Samson Zhang
@wwsalmon
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✒️ words, webapps and datavis / @theyappie , past: @sacbee_news @equitylab_sac @aajavoices / they/them
los angeles
Joined February 2015
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Pinned Tweet
Goat herders prevent California wildfires. Most haven’t seen their families in years.
Americans don't want the job, which requires being on-site 24/7 w/ exception from hourly min wage, so operators bring workers from Peru for three years at a time.
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MASS ARREST OF STUDENT PALESTINE PROTESTERS AT POMONA COLLEGE IN LA RIGHT NOW.
I’m covering for student publication. Please DM me for info + media.
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3K
6K
Going through footage now. Here's the last round of police arresting students and taking them out of the building.
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Claremont Faculty for Justice in Palestine have released a statement saying they are “appalled” by the college’s actions.
“On Friday afternoon Pomona College took aggressive action against the protesters, infringing on their rights to free speech and peaceful protest.”
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PHOTOS: Pomona College called in more than 30 police officers, over a dozen in riot gear armed with shields and high-caliber crowd control weapons, to arrest 19 students who were participating in a peaceful sit-in to demand divestment on Friday, just two hours after it began.
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at Claremont Police Station now. Police are refusing to let lawyers in when they ask to see their clients.
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live - heres the jail support crowd at the Claremont Police Department.
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Police just arrested four more students, making 16 total. At least 100 students outside rallying in support.
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Here's our reporter getting forced out + window blocked from earlier in the day.
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earlier today pomona college attempted to tear down a mock apartheid wall that student organizers erected and defended for a week. they also cleared a makeshift library and tent city set up around the wall.
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Dozens of students began an occupation of President Gabi Starr’s office in response. Campus Safety locked them into the office and physically pushed one of our reporters (wearing a press vest) out, then blocked the window in.
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Police from Claremont, Pomona and La Verne departments are here. 12 students arrested so far.
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22 squad cars left Alexander Hall at Pomona for 19 students arrested total (18 for trespassing, 1 for obstruction). video muted for privacy
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Pomona College has allegedly cut swipe access for arrested and released students. A prof and others offered housing.
Still 14/19 left inside. Someone claims its all the femme people but have not verified. Everyone released so far appeared masc.
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VIDEO: Just two hours after a 19-student sit-in began on Friday, Pomona admin called 30+ officers from 5 police depts, including a dozen+ in riot gear, to arrest them for trespassing and remove them the President's office. Police also arrested one student outside the building.
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40 min later another police released five more students. Just one more inside now!
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ALUMNI JOIN POMONA DIVESTMENT PROTESTS - dozens of Pomona alumni are blocking an alumni procession with a banner that reads “[Pomona] funds genocide, divest now”
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thats a half hour more of no releases, 6 students still inside. the crowd is still going strong. someone said chanting can be heard from the holding cells.
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After more than an hour of no releases we got four! All appearing femme. 9/19 released now.
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another round of releases, 4 more students out, 13/19 released and 6 students still inside.
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PITZER COLLEGE THE LATEST TO SET UP GAZA SOLIDARITY ENCAMPMENT
right next door to Pomona College, which arrested 20 students on April 5 at a divestment sit-in, Pitzer SJP & JVP have laid down tarps and tents ahead of the school's alumni weekend.
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lmfao this video blew up and got me 6K subs in the last two weeks for some reason ??
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Two weeks ago,
@postulateapp
interviewed for
@ycombinator
. I prepped hard and the interview went smoothly, but we weren't selected.
However, the process helped us synthesize two months of learning + make our first pivot, towards creators.
A 🧵 on how it happened 👇
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Excited that
@postulateapp
was selected for a
@ycombinator
interview! @ founders who have interviewed before, any tips?
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thinking of putting together a "web dev for makers" course
go from zero to build any reasonable webapp in a few weeks. HTML, CSS, straight to NextJS frontend (React)+backend (Express) with NextAuth and MongoDB, with all real-world exercises along the way
anyone interested?
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hit 10k subs, monetized two weeks ago and have earned $70 from that one machine learning video hehe
maybe i'll make some more
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The police arrested one additional student who was standing outside of the building in support. Pomona immediately placed all arrested Pomona students on "interim suspension," depriving them of housing and access to campus.
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j sent out my 2021 in review newsletter!
along with building and writing, tons of personal growth this past year, esp re: taking ownership of my life, work, and relationships. grateful esp to
@JoinEdyfi
@TheYappie
and other friends and spaces🥰
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anyone looking for nyc housing jun-aug?
offering $1k/month room in 2-person apt on the corner of Central Park four blocks from Columbia
and me as roommate/convo+running buddy/really good cook,
@benjlaufer
and
@silennai
can testify
dm for details
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Two months ago I struggled to write blog posts.
