The Edgy Edge 0002
The Edgy Edge 0002
Hello it's John again! I'm here in your inbox with a weekly summary of 'interesting things I saw on the net'. It's week two and we're already running late. Sorry!
On with the Content Aggregation
#1 Do you know how you should live your life? Probably not
We all go through life, thinking that we basically know the right way to live. But, as this article points out:
- No one has lived a lifetime with the type of weird lifestyle adaptions that are common now.
- No one has lived a lifetime with a 'trad' lifestyle in This Modern World.
So, we don't really know how spending all our time doing 'dopamine fasts', or mainlining TikTok videos, or eating a Keto diet, or rubbing retinol on our faces will work out in the medium/long term. And we also don't know how trying to live like it's the 1930s in a whole new world will work out (but the answer is probably 'not well').
But despite our lack of understanding, we aren't humble. We spend a lot of time discussing what's the best diet, way to interact with computers etc - with wildly different answers ascending to mainstream popularity every few years and...
While such discussions can be immensely valuable for certain people in certain contexts, as a whole they testify to an utterly tragic misunderstanding that seems to dominate our culture today. They foster the misconception that success in endeavors represents the zenith of human intellectual and emotional capability, when in fact, almost all of the risk and all of the reward in human life revolves around the question of selecting endeavors. The question of what to value is far more crucial question than the question of strategies and tactics for obtaining what one values. And the question of what to value is the question that popular culture vehemently ignores.
#2 AI guys
The writer of this article seems a bit too grumpy, and should probably chill. But they do have some cracking lines.
They show us some amazing examples of AI guys on twitter, who are here to tell you that Large Language Models are imminently going to replace engineers/artists/whatever (they aren't), oh and also they have a get rich quick scheme to sell you.
The author notes that their twitter feed is now completely full of this kind of drivel. They don't point out the key reason why that is:
- All the accounts they quote are 'verified'.
- Twitter just started allowing people to pay to be verified.
- Paying for verification now boosts tweets onto the top of everyone's feeds.
- The only people paying for verification are hucksters trying to sell you things.
#3 Why it's so hard for a biggish company to make good stuff
I keep going on about how small software teams have advantages over big ones, particularly in terms of quality. This article expresses similar things in a much better way. It charts the move of Instagram's team from small and effective to big and useless. They also show why it's so easy to assume that 'our team is different', not do anything to enshrine quality an important company value, and then suddenly realise that all you do is ship features that no one wants and which don't work.
A small, talented team can make it feel almost effortless to design and ship incredible software. The trap here is when you start to take this for granted and assume that craft and quality are “just a part of your corporate DNA.” In reality, there are a number of subtle, “free” perks to being small that can create a false sense of security.
If you take these benefits for granted and don’t foster a culture of intentional quality while small, the craft and quality will start to evaporate, replaced by increased product complexity and tension between teams.
#4 The best reviews of the movie 'Showgirls' I found on Letterboxd
The End
That's all for this week! Thanks for stopping by!