Rahul Prabhakar

Software & Life Engineer

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

Built a thing:
Hush, a tiny macOS menu bar app for ambient noise.

White, pink, brown noise + a speech blocker. Right-click to toggle. Fully offline. No analytics. Free & open source.

https://t.co/oCvXjvA8dC

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

The great unlock exists in the delicate balance between authenticity and pro-social behaviors.

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

If you want to have more, do more, and be more.

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

@mattpocockuk sounds like the unix philosophy

https://t.co/vvtsGiG4wq

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

to improve, one must continully up the ante.

this involves pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone: taking on larger and larger projects, sprinting faster and faster, presenting to bigger and bigger crowds.

the mind and body prefer homeostasis (comfort).

once you ascend to a new level of ability, your body morphs to make this altitude easier to be comfortable in (redefining homeostasis), at which point you’ll stop improving—that is, until you up the ante again.

most adults reach a level of “good enough” where they’ve learned enough to get by—and there’s nothing wrong with that. good enough is good enough. but it’s important to know you have the option to change if you want to.

upping the ante won’t just improve you, it’ll make you feel ALIVE, your consciousness will process at a higher throughput, experience will be nutritious, you will feel satiated.

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

how to feel alive:

do hard things

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

@measure_plan just ask a local

much safer that way.

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

@joshmillerzzz @JWonggg Fair 🤝

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

@joshmillerzzz @JWonggg btw, i’m team daigo lol

but i acknowledge that all characters aren’t equal.

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

@joshmillerzzz @JWonggg i get it, but it’s not the first time we saw something that needed to be nerfed (devs pls) or broken (organizers pls)…but until it is, players need to find a way around it.

win by any means (within the accepted rules)

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

apple watch killer feature not enough people talk about.

has saved me hours of my life

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

meaning aides memory

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette

[Kpaxs @Kpaxs]

The path to a higher-order state often requires temporarily destabilizing a lower-order state.

You can't rearrange the furniture without making the room messier first. You can't refactor code without breaking some tests. You can't reorganize your knowledge without temporarily losing access to it.

The mess is the metamorphosis.

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

dark souls taught me, don’t try harder, try differently.

it’s a technique issue, not a intensity issue.

if you’re trying hard, you’re doing something wrong

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

https://t.co/0cNRV5RbST

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

hits different when you're post-30

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

red cartridge hit different

[🌵 RC | The Nostalgia Pro🕹️📺 @NostalgiaPro]

So this happened.

My wife, who’s not really into video games outside of Mario Kart, was snooping through my collection.

I wasn’t paying any attention until she let out this massive “wooooooaahhhhhhhh.” Since she’s 5 months pregnant and I’m on guard 24/7, I came running over asking what was wrong.

She looks at me dead serious and goes, “YOU HAVE KILLER INSTINCT?!?!”

Turns out she used to play it constantly with her brothers as kids. That black cartridge has been sitting front and center on my shelf for at least 2 years and she never noticed it.

Sorry guys, I’m busy this weekend. Wife wants to play Killer Instinct on the Super Nintendo.😂

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

Real people > Robots

Regardless of the quality of a service, my perception of it is disproportionally better when I'm dealing with a human.

When I go to the grocery store, I avoid self-checkout and opt for the longer line with the human cashier because it's nice to be greeted with a smile rather than another screen.

I keep my money with Fidelity because they have reliable (human) customer service agents and I don't need to go through a extensive call-tree of robots to get to them.

I prefer hotels with doorman because it signals the hotel is prioritizing the human experience over pure efficiency and cost-cutting.

There's intagible vibe shift when people are involved.
It feels more bespoke, thoughtful, and humane.

AI is cool, automation is cool, but it's hard to ignore that humans have an aura--and machines don't know how to manufacture it.

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

High agency is seeing the options you were once blind to.

[Rahul Prabhakar @oldmanrahul]

high agency = going off script

[Cate Hall @catehall]

literally yes

agency does not = working hard

high agency = accomplishing your goals with as little effort as possible, since there are endless good uses of your time and energy, and spending less of them where they’re not needed frees them up to spend somewhere else