Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp

Venkatesh Rao ☀️

@vgr

473 Following
117944 Followers
Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Lots of cope in this memo “Before long, Harris’ “honeymoon” will end and voters will refocus on her role as Biden’s partner and co-pilot.” Trumpies underestimating the extent to which Biden’s unpopularity was due to sheer age and Clinton-Obama baggage rather than his admin’s policies. Harris is still likely to lose but her polling gains are real, not a transient sugar high. https://cdn.nucleusfiles.com/9f/9f5bada8-1641-4603-83ad-2e5ef9c481fb/7-23-24-harris-honeymoon.pdf
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
The evolution of my project management technique over the lifecycle of a project https://xkcd.com/1066/
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Eee https://media.tenor.com/tMWnrxFLU1wAAAAC/jonah-hill-yay.gif
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Apparently GenZ likes to crochet? Iirc millennials were knitting in like 2009 https://www.exeterenigma.com/nonfiction/2024/2/3/subtly-subversive-is-crochet-gen-zs-answer-to-punk
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Excellent 8-bit Donald Duck
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Well… https://bricknerd.com/home/barely-legal-building-lego-with-dubious-connections-7-2021
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Lego is the matlab of physical design Zero mucking around with configurations and environments. Just fire it up and go, most things are intuitive and don't need any/much lookup, and for the few things that do, there is excellent documentation. Zero code/low code is actually a bullshit engineering goal. What you want is zero/low configuration. Coding is actually easy, even for lay people, once you give them a design language that's fit to the domain in a way that draws on intuitions. Nobody really needs to be "taught" the syntax or grammar of Lego. It is self-evident. It is configuration that is a nightmare, and if you can get it to zero, you have a winning engineering dev environment.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Analog, power, and RF electronics feels like a dark art compared to digital electronics, which feels like midwit ocd nerd stuff. Something badass about anything where entropy enters at the design stage in a very fundamental way.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Futuristic drone war is here. It’s just unevenly distributed. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cne4vl9gy2wo
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Fireside chats are bullshit
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
You don’t have to stop making meaning you just can’t make it here I suggest shelbyville
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Nothing personal but I’m going to throw something at the next person who uses the phrase “meaning-making”
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
So I’m building this kit of a tuxedo cat because my wife got it into her head that she wanted it. She doesn’t want to build it, just have it. Not a type of kit I’d ever have bought myself since it’s almost entirely about aesthetics and smooth surfaces with uninteresting mechanics. But there are some interesting insights here on how to construct curves and non orthogonal angles out of Lego parts. But it’s mostly a tedious kit. https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/tuxedo-cat-21349
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
This diagram based on How to Disagree was what made me mostly tune out Paul Graham. Ironically, people’s filters are actually a solid basis for tuning your own. This is a filter model for the powerful-but-overwhelmed pretending to be a reasonable discourse model for truth-seeking. A consent manufacturing funnel that eventually ossifies into a reality distortion field and then decays into a charismatic epistemology (see linked thread). I rarely descend to the lower levels, but consider a dash of name-calling a reliable indicator of a real signal. But I don’t care enough to actively disagree with people who feel the need for unilateral rules of engagement. And to be fair, once someone has installed such a filter, I’m not a particularly useful person to talk to for them either. So no loss. But yeah, this is why I give the “civil debate” crowd a wide berth. I’m a fairly civil person but have never had a useful “civil debate” in my life. https://x.com/vgr/status/1421268674313220102
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
This will influence the nerd vote https://bsky.app/profile/xkcd.com/post/3kxvvmuapku2x
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Your periofic reminder that there is an active supervolcano around https://x.com/US_Stormwatch/status/1815824286562558358
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Found on X
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
So this is going to be the basket-of-deplorables vs childless-cat-ladies election I take it 🤔
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
The only person missing in this fine lineup of Extraordinary Visionary Future Leaders is Jim Cramer. Damn the Bitcoin ecosystem is beyond redpilled. https://b.tc/conference/2024/speakers
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Here’s a brilliant idea: Reddit amitheasshole type forums but with zk proofs that the story is real How could this be done Or maybe it’s a dumb idea because no real stories would be as creative
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