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Aug 1
Every time I go through customs in a foreign country, I get tripped up. They ask, “Where are you coming from?” Recently, the right answer has been New Jersey. But, my natural, instinctual response is, “Kansas City.” No matter my destination, my point of origin is always the same — because I’m a Kansas-City native.

Liberalism is not the party of tolerance; conservatism is not the party of bigotry. Conservatism is not the party of reason; liberalism is not the party of impulse. Liberalism is not the party of progress; conservatism is not the party of tradition.

Most people are tolerant, reasonable, and want to progress with respect to our long-held traditions. Liberalism and conservatism are parties of very similar people who too often forget their common ground.

Liberalism is the party of possibility. Conservatism is the party of practicality. Without the one, we’d stick to the status quo, and without the other, we’d have no idea where to go.

[[The liberal asks what’s possible. The conservative asks what’s practical. Without the one, we’d stick to the status quo, and without the other, we’d have no idea where to go.]]

If you want your message to be remembered, edit it for meter as much as for meaning.

If you want your message to be memorable, edit for meter as much as for meaning.

If you want your message to be memorable, edit its meter as much as its meaning.

If you want your language to be memorable, edit for meter, not just for meaning.

Aug 2
Am I the only one who is completely uninterested in learning how to talk to a computer? Why would I read about how to prompt chat GPT when I can read a book by a human that is a 300-page distillation of their best thinking and their area of expertise?

Why would I spend time learning how to communicate with a computer when there’s still so much I have to learn how to communicate better with humans?

Make like Nature and grow. Invite change and uncertainty so that you’re open to serendipity.

“Season” is from the Latin root serere meaning “to sow.”

A season is not a stagnant phase of time or a style of nature. “Season” is a verb. It means to plant new seeds so that they may grow — to sow.

Invite the change of the seasons in your life because transitioning to new seasons is the only way to avoid stagnation.

(Don’t wait for the solstice.) Like Mother Nature, invite new seasons when you need them, and sow [now] what you want to grow.

[[Make like Nature and grow. Invite change and uncertainty so that you’re open to serendipity.]]

When you treat life as a series of seasons, success becomes synonymous with progress, and your main goal becomes the following: gracefully transition between this phase and the next.

[[Defining Success and Managing Expectations]]

Aug 3
The spring and fall are pivotal moments in the past:

• “Spring has sprung.”
• “The leaves have fallen.”

The summer energizes the present:

• “Summer is here!”
• “School is out for summer!”
• “Have a great summer!”

The winter looms large in the future:

• “Winter is coming.”
• “I can’t wait for snow!”
• “The groundhog saw his shadow; it will be a long winter.”

Aug 4
Oppenheimer Intro

I cried within the first 30 seconds of Oppenheimer.

The opening scene is a close-up of the fiery blaze of a detonated atomic bomb. Before the scene cuts to Killian Murphy’s Oppenheimer, two lines of text show up on screen.

They’re written in black, and you can only see them for their contrast agains the red and orange flames erupting in the background:

Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. / For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.

[[Oppenheimer convinced me that we will kill ourselves.]]

Aug 8
Sometimes characters in film aren’t people. Sometimes, the main character is a concept or setting.

Christopher Nolan does this with entropy, time, and dreams in :

• Tenet
• Interstellar and Memento
• Inception

James Cameron does this with Pandora in Avatar.

Even when these movies have too much exposition, a weak plot, or shallow character development, they still work because they’re depicting things that can only be represented in the cinema.

A movie isn’t just a script. It’s a movie.

The direct contrast to this is Quinten Tarantino. His movies are scripts firsts, then films.

I dream because I am human. I am human because I dream.

Aug 9
Perfectionism is pathological. It’s the compulsion to chase an illusion: perfect.

Relationships are meant to supplement your individuality, not supplant it.

Aug 10
A Logical Argument for a Dream-Like Afterlife

• There is no perceptual difference between the waking state and the dreaming state (in non-lucid dreams).
• In a dream, you identify only with yourself, even though the world you’re experiencing is a world you’re simultaneously creating.
• You can have dreams within a dream.
• You recognize that you are dreaming when you come out of a dream, not when you drift into it.
• There is no way for you to prove that the entire physical, waking world does not exist purely in your imagination, like a dream.
• When you die in a dream (or right before you die), you wake up.

