My recommended starting order for new visitors:
- Library Ethos
- We were voyagers
- Are you serious?
- Most People
- it’s just math
- the world is big
- greatness is deviance
Most shared: Communities, Solve for distribution, Letter to a young songwriter, Being smart vs Being kind, The library ethos, relationships, one must imagine Sisyphus LOL-ing, how to ask for help, Most People, good reply game, unlearning coercion, pay it forward
Most visited: relationships, The library ethos, do 100 things, Communities, good reply game, Most People, my influences, make friends, solve problems, how to ask for help, my talking points, seek excellent peers, constructive ADHD, how to de-escalate tense situations, do whatever makes your heart sing, ‘Mean Girls’
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I’m planning to update Friendly Ambitious Nerd to a “Mark II” version. One of the things I thought of doing was to assemble as many of the constituent blogposts in one place as possible.
Friendly Ambitious Nerd:
Friendship is shared understanding
- Helm of the Arse Gods, kids in shitty social graphs, being a misfit
- Make friends – practice good reply game, seek excellent peers, everybody loves to make a great introduction, persuasion, accumulating social capital, small talk
- How to be more optimistic
- How to ask for help
- Develop genuine confidence, imposter syndrome
- communities,
- assholes, never be gleeful about violence, when i block people, sinister connotations
- the apocalypse test
- parents, peers and other benevolent plagues, Most People
- pay it forward
- perspective (feels kinda weak)
FA: encourage your friends, how to DM your heroes, cold emails
Ambition – giving as much of a shit as possible
- Are you serious?
- articulating a vision, articulate your vectors, joke about outcomes you want, think in dominos, fumbling the bag
- optimize for survival, 4 kinds of luck, play long games
- ambition is not about prestige, the prestige trap
- tell it slant – on obliqueness
- you are already monarch of your life
- plans are worthless, planning is priceless. XAB method, soften the ground, mvp model of personal dev, projects require collaboration, project management, problems are solvable, mario castle problems
- elitism, the ratatouille rule
- don’t jump – the folly of the plunge (2016)
- shame – status regulation
- self-promotion, the world is unkind to the tacky
- struggle porn / hustle culture
- good vs great
- sitcom living
- status quo soldiers
Nerds are people whose behavior is driven by curiosity (asking questions, making lists)
- pursue your curiosities (merge: nerds) / taste is the beating heart of all creative value, everything is a remix, creativity is just connecting/remixing things
- take notes, constructive ADHD
- models, ‘systems thinking‘
- ‘jetpacks‘ should solve information overload
- narrow utilitarianism (failure mode), advanced stupid, learned catastrophizing, courage deficit
- the utility of art
- mindfucks – ideas that expanded my mind
- bottlenecks
- humility is honesty in the face of reality
FN: talking to people makes you a better writer
scenes: scenius, jane jacobs, talent is clueless and scared, erasmus, the losev problem, greatness is deviance
Introspect? Self-sense beating yourself up is egotistic (merge? moral failing fallacy), do you know what you want? (currently titled /introspect/, should change this) fault, boredom, adulthood, insecurity projection, identity, depression, earn self-respect, narcissism, better place, exhaustion funnels, unlearning coercion
Culture – I want to do more work here, this is what I want Voltaic Verses (visakanv.substack.com) to focus on
school, safe spaces, baby abandonment, smartphones, screentime, fame, fashion, civilization is potty training, real life is already dystopian, religion, mean girls, fuckability, pissbabies, Cultural appropriation, cultural cosplay
masculinity – merge menworld, cowardly men, mansplaining
How tos: picky eater, get my attention, so you’ve been Main Character’d, twitter rpg guide, advice for people in their 20s
memoirs/about me? busker, blinders, giftedness
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The following is a leftover remnant of one of the previous times I tried to sort my blog:
pedestalization, take deep breaths, talking for writers, Influences
Politics and the English Language (2016),
heat death, sisyphus, ayylmao,
Potentially promising but unfinished: hyperthreading, smartphones, jetpacks (information overload), information superhighway
Things that should be essays: projects require collaboration, status regulation, obliqueness, monarch life…
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(2023jan4) magicbeans:
I’ve spent many years writing, blogging, note-taking, etc and over time I’ve found it necessary to come up with good, memorable phrases that I can use as reference points. “good phrases” or “memorable phrases” is a bit too generic, but magicbeans is quite a bit better. It’s not perfect – a truly great phrase would be one that nobody else uses. It’s a bit more complicated than this but I won’t get into that right now.
Advanced Stupid — do100things — desire paths / mindcity — joke about outcomes you want —
to be updated
teasers, riffs, seedphrases: emotional knottedness – oblique – beware of psychofauna – poaster trajectory – switchboarding – ayylmao chaos surfing – focus on – Mario castle problems – royal touch / king energy / honor economy – make yourself comfortable – overpreemptive (thread) – uncommonly confident, humility… more…
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changelog?
2023May02: Wow, I’m so glad that I did this. It’s going to save me so much time as I continue to piece things together.
2023Jan18: This blog has been weighing on me somewhat. In part, it feels like a historical record, and that’s… good? But it also feels clunky and tedious. The sitemap is too complicated. I think it’s time I did a fresh “research review” of the posts that I reference and revisit most.