Rahul (@ 🏡)

Geek.Tinkerer. UNIX, cloud, automation, DevOps. Dad. IPv6&More Author Work@

[Rahul (@ 🏡) @RahulSen]

@SoBrunswickPD This is all well and good. Thanks for keeping us safe! However the general impression in our community (PW Preserve) is that quarry truckers on Promenade Blvd who overspeed and violate laws all the time get a pass. Hope enforcements treat everyone equally.

[Rahul (@ 🏡) @RahulSen]

@NWSWPC Can we fix this with a sharpie ?

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

The brain is our hardware
Human nature is our OS
Culture is our software
Memory is our hard drive
Knowledge is our data
Language is our internet

[Rahul (@ 🏡) @RahulSen]

Was that an #earthquake?

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

An idea I can't stop thinking about...

Solomon's Paradox (and how to escape it):

In the Old Testament, King Solomon was known for his incredible wisdom. He was considered one of the wisest men who ever lived.

But King Solomon's life was quite a mess:

• Hundreds of wives and partners
• Obsession with money and wealth
• Absent relationship with son and children

In short, King Solomon was great at giving advice, but terrible at taking that same advice into account in his own life.

This story gave a name to a common psychological phenomenon:

When we provide clear, rational perspectives and advice to others, but are unable to provide those same quality perspectives to ourselves, we are falling victim to Solomon's Paradox.

We've all been stuck in Solomon's Paradox at one point or another.

Why? Well, it's quite simple, really:

When you're considering someone else's problems, you are objective, rational, and balanced.

When you're considering your own problems, you are emotional, irrational, and volatile.

It's not your fault—you're human, after all!

Two core strategies to escape:

Strategy 1: Create Space

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian philosopher and Holocaust survivor renowned for his contributions to existential psychology, has a brilliant framing for the power of space:

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response."

Pause: Our immediate reactions are almost always emotional, and we make bad decisions in the heat of emotion. Force a pause (whether it's seconds, minutes, hours, or days) before reacting.

Reset: Allow yourself to feel the emotional response, but remind yourself that you are in control of what comes next. Give yourself that power.

Engage: With a more balanced perspective, engage with the situation.

Strategy 2: Zoom Out

A rule for life: When in doubt, zoom out.

You live your entire life zoomed in. This can create challenges, as struggle feels bigger than it really is and growth feels smaller than it really is.

Forced zoom outs provide perspective, on the true nature of your struggles and the impressive nature of your growth.

​Mental Time Travel is a useful tool for zooming out:

Imagine yourself in the past and consider yourself in the present.

Imagine yourself in the future and consider yourself in the present.

This zoom out forces perspective that breathes new life into a situation.

***

To fight back against Solomon's Paradox:

Create space and force new perspective.

The right questions (and answers) will come to you.

[Rahul (@ 🏡) @RahulSen]

@kelseyhightower It was GREAT listening to you and meeting you in person ! Your ability to inspire tech people by succinctly packaging a complex idea in a well-timed, pithy sentence is phenomenal.

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

I've been watching the show Alone and noticing that I constantly wince watching the contestants (survival experts stranded in a harsh wilderness) kill animals or even cut down trees. I wince because modern society keeps me so well insulated from how the sausage that is my comfortable life is made.

For the people on Alone, there's a gravity to every meal—a mix of gratitude, sadness, responsibility. When an animal they killed rots before they eat it, they feel a profound sense of guilt. By insulating us from unpleasantness, society also insulates us from guilt, accountability, and gratitude.

There's an irony to it. If things ever get apocalyptic, the very people who will be wincing the hardest seeing the realities of life up close will be those who felt the least guilt about it back when things were good.

[Rahul (@ 🏡) @RahulSen]

Join X! Where the symbol to open the app AND close the app is same.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

America: we are dropping AP math and science because being in the 1% of STEM is divisive and hurtful to others.

Also America: here’s umpteen ways you can spend money and time trying to be in the 1% of a sport that likely has no bearing on your future.

These priorities are fucked up.

[Rahul (@ 🏡) @RahulSen]

@Tesla not allowing FSD transfer to a new car *IF* FSD was added on later. Transfer is allowed only if FSD was bought with the car. This makes no sense @elonmusk. Not buying FSD with the car has been the prudent thing to do to stay inside federal tax refund cutoff!

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

There’s a tiny chance I died this morning and the person writing this tweet is a clone of the former me. Let me explain.

