After reading about the default mode network here a few times recently, I think missing out on all that critical "daydreaming" time is a bigger problem. I've stopped listening to things while I'm out walking, and I've noticed a lot more solutions and ideas coming to me. The DMN seems to fall into a similar area as meditation (remember when that was all the rage among tech leaders?); the lowered input noise gives the brain time to clear things out.
Sounds like the "Penfield Mood Organ"[0] from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Characters "dial" emotions, from basic to extremely specific (e.g. "481. Awareness of the manifold possibilities open [...] in the future", or "888 [...] The desire to watch TV, no matter what's on it")
>Fawns/calves/... can walk almost as soon as they are born. It takes humans far longer to learn that.
Humans are helpless at birth because we have big brains and walk upright. Which means narrower hips which means we need to be born before the brain is fully developed.
Fantastic book. I read it for the first time about a year ago but I still think about it once every week or two. Thought about it as soon as the "spaceship" started to accelerate towards light speed.
The SponsorBlock [0] addon has already solved that for sponsored/ad segments in videos. Rather than AI, crowdsourced timestamps lets it automatically skip past adverts.
As do most people who quote the 10,000 hours thing. Gladwell greatly simplified K. Anders Ericsson's work [0]. Most people just read Gladwell's catchy headline and miss the point. Doing something over and over != deliberate practice. In Ericsson's words:
>Expert performance can, however, be traced to active engagement in deliberate practice (DP), where training (often designed and arranged by their teachers and coaches) is focused on improving particular tasks. DP also involves the provision of immediate feedback, time for problem-solving and evaluation, and opportunities for repeated performance to refine behavior.
Nice to see this again. Such a clear breakdown of a complex topic, presented beautifully.
Tangentially related, the documentary The Watchmaker's Apprentice [0] is a captivating look at the dedication it takes to create a mechanical watch. It's amazing that it's possible for a single person to craft each tiny cog and spring from scratch and put it all together.
Not sure if they're being serious, but there's what looks like a "3" on a distant air-con unit, next to left-most tree. If your viewport is narrow you might not see it [0]
Switched from Goodreads to StoryGraph to escape Amazon’s nonsense a while back. Felt like it was missing a few things and found Hardcover recently, and I haven’t looked back.
I don’t really use the social features of these apps, so I’m more interested in the progress tracking and recommendations: I can’t think of any other apps that are working on “AI” recommendations, which so far have been pretty good.
Adam’s email updates are refreshingly non-corporate. Interesting, technical, and honest (he often discusses Hardcover’s finances).
I have an account for my game dev projects on https://mastodon.gamedev.place/ and it's a great community for that kind of stuff. People tend to stay on topic: the local feed is almost exclusively videogame related updates, and it's all very positive.
