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I have nothing to say other than that this piece made me cry, and I'm grateful for it.

maxverseon Ronda Rousey: "I never wanted to talk about concussion"

I don't follow MMA, but I picked up Ronda Rousey's first book, My Fight/Your Fight and couldn't put it down. I then listened to it on audiobook, which she narrates with style and ease. Her story is absolutely incredible, and she and her ghostwriter do a great job sharing it. The first book is all about what it takes to be a fighter, with Rousey undefeated, at the height of her career. Ronda is adorable and terrifying, inspiring and impressive through and through.

I just got her second book, which addresses what it was like to get beaten after going 15:0, then beaten again. I think she's going to talk about finding a way forward after her whole identity was being a fighter. I started today and can't wait to get into it.

maxverseon So you wanna de-bog yourself

I'm floored by how good this article is, and I just read another, and was also floored. His writing reminds me a bit of Raptitude in its - everything-is-fucked-heh-let's-try-to-function-anyhow attitude. And the writing is so, so good, and wildly relatable.

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/its-very-weird-to-hav...

maxverseon The illusion of being stuck

This is an interesting topic of its own, but there have been a few books/ideas that have made a significant difference on how I operate day-to-day. There are many more books and ideas I nod along to and never implement.

maxverseon The illusion of being stuck

The difference between medicine in poison is the dose ("the dose makes the poison.") Good ideas taken to extreme are often Very Bad, but sometimes a little bit of the idea is exactly what you need.

If you have social anxiety, talking to people through discomfort, or initially treating interactions as a game can help take the pressure off. Treating people as NPCs is unhealthy. Routine exercise is good. Becoming obsessed with how your body looks, living in the gym, taking steroids is bad. A sense of humility, purpose, and devotion in life is generally good. Religious fanaticism is bad. Confidence, which often involves a touch of self-deception, generally is good. Unchecked arrogance is bad.

If I tell you to go for a run or do some push-ups, there's a risk that you'll become totally obsessed with exercise. But going for that run will also help. You need a moderate amount of my advice, not an extreme amount.

This piece resonated with me. When you're stuck in a routine you dislike, being aware that your brain is optimized to stay in its current state (according to the cited research) is good. Going bananas and being "unmoored and open to anything", living every day without any sense of habit or purpose is bad. The dose makes the poison.

maxverseon "It never gets easier, you just go faster." (2020)

This is really nicely written and packed with very useful advice

maxverseon Want to start a startup? Meet all the YC partners in Boston – Apr 20th

Am I reading this correctly - anyone can apply to Startup School, but only students can do the in-person interviews?

maxverseon Ahead of IPO, Reddit blends advertising into user posts

I'm surprised this works, I thought Reddit effectively killed apps that rely on its API?

maxverseon Ahead of IPO, Reddit blends advertising into user posts

I stayed away from Reddit for probably nine months after that scandal, and pop back in occasionally now. It has gotten significantly worse.

maxverseon My husband went through the Amazon Pivot process. It was crushing

Companies need to address the nauseating imbalance between what they do for recruitment and retention (nice-sounding company values getting drilled at every all-hands meeting, team building exercises, talking about how much they value their people) and the dystopian, liability-paranoid way they cut ties with people they lay off and fire. I understand that letting people go is a part of business. I've had to let underperforming employees go myself. But companies need to understand that they're playing Operation on human lives here. Being laid off or fired, whether deserved or not, is traumatic. Companies should offer their employees the same kind of care and respect they (hopefully) treat their customers with and want to be treated with.

The standard answer is that "your time with the company is a two way business contract; don't treat is as anything other than that." But while companies no longer call it a "family", they do everything in their power to make you feel like you belong when they need to retain you - and then, one day, your manager's manager decides to change priorities, and your laptop is remotely terminated, to be sent in within 7 days. Sorry, pal, it's just business. Then they wonder why "mass resignation" or job-hopping every 2 years is a thing.

maxverseon Show HN: I made a site that lets you punish yourself

Congrats on launching; it's a big step that a lot of people shy away from. And congrats on the traction and comments you're getting!

I think there's nothing wrong with entering a crowded market or building an alternative to similar existing products - but I also think you need something to differentiate your offering! I'm not sure what that is for this product, but I think it's great that you launched and hopefully v the experience will help you design your next offering.

maxverseon Show HN: I made a site that lets you punish yourself

Classic Pieter Levels project: https://www.gofuckingdoit.com

maxverseon How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

I'm a big believer in the fact that you have to hear the right lesson in the right way from the right source. This piece might not resonate with everyone, but it really spoke to me. I needed to hear it.

maxverseon Zed, a collaborative code editor, is now open source

It's possible that the user is Russian and using the locally popular browser

maxverseon IA Writer in Paper

I've had that happen. I recently bought a few Muji notebooks for $2/piece[1]. They're thin, beautiful, and relatively cheap. I want to use them to doodle with less constraint or self-judgement, but still with a good experience. It's a weird balance between writing in a way that feels good, but also not judging yourself too much because you're using beautiful tools and materials.