I once wrote a post called “What Makes You You” (won’t link here because then the Twitter algo will bury the post but you can google the title if you want). In the post I talked about how weird it is once you start really thinking about the concept of “you.” When you look at a childhood photo of yourself, it’s you—but why? The physical cells in that kid’s body have been recycled and are no longer in you. But it’s still you right?

But then there’s Derek Parfit’s famous teletransporter experiment, where hypothetical future people travel instantly from, say, Boston to London, by going into a machine in Boston that scans the atomic structure of their body while also destroying that structure and simultaneously reforming it across the ocean. Successfully “teletransported,” they go on with their day in London.

But one day, the machine that’s supposed to scan and destroy your atoms in Boston fails to destroy them. After the scan, Boston You is still intact. The technicians tell you that this happens sometimes and it has an easy fix: they take you to a different, non-malfunctioning machine and obliterate your body there instead. They show you a video of London You walking happily out of the facility and assure you that the transfer worked as normal and they just have to complete the “destroy Boston You’s body” part.

But now Boston You is horrified because it feels like London You is a totally different person and that if they destroy your body, you’ll actually be DYING. And if so, who cares if there’s a clone of you walking around somewhere—you’ll be dead! When I wrote about this in that post, I knew exactly where I stood: I would never use a teletransporter.

But childhood me is also made of different atoms than current me. So what makes that different from the teletransporter? Perhaps it’s continuity of consciousness—something broken during teletransportation but not during aging.

Back to today. I had a minor surgery this morning (removal of a lipoma on my back, all went well), which required general anesthesia. One minute I’m chatting with the doctor, the next I’m hearing “Tim? Tim?” as they rouse me out of my haze three hours later in a different room. Deeply bizarre.

A friend of mine is scared of general anesthesia because he worries that the break in continuity might mean that Pre-Surgery You actually dies during the procedure and a different you—a clone—wakes up on the other side. Similar logic, he says, to why he’d never agree to teletransportion, even if he knew the machine would work correctly.

These were the fun thoughts I was having as they hooked up the IV and prepared to knock me out. My friend’s theory, and the teletransporter thought experiment, swirled through my head as I accepted that I couldn’t exactly prove that I was not about to die. But it was also weird—even a tiny chance that this was true should have absolutely freaked me out and made me say NOPE—forget it. Let’s skip it. Not remotely worth the risk.

But that’s not how I felt. I was like, “well, whoever does wake up on the other side will feel like me, and to that future me it’ll feel like it was a simple procedure and nothing more.” And the question of whether that person who wakes up will be current me or not just didn’t seem that important.

As I type this, of course, it’s no longer relevant. Either I’m the same me as before, or he’s dead and I’m the clone. As the clone, this is perfectly fine by me. In fact, I only have a chance to live because previous me is gone. Amazing turn of events!

But the fact that previous me didn’t really care either—it’s making me rethink how I feel about the teletransporter experiment and about the self in general. If the future really has teletransporters, might I and other people happily use them, even though we’re all aware of the “Is that just a clone of me in London?” question?

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

Walk like you have *4,000* ancestors behind you.

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

30 years ago there was no internet and everything functioned fine. If it vanished today it would cause a global meltdown.

We talk about the existential risk of new technologies, but it may be the sudden loss of one that does us in. The more magical the world, the more fragile.

[Stephen Orban @stephenorban]

My latest blog on what we're up to with migrations @googlecloud https://t.co/wQBjK2EI6K

[Rahul (@ 🏡) @RahulSen]

When do you know a company has grown too big ? When a partially visible notification flashes on your phone from said company and you wonder if your toilet paper has shipped or if your Kubernetes cluster has crashed.

[Rahul (@ 🏡) @RahulSen]

@chloecole @VivekGRamaswamy I was starting to like the guy ... but then he shows up at the NRA and also wants to distribute guns to every Taiwanese household. What ????? Next !

[Rahul (@ 🏡) @RahulSen]

@krassenstein I am with her on this.

[Prof. Feynman @ProfFeynman]

1. Never stop learning.
2. See failure as a beginning.
3. Teach others what you know.
4. Assume nothing, question everything.
5. Analyze objectively.
6. Practice humility.
7. Respect constructive criticism.
8. Love what you do.
9. Give credit where it's due.
10. Take initiative.

[Rahul (@ 🏡) @RahulSen]

@Jason The new #ozempic model ?

[CyberbeastForSale.com @TeslaTruckClub]

Perfect example of why I make a big deal about FSD not slowing quickly enough:
I was going 41 in 35. I scrolled speed to 25 100+ yards before the speed limit sign. It was still going 36 right as I approached the sign so I braked to disengage.

Would have been pulled over for sure