*deep breath*
people think I'm joking when I tell them that to develop taste for software they need to have brunch with their friends, watch old movies and find old records, walk around metropolitan cities and observe how the building styles lend to the personality of the people around them, but I'm so fkin dead serious. where else is this mythical "taste" going to come from? what are you doing to parse the human condition? mf you can barely decide what discomfort you're subjecting yourself to in finding out what you like/dislike, and I'm supposed to trust you to make decisions for millions of people? go do some pottery and come back to me and describe the joy you felt without faffing about curves or whatever, I need you to feel the clay under your fingernails and fall in love with mud. even steve had the decency to drop acid on a sweaty beach in goa to find himself, the least you can do is listen to your friends talk about their lives over a meal without getting distracted by your phone.
*exhale*
Guys...this applies to anything that's highly competitive.
During high school I was told repeatedly that I could do anything I wanted to do.
So I decided I wanted to be an Army Ranger.
When I got to West Point I realized that becoming an army ranger would in fact require me to be a totally different person than I actually was.
Could I have maybe willpowered my way into the ranger regiment? Probably. Would I have thrived or been successful there? Almost certainly not.
Not everyone has the chops to be a quant. Or a trader, or an I-banker, or an army ranger. The qualities and talents you need are usually innate and not things that can be forced. You either have the juice or you don't.
Play to your strengths. Figure out who you really are, and then lean into that heavily. Otherwise you're just fooling yourself.
The future is going to be very weird for personal computer use. My advice is to learn how to operate a computer through a Unix terminal, and keep that as your interaction point. Understand how operating systems render pixels for users. Build your own tooling. Don't get locked in
i simply do not understand how ppl get any serious work done in a coffee shop, cafe, or any space that is constantly noisy, inconsistent, & unpredictable.
conversations, espresso machine noise, music, ppl coming & going, random phone calls, god damn. every few minutes your brain gets context switched by something.
lots of coffee shop work seems more like productivity larping than any real work. kudos to those who can actually pull it off. i need a real office where i can have my perfect environment setup where i don’t have to bring anything, move the mouse & i’m ready to go.
if you give opus 5.5 perfect access to a company’s email, slack, docs, browser, databases, calendar, internal tools, permissions, institutional memory, etc, plus enough reliable computer use & verification loops, & nearly all of white collar labor could already be done without any human.
it is that good. it is true agi.
Once you understand that the world is full of highly neurotic people who need a doom's day scenario to validate their emotions, it all makes much more sense: Malthusian starvation, pandemic, climate, and now AI. I wish we still had "the devil" to play this part.
Total cope. 75% of people working at these firms, even in critical investment and development roles are normal human beings without these bells and whistles.
Hard work and building subject matter expertise is what gets you in the door. Hard work and a hunger to remain at the cutting edge of what you do is what keeps you there.
this guy has brilliantly explained ADHD: high-order cognition working at full throttle, but totally immobilized due to the neurological baggage of one commitment pending.
Undiagnosed ADHD symptom nobody talks about: Reading an entire page of a book or article, getting to the very bottom, and realizing you didn't process a single word because your internal voice was busy running a completely unrelated, full length monologue in the background the entire time.
People don't understand Napoleon's insane work ethic. Napoleon had secretaries rotating shifts so that he could wake up in the middle of the night and start dictating. Napoleon would sleep 3-4 hours on campaign in 15-30 minute segments so he could always be giving orders. Napoleon would read for 12hrs+ on abstruse subjects in a single day. Napoleon would position cannons himself when he saw soldiers not manning them. You think you're working hard enough but you're not. When you study the greats of history you realize the true level of output that it takes to be known by posterity.
For everyone, WhatsApp has won. For us, giving up would mean letting the other side win.
We know why people use WhatsApp.
Everyone is already there. Your family is there. Your friends are there. Your communities are there.
That’s what makes switching so hard. But every alternative in technology started with someone willing to try. Linux challenged Microsoft. MySQL and PostgreSQL challenged established database ecosystems.
Arattai will challenge WhatsApp.
We’re not asking you to leave anything. Give Arattai a try. Tell us what you like. Tell us what we need to improve.
Because every meaningful alternative exists because someone was willing to be an early adopter.
If you believe technology should have choices, give us a chance.
We’re improving. We’re listening. And we’re not giving up.
If you want to make the most progress you've ever made in your life, you need to be alone. You need an extended period of isolation, not influenced by friends or media, spent building your future. You need space to learn, think, experiment, and fail.
Give yourself 6 months. Focus solely on the development of your mind, body, spirit, and finances. This is how you get ahead of most people.
seeing your age group having the best time of their lives while you’re at your lowest trying to figures things out - is another type of pain no one talks about.
I fucking love people who become more themselves with age. Stranger taste. Clearer boundaries. Louder laugh. Less interest in impressing random people. Watching somebody slowly stop auditioning for the world is fucking beautiful.