Therefore: Death could be the event that shakes us awake from our parent dream and reveals that we are not a single snowflake in a blizzard but the entire storm, the sea, and the stars.

Aug 11
Inbox zero? Why? That means that anyone with your email can add a task to your to-do list.

Aug 13
Group Discussion Framework

When you chime into a group discussion, you’re either building on or branching from what has been said. If you are doing neither, that’s called a monologue.

Aug 14
There is a certain feeling I get when I have copied something but haven’t pasted it – may be a block of text or a webpage URL.

That is an open loop. The feeling you get when that loop is open, when you have copied but not yet pasted, is what you want to avoid. The more time you spend in that headspace of open loops, the less time you spend in the headspace of thinking about the always-open circle.

Open loops are unsolved problems. The open circle represents the open and unanswerable questions of life. There are solutions to every problem in the world, but there are not answers for every question in your head.

[[Closed Loops and an Open Circle]]

There are two valid reasons to compare yourself to others:

1. To find gratitude in your situation by comparing your hardships to others’
2. And to reassure yourself of your character and morality by comparing your worst deeds others’.

Of course, in the latter case, you risk justifying your wrong doings. And in the former case, you risk gaslighting yourself. But what you risk in these exercises you gain even more for the gratitude and self-esteem they bring.

Keep your comparisons tame, but don’t dismiss them as wholly unproductive or unhealthy.

Aug 15
It’s unnatural to be unchanging.

Claims and Evidence

When writing essays, you can generally think of there being two types of ideas: claims and evidence.

If you want your argument to be cohesive and clear, your reader must know — for each idea — whether it is a new claim or evidence for a claim.

If you want your argument to be convincing, your reader must agree that each of your claims have sufficient evidence.

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When writing essays, you can generally think of you having two types of ideas: claims and evidence for your claims. If you want your argument to be cohesive and clear, your reader must know, for each idea, whether it is a claim or evidence.

Writers, think of yourself like a park ranger who’s building a hiking trail. You don’t hold the hiker’s hand as they go, but you do give them a clear path to follow on their own — so that they don’t get lost.

Aug 16
Your first draft maps out the road. Revision paves the road (for others).

Your first draft is a dirt road. Through Revision, you pave the road and make it accessible to others.

Your first draft is a gravel road. Revision paves the road and makes your ideas accessible to others.

You were made to be misunderstood. (We contain multitudes.)

[[Emerson’s Understanding]]

By hoping, you are subordinating the present to the future. Why hope for something better? What could be better than this?!

The only life-affirming manifestation of hope is faith in the unbounded potential of the present moment. Hope that what you are doing will lead to good things, but don’t hope for good things to come.

Aug 17
The dark side of gratitude is complacency. The dark side of ambition is dissatisfaction.

Aug 20
Match the rigor of your writing to your reader’s stamina. At the start of an essay or book chapter, don’t lead with an easy, fluffy anecdote. While your reader is fresh, lead with a challenging concept, an intriguing question, or your thesis.

(It’s like doing your hardest lift at the start of your workout.)

Then, make a four-course meal out of that initial idea. And don’t forget to serve dessert.

Aug 21
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Do the things at which you are great, not those you were never made for.”

My revision: “Do the things at which you are great, not those for which you were never made.”

• Parallel structure
• Not ending with prepositions
• Emphasizing the right elements/phrases at the beginning and end of the sentence.

Aug 22
Morality Requires Faith

There is a faith required to live a moral life, but not a faith in God. To have a sound morality, you must have the following faith: “I have the necessary faculties to discern right from wrong, and I have the duty to uphold in the world what I deem to be just.”

Aug 25
Your first draft generates a bunch of potentially related ideas — like a pile of building blocks on the floor.

During revision, you sift through those ideas and make them click together like Lego bricks.

Aug 27
A man so domesticated that the dog trains him

Aug 29
Conservatives think that progress comes from the movements of the free market. Liberals think that progress comes from policy.

They’re both right. Social progress comes primarily from policy, then implicitly from economic freedom and access to quality education. Material progress comes primarily from the free market and can be accelerated by stimulus policy.

[[The liberal asks what’s possible. The conservative asks what’s practical. Without the one, we’d stick to the status quo, and without the other, we’d have no idea where to go.]]

Don’t give it any credit. It isn’t doing shit. All it’s doing is reading and rewording what humans have written.

**AI is not thinking; it’s strategically regurgitating. **