Coney Island, Brighton Beach

I built a tool to explore when the NYC zoning resolution was amended!

nyczoningtimeline.com

Getting Anki

Anki can be found at https://apps.ankiweb.net/. Website screenshot shown below.

The Android app is called AnkiDroid (free) and the iOS app is Anki (it’s $25 one time and goes to support the sole developer working on it)

You can sync between your mobile app and desktop application by using your AnkiWeb account.

The theory behind Anki: what is spaced repetition?

If you learn a fact, your memory of that fact will deteriorate rather quickly. If you review that fact a day, your memory will degrade less slowly. This means that reviewing things at specific increasing intervals will ensure that you always remember that fact. Here’s the cool part – increasing intervals! After each progressive review, your memory will degrade less slowly, which means that eventually, you’ll be reviewing your fact once per year, once per 3 years, or even less, while still retaining the information.

This is why spaced repetition and Anki are different from flashcards. You only review a fact when you’re about to forget it, which means you don’t waste time reviewing cards you already know. Let’s do some napkin math — 

Traditional flashcards vs Anki

Let me break this down, comparing traditional flashcards vs Anki’s spaced repetition system (SRS).

Assumptions:

Each card review takes ~5 seconds

Traditional flashcards: Reviewing all cards daily

Anki: Following typical SRS intervals that grow exponentially

Traditional Flashcards (100 cards):

100 cards × 5 seconds = 500 seconds (8.3 minutes) per day

180 days (6 months, an arbitrary period of time) × 8.3 minutes = 1,494 minutes (≈25 hours total)

Anki (100 cards):

Initial few days: ~100 cards/day (like traditional)

By week 2: ~40 cards/day

By month 1: ~20 cards/day

By month 3: ~10 cards/day

By month 6: ~5 cards/day

Rough Anki calculation:

Month 1: (~60 cards/day avg) × 30 days × 5 sec = 150 minutes

Month 2-3: (~15 cards/day avg) × 60 days × 5 sec = 75 minutes

Month 4-6: (~7 cards/day avg) × 90 days × 5 sec = 52.5 minutes

Total Anki time: ~277.5 minutes (≈4.6 hours total)

So Anki takes roughly 1/5 the time (4.6 vs 25 hours) while typically providing better retention due to optimal spacing of reviews. This is a simplified model – actual results vary based on card difficulty and individual memory patterns.

This means that you can have a deck of 100,000 cards and still keep up with it! You can memorize an insane amount of facts and retain them indefinitely.

How to use Anki?

Let’s look at the desktop app. Most of the apps work rather similarly.

Once you’ve downloaded the app, you can create a deck, which is a collection of cards.

Let’s add a card to this deck now.

Now we can study this card

Notice how you can select the difficulty you had in recalling the card. “Again” and “Good” should be self explanatory. My headcanon for when I select “Hard” is when I get something almost right (like one letter off) and “Easy” is for when I instantly recall the answer without even thinking about it.

The numbers above each button are how soon until you see that card again.

What can I do with Anki?

Reverse cards

The abstract form of a card in Anki is called a note. You can have a note that turns into multiple cards, for example.

One common use case for this is the “Basic (and reversed card)” — this is when you turn one note into two cards, with the fields swapped. This is useful when you decide to learn a foreign language and need to train both recognition and recall.

There’s more to this than you may think. Let’s say you speak English and are trying to learn Spanish. You’ll need to remember hello -> hola in order to speak the language. On the other hand, you’ll also need to understand the opposite direction of hola -> hello. This is so that when someone says that word, you’ll be able to comprehend them. 

With the reverse card feature, you can skip creating two cards when one will do, plus you won’t need to update the card twice when you need to change it.

Cloze deletion

Let’s say you’re trying to learn grammar in Spanish. In your textbook you’ll see this familiar table:

Yo quiero

Tú quieres

Él/Ella/Usted quiere

Nosotros queremos

Vosotros queréis

Ellos/Ellas/Ustedes quieren

You’ll be tempted to create the following card:

Front: Yo (querer)

Back: quiero

Stop! Don’t do it! There’s a better way!