In Jan, with the philosophy, "I haven't learned something until I publish writing about it," I wrote 20. With
@PostulateApp
, this number keeps going up.
A thread 🧵
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In top journalism award panels, judges of color still find themselves the only member of their race or ethnicity in the room.
our
@aajavoices
investigation into judge diversity, selection + impact on who receives journalism's highest honors:
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A few ppl have asked me for gap year advice
my two general principles, heavily based on
@delk
's
@JoinEdyfi
q&a:
- double down on sth, don't try to generalize/patch weaknesses
- take on more risk: crazy projects and experiences
read the scs or the post
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second in-person class of nyc web dev for makers!
(forgot to take pictures for the first class whoops)
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excited to share that my piece about pomona's class of 2025 admissions, which had significantly fewer first-gen/low-income and black students compared to prev years, won
@Calcollegemedia
Best Interactive Graphic for 2021 ✨
ya boi is now an award-winning data journalist 🤩
@wwsalmon
and
@jenna_mcmurtry
received first place for Best Interactive Graphic for a piece on the changing composition of Pomona's first-year class.
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also THIS IS HAPPENING :DDD
@pomonacollege
is paying me to make this over the summer thru a CS/media studies research grant
so if you want to be part of the pilot and learn to build webapps, fill out this form ‼️ ‼️
thinking of putting together a "web dev for makers" course
go from zero to build any reasonable webapp in a few weeks. HTML, CSS, straight to NextJS frontend (React)+backend (Express) with NextAuth and MongoDB, with all real-world exercises along the way
anyone interested?
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Excited to share that I'll be a part of the
@aajavoices
fellowship this summer along with
@omarsrashad
,
@itsyiwenlu
,
@BaharOstadan
and
@brammhi
on the investigative team!
I'm sure we'll have an amazing story to share by end of July
@aaja
convention, keep us on your radar :D
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college math class: TA went through easy problems at a snail's pace for 1.5h with students who didn't care
@JoinEdyfi
workshop by
@adithya_balaji
: implementing Bitcoin in Python, w/ math major commenting on algs and defi expert in room
"are you excited to go back to school?" 🤪
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excited to share that i'll be at
@sacbee_news
@equitylab_sac
this summer covering aapi communities through
#djnfdigital23
:D
grateful for all the learning to come! also still looking for sacramento room/housemates if anyone is around 😇
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OK HERE WE GO
IN NYC THIS SUMMER? WANT TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE WEBAPPS?
I'm running a:
4️⃣ four-week, twice-a-week
🧑💼 in-person class in Flatiron District
📆 starting June 27
💸 pilot for project-based curriculum so it's free
📣 ‼️ dm me if interested!! ‼️
thinking of putting together a "web dev for makers" course
go from zero to build any reasonable webapp in a few weeks. HTML, CSS, straight to NextJS frontend (React)+backend (Express) with NextAuth and MongoDB, with all real-world exercises along the way
anyone interested?
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New side proj: Question Journal
Asking questions you're truly curious about => meaningful learning+discovery
QJ lets you take notes centered around questions, with more features (social?) to come
Just mockups rn, but get on the waitlist as I built it:
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Light show over northern Manhattan just now? Plus distant humming?
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lil side project: semantic document viewer
ever have a paper or transcript that you know has a relevant quote but you can't find it and ctrl + f isn't helping?
semantic search (meaning, not keyword) might j do the trick
play with it:
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Back to
@postulateapp
outreach after setting up
@JoinEdyfi
Agora
pitch: notetaking for writers sucks, links/ideas get scattered. Postulate puts them in one place and makes it easy to reference them while writing.
Tag your fav newsletters/writers for me to give early access to!
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this one's a long time coming:
@postulateapp
launch to public access!
ever look for the same tutorial or doc over and over? share notes & fall into gdoc permission hell?
postulate's opinionated solution: publish gh-style personal knowledge repos.
👉
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first real project and note created in new version of
@postulateapp
!
no more scattered markdown reading notes on my desktop 😍
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hihi twitter friends i made a substack!
it's a log of what i write and build each month. a shipping log 🛳
those things include tech ideology, aapi politics, knowledge management tools, data visualization, and more
and it's pretty! pls subscribe ♥
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in many cases time-based notes are more natural than doc-based ones -- think about how easy it is to text an "essay" of thoughts to someone vs actually writing one
Threader is a notetaking app I built around this idea
check it out ~
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finally got around to rebuilding my personal website!
w up to date info and projects, cleaner styling, and switching from Jekyll to NextJS
site:
replicating jekyll's markdown-based blog in Next was fun! lil technical write-up:
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.
