I read about Steven Wolfram’s personal infrastructure. He develops his approach to just about everything using the tools that he built. I’m guessing this approach works great for building Wolfram as a giant feedback loop but not directly transferable to others.

Some of the ideas I liked were combining emails and notebooks as primary sources for working on various projects. The starting point and rallying point for all his work are notebooks though.

Over the years, I’ve accumulated over a hundred thousand notebooks, representing product designs, plans, research, writings, and, basically, everything I do. All these notebooks are ultimately stored in my filesystem (yes, I sync with the cloud, use cloud files, and file servers, etc.) And I take pains to keep my filesystem organized—with the result I can typically find any notebook I’m looking for just by navigating my filesystem, faster than I could formulate a search for it.

He files them all manually using a simple strategy of active vs archive laid out as projects. The filenames themselves are ordered but that’s about the extent of the filing schema.

That seems like a more useful way of organizing things (what am I trying to do? or what am I trying to answer?) rather than generic buckets of “work”, “personal”, and “refile” like I use. Maybe it’s time to start bucketing things more intentionally (though for org-roam, I’ll stick with structure notes for that) and stop worrying about cross listing.

He also talks about writing in notebooks, mixing them with screen captures and sometimes running computations in them. This reminds me of org-mode and using org-babel to evaluate code and display the results in the document (or even in-line using org-macros).

There is an extensive indexing system he uses for personal search. This includes emails and notebooks, which again, seems very useful than the disjointed experience most of us have because our digital lives are siloed. He seems to have solved that for himself and building a company to do it (half joking).

Then there is a personal dashboard that serves as a jumping off point between all of his resources that he revisits many times per day. I find that using org-agenda for work is starting to serve a similar role (for example, listing goals as well as tasks).

It’s surprising how much selling happens by sending follow-up emails. We all lead busy lives (for better or worse) and a well-timed nudge can result in a sale. I would estimate that this single behavior generates billions of dollars of revenue per year.

See also:

• A third of sales comes from doing nothing at all but some persistence is still required.
• One of the problems with founder-led sales is that founders juggling many things might drop this simple behavior and miss out on some sales

An easy way to spot bad business writing is to check if it poses and answers a key question. Even a highly detailed document that goes to great lengths to explore a subject is not useful if it leaves it up to the reader to figure out what to do about it.

I can imagine there is hesitation in putting oneself out there by answering the question. There’s the possibility of being wrong and that can feel risky. However, a huge part of effective business writing is answering the question which was important to write about in the first place.

See also:

• The Minto Pyramid Principle
• This is an example of the principal-agent problem, the principal wants to solve problems, the agent wants to avoid being wrong
• Problems are conflicts between ideas, if there is no conflict then there is no point in writing about it

An experiment suggests that quantum processes (entanglement) might be used by brain functions which could explain memory performance and conscious awareness.

The researchers used a quantum gravity experiment to measure the proton spins in ‘brain water’ using an MRI. They deduced that the likely explanation for entanglement they observed is that the brain must have quantum process mediating it.

If the brain has quantum processes the implications for AI research and quantum computing could be huge. The two fields might be more closely linked than we thought.

See also:

• This sort reminds me of the book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World—if the multiverse theory is correct, might we experience infinity in our thoughts?

Tupper’s formula displays its formula when plotted on a graph. This is a form of recursion but more like a mirror. Compared to Godel’s incompleteness theorem (also self-referential), Tupper’s formula is more like perception not reception—it does not create new meaning in a system unintended to do so (Principia Mathematica) and is more like a reflection of itself.

See also:

• I Am a Strange Loop goes into great detail about recursive systems and developing meaning from systems incapable of expressing meaning
• Straussian reading is another kind of recursion where the meaning emerges from multiple layers of understanding about the context of a piece of text rather than the literal transformation of a linked list of ideas into a tree

One of the key points of I Am a Strange Loop is how the “I” develops into consciousness. The constant reinforcement (and self-enforcing) of the “I” gives rise to perception, symbols, meaning, and reality. On the other hand, the key point of mindfulness (at least to me) is recognizing the illusory self.

