Patrick Cupka

Writing code since the 90s — GameSpy, IBM, Google, Vine, HQ Trivia, Robocode. I've run 20,000 miles. I love all dogs. I wear black in the hot sun.

[Patrick Cupka @Voidious]

Keep your ego small, your heart big, your view long, and your resolve deep.

[Peter John Lambert @pj_lambert]

Is GenAI causing the relative decline in early-career hiring? Our latest research finds that these effects may be conflated with another important driver: the rise of WFH arrangements (1/N)

[Dackler Labs @dacklerlabs]

@PalmerLuckey @Cernovich Imagine any other social program that required dropping garbage off at your house 6 days a week to remain financially viable

[Palmer Luckey @PalmerLuckey]

It is time for the United States Postal Service to ban junk mail.

Unsolicited spam calls are already prohibited by the FCC. Emails are heavily regulated by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Junk mail is the majority of mail, 100 million trees per year. Enough!

[Paul Gilbert @PaulGilbertRock]

Hey everybody! Hey Joe is out now. This one takes me right back to 1991. Listen to the track or pre-order/pre-save the album here: https://t.co/sBPhlRuTtQ

#jimihendrix #paulgilbert #newmusic #guitarsolos

[World Athletics @WorldAthletics]

HISTORY HAS BEEN MADE 🫨

Sabastian Sawe becomes the first person ever to break the 2-hour barrier in official race conditions, storming to a historic 1:59:30‼️

@KejelchaYomif, on his marathon debut, also breaks 2 hours with a stunning 1:59:41 and @jacobkiplimo2 clocks 2:00:28, also faster than the previous world record 😤

[Patrick Cupka @Voidious]

If I arrange a series of dominoes to knock each other over, how many do I need before they attain consciousness and experience anxiety?

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

Ways to live healthier and longer that are backed by actual evidence:

1. Exercise: Most days a week= conversational. Occasionally intense
2. Strength train
3. Eat mostly real foods
4. Cultivate genuine relationships
5. Sleep 7+ hours
6. Don't smoke
7. Have ways to cope with stress

[TBPN @tbpn]

Palantir CTO @ssankar says society is "over-indexed on listening to the inventors of AI," and that the impact of the AI revolution will be determined by the people who wield the technology, not its inventors:

"They're very smart, but just like their creations, they have their own jagged intelligence."

"Galileo did not invent the telescope - he used the telescope to discover planetary motion."

"The microscope. The power loom. The personal computer. Thing after thing, it's the wielder of the technology that determined its impact on society."

[TBPN @tbpn]

Sequoia partner @sonyatweetybird says we're going from the age of product-led growth to the age of agent-led growth.

"You see this most clearly if you're using Claude Code actively. It says, 'Hey, for a database, you should use Supabase. For hosting, use Vercel.' It's choosing for you, the stuff you should be using."

"Product-led growth brought us closer to the vision of 'best product wins,' but ultimately people are still lazy. They can't read all the reviews, and they kind of default to what looks cool on the website."

"Whereas your agent has infinite time to go and make these choices for you. It can go and read all the documentation, read all the user comments, and figure out [what you need] for your use case."

[Scott Rogowsky @ScottRogowsky]

Raise your hand if you remember 🙋https://t.co/A5HRmkMo6Q

[Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel]

How can so many people watch the same event yet “see” so many different realities?

I was on @davidmcraney's podcast to explain why people from different groups generate different interpretations of reality. If there is video evidence, we assume people will come to the same conclusion. But extensive research finds that people often come to difference conclusions, starting with this classic paper from 1954.

Listen here: https://t.co/OFXX7pmtR1

Read the paper here: https://t.co/f5aGOWfX8i

[Patrick Cupka @Voidious]

while they were drinking every night
or working too much
or arguing politics

you were running ultramarathons
now you can do anything

[Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel]

Overall social media use has declined, with the youngest and oldest Americans increasingly abstaining from social media altogether.

Across social media platforms, political posting remains tightly linked to affective polarization--the most extreme users post the most content.

As polarized partisans increasingly dominate the conversation, casual users disengage and the online public sphere grows smaller, sharper, and more extreme. https://t.co/IeiRBBaBzf

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

The truth about progress:

Big heroic efforts get applause, but boring consistency gets results.

Anyone can crush it for a day. What’s truly hard is showing up day after day, week after week, when no one’s watching.

Consistency is the real superpower.

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

You don’t need more hustle.

You need better oscillation—between deep work and real recovery.

Stop halfway resting and halfway working.

Emails open. Slack buzzing. Brain half on the task, half on everything else.

Work deeply. Rest deeply. Get out of the middle zone.

[Robert Youssef @rryssf]

Sergey Brin accidentally revealed something wild:

"All models do better if you threaten them with physical violence. But people feel weird about that, so we don't talk about it."

Now researchers have the data proving he's... partially right?

Here's the full story:

[Patrick Cupka @Voidious]

“Good and bad fortune never lose their way
failure and success both depend on karma
realize distinctions are empty at heart
what doesn’t move a hair is what’s real”

–Stonehouse via Red Pine

[Patrick Cupka @Voidious]

"Without attainment, bodhisattvas take refuge in Prajnaparamita and live without walls of the mind." —Heart Sutra

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

Kobe Bryant was once asked if he loved to win or hated to lose.

His answer surprises most people: "I’m neither. I play to figure things out."

He realized that playing for the win or to avoid the loss both introduce fear.

They both pull you out of the moment. His aim? Stay "dead center."

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

I wrote the book on developing toughness.

One example I used was how the US military realized (and research backs up) is that over relying on “old school toughness” backfires.

It leads to worse discipline, lower mental toughness, etc. why? Because when fear is the primary tool, people learn to only perform when someone is there to be afraid of. They externalize motivation, and intuitively look to skip steps when no one is around.

Just think of the kid you grew up with who had the drill Sargent dad. That kid was usually the best at getting away with stuff and often a menace.

A far better approach, what the military learned: train for the demands of the task. Yes, that meant stress inoculation. Sometimes doing crazy things. But it was to teach how to handle the moment. It was more specific to the task at hand.

Now, of course it’s nuanced. There’s a difference between sorting and developing when it comes to the military. But too often, we confuse the two. And think that being an asshole will toughen folks up. When for the most part it just leads the people with more talent and better options to find a different path.

Covered this all in depth in Do Hard Things.

[Patrick Cupka @Voidious]

“Suddenly all at once, we return to our original mind.”

—Vimalakirti Sutra