If you want to get an idea of what the book is all about, Taleb has posted several chapters and excerpts on Medium. Here’s one of them, on “The Logic of Risk Taking”:
I also use my Kindle for reading fiction, but not for non-fiction.
My holdup with non-fiction is that I find that the experience of reading a physical book helps me learn more effectively. I can write in the margins, underline, and dog ear pages. I can flip back and forth to reference previous chapters or notes, based on the visual cue of those markings and folds. And all of these books are mine forever, for me to reference years later.
I’m sure eBook readers will continue to get better and better, but for non-fiction books I plan to reference in the future, a physical book will be hard experience for eBook readers to beat.
I first used swirl while taking several of the R Coursera courses from Hopkins. While the courses were fantastic, swirl was how I learned the material to be able to complete the assignments and projects.
I highly recommend using swirl if you're just getting into R.
Thank you for the heads up! I just reached out to volunteer.
On a related note, it would be fantastic to have a resource to discover research volunteer opportunities like this. It's almost impossible to find these types of research projects without having someone tip you off!
This reminds me of Season 4 of The Wire where Colvin runs a special classroom for the "corner kids" and sees promising results.
One of the big differences is that in The Wire they mentioned that high school kids weren't going to be impacted as much as the middle school kids they ended up doing the program with. This program seems to focus on high school, which is interesting (and exciting).
I think puls meant that Pennsylvania is a big state in the sense that Philadelphia is considered to be a part of the east coast while Pittsburgh (home of Carnegie Mellon) is often considered to be a part of the midwest.
In that sense, Pennsylvania is a big state. Perhaps "wide" is a better descriptor.
Pittsburgh is kind of a buffer between the east coast and the midwest. Architecturally, it feels more like an east coast city, but culturally it feels more midwestern.
The first thing I thought about while reading the article was minimalist classical music, like Philip Glass.
I think Glass does the repetitive/unexpected thing exceptionally well, though it's often subtle.
If you're already familiar with Glass (or if you like Beck) you might want to check out Beck's song from Rework, an album of remixed Glass: https://soundcloud.com/dunvagenmusic/nyc-73-78
It's repetitive, but has enough of the unexpected mixed in to make it a stimulating listen.
In a similar vein, I almost always have my phone set to silent without vibrate. This small change has made a huge difference in my interaction with my phone. I reach for it less and just generally think about it less.
The downside is people are sometimes annoyed at me not reacting to calls/messages immediately. I should probably experiment with the iOS Do Not Disturb feature, but it hasn't been too big of an issue so I've put it on the back burner.
The article discusses how Germany's middle class manufacturing jobs are booming while the United States is seeing a major decline in that demographic.
There's a comment after the article by 'LaughingTarget' that touches on a lot of great points but I wanted to bring up this specifically:
> For example, if an accountant is hired at BMW is classified as a manufacturing employee while an accountant in an accounting firm supporting Tesla Motors is classified as a service employee.
Classification of jobs matters, and the article's analysis of manufacturing jobs between Germany and the US seems like an apples to oranges comparison.
> Culture is not a good or bad thing. It’s a shared thing. I sometimes hear people say “they aren’t a culture fit” as if it’s a bad thing, or others feel bad pointing this out as if it’s an indictment on someone’s character. It’s not. I am not a culture fit at probably any other company, which is why I had to help start one!
This (which is one of Brian's notes in the article) is one of the best ways to think about culture that I've encountered. A company can't have "good" culture or "bad" culture. It just has a certain shared way of doing things that may or may not vibe with you.
On a related note, Tony Hsieh of Zappos believes what your culture is doesn't matter as much as having a strong identity. Just figure out who you, as a company, are and the rest will follow:
"...one of the really interesting things I found from the research is that it actually doesn’t matter what your values are, what matters is that you have them and that you align the organization around them. And the power actually comes from the alignment not from the actual values"[1]
I get stressed out when I don't know what I need to do. A combination of scheduling appointments and writing down everything I need to get done dramatically increases my productivity by removing the "oh shit, I know I have to do something but I can't remember what it is" moments.
I agree with Jeff about the fact you should know the top three things you need to do each day, but lower priority items can - and do - find a way to slip through the cracks without some kind of to do list.
I thought this was an insightful look at Elon Musk, the man. It looks like his eyes are actually tearing up when discussing the NASA contract.
Another area of the interview I found telling was when Musk described 2008 and how he essentially lost all his money, got divorced, and almost faced a nervous breakdown. Musk isn't some billionaire playboy, he's a brilliant man with the conviction to take bold risks that could change the world and he's experienced the highs and lows of that journey. I'll admit I was a Musk fan before watching this interview, but now I'm even more impressed with him.
Here’s an example config: https://github.com/earendil-works/gondolin/blob/main/host/ex...