If the self is an illusion then it must not be real. The “I” is merely an abstraction over consciousness that disappears upon closer inspection (in meditation, this is the “look for the one who is looking” idiom). However, abstractions themselves are real.

Does the “I” give rise to consciousness to begin with or is it the other way around? Does the failure to inspect the strange loop in consciousness make it an illusion?

Maybe both are true. Everything arises in consciousness and the “I” is inseparable from reality.

In org-mode, macros can be used to expand text but are only visible when exported. However, by combining org-macro and emacs' built in font-locking system, you can expand macros inline in the buffer.

For example, here’s a macro that expands to the text returned by an elisp expression which gets today’s date. In the buffer, you don’t get to see the expanded value (though it does show up if you export it).

#+MACRO: today (eval (format-time-string "%m-%d-%Y"))

* Today's date is {{{today}}}

Adding the following to your init.el tells emacs to font-lock text in org-mode buffers when it sees triple curly braces. Using the display overrides the text shown when there is a match. Then the macro is expanded programatically the same way (for the most part) org-mode does it during export.

;; Display macros inline in buffers
(add-to-list 'font-lock-extra-managed-props 'display)

(font-lock-add-keywords
 'org-mode
 '(("\\({{{[a-zA-Z#%)(_-+0-9]+}}}\\)" 0
    `(face nil display
           ,(format "%s"
                    (let* ((input-str (match-string 0))
                          (el (with-temp-buffer
                                (insert input-str)
                                (goto-char (point-min))
                                (org-element-context)))
                          (text (org-macro-expand el org-macro-templates)))
                      (if text
                          text
                        input-str)))))))

Now you can see the macro expansion inline in the buffer.

#+MACRO: today (eval (format-time-string "%m-%d-%Y"))

* Today's date is 2022-10-29

This quote by Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor at Stanford GSB, sums up the difficulty of achieving something different by doing the same things. You can apply this to “success” or any venture really. For example, it’s highly unlikely that Tony Hawk became the best skateboarder ever by living a conventional life.

There is an important nuance that I think people forget—it’s not about personality, it’s about behavior. Emulating Steve Jobs personality completely misses the point, his moodiness and assholery did not a good product make. It was the cultivation of taste and building a cathedral with maniacal focus and decision making. He was extreme, but I highly doubt being an asshole was the essential part.

See also:

• “Extreme people get extreme results” from Sam Altman’s essay How To Be Successful.
• Controlled self-deception

This is a work-in-progress as I’m still refining an org-agenda centric workflow. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

The key problem I think this system should solve is 1) trust that something wasn’t lost or forgotten 2) what to do next. Everything else is nice to have.

You can’t get everything into org-mode. There will always be some incompatibility like getting your calendar synced using GCal. If you don’t accept that, you’ll never actually use it.

The default org-agenda has too much stuff going on if you have 100s of items. I realized I need multiple views of the same things to keep focus. One for the day and another for a fortnight. I look at the day view the most because it has mercifully few items. I look at the fortnight view to think ahead and plan.

Having separate org files is a bit cumbersome. It’s best to always use org-agenda to interface with tasks. Otherwise, there is a lot of manual file opening and searching.

Including goals at the top of the agenda to help focus my attention on what matters. I wrote a small function to inline macros in the buffer so I can see things like how many days are left to hit the goal.

Business problems that are being solved with software tend to reduce to a data modeling problem.

The share of remote job postings across the US, UK, NZ, CA, and AUS have increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The following chart was reweighted based on occupation distribution in 2019.

Source: Remote Work across Jobs, Companies, and Countries

Job postings are a lagging indicator of the number of jobs that are being done remotely along with office real estate decline and office occupancy rates.

I watched a press conference of Bill Belichick being asked about long snappers and whether it’s worth having a dedicated roster spot for a specialist. I don’t particularly care about this but I was struck by how thorough and detailed Bill’s answer was.

