duopixel

That's because _patisserie_ is really a combination of processed ingredients (fruit is mostly decoration). Should my obese friend grind wheat into flour, turn milk into butter, juice sugar canes into sugar, he'd surely bake less and expend more calories doing it.

If you try to measure the subjective through objective values, you will only measure what you think about yourself. If I ask myself "how much did I learn today?" it is more judgement about myself rather than an objective value.

I explored this throughly in 2014:

https://medium.com/@duopixel/the-qualified-self-7f69c6b23623

I have not updated this post, but I did this for years without finding satisfaction, because what I had to address was judgement about myself, not the shortcomings that I perceived I had at the time.

But the exercise of trying to measure the subjective is very instructive in itself. I ignore if you counter my point from experience, if not, I encourage you to register subjective judgement. And if you already do it, I encourage you to drop it and sense how it feels.

Many paths of personal growth require you to do opposite things at different times, so you can maximize your surface of experience.

Our true values (as human beings, not organizational values) are not measurable. I may want to become closer to my family, so I schedule more time with them. Spending time with them makes it more likely, but it may also go in the opposite direction through conflict.

In paper you have accomplished your OKR, but in practice you are further away from your true goal.

Basecamp first launched when I was in college, and being completely unfamiliar with any project management workflow I thought: "this would be great for managing myself" so I set milestones and wrote entries for myself and project managed my life for a brief period.

It makes life as boring as work.

These methods are meant for teams working towards a common objective, where anything extraneous to the OKRs is considered a distraction. This has its shortcomings (I've met way too many project managers who seem to be so absorbed by metrics they fail to see what is right in front of their noses). It's most definitely useful is this context, but not in life.

Consider: the author has set himself to read 20 books per year. Suppose this is double of his standard. What he will do to fulfill his OKR? He's not going to choose a difficult read such as Ulysses, or an existential crisis inducing book such as Crime and Punishment, he will go for what is more superficial and easier to read, because his goal is not to be transformed by what he reads, his goal is to read 20 books.

The crucial layer of meaning is lost when we project-manage ourselves. Life is more akin to a poem than it is to a project.

I took up biking as an adult again by biking with rental bikes in Mexico City (government owned) and they are built like tanks for durability, not for riding pleasure.

When I finally got on a "real" bike, I flew. I was much faster and agile than my bike-riding friends. Because I couldn't upgrade the bike, I had to upgrade myself, and these investments are compatible with any kind of bike (or sport, actually).

Thank you! Brevity in code is underappreciated. People think it is about file size (and it partially is) but it is mostly about understanding what the code does so that you can extend it in the way that you want. This looks like a true foundation, unlike the namesake framework which is building on top of an existing buildings.

It is amazing, I made https://boolean.method.ac with it.

Author here. I’ve been meaning to release a second version of the game, will probably tackle it in 2020 (this game is around eight years old and needs a complete rewrite to work on mobile)

Anecdota about depression and exercise:

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It's not getting in shape what lifts depression, it is physical activity in itself. You generally feel better after exercise.

It becomes much easier to hit the gym after realizing the reason to go is simply to feel better. Instead of thinking _I don't feel like going to the gym_ the correct cognition is _my medicine is there_.

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There's a variety of options to exercise. Don't stick to running if you don't enjoy it (but you keep doing it because you feel better). There's a large menu of activities, at first try what is convenient, deliberately try many things and find what is more fulfilling to you.

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With exercise nutrition follows quite naturally. It's difficult to navigate all the BS in nutrition, but in general eating fresh things closer to nature (leafs, fruit, veggies, nuts, lean meats) also has an impact on your wellbeing.

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Often there are more issues other than lack of exercise. If you are socially isolated, if you are under constant stress, if your home situation is dire, exercise will help you cope with it but it's not getting at the root cause. Identify and work on the cause too.

There are clear returns there: immersion in nature, cardiovascular/muscular/mental fitness, tolerance to pain, social bonding, etc.

One must consider that Alan Watts himself was a magnificent old rascal. He made no pretense about it and described himself as a "philosophical entertainer". When you verify his teachings (either by experience or by going to the source) you find a lot of deliberate bending. His interpretation of the Tao Te Ching is deeply idiosyncratic, for example. Though I suspect there's some degree of truth in his opinion of Gurdjieff, I wouldn't take his word for it.