The best way to learn this is by using context. We learn through pattern recognition, so it’s tough to apply facts memorized in isolation.

Create cards in this format instead:

Front: Yo ____ (querer) comer una manzana

​​Back:  Yo quiero comer una manzana

You’ll remember the conjugation in context and you’ll also get some free practice with the surrounding words. 

You can create these cards by using the Cloze card type and clicking here to delete a certain part of the word.

Image occlusion

This is basically cloze deletion but for images — you can black out certain parts of an image and then reveal it.

Audio

You can add audio cards! I’ve never done this, but it is an option, say for training listening comprehension.

Card design

The Fundamental Trade-off: there’s always a trade-off between creation time and review time. 

More effort during creation = Easier reviews later

Quick creation now = More challenging reviews

The beauty is that you get to choose where on this spectrum you want to be. If you don’t make this choice explicitly, it’ll be made for you implicitly.

Having a card in Anki is far more important than having a perfect card in Anki. Sometimes, I intentionally create “bad” cards just to get the information into the system. Later, when I have more time or when the card starts bothering me during reviews, I’ll clean it up. This approach keeps the momentum going while allowing for future improvements.

The best Anki cards share two key characteristics:

They’re extremely short (1-2 sentences)

They have minimal ambiguity

If you’re looking at paragraphs in your cards, that’s usually a red flag. While I have a few cards like that (intentionally), they’re the exception, not the rule.

Let’s look at what works and what doesn’t:

Good examples:

Vocabulary terms

Specific dates or events (like offices in the Cursus Honorum)

Clear, single-concept questions

Challenging examples:

Long, opinion-based content

Complex historical events (like the fall of the Western Roman Empire)

Detailed explanations that require multiple concepts

When dealing with complex topics (like system design), I use a different approach. Instead of trying to recall exact answers, I aim for conceptual understanding. For instance, with a question like “Why is caching useful?”, I’ll count it as correct if I can articulate the main concepts, even if I don’t recite the answer verbatim.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Start creating cards, use them, and let your review experience guide your improvements. The time you spend perfecting cards is time you could spend reviewing them – find the balance that works for you.

Sticking with it

Something that doesn’t get enough attention in the Anki community is how to stick with it long-term. After starting and stopping Anki at least 8 different times, I’ve learned some valuable lessons about maintaining a sustainable practice.

The most crucial piece of advice I can give you: don’t delete your decks. Ever. I’ve made this mistake too many times

• Always keep backups
• Store them even when you’re not actively reviewing
• Think of them as a knowledge investment

Returning to Anki after a break can be intimidating. Coming back to 1,000+ reviews is enough to make anyone want to quit before starting. This is fundamentally a UI/human psychology problem. The interface isn’t well-suited to handling breaks in usage. Fortunately there’s a hack:

• Adjust your daily review limit (in Options)
• Start with just 10 cards per day
• Gradually work your way back up
• Remember: any review is better than no review

Rather than treating Anki as a formal study session, I use it as a gap filler:

• During elevator rides
• On the train
• Waiting for food
• Any spare moment where I might normally check Twitter

Even minimal use is incredibly powerful. Reviewing 5 cards is better than 0. Some days, I only do 1 card. The goal is maintaining the habit, not hitting perfect numbers.

Make your own decks

This is important enough to warrant its own section. Don’t download huge decks from the internet, make your own. I’d recommend downloading a deck only if it’s less than 50 cards (let’s say learning an alphabet, or something like that).

The problem is that Anki is not for learning, it’s for reviewing. Learning on Anki is incredibly painful since you’re learning without context. If you use someone else’s cards, you’ll hit a brick wall.

Using Anki for language

I primarily use Anki for language learning. Most of my cards are straight vocab, with a few being cloze deletions (not enough I’d say).

