' schema. Would be great if it could display all tables and views in all schemas present in the database
learningerrday··on Show HN: Glass Dome — an Alfred workflow to fight link rot in markdown notes
Another alternative to Internet archive is perma.cc. A webmaster can write to IA and request that they pull archives off their site at any moment: https://perma.cc/
learningerrday··on Ask HN: What will you read while quarantined by Covid-19?
Taking inspiration from this list of books to help form a core of understanding of the world. Working my way through the 'core' section: https://medium.com/swlh/definitive-list-of-50-books-to-under...
learningerrday··on Luhmann's Zettelkasten
Gordon Brander's pattern wiki is probably the best contemporary example I can think of that implements the Zettelkasten pattern: http://gordonbrander.com/pattern/

I think part of what can make the concept hard to see in practice, is that it's both the Zettelkasten artifact, and your methodology for adding and linking concepts when you're learning

learningerrday··on Analyzing churn rates, free trials, and other metrics
I'd punt on offering free trials and instead offer a 30 or even 60 day money back guarantee. This is effectively the same thing but gets you access to money today as opposed to 30 days later. Learned from this terrific video from Jason Cohen: https://vimeo.com/74338272