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The Foundation series is considered a classic of science fiction.

Get a Spanish language book from the library and try reading it.

At my last job, I would simply reply with "Agenda?" before accepting a meeting invite. Nobody ever complained. Also, setting a good example helped.

Try walking without listening to your brain. Consider it walking meditation.

Good answer. Personal writing can also help you understand stressful events in life.

Read more in order to identify the types of writing you admire, enjoy and perhaps wish to emulate on some level. I like William Zinsser's books, On Writing Well is the "flagship" I guess.

If you're writing in public, like a blog, try giving yourself a deadline and permission for the post not to be perfect.

An antidote to bullshit (e.g., unproductive meetings that you still have to go to) is journaling. When you're writing to yourself, for no other audience but yourself, you can be 100% honest. So that helps serve to counteract it and give strength, sometimes you also see things from another person's perspective. e.g. the meeting may have some value to your boss, which has follow-on benefits to you that you hadn't considered.

I'm very curious what you may have done differently knowing what you know now. Particularly any self-care / mental health. Please feel free to contact me at the email in my profile.

You sound like you're in a down place, and I sympathize. You had the guts to try though. And it sounds like you built something useful. That's pretty good.

I kept looking for a spoiler saying that these glib, seemingly-profound sentences were generated by GPT-3.

Don't work for someone you wouldn't want to become? How on earth is someone supposed to determine that during a standard interview process? What are you supposed to do when teams get shuffled around, or your boss leaves? To say nothing of the fact that you can admire someone without wanting to become them.

Flatmates can also do bad things to cast iron, e.g. dump them in the dishwasher and let them rust. Can't tell you how many times I've had to reseason a pan. After a point I just stopped trying to educate them and said, "you buy your own stuff and feel free to ruin it if that's how you want to treat your stuff".

Agreed, the geopolitics was very simplistic. I was always looking forward to the next space scene.

I also read Ministry for the Future which was pretty heavy on politics. It didn't grab me the way Project Hail Mary did, though.

Project Hail Mary was special because it was so straightforward. It didn't try to beat you over the head with some grand message about society. It's just a science teacher doing cool stuff in space. Refreshing, in my opinion.

"Corporate social network" is nowhere near an oxymoron. The value of strong and weak connections alike is critical to businesses and professionals.

You (and parent commenters) should keep asking for thinner until you actually get what you want. Yes - let it take 15 minutes, if it has to. You're the one who's paying. The feelings of the employee are irrelevant - he has a job to do. The feelings of the people behind you are irrelevant - you waited your turn, too.

Very much a caricature, though some of the details were funny. Is Peter Gregory supposed to be PG?

I don't think Marco knows what lock-in means. Not to mention, his concluding sentence is a string of absolutes that almost makes me think he's writing a satire of some sort.

Dave Gooden's post only has images of the emails. The anchor text doesn't expose affiliate id's, but the link itself may have them.

Airbnb was caught, but this story isn't big enough to matter.

People relate to each other based on emotions, rather than facts, which is the basis for most "awkward smart guy" conversations.

American Idol: "I've heard a lot about this show, but I haven't seen it yet. I wonder why it's so popular. It must really resonate with people for some reason. Why do you think it's so popular?" This should appeal to anyone who's reasonably smart, whether or not they're a fan of the show.

Something sad or bad: First say "I'm sorry to hear that," and then empathize by relating a similar experience that you or your friend had. Show some vulnerability, show that you understand them by conveying the emotion from a real experience that you've had. People want to feel comforted by having companionship and feeling understood.

Curious as to their line of reasoning: "Why do you think that?" is fine for other awkward smart people. Find a softer more polite way for everyone else. Also, allow the possibility they might be right. "Oh, that's interesting. I always thought XYZ was true, rather than ABC, but maybe you're thinking about it differently than I am."

At what distance to say Hi: It doesn't matter, as long as you acknowledge them once a day, and everyone knows this sort of thing is silly. Establish eye contact somewhere around 7-10 feet away, acknowledge them with a smile or a Hey shortly after, like 5-7 feet.

Making friends: Nope, beer and coffee are the basis of all friendships. Better start getting used to it!

Accepting compliments: Say thank you without making a big deal out of it. It's not egotistical at all. If you want to lighten the mood, joke that you have them fooled, and you're really quite the opposite.

Absolutely true. Maybe I'm mincing words but there is a corollary here too. There is a class of situations where the harder you try, the bigger the disadvantage you have. This can be hard for workaholic types to understand.

Class A (Effort correlates with results) = Work, school, etc.

Class B (Ease correlates with results) = Socializing, dating, etc.

Here's a related trick, more useful when you're starting your day than when you're already in the flow of things:

Pick your task, preferably something small and easily defined like "refactor this duplicated code", estimate how long it will take you, set a countdown timer for that amount of time, and then try to beat your estimate.

This can begin your day on a productive note, rather than sitting and spending 45 minutes reading email and whatnot.

It also doesn't work on AT&T.

I can cover the rent of a 2-bedroom apartment in Manhattan by renting out one of the bedrooms on Airbnb. I don't expect the situation to last forever, but for now it's great.

Facebook has to stay cool, which is very difficult. It also doesn't have a clear way to dominate Google's bread-and-butter business, organic search and paid search advertising. They are no doubt very innovative but I give Google the edge, especially if Google can figure out social.

I'm building a dating site. Contact me if you want in on the beta. NY for now, expanding later.

The first thing to understand is the dating world is fraught with mishaps and frustration. This is often misinterpreted as specific shortcomings to various approaches, "bars suck!" and whatnot. The real conclusion is that there is a lack of transparency in dating: signals must be interpreted; brutal honesty is simply not socially acceptable. Because there is so much confusion, everyone has an opinion.

Lots of people want to go beyond their social networks to meet people. There is no doubt about that. Subscription models are also proven successful at critical mass.

The challenges are building to critical mass, removing the stigma, encouraging best behavior, removing spam, keeping the most desirable members, among many others I'm forgetting.

Dating won't go away, the web isn't going away, and we have fun new social tools to play with. Lots of opportunity here to go beyond what the traditional dating sites have done.

I've met lots of sane, pretty and smart women. I wouldn't let a few exceptions tilt my perspective.

These are biz noobs. There are good ones too who understand talent and startups. We can make fun of the arrogant noobs, but we'd all benefit if they were just enlightened about the shortage of tech talent, and about the best way to sell their idea and build a team.

What would someone relentlessly resourceful do?

Apple fanboys are by far the most annoying, in my experience.

Apple, despite its many hit products, is still open to criticism. Fred's prediction is not flamebait, it's just a prediction, and a totally fair prediction in my opinion.

I'm glad the startup and early adopter community recognizes Apple fanboyism. I hope they recognize their own bias toward Apple as well, which I've noticed here on HN.

A "bad", or perhaps more accurately "marginal" or "nifty but unprofitable" can still help the creative process leading to "good" ideas. The marginal one may end up as a feature of the killer app you build later, or the unprofitable one may see some future profit potential as other factors change.

I track all mine, good or bad, and when I'm feeling uninspired or burned out on what I'm working on, I like to go back and at least have a laugh at all the old ideas.