Links

Links to things that I've found interesting, sometimes with commentary.

Currently a combination of:

I wrote a post about how this system works and there is also an RSS feed available.

being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

maalvika.substack.com

This torment has a name in cognitive science: the “taste-skill discrepancy.” Your taste (your ability to recognize quality) develops faster than your skill (your ability to produce it). This creates what Ira Glass famously called “the gap”" but I think of it as the thing that separates creators from consumers.

Watch a child draw. They create fearlessly, unselfconsciously, because they have not yet developed the curse of sophisticated taste! They draw purple trees and flying elephants with the confidence of someone who has never been told that trees aren’t purple, that elephants don’t fly. But somewhere around age eight or nine, taste arrives like a harsh critic, and suddenly the gap opens. The child can see that their drawing doesn’t match the impossible standard their developing aesthetic sense has conjured.

This really resonates with me. I feel like I have a childlike sense of adventure around creating, and not much fear of failing. But my persistence on particular projects or efforts needs more work in order to reach the taste that I can envision for them.

Computer and coding books from Usborne

usborne.com

Usborne has been publishing award-winning computer books since the 1980s, and we’re happy to offer free pdfs of these books to download.

[…]

Many of today’s tech professionals were inspired by the Usborne computing books they read as children. The books included program listings for such iconic computers as the ZX Spectrum, the BBC Micro and the Commodore 64, and are still used in some computer clubs today.

He’s Ringo. And Nobody Else Is.

nytimes.com

I asked Starr to explain what that mantra means to him, if there was a specific incident to which it could be traced. “The ’60s — that was the incident,” he answered. For him, “peace and love” is not only a wish for a world with less violence and anger, but an expression of nostalgia for a simpler time of optimistic idealism.

Ken Jennings: Trivia and ‘Jeopardy!’ Could Save Our Republic

nytimes.com

Trivia, of all things, is a ray of hope in our moment of national crisis. Somehow, it’s still an arena where ideological projects are completely ignored and the thing that matters — the only thing that matters — is the right answer. On “Jeopardy!” the clues are novel and varied and created every night by gifted human writers, never spun or fact-checked by A.I. The canon from which the questions are drawn is unapologetically evidence-based, the product of scholarly and scientific consensus. And yet the show is, I’m told, one of the last great media monoliths, regular viewing for millions of faithful viewers in red and blue states alike.