A few quick notes

• Shove it into Anki (even if you don’t think you need it). I regret not having more cards. I only spent around 25 hours!!!! this year reviewing Anki.
• If you have multiple words with the same meaning (eg wealthy, affluent), generate two different images and then put them on the front of each card. You’ll associate the word with the image so you’ll remember both individually
• If a word isn’t sticking, create a mnemonic for it and put an image reminder of the mnemonic on the front of the card.
• My Russian teacher gives me a long list of vocab words after a lesson. I have a virtual assistant input them into Anki — I highly recommend this if you’re falling behind on card creation! You can also input words via .csv.

Using Anki for Leetcode

I also use Anki for Leetcode practice. Instead of endless random practice, I focused on mastering a core set of problems. Traditional LeetCode practice assumes you’ll naturally absorb patterns through repetition. Since I have a poor memory, this empirically wasn’t effective — I’d do a problem, retry it a week later and have completely forgotten how I had done it. 

The process:
Selected about 30 fundamental LeetCode problems

Created simple Anki cards for each problem

Front of card: Problem name/link

Back of card: Just time/space complexity

When a card comes up, I:

Open LeetCode

Solve the complete problem

Review complexity

Mark the card as done

As you can see I’m using Anki purely as a scheduling tool. 

The goal is not to memorize solutions per se, but rather common patterns. For example: converting adjacency matrix to adjacency list is now a pattern I recognize instantly. I wanted to focus on building “muscle memory” for common coding patterns.

The most common criticism I get is about overfitting – the worry that I’ll only learn to solve these specific problems. I’m not really worried because – 

• My memory isn’t great (ironically, this helps)
• The goal is pattern recognition, not memorization
• These patterns transfer well to similar problems

So far, I can say it’s been working quite well. I’m far more comfortable with Python syntax in a Leetcode context, and I can apply chunks of what I’ve memorized elsewhere in new problems.

I used to panic during coding interviews. Every interview felt like starting from zero and I had a significant fear of blanking out.

Memorization transformed my entire interview mindset:

• Instead of “solve this impossible problem,” it became “identify the right pattern”
• Having a solid foundation of memorized patterns gives confidence
• The interview feels more like pattern matching than pure problem-solving
• I became way, way calmer during interviews

What decks do I have?

Active

• Early Christianity in the WRE
• Leetcode V2
• Maximum NYC
• NATO Phonetic Alphabet
• Northeast trees
• NYC City Council Members
• Robert’s Rules of Order
• Russian
• Russian Cursive Alphabet
• Sys Design
• The New Colossus Poem
• Vim

Archived

• Clojure
• Graduate Intro to Operating Systems
• Leetcode
• Spanish

My Anki decks can be downloaded here

What should you memorize and why?

Let’s start with the obvious ones:

Academic Learning

The canonical use case for Anki is coursework, and for good reason. Beyond just acing tests, memorizing specific facts creates a mental scaffolding that helps you grasp bigger concepts. I’ve found that having these little details firmly in mind gives you something concrete to anchor those abstract theories to. If you’re interested in this check out how med students use Anki to memorize stuff for their coursework.

Language Learning

This one’s a no-brainer. Anki feels like it was purpose-built specifically for vocabulary and language learning. It’s perfect for that steady accumulation of words and phrases that language mastery requires.

I’ve also been experimenting with some less conventional uses:

Nature Knowledge

I’m currently using Anki to memorize trees in my area. It’s part of my goal to be more outdoorsy in New York, and having this knowledge makes every walk more engaging.

Literature

I’ve started creating cards for poetry & quote memorization. This is tough since I find memorizing ordered lists difficult.

Book Retention

I’m experimenting with transforming entire nonfiction books into Anki decks. For example:

• “Through the Eye of the Needle” by Peter Brown (about early Christianity)
• “Designing Data-Intensive Applications” (a technical book)

The time investment for experimentation is surprisingly low. I spent 25 hours total this past year on Anki, so a failed experiment might only cost me 5 hours across an entire year. That’s a pretty low-risk way to potentially discover a game-changing use case.