He explains how the league started with more generalists—players who could do special teams and long snap. As strategies changed, it became more important to have a specialist long snapper who could block. If you saved a roster spot by having a player who performs more than one role well, there is a risk they could be injured. The league evolved to specialized roles for punters, kickers, and long snappers as a result.

I watched all 10+ minutes of it because it reminds me there is infinite detail in just about everything. Things can seem so simple and but is more likely a failure of imagination of how deep it goes.

There should only be one primary action the user can take on the screen at a time. When there is more than one action to take it becomes confusing. Which should I do first (ordering)? Which am I supposed to do (decisions)?

As a simple analogy, think of the difference between a plane’s cockpit and a soap dispenser. The former is filled with knobs and switches for all sorts of functions, the latter has only one thing you can do—get soap.

If you want to make UI feel intuitive, requiring little to no explanation, distilling the interface into a series of single actions (choices) is your best bet.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for more complicated interfaces, but if you see this happening, you’ll know it increases the level of understanding needed by new users.

Tags are used to create heterarchical systems that lets you iterate on retrieval. The tag names are abstractions like categories, projects, or ideas that are encoded on top of a set of items (like notes) to make it easy to find later.

A built-in assumption with tag-based systems is that you will use tags consistently—a tag vocabulary. That’s why tags are much easier to develop individually than as a group. It’s easier to map your way of retrieving information than having others agree on how to collectively retrieve information. Twitter hashtags are the exception, but I would argue these are a form of Schelling points.

See also:

• org-mode uses projects (hierarchy) and tags (heterarchy) to manage large numbers of tasks
• My tag vocabulary is used for driving functionality rather than organizing topics

Coordination in the absence of communication. For example, two players in a game can’t talk to each other but they want to team up for a quest. They show up at a time that seems most likely (noon) on a day that is most likely (New Years) in a place that’s most likely (an inn). This works because people can use the shared context of their world to superimpose coordination.

Does remote work make the principal-agent problem worse? If so, why?

A few possibilities come to mind:

• It’s actually not worse but empiricism makes us think it is
• Remote workers necessarily have more agency (either through technology or job role) and therefore greater conflict
• Remote teams need to be more deliberate about everything and principals are making it worse by not adapting to the demands of remote work

The following list of things are my choices for boring technology.

Backend programming languages:

• Python
  • Frameworks:
    • Django
    • FastAPI
  • Package manager
    • pip

Frontend programming languages:

• Javascript (TypeScript is nearly there)
  • Frameworks:
    • React
    • React router
  • Package manager
    • npm
    • Use create-react-app for as along as humanly possible

Databases:

• Postgres
• MySQL
• Redis

Deployment:

• Ansible

Hosting:

• AWS

Notes:

• I’m hoping terraform to become boring. It looks like more engineers have experience with it, but few have set it up from scratch.
• There are no boring package managers or build tools for the JavaScript ecosystem.
• Redis used to be novel, but now it’s boring which is good. Try not to use it in novel ways though.

The likelihood of pivoting seems to increase as the number of founders increases. Solo founders are the least likely to pivot compared to co-founders of 2, 3, and 4. The most likely to pivot is when there are 4 founders.

Pivoting is often needed to find product market fit although having lack of conviction to fully explore an idea can also cause failure.

Solo founders are less likely to pivot because they don’t necessarily have a support system to bounce ideas around making it easier to fool themselves.

Four or more founders pivoting most frequently might be consensus seeking and deference to each other. Maybe there’s just too much resistance which makes efficient decision making difficult to stick with (easier to decide to change than to move forward and be wrong).

Read Co-Founding Considered Harmful by Florent Crivello.

See also:

• Companies started by solo founders survive longer and generate more revenue
• Fundraising as a solo founder

The American Community Survey from 2021 by the US Census Bureau showed that the largest share of working from home was in major cities and metropolitan areas. For example, San Francisco, District of Columbia, Brooklyn, and Chicago are all in the top 10 in remote work.

This might feel counter intuitive—if housing prices are rising (blamed on remote work) and city office real estate value is declining (also blamed on remote work) shouldn’t suburban and rural areas see the largest share of working from home?