@postulateapp
hit 400 waitlist signups, while I've barely mentioned it for a month 😅
it's taken a backseat to some other commitments, but I'll share some updates soon, including a clearer medium-term vision, big redesigns, & semi-open access 🐶
stay 📻'd + have a sneak peek
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fall cohort of Web Dev for Makers at Claremont kicked off this weekend! 🎉
excited to see what people will build :D
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a vision for school:
students continuously creating content about their reading, learning, and thinking, shared with classmates and the world
a vibrant learning-thinking community, a continuously-produced para-curriculum connecting key texts and questions of class curricula
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happy to share that
@XuehuaiH
, Saatvik Kher & I won runner-up for Best Insight among 70+ teams at
@UCLADataFest
this weekend!
thanks to prof
@jo_hardin47
for bringing us + for the pics :D
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First contribution to
@sacbee_news
: lil datavis on
@mayacmiller
's story about patients' difficulties getting eye care as Medi-Cal reimbursement rates stagnate.
Thanks
@NathanielLevine
@EmilieStigliani
for the guidance!
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second two-hour
#TidyTuesday
visualization: popularity of top 20 US baby names since 1880!
lots more to investigate -- seems female names have shorter popularity-spans than male ones, for example -- and could be prettier, but cool to make ridgelines in d3 for the first time :D
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Late post but 45 min after last release, police released the last 6 students in quick succession. All students released now. Signing off for the night. Will process photo/video and post more later.
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yesterday I did my first
#TidyTuesday
datavis! p simple but nice to brush up on python/pandas and learn how to geomap in d3
writeup:
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bruh I wrote a few hundred words in a
@postulateapp
post, then it crashed on me (the live site! hasn't happened in a while) and I lost all of it
being your own user really heightens urgency of product work
AUTOSAVE SHIPPING ASAP Y'ALL
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two moods of using ur own app
1. wow i can’t believe how well this works and how pretty it is i’m a god for making it
2. wow i can’t believe how broken this is how have i built anything ever w my utter lack of skill
in other news new vers. of
@postulateapp
is live 🥰 more soon
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In January I quit my full-time job, moved to
@JoinEdyfi
, published 20 blog posts, built a bunch of landing pages, and made my first $10 through my software. Humble beginnings, but it's only up from here!
Check out my Jan newsletter 🤠
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happy to finally share a simple app I’ve been working on: define whatever metrics you want and make records tracking them over time
very MVP right now — charts, reminders, and other features to come
get it on TestFlight:
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📣 just published videos from the NYC WDfM pilot!
🛠 0 exp => build fullstack apps in 2.5h:
- set up IDE and dev env
- HTML & CSS (portfolio website)
- React components, state, API fetch (weather app)
- MongoDB, NextAuth backend (social media app)
👉
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Side project I hacked out yesterday: , a stupid simple + fast personal relationship manager.
Played around with terminal-y UI and keyboard-first navigation, and got - more to come here 😁
Bit rough still but go give it a spin!
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switched to iphone two days ago. observations:
- the interface is *too* pretty, had to turn on black + white to feel right
- gboard + haptic feedback feels j like android, better than ios keyboard imo
- swipe to unlock is annoying
- imessage is hella nice. now I kinda want a mac
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Thanks for the shoutout 😁
I'll plug a recent post while I'm here -- my philosophy for blogging so much: "I haven’t learned something until I’ve published writing about it." Inspired by
@philipliao_
and
@swyx
's philosophies of learning in public
Woah this kid
@wwsalmon
has crazy intellectual horsepower. Published 19 blogs this month, definitely deserves a follow
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Better late promo than never: datavis of
@pomonacollege
's class of 2025 for
@TSLnews
published last week!
made using
@idyll_lang
and d3, inspired by
@katmhuang
and
@jeffreyjshen
check it out:
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Three days of not working on finals later v0.7.0 is live! w/:
-new landing page
-mentions in posts and comments
-comment likes
-lots of refactors and bug fixes
if you want to build a habit of regular reflection w/ friends, go check it out 🤠
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Switched to
@Zeet_Co
for
@postulateapp
today and MongoDB is very happy 😛 serverless + MongoDB was a nightmare, Zeet made it super easy to deploy my project back on a server. Thanks
@_johnnydallas_
for building it 😁
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questions asked and answered are the best indicator of personal intellectual progress over time. (maybe on a collective level too?)
they also distill scattered inquiries into intentional, directional exploration.
here's what I've recently realized is on my mind:
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"If you have a co-founder, team, and a roof over your head, you're bulletproof."
@benpasternak
&:
- amount you raise => time you have to figure things out
- optimize for time freedom asap
-
@cory
does 1 random thing/wk, ex. this. Give him some good things to do!