I don’t have definitive advice about what you should be memorizing. What I do know is that experimentation is key. The time cost is low enough that trying new approaches is almost always worth it.

Breathe Right please sponsor me! I recommend everyone try Breathe Right strips. A pack of 30 is $9 and they’ll even send you the first pack for free.

https://www.breatheright.com/samples-sign-up

New EA cause – get everyone to try nasal strips. The positive impact of better breathing at night for the low price of $0.30 is an insane cost / benefit. Even if they do nothing for you, they’ll come in handy when you catch a cold.

How I figured out I have sleep apnea

I was always super tired in the morning and about every two weeks I’d have a situation where I’d wake up gasping for air. I never really paid attention to it, because I figured that this was normal. 

Thanks to a Facebook advertisement, I decided to take the Lofta sleep test, which revealed that I have sleep apnea with an AHI of 18 and RDI of 26. This is classified as moderate

I followed up with an ENT to take a look at my throat. Viewed through an endoscope, it was obvious that my tongue was too far back, close to obstructing my airway.

I figured that while CPAP is a decent solution, it’d be a good idea to test some less annoying ways of fixing my sleep apnea. The masks are rizzless, see below

A quick aside though – CPAP is the gold standard therapy for sleep apnea and if my exploration doesn’t work I’ll very likely begin using one. It’s just that my sleep apnea is relatively moderate, I’m young, and I’m highly motivated. Don’t use this article as an excuse to not treat your sleep apnea!

Measurement

In order to properly measure the impact of interventions, I’d have to measure my sleep somehow. There aren’t a lot of options unfortunately.

Oura Ring – it measures sleep quality in a general sense, not specifically sleep apnea. It does have a blood oxygen measurement feature, but it’s not very sensitive. I decided to buy one mostly on the theory that improved sleep apnea would likely correlate with better sleep in general.

Wellue O2 ring – I’m not sure why continuous pulse oximeters are so hard to find (glares at FDA?), but this one does the job. It measures my sleep apnea decently well. The only issues I have with it is that 1. if I toss and turn too much I get bad readings 2. The rubber ring has started to wear out, which I counteract by putting on progressively larger fingers.

Lofta sleep test – This is the test I used to get a formal diagnosis. It’s usually $189 for the test. Lofta ships you a pulse oximeter which is connected to a single EKG lead that you attach to your chest. You connect it via an app, measure for one night, then discard the hardware (!!!). Someone please hack this thing so it’s not such a horrible waste. You then get a call from a doctor who discusses the test results with you and tries to sell you a CPAP from Lofta.

Sunrise sleep test – I haven’t tried this but it looks really cool. It measures sleep apnea with a sensor placed on your chin. The idea is that your jaw moves forward to counteract a collapsed airway, so by measuring jaw movement you can determine respiratory effort.

Lifestyle interventions (listed from least woo to most)

Sleep position – this is by far the best effort to results item on this list. If you currently sleep on your back, try sleeping on your side. There are countless ways to achieve this, so I won’t bother listing them all, but suffice to say they usually work by mechanically forcing you to sleep on your side. (Un?)Fortunately for me, I’m a lifelong side sleeper. Interestingly though, the O2 ring and Oura helped me discover a position issue during sleep. I usually sleep hugging a pillow, but for a short period during a move I slept without one. My sleep and oxygen scores were significantly worse! It turns out that hugging the pillow were helping my breathing by preventing me from flopping onto my stomach. The conclusion for you should be to experiment with various position interventions.

I started with the wedge pillow, since it was the easiest of the interventions. Unfortunately, it was a total failure, with my sleep apnea appearing to only get worse. You can also try tilting your bed.

Nasal breathing! Mouth taping appears to help some people by preventing you from breathing through your mouth. The theory goes that you can reduce snoring, improve mouth position, and take advantage of the benefits of breathing through your nose.

