Attempts to Explain #2

The Feynman Technique at work (again)

Sep 01, 2021

“The opportunity cost of your time should increase every year.”

Last week, we launched this sub-series on Substack, a spot where we share what we’ve been reading and then share what we understand from what we’ve been reading – look at us, learning. For those of you that are new, welcome to our take on the Feynman Technique in action. It’s very always beta, and that’s very on brand for us.

Identify a subject you want to learn about
Attempt to explain it to someone who has no prior knowledge
Identify the gaps in your knowledge — the bits you struggle to explain
Research further, refine your explanation

For things that we’re constantly referencing and rate our explanations of, here’s the <$ Anti-Library. For literally everything else, subscribe for a premium experience.

Hot girls officially drink milk again

Hooray for cows. Well, not for cows, but the people who squeeze their teats. This feels like a good time to share that Charl comes from a proud dairy farming family. #waikatoreprazent

Read the article here.

Architect of Good Code Definition uses “Architecting” as A Fucking Verb and so Now I Don’t Want to Take Them Seriously.

"I call this my rule of good code: If the product doesn’t work well, the code is not good. In other words, there is no such thing as good code in the abstract; good code can only exist if it’s producing a working product. Over and over I see some engineers producing great product quickly, and when I see the code it’s usually well factored and smartly built. It’s not surprising since it’s hard to quickly build good product in a complicated system with code that is poorly architected or factored or not tested. Conversely, when I see programmers not launching features quickly, the issue is often overengineering. Or when engineers do launch quickly but the quality is bad, then the issue is usually under-engineering or sloppy code."

Zach Lloyd on the two types of programmers: those who care more about code, and those who care more about product. We care about nouns being nouns and people not believing that there are two types of people in the world, but wev.

Afghanistan is hard, whichever way you look at it.

Lots of people pretending to know stuff about something that the world’s biggest military has struggled to make sense of after 20 years and trillions of dollars. Planning fallacy, anyone?

Here’s what little we understand: Biden is making good on Trump’s own deal, which is a response to Obama trying (unsuccessfully) to clean up Bush/Cheney’s mess. At the end of the day, the USA lost the war, and that’s never going to look good, is it. Robert Wright and Ezra Klein say nope, it’s not. They make, for my money, a compelling argument for the Washington Establishment’s bias for action and documented inability to look objectively at its own metrics for successful occupations. Sam Harris and Peter Bergen say basically the opposite — but they both seem to have a view of US hegemony that feels a little rosy to me, frankly. Sam Harris more or less shoots off his mouth and sounds like an author who made his career as a response to 9/11. Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vitor, two ex-Obama staffers, give a pretty in-depth argument for how a ContinuedPresence™ in the middle east isn’t the option people think it is.

Or, as Tyler Cowan says:

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Cracks Down on Big Tech

The message from the CCP is unmistakeable: ‘the US and Europe may be content to allow Big Tech to become a rival power centre, but it’s not happening here.’ NWSH worries aloud about China’s stance on Jack Ma et al.

The new plan for Internet + Supervision here.

COVID will kill travel for years. Better call Qantas.

Think things will be back to normal again? Don’t. Incentives matter, and Qantas is incentivised to say that travel will be rtr and g2g by Dec 22 because that gets people spending money with ‘em. But it probably won’t play like dat.

Quotes that’ll change the way we think about design, don’t change the way we think about design at all.

All the quotes here.

“The design is not just what it looks like and feels like. The design is how it works”
— Steve Jobs,

“Design is the intermediary between information and understanding.”
— Hans Hoffman, artist and teacher

“Design is intelligence made visible.”
— Alina Wheeler, author

“Every great design begins with an even better story.”
— Lorinda Mamo, designer

Professional Happiness Expert shares the secret to finding happiness.

‘The best way to know if you're happy is to ask yourself, “How am I feeling right now?”’ says professional happiness scientist Dr. Laurie Santos

‘Even as scientists, we do rely on people's self-reports. But the good news is that those self-reports are valid for happiness and well-being. Self-report measures seem to correlate with other important things like textual analyses of your journal entries or detailed interviews with your family. So really the best way to know if you're happy is to ask yourself.’

Thanks, Science.

Nuclear Fusion is happening so now we can finally use this Val Kilmer GIF from a movie Charl watched when he was 11.

Even though it’s not scientifically accurate; cold fusion is a type of nuclear fusion that attempts to get nuclei to fuse without all the heat you’d usually use. So, no, Val. 25 years on and we still don’t.

However, clean nuclear fusion — now backed by billionaires like Bezos and Gates — really is inching closer to reality. The effects would be immense: for one, it’d give us a shot at hitting the US’ latest goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Lastly, On Stoicsm

So, that’s that. What do you reckon? Disagree? Got something to challenge? Got something to read? We’re all ears, eyes and nose.