Category: uncategorized

Alex Payne — Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

~ Mark

Here are some things to consider that, in my experience, you’re less likely to hear about working in startups.

Good essay. I’ve been thinking this for a while:

Startups are portrayed as an exciting, risky, even subversive alternative to traditional corporate work. Startups are thought of as more free, more open and flexible. Some companies surely begin that way, but a few interviews at later-stage startups will make clear just how quickly they ossify into structures that look very much like the organizations that came before them.

As there was in the first dot com bubble, there is a current proliferation of startups, incubators, accelerators, angel/seed funding, and so forth. In order for the “startup community” to replicate itself, nanobot-like, the mechanics of “doing a startup” have been reduced to an easily transmitted sequence of actions accompanied by a shared set of values, norms, and language.

Alex Payne — Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

~ Mark

Cinema du WTF – UPSTREAM COLOR (Shane Carruth 2013) – Bright Lights After Dark.

Even at its most obscure, Upstream Color keeps the viewer involved thanks to the aforesaid music score and the flow of its nature-derived imagery – sunlight, water, animals, insects, and birds (see still at top of page) and the archetypal blue flower motif. The consistent beauty of the imagery gives the movie the feel of poetry:

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

(“The Sick Rose” by William Blake.)

I can’t seem to stop reading about this movie since I watched it a few weeks ago. That blue flower connection is a good find.

Does reading have a future? A noted Canadian philosopher gazes into the future

~ Mark

Via Alan Jacobs, who rightly encourages you to read the whole thing.

It’s not technophobic or Luddite to recognize that the techie questions are largely beside the point. The scope of their effects lies on a time scale that none of us can foresee, thus creating not genuine questions but opportunities for self-serving predictions.

Ha! Also:

The specific concern for the future of the bound-page book should be seen for what it is: a form of fond special pleading whereby a particular (how I like to read) masquerades as a universal (reading!).

His essay is more thoughtful and substantial than those quotes, by the way. I just thought they were funny.

Does reading have a future? A noted Canadian philosopher gazes into the future

~ Mark

Part of my drinking was so much about trying not to feel things, to not feel how I actually felt, and the terrible thing about being so hidden is if people tell you they love you… it kinda doesn’t sink in. You always think, if you’re hiding things, How could you know who I am? You don’t know who I am, so how could you love me? Saying who I am, and trying to be as candid as possible as part of practicing the principles, has permitted me to actually connect with people for the first time in my life.

Mary Karr.
~ Mark

Tim Duncan Encourages Teammates To Be Fathers First, Basketball Players Second | The Onion.

“What you do on this court is nothing compared to what you do at home for your children,” said Duncan, adding that what this country lacks most is not basketball players but mature men. “The playoffs end in June, but the responsibilities of fatherhood? Those are year-round. Guys, it doesn’t matter if you score 10,000 points or win three NBA championships—spending time with your kids: that’s the championship.”

The Onion and Tim Duncan go way back.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

~ Mark

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Now we’re getting somewhere! Better than the first, way better than the second. I like how the physical/technical strain of the driving is more evident. Definitely a contrast with the delinquent joyride thrills of the second movie. And the change to mostly night-time, dense, urban driving makes for all kinds of crazy lighting and colors that gives the restless camera more to ogle. The two opposing father-son stories work. One son rebellious, one obedient. A possibly inadvertent dramatic bonus: what with the setting not being conducive to reckless gun-play in the streets, the few times when a gun is drawn are a bit more potent. Great job on audio across the board. Also, the scene with Neela driving is reminiscent of Toretto’s “10 seconds” monologue, but it also instantly made me think of the balcony scene in Heat.

2 Fast 2 Furious

~ Mark

2 Fast 2 Furious. Not as good as the first one, bro. Seemed more exploitative, more dopey, more juvenile. Tyrese is funny and charismatic, whereas Paul Walker’s performance reaches new levels of… subtlety (Ebert perfectly describes him as Don Johnson lite). BUT, those chases are fun. Nice to see them driving in legitimate traffic this time around. Also: Luda + Eva Mendes. Out of Sight and Miami Vice are far better Miami movies. I still haven’t seen either of the Bad Boys films, unfortunately.

Small Talk | The Point Magazine

~ Mark

Exchanging small talk with people we’ve just met may be an unfortunate necessity, but with people we already know, it seems to suggest that they’re people to whom we have nothing to say. And yet if small talk is just talk that’s idle, insignificant and without stated purpose, then surely a substantial portion of the chatter that goes on between couples, friends and (or especially) families must count as small. Banality, however, need not always be insignificant. There’s nothing earth-shattering, usually, about missing the bus, what you ate for lunch or the new dress you just bought, but these are just the mundane tidbits that make up so much of the talk between intimates. In fact, such conversations about trivialities can arguably happen only with those close to us—only the members of our inner circle do we presume to burden with the minutiae of our lives.

Small Talk | The Point Magazine

~ Mark

Wherever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who lives it, there the life becomes genuinely significant. Sometimes the eagerness is more knit up with the motor activities, sometimes with the perceptions, sometimes with the imagination, sometimes with reflective thought. But, wherever it is found, there is the zest, the tingle, the excitement of reality; and there is ‘importance’ in the only real and positive sense in which importance ever anywhere can be.

William James.

The Fast and the Furious

~ Mark

The Fast and the Furious. Almost exactly what I was expecting. One surprise, though: I figured there would be some fun, gratuitous style flourishes, but didn’t think it would be so cinematically interesting. The way they edited the racing scenes, the warps and perspective shifts, reminded me of the welding scene in Thief. It goes from a more neutral third-person observer perspective into this subjective-experience interpretive moment. Nicely done. It’s not high drama, but credit for making some gestures towards character-building, even though that’s not the point. And there’s a fun soundtrack. Two-Lane Blacktop is another good movie with itchy street racers.

~ Mark

A knot is the basal portion of a branch whose structure becomes surrounded by the enlarging stem. Since branches begin with lateral buds, knots can always be traced back to the pith of the main stem.

Ah, this makes so much sense now. Excerpt from Understanding Wood at Cool Tools.

Why are we not much, much, much better at parenting? | Practical Ethics

~ Mark

Economics!

Humans are quite bad at estimating the results of different interventions, if the feedback only comes years later. One needs only to see the plethora of different parenting guides and opposed schools of upbringing thought. Such variety couldn’t maintain itself if it were easy for parents to see which methods worked and which didn’t. Thus parents are poor at knowing what they need, and hence make ineffective consumers from the economic perspective.

Also, “a lot of parenting techniques are procedural, rather than declarative.”

Why are we not much, much, much better at parenting? | Practical Ethics