Nasal strips, as previously mentioned, can be a lifesaver. I don’t even have nasal based sleep apnea but just having an open nose is super helpful in having better sleep quality.

Nasal dilators are an alternative to nasal strips where rather than pulling open your nose through an adhesive on the outside, they push it open from the inside with a plastic bit. I tried them and found that they feel exactly like having a piece of plastic in your nose. My friend, however, prefers them to nasal strips — he says they’re easier on the nose skin.

Weight loss can help a LOT with sleep apnea. If you have less fat in your airway, you’ll have less to collapse. Sleep apnea tends to cause weight gain, so treating sleep apnea can actually help you lose weight as well. I’m at a normal weight, so not much relevant here for me.

Exercise can help a lot, but I already exercise. If you don’t, you really should, and not just because of the sleep apnea.

Vik Veers says that only 6% of patients exclusively have a tongue issue. On hearing that, I thought I’d try Flonase to have a bit easier time breathing through my nose, hoping that it’d have an effect on my sleep apnea. Unfortunately, while I did subjectively feel that it improved my sleep quality, it didn’t affect my Oura or O2 scores. Note – you can use Flonase continuously for up to 6 months, which should cover you for allergy season.

Azelastine is an alternative mentioned by my doctor for allergies. It’s an antihistamine that you can spray directly into your nose, which means it works significantly better for opening up nasal passages. Do note that there’s a specific spraying technique you should use to avoid getting it into your throat since apparently it tastes terrible. I ended up not trying azelastine since Flonase didn’t improve my symptoms and allergy season ended.

There’s some evidence that mouth exercises can help with sleep apnea. Here are some links to research papers and Reddit posts about various exercise techniques. Since my apnea is mostly tongue related I’ve been doing this set from Vik Veers. So far I haven’t seen much in terms of effects, but it takes a while to build up muscle tone. If you want exercises in a nice app format, check out Airway Gym.

Have you wanted to learn an instrument? No? Me neither, but here we are. There’s some (sketchy) evidence that playing specifically either a double reed instrument, which is the oboe, or a didgeridoo can be protective against sleep apnea. The suspected mechanism in the didgeridoo appears to be the circular breathing, which doesn’t make sense because many woodwind instruments require circular breathing. The oboe may be useful since you need to generate high pressure in the mouth and also move your tongue to play music. In any case, it’s worth trying, but don’t hold your breath (hah).

I’ve been playing the didgeridoo now for 3 months — I’ll be taking a follow up sleep apnea test soon. Will report back with results.

Buteyko breathing is a technique by which you work to increase your CO2 tolerance. In theory this should help with sleep apnea symptoms since you’ll have a lower reaction to holding your breath (which in this case is choking on esophagus). Buteyko does seem to work for freediving, so maybe it works for sleep apnea, someone please try and report back.

Myofunctional therapy

Mewing is a practice invented by Mike Mew to expand the palate in order to increase jaw size. It’s unclear as to whether it works, and if it does work, it’s unclear if it would resolve sleep apnea. Mewing is where you suction the tongue to the roof of the mouth, thereby expanding the upper jaw. The theoretical mechanism by which it could address sleep apnea would be — larger jaw -> more room for tongue in jaw -> less tongue collapse. It probably wouldn’t address issues with throat collapse.

People on Reddit say Wim Hof breathing helped, but frankly I’m not certain by what mechanism it would help with sleep apnea. Let me know if it worked for you?

Medical treatments

CPAP

REM catchup

Poor sleep regardless

Mask fitting + settings

iNAP is an alternative to CPAP which I find super interesting. It solves tongue based sleep apnea by suctioning the tongue to the back of your teeth — preventing it from falling into your throat. Image below —

Bongo RX is a nasal-only insert that takes advantage of creating back pressure on your exhalation. When you breathe out, there’s reduced pressure on your throat, which allows it to collapse. If you maintain some small amount of pressure, it should prevent the collapse. Diagram & image below.