Congrats on the change in careers, Glen. My own journey follows a very similar arc. For a rational person it's incredibly lonely: the spiritual community often sees the rational mind as a hindrance into more subtle realms, and the rational community sees the spiritual one as full of fluff and fantasy. It's difficult to have a foot on each side.

We must understand that one does not invalidate the other, they belong to different realms of being. An inner truth (i.e. everything happens for a reason) does not invalidate an outer truth (i.e. everything that happens is random). Being able to hold this paradox is an important developmental milestone.

Another duality is the relationship between mind and body, and for mental people bodywork is crucial to make emotional breakthroughs, but in my experience most people dedicated to this don't understand where you're coming from. Very little can be accomplished if the rational mind is the master at all times, but at the same time it's guarding an emotional dam that should be drained with caution.

Therapists who understand the tech industry and the rational mind are desperately needed, most people who get into it are naturally empathetic and operate from the heart, which is wonderful for therapy, but they can't relate at all with the territory you're traversing when you're going through transformation. The maze that you describe is completely foreign to them, and even worse: very few people have navigated it successfully, it remains largely unexplored and uncharted, so it requires infinite patience and lots of trial and error.

This reminds me a bit of Alejandro Jodorowsky's approach to psychotherapy[1], in which trauma and neurosis are resolved by performing an act related to them. For example, if conflict was left unresolved with someone who has passed away, he instructs talking over the problem at the grave, and then painting "peace" with honey over the tombstone. Most of his suggestions are quite outlandish I recall his cure for agoraphobia was having your friends carry you inside a sleeping bag to a plaza where they would simulate your "birth into the world".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Jodorowsky#Psychomag...

An amusing footnote I found in Tolstoy's Confession:

The context:

>In spite of the fact that during these fifteen years I regarded writing as a trivial endeavor, I continued to write.* I had already tasted the temptations of authorship, the temptations of enormous monetary rewards and applause for worthless work, and I gave myself up to it as a means of improving my material situation and as a way of stifling any questions in my soul concerning the meaning of my life and of life in general.

The footnote:

  *It was during this period, when he "regarded writing as a trivial endeavor," 
  that Tolstoy produced War and Peace (1869).

> Segovia identified 155 artifacts, some with faces of Toltec rain god Tláloc, and others with markings of the sacred ceiba tree

It would be significant, because the Mayan version of this god is Chaac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaac, and there's some speculation over who inherited the god from whom:

> Although the name Tlaloc is specifically Aztec, worship of a storm god like Tlaloc, associated with mountaintop shrines and with life-giving rain, is as at least as old as Teotihuacan and likely was adopted from the Maya god Chaac or vice versa, or perhaps he was ultimately derived from an earlier Olmec precursor. An underground Tlaloc shrine has been found at Teotihuacan.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C4%81loc

But my suspicion is that the archaeologist might have said something like "we found faces of Chaac, who is equivalent to Tláloc" (because Mexicans are much more familiar with Tláloc) and then it was mangled by the reporter.

Especially a list you write when you're 15 years old. It probably morphed a bit throughout his lifetime as he gained more knowledge. I can't imagine my 39 year old self wanting to complete every task my 15 year old self put on a bucket list.

I don't think anybody would argue that the alternatives are better than JSX (if it were, why use JSX at all?), the step that you want to avoid is transpiling jsx. Why? Javascript's tool chain is complex, once you're using jsx you probable want `react-create-app` too, and things begin cascading from there. It's only worth it if what you're doing has a certain degree of complexity.

That sounds like a very convoluted way to ask for what is in essence a discount.

When I first moved to Europe I was struck by just how domesticated the land is. I can sleep in the open without being afraid of snakes, scorpions, spiders, wolves or bears. Even when land is "wild", the larger mammals will be rabbits, deer, wild goats and such. Excepting natural parks, hunters are the only predators.

At least in Spain, a tremendous percentage of land is put at the service of mankind. The dehesas give cork, honey, acorns to feed the pigs, and grass for the cattle.

The situation where developing countries need to conserve their land in a natural state in the interest of biodiversity and climate reminds me a game of Civilization where you are no longer allowed to exploit them to your advantage (with good reason!). We need to keep this land intact, but the only way to do it is to make conservation more valuable than exploitation.

That was an interesting read, thanks!

In HN you will find a very hostile audience towards the idea that an _inner world_ exists at all. This is unfortunate, when I denied my inner world I lived only half of what I experienced, and I insisted that all my problems could be resolved with pills and external stimulus. This leads to a barren emotional life and a distinct sensation of being stuck in the same place, which eventually leads to depression.

