Issue 13: Mothers
Issue 13: Mothers
theory of friendship, how to be happy, must watch korean thrillers
Hello people! Welcome to Issue #13!
Sorry for the really late update! 🥲 Life caught up with us and we got behind on schedule.
Hope you still enjoy this week’s update and leave some comments below!
Life Updates
Finished an MVP of Youtube University. We will be launching on Backdrop soon!
— Ben & Wei
Music for Programming
The music here actually got me locked in. Try it yourself!
Friendship Theory of Everything
10 tenets for friendship by Ava.
You accept that in choosing who you spend time with you choose who you are.
Almost everyone who’s unhappy is unhappy because they feel isolated. The best cure for isolation is a strong friend group. So much of happiness is having someone you can get a last-minute dinner with on a Monday night, or ask to water your plants while you’re gone for a week. The opposite of loneliness, as it were.
You try your best to move to where your favorite people are. You do not agonize over whether this is, in fact, The Best City in the World. You do not Complain Relentlessly about Everything You Dislike About It. You simply suck it up and accept that if you like the people around you, everything else will work out.
You ask your friends to live close to you, though you accept that they might not want to. You say, Let’s all stay in California together. I want my kids to grow up with your kids.
When you value friendships more, they also get more fraught. I think this is what Rhaina Cohen referred to as “the problems of having community versus not having community.” When we ask for more from friendship, we also get more disappointment, conflict, mismatch. There is no such thing as closeness without friction.
Befriending people who are good communicators can make you a better communicator. Befriending people who are trustworthy makes you more trusting. Secure attachment can be a learned thing.
People will have periods when they disappear; people have times when they let you down. When you know someone for many many years you will have so many ups and downs. As with any kind of love, the most important thing is that you both keep coming back.
It’s okay to pursue and cherish romantic love, but sacrificing platonic love for it leads to disconnection and atomization.
You show up: you go to your friend’s birthday parties. You ask them to read your writing. You make an effort to make nice with whoever they date.
Your friends will change you, even in ways you initially reject. That’s a good thing. You will acquire new opinions and hobbies; you will find yourself into uncomfortable situations; you will learn to like the people they like.
Jiddu Krishnamurti on Creativity
Intercom on Starting Up
Intercom, a startup specializing in business messaging aggregates 500 of their internal blogs into a free book for anyone looking to start a company
What will you build?
How will you build it?
What will you charge?
Who should you hire?
Do culture and values matter?
How will you find your first customers?
How should you think about competitors?
What will you measure?
How will you grow?
Picasso’s Blue Period
A few artworks during Picasso’s depressed period after his best friend took his own life.
Careful Words
A thesaurus that is aesthetically pleasing and shows you dozens of other similar words, and how the word is used in many situations.
Cognitive Load for Developers
How to reduce cognitive load in your code.
Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
So many good links over here that you should explore. Some of them are even featured in this week’s newsletter.
You are What You Read
The goal of a book isn’t to get to the last page, it’s to expand your thinking.
I resonated with this a lot because even though most of the time I won’t be able to remember the exact thing that I read. But I know it’s within 1 little corner of my mind. More often than not, a couple of hours later, I remembered the thing I was searching for.
LLMs Explained for Beginner
A good explanation about LLM coming from an expert. If you are non-technical and want to know more, this is one of the best articles I came across.
Also, check out Karpathy’s Zero to Hero course on AI.
A Playground of Minimalistic Sites
If you are creating your next blog, here’s the place to get some inspiration.
How to Be Happy
A brief note on being happy and content by Scott Young. Most of us forget about being happy in the pursuit of life. Sometimes slowing down helps.
The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse
Embrace the seasons of your life.
Striving is good, but achieving is overrated.
Meet other people more than halfway.
Apologize often.
Stop listening to people who are paid to make you angry.
Look for small novelties.
Remember everything is a choice.
Dating Advice
Dating is hard. Make it less hard with this.
Recommended on Hacker News.
The two rules:
Be vulnerable.
Don’t be needy.
The three fundamentals
Having an attractive lifestyle.
Knowing how to flirt.
ACTUALLY ASKING PEOPLE OUT.
What I’m Watching
Recommended by many of my friends, I watched both of these shows - Exhuma (2024) & The Wailing (2016) which were highly-rated horror thriller movies. There were many hidden gems diving into folklore from different cultures and you need to watch closely to understand.
These are different from your usual horror movie which is filled with jumpscares so it’s actually enjoyable. It’s one of the few where after the movie, I go like ‘Damn, I need an interpretation of the meaning and holy sh*t, it’s good’.
What I’m Listening
Honestly, her voice is golden. I love her covers of various songs as well as the originals that she put out.
If you found this interesting, please share it with a friend and consider subscribing if you haven’t already.