Issue 2: Luminary
Issue 2: Luminary
on reading well, why we're burnt out, and increasing your surface area of luck
We’re back.
We’re starting Luminary in Kuala Lumpur, inspired by Socratica.
If you’re in KL, join us!
[art] #002 Observational Drawing - by Charlotte Durance
Capture moments in your day by drawing.
65 Words: Write daily in your target language
time.fyi - all the time-related tools in one place
Publishing your work increases your luck
Luck = [Doing Things] * [Telling People]
Whatever you’re excited about, be excited about it publicly.
Projects outside of work are a good place to dive into your curiosity.
If you want to make a thermal receipt printer that prints GitHub issues, you should.
If you want to turn a prefabricated shed into an office, go for it.
If you want to go all in on an SVG drawing tool, do it.
If you want to write tens of thousands of words about the infrastructure of modern money, that’s a newsletter.
Whom We Love and Who We Are: José Ortega y Gasset on Love, Attention, and the Invisible Architecture of Our Being
“There are situations, moments in life, in which, unawares, the human being confesses great portions of his ultimate personality, of his true nature. One of these situations is love. In their choice* of lovers [human beings] reveal their essential nature. The type of human being which we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.”
Heroku Values
Make it real
Ideas are cheap. Make a prototype, sketch a CLI session, draw a wireframe. Discuss around concrete examples, not hand-waving abstractions. Don't say you did something, provide a URL that proves it.
Reading well
How to actually read properly and appreciate fiction. Writing good summary is also another holy process in completing a book.
Careful descriptions and summaries miss too much of the world. Hard distinctions make bad philosophy. Reading fiction helps you become an unsystematic thinker, something that is equally valuable but more elided by some engineers. It is easy to maintain an intellectual rigidity. It takes more care to maintain a loose poeticism of thought.
Template for book summary
In 1-2 sentences, what is the book about as a whole?
What are the 3-4 central questions it tries to answer?
Summarize the answers in one paragraph each.
What are the most important things you have learned personally?
Open Source Outdoor Fitness Tracker
Track your fitness but without being tied to any particular provider
Web Design Museum
Discover old school web design.
Watching
Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society.
What burnout really means. And a different way of looking at depression. Not just as a personal issue, or a biomedical issue, but as a social result of the pressure to achieve.
Sahil Bloom recently released daily wisdom done during his cold dip. Plenty of gold nuggets to listen to.