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WeWork on weekends is so good
- no ppl so sit wherever you want
- no music playing all the time
- j wire in and work
tragic downside tho
- no coffee, but there's tea ig
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0
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my proudest to date: a
@soljourno
funded piece on the fight to protect formerly incarcerated immigrants in California from ICE from 2011 to today, w
@Katelyn_monaco
for
@TheYappie
read:
or as thread ⬇️
🚨 NEW: California's prisons transfer thousands of immigrants to ICE each year even though state law doesn't require it.
@TheYappie
's
@wwsalmon
and
@Katelyn_monaco
report on the activists who have worked since 2011 to end the practice.
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how to be very happy:
1. make a platform for social productivity updates
2.
@laurgao
implements private accounts & a bunch of ppl use the platform for sharing thoughts and memories w friends instead
3. see so much joy and meaning unfold on the platform and be thanked for it 🥰
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planning to be in SF November 23-28
1. anyone wanna meet up?
2. anyone willing to let me crash with them? 😅
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One of the most joyful things I've covered:
@homelesswrldcup
kicked off in Sac today, a street soccer cup w 400 players who exp'd homelessness from 30+ countries.
"I got a community I can rely on...if I'm feeling down I go into the field and kill it."
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The 19 students entered Pomona President Gabi Starr's office around 4 p.m. Campus Safety closed the door to the office, physically pushing a student reporter wearing a press vest out. Around 40 students subsequently entered the building, sitting and chanting in the lobby outside
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Notes don't j relate to each other via simple backlinking. They can be:
- draft => refinement
- loose notes => synthesis, i.e. blog post
- idea => nested idea, e.g. example
- idea => connection (classic backlink)
- event => time series, e.g. dev log, journal
what else?
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NEWS MEDIA: I own this footage. Please DM me for permission to use this footage. I can share higher quality direct download.
0
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scratching my webapp dev itch: built a multi-semester course planner for Claremont Colleges catalog
2
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"More goats are being used to prevent fires. Are their herders paid fairly?"
A question no major publication seriously asked before
@mathewjmiranda
@HectorJAmezcua
and my
@sacbee_news
article. Thanks
@kcrw
for having me and spotlighting the issue.
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6
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my main contribution to this was putting ben and luke on the new contrary website :P
grateful to have been part of the Edyfi journey since the beginning and excited to see what comes next!
.
@benjlaufer
and
@LukePiette
are two of the most unique doers and thinkers around. They've spent the past several years working on new kinds of educational institutions, and we're excited to formally welcome them into the fold at
@contrarycapital
today!
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it's so exciting for ppl to use the things you build. lil communities forming on w ppl I don't even know wow
on that note: opening
@postulateapp
to public sign-up by e/o next week, as I promised
@jasminexywang
and others -- hold me to it :P
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Really excited about this 😁
Using a MD editor was great for prototyping
@postulateapp
, but a more versatile/intuitive editor was always down the line.
It's amazing how nice of an editor can be quickly built, and deeply extended, using
@ianstormtaylor
+
@zbeyens
' Slate+Plugins!
Sneak peak of an improvement a long time coming: an editor on par with Notion or Medium, with drag and drop, hovering toolbars, intuitive markdown auto-formatting, and more.
Shipping this week!
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Discipline can be thought of as a relationship with yourself: develop trust by making promises and fulfilling them, as in any other relationship.
Nothing super profound but I've been doing some personal experimentation and wrote a quick piece:
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hey look it's my
@reboot_hq
debut!
some reflections on the limits of EA and effective in(altruism) as in(effective altruism)
don't plan to spend much time thinking abt EA tbh but lots of thoughtful bits in this newsletter👇
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🚀🚀🚀SZ Project Tracker has launched on PH! Thanks to
@swyx
for hunting!
💨Log projects & learning as easily as posting to Twitter
✏Write in markdown, drop images in
🌎Make projects & updates public in just a click
▶▶▶
❤
#30DaysofShipping
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Maybe obvious but useful way to think about private notes vs. published writing:
Private notes = backend
Published writing or shared reflections = frontend
Backend can have many structures and hidden layers, as can frontend, but backends must eventually serve some frontend
for a given topic there are four types of notes/writing
- sources: notes on articles, books, convos
- musings: loose observations, thoughts
- evergreens: distinct, key ideas to remember
- syntheses: combining prev into novel arguments
maybe structure to build into
@postulateapp
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late afternoon sun is so pretty, it fills me with the joy of not having imminent deadlines crushing my soul
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first content of 2022!
a summary of what i learned from classes, speakers, and friends during my first semester
@pomonacollege
mostly for my own reflection's sake but maybe you're curious abt media studies, enlightenment philosophy, or physics too :P
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and first story published in
@sacbee_news
!
From residential lots to huge open spaces, having goats graze down brush can be cheaper, better for soil, and more fun than traditional landscaping. Entrepreneurs say there's unfulfilled small-scale demand.
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