[1] https://www.muji.us/products/bind-grid-notebook-9s62?_pos=2&...

maxverseon According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar was once captured by pirates

So, are we reading The Social Network of Caesar's life?

maxverseon Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

Yeah, both are true for me. I love Spotify, and the app is getting worse. They got rid of the "make a radio from a playlist" feature, which made no sense to me - the tech is there. Instead, they're suggesting the "Enhance Playlist"/"Smart Shuffle" features, which are worse. Making radio from playlists was a major feature for me, and I really miss it. I have no idea why it's gone.

maxverseon Music-Map – Find Similar Music

This project was one of the major inspirations for my learning to code a decade ago, and I still turn to it sometimes when I'm looking to make sense of what kind of music a band plays

maxverseon They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

Past discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737993

maxverseon Show HN: IndieHackerStacks – See tools Indie Hackers use to build their products

Aw damn, this is just a landing page. Gah. I get that you're validating a product idea, but you can't say "That's why I created IndieHackerStacks, a platform that makes finding the right tools easier and quicker" if there's no platform. That's frustrating. Surely Show HN has to be more than a landing page.

maxverseon Show HN: IndieHackerStacks – See tools Indie Hackers use to build their products

I think this is a nice idea. I've always been fascinated by the distinction between how we build MVPs/quick side projects, and how we build stuff as employed engineers. There's the classic trope of an ex-FAANG engineer working for months so their MVP can seamlessly serve hundreds of thousands of users. The most successful thing I ever built was built with really hacky code; I didn't know what I was doing at all, but I knew what I wanted to build. I'm a much better dev today, but I also tend to over-engineer things now.

I think of it as being akin to knowing music theory. You think it'll make you a better musician, and it does, but first it overrides your creativity and you end up just following the patterns you learn. It's hard to think freely when you know how it's "supposed" to be done.

maxverseon The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get Back (2022)

I'm not very familiar with Billie Eilish's music, but any interview I've seen her brother Finneas has been really great. Seems like a cool dude and a great musician.

maxverseon Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

https://gem.fm

Find the best episodes for any podcast and recommend your favorite episodes. Reconciling different podcast episodes was a slog and maybe the hardest technical thing I've ever worked on. I never officially gave up on it, I've just been putting off coming back to it.

https://tinylogger.com

Minimal blogging app with a judgement-free writing mode, focused on getting you to write more. Actively working on this one!

maxverseon 2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin

I didn't see your initial remark, but I wanted to commend you for saying this; it's so rare to see any kind of regret or change in opinion in an online discourse. Thank you for following up.

maxverseon 2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin

shakes fist in Brooklyn Tech

maxverseon ”Be Useful”

What do you consider useful?

maxverseon ”Be Useful”

Same. I also enjoyed the wonderfully-narrated audiobook. Just listening to it makes me want to get out into the world and do something.

maxverseon ”Be Useful”

One of the things I love about his autobiography is that he talks with the same sense of wonder about the people he wanted to be growing up, and reflects on meeting his heroes. In one of my favorite passages in the book, he talks about growing up on on Joe Weider's bodybuilding magazines:

> “Other pictures in the magazine showed scientists and technicians in white lab coats developing nutritional supplements in the Weider Research Clinic. “Weider Research Clinic,” I would say to myself, “this is unbelievable!” And there were pictures of airplanes with “Weider” painted on the side in big letters. I’d imagined an outfit the size of General Motors, with a fleet of planes flying around the globe delivering Weider equipment and food supplements. The writing in the magazine sounded fabulous too when my friends translated it for me. The stories talked about “blasting the muscles” and building “deltoids like cannonballs” and “a chest like a fortress.”

> And now here I was, six years later, on Venice Beach! Just like Dave Draper, only now it was me with the dune buggy and the surfboard and the adoring girls. Of course, by this time I was aware enough to see that Weider was creating a whole fantasy world, with a foundation in reality but skyscrapers of hype. Yes, there were surfboards, but the bodybuilders didn’t really surf. Yes, there were pretty girls, but they were models who got paid for the photo session. (Actually, one of the girls was Joe’s wife, Betty, a beautiful model whom he didn’t have to pay.) Yes, there were Weider supplements and, yes, some research took place, but there was no big building in Los Angeles called the Weider Research Clinic. Yes, Weider products were distributed around the world, but there were no Weider planes. Discovering the hype didn’t bother me, though. Enough of it was true.”

maxverseon J. G. Ballard’s brilliant, “not good” writing

Am I missing something? I've never read Ballard, but found this article to be pretty terrible. Is it meant to satirize or mimic Ballard's writing? The run on sentences, the [a and b, c and d, e and f] structure, the superfluous language all made this writing feel like a pretentious slog. I feel like I'm missing something.

maxverseon Neopets is still around

Same!!