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John Carmack's talks, especially the ones from his id days at QuakeCon.

Watching somebody get on stage and just talk for hours in detail without notes about a whole range of technical topics that they mastered and enjoy is pretty inspiring.

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I’m by no means a gamer but have always admired Carmack for his sheer brilliance. I stumbled over one of his talks while doing something else and jumped to various points in the talk. _Every. Single. Time._ he was talking about something profound and the talk is friggin several hours long.

To make him more impressive, he had a pretty significant speech impediment when he was younger. So he was never some natural orator, he had to work extremely hard to sound like one.

I feel it was a huge loss that he no longer holds talks in any capacity. We get a detailed and incredibly interesting blog post from him like every 12 months, but otherwise, nothin'.

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