Pablo Stanley is Mexican.

I find it unsettling that people here try to read too much into this choice, it was released a month ago on Designer News and there's not a single mention about it:

https://www.designernews.co/stories/98999-humaaans-a-library...

Feedback: very interested on the topic of your book, but seeing the marketing tactics and your response to criticism seriously put me off. I’d rather support more agreeable authors. Content ignored indeed.

A simple self-experiment if you haven't read the paper, find which of these sentences are bullshit. Answer in order without reading further ahead, and don't go back to change your answers (as to replicate experimental conditions).

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1. A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but it's persistence.

2. The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.

3. The future elucidates irrational facts for the seeking person.

4. You are not only responsible for the things you say, but also for the things that you do not say.

5. Health and tolerance provides creativity for the future.

6. We have other flaws before our eyes, but our own flaws behind our back.

7. Your teacher can open the door, but you have to step in.

8. Your movement transforms universal observations.

9. The person who never made a mistake never tried something new.

10. The whole silence infinite phenomena.

11. Imagined pain does not hurt less because it is imagined.

12. The invisible is beyond all new immutability.

13. The unexplainable touches on the inherent experiences of the universe.

14. It is one thing to be tempted, but quite another to fall for the temptation.

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Here are the answers for self-assessment: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=l...

No claim is made on the validity of the experiment (the researchers' or your own). Proposed in the name of curiosity!

Let's think about personality traits in a depressed person:

Extraversion: "leave me alone"

Agreeableness: "the world is shit"

Conscientiousness: "my home is a mess"

Openness: "Why try something new if I know I'm not going to like it"

Conscientiousness: "my home is a mess"

People who go through these phases, or live in this reality, are more likely to have seeked therapy. The results could imply that, after all, it is not very effective, since it is observed that "Therapy experience is associated with negative changes in personality", but to make the analogy clear, you could say: "People with heart transplants see reduction of heart function".

> how to avoid getting into scrapes like this in the future?

It seems that your intention was to use your investment as motivation to further your career, i.e. "Once I own a company I will get awesome stuff done".

I recognize the line of thinking (from being there!). It is not "hopelessly naive" it's more of a bias, the other side of the sunken costs fallacy. "If I invest in this I will find the motivation to perform". Same principle for paying an annual lump sum to the gym and then never attending.

Though it seems the lesson is "never use fear of loss as a motivator", fear of loss is simply a variable in a complex formula. You can't rely entirely on it to get things done.

I used to play computer games in my late teens (quake 3 particularly) and even though I have fond memories, I don’t think I bonded as much over it. In retrospect I value more real life adventures (going on trips, nights out, general mischief). In the end there are ‘avatars’ performing antics that cause real emotions, but being in your body, in the world does not compare. Perhaps we simply belong to different generations (I’m 38 btw).

As I was reading the article I thought about how cool it would have been to play with dad, but I’d be cautious not be pushy towards playing with my (future) children. Sons specially are thrilled to share activities with dad and will surely entertain him until they lose interest.

But kids come with their own personalities and skills, should I have a child who is into sports, I would rather enjoy that with him or her instead of passing my old hobbies. I’d be hesitant to share time in front of a screen though, video games don’t seem to be real interaction.

I was going to write that we should simply do away with nation narratives. Be a proud member of your nation and become a fascist, be angry at those who abused their power and you’ll blame all your problems on external forces, stripping you of all agency.

But all of history is nation narratives! In Mexico the US stole Texas, in the US Texas wanted independence from Mexico to join the union.

I’m not sure if there can be anything resembling objective history, but I think Jodorowsky’s assertion that seeking identity in our nationality is misguided. We are certainly products of our culture, but confusing our culture with our country will only cause more atrocities.

I use a similar technique [1] and I’ve also yielded great results from it, but my goals tend to be more progressive. Everything that you do better than yesterday is streak, so if your aim is going to bed at 10am (why!?) the streak is what takes you closer to it.

[1] https://medium.com/@duopixel/the-qualified-self-7f69c6b23623

I think it might be easier to type on a virtual keyboard with your mind than it is to dictate with thought. When you move your hand and fingers there is no conscious effort or thought, will is translated into action. Our body is an interface to the physical world, we currently make the jump form physical to digital. Advanced technology, I imagine, would simply eliminate the jump and make digital interfaces feel like physical ones.