The most obvious reason that comes to mind is that the highest density of workers who can work from home already live in major cities. Young people of working age live in urban areas generally (“Millenials love cities” was a common theme from the late 2010s). The largest portion of people that would move out of urban areas to work remotely probably already have.

Finally, people have preferences that are better suited to cities (like me). Political views might also have some bearing on people’s decisions on where to live or just having things to do.

Read Working From Home Is Not an Urban Escape Hatch from the Washington Post.

The abundance of stuff—both online and offline—means that every conceivable niche is available to everyone. Search engines are niche machines that are increasingly sophisticated at directing attention to these fine grained interests.

Have these obscure interests always existed or does the search engine cause us to grind our attention finer? What or who are we ingratiating?

From a passing sentence in My Obsession by William Gibson on Wired.

See also:

• Maybe niche interests is a hunt for rarity like CryptoPunks are the Star Wars action figures of the future
• Identity is a powerful motivator for behaviors and “I’m the kind of person that wears rare vintage watches”

For as long as possible, in an early-stage startup, one of the founders should write the check for any expenses of the company. That includes payroll, vendors, SaaS subscriptions, professional services, and how much you’re paying accountants and bookkeepers (whom you may incorrectly think are looking out for the company’s cash).

The reason this is so important is that expenses tend to grow very rapidly as the company grows. Left unchecked, you can get surprised by large bills and overpay for a long time. Every dollar going out is a dollar less in runway.

It takes money to grow, but startup failure is nearly always due to running out of money. Shouldn’t you keep an eye on that?

See also:

• This is especially true when running a startup during a recession when raising more money is not always an answer to high burn rates

My personal site now gets 1,000 clicks per month from Google searches. It took two and half years of consistently adding content nearly every day to get to this point. There are 884 pages indexed by Google and 186 that are not (for mysterious reasons). It takes ~24k impressions to deliver 1,000 clicks. The majority of the content comes from my published notes rather than longer form content like blog posts or essays.

It’s kind of incredible how much content is needed to generate a comparatively small amount of traffic through SEO. This could be because the things I write about tend to be fairly niche and far ranging in topic.

See also:

• This is an update on the effects of note blogging on SEO

There’s now an official API for Grammarly and a language server. That means we can use eglot to get Grammarly in Emacs buffers. Here’s the setup which mostly works.

Update: Grammarly announced they are discontinuing the API so this won’t work after January 10th, 2024. There are no good replacements. If I find one, I’ll add it here.

You can get an Grammarly API client ID by creating an app here.

Build the Grammarly VSCode extension:

git clone git@github.com:znck/grammarly.git
cd grammarly
# Install pnpm if you don't have it installed already
npm install -g pnpm
# Build the extension and language server
pnpm build

Wrap the node based language server in a script:

#!/bin/sh
node /{PATH TO REPO}/grammarly/extension/dist/server/index.node.js --stdio

Add it to the path or copy it to a global bin:

cp /{PATH TO REPO}/grammarlylsp /usr/local/bin/grammarlylsp
# Make it executable
chmod +x grammarlylsp

Configure eglot to use it when in markdown mode:

(defclass eglot-grammarlylsp (eglot-lsp-server) ()
  :documentation "Grammarly Language Server.")

(cl-defmethod eglot-initialization-options ((server eglot-grammarlylsp))
  "Passes the initializationOptions required to run
   the server."
  `(:clientId "{GRAMMARLY API CLIENT ID HERE"))

(add-to-list 'eglot-server-programs
             `(markdown-mode . (eglot-grammarlylsp ,(executable-find "grammarlylsp"))))

A recent analysis of the trading volume of NFTs found that it fell 97% from $17 billion in January to $466 million in September.

Read NFT Trading Volumes Collapse 97% from January Peak from Bloomberg.

See also:

• Mania and speculation is a good example of investment strategies that only work in a bull market
• NFTs provide digital scarcity among digital abundance but the falling volume has more to do with speculation than the principle of scarcity
• NFTs joining cryptocurrencies as not being immune to market conditions
• Zero interest rate policy (ZIRP)