Note: I’ll use the word “shock” to describe what the next few devices are doing, but it’s less of an electrocution and more of a gentle pulse. Nobody’s looking like this —

Inspire is a bit hardcore for my tastes, but it does appear to be super helpful for people. It involves surgically implanting the equivalent of a pacemaker that then shocks your esophageal muscles every time you take a breath. This ensures that your airway has the same level of openness as it does when you’re awake and your muscles are tense. Downside is that it requires surgery.

Zeus is basically Inspire but without the surgical implantation step. You attach it to the bottom of your chin and it shocks the tongue & jaw muscles through the skin.

ExciteOSA is a fascinating product — exercise in a device! If you don’t have the executive function to stick with the tongue exercises, you can try using this instead. You put the device in your mouth and it shocks your muscles to exercise them. You use it for 20 minutes per day for 6 weeks.

Oral appliances are generally anything that manipulates your mouth physically to prevent sleep apnea. They fall into two main categories, mandibular advancement devices and tongue retention devices. Mandibular advancement devices shove your jaw forward, which should open your esophagus more. Tongue retention devices grip your tongue and thus prevent it from falling back and choking you. I can’t use the jaw advancer since I have TMJ, but you should feel free to try! Tongue retention devices are notoriously uncomfortable since they’re usually grabbing your tongue.

Surgery is an option, but I don’t know much about it. I’d be careful if I were you.

Sleep apnea

Sleep apnea is where your breathing stops and then restarts during sleep. This can be either due to airway collapse or because your brain forgets to send a signal to your body to breathe. Your brain forgetting to breathe is pretty rare and called central sleep apnea. Most treatments here will have no effect on central sleep apnea — if you do have it you should go on a CPAP since you’re literally forgetting to breathe.

Obstructive sleep apnea, where your airway collapses, is generally because your airway muscles relax during sleep. Since you now can’t breathe, your body attempts to counteract this by increasing heart rate (to deliver oxygen more effectively) and releasing adrenaline (since you can’t breathe). This makes you do a mini-wake-up, where you wake up just enough to bring back some muscle tension to your airway. Your AHI is the number of times you stopped breathing per hour, your RDI is AHI + the amount of respiratory effort–related wake-ups you had per hour.

A question I hear often is — why is sleep apnea so common now? Unfortunately, the modern diet of soft foods means that our jaws are drastically underdeveloped compared to the jaws of people living in the pre-Industrial era. This means there’s less room for the tongue in the mouth, leading to the tongue falling back into the throat. The modern diet and predilection for cleanliness also mean allergies are far more common — leading to nasal breathing issues. Throat collapse can be caused by many factors, but the most common are obesity and age. Obesity is a modern problem, and can also traced back to the Western diet.

What are the effects?

Why get treatment

Ensemble effect?

Honorable mention to chilisleep

Breathe by James Nestor

Duolingo is a scam and most people shouldn’t learn grammar.

I’m hardly an expert on the topic of language learning, but at this point in my life I’ve done enough of it that I feel comfortable giving some advice. I’ve learned Polish to a native level from my parents while growing up in the States, which doesn’t seem like an achievement until you meet a thousand immigrants who don’t speak their native tongue. I spoke Norwegian at a conversational level, I’m currently learning Russian with a lot of success. I failed to learn French through school which is an important data point on what not to do.

Language learning is about learning a language and not learning rules or scripts or writing systems. The fundamental point is to communicate. This is what comprehensible input, moving to your target language’s country, watching a lot of movies, talking to tutors, finding a bf / gf who speaks a different language achieve. You have a pressing need to communicate which leads you to learn.

What’s interesting is that when I tell people that the best way to learn a language is to get a tutor and then go and do something you like anyways in your target language, they invariably don’t do that. The reasons, I assume, are manifold. Fear is a big part of it, I hear often that they’re not ready to speak to someone else yet. You’ll never be ready! It’s impossible to speak perfectly on your first try, unfortunately your ego must suffer through being bad at things in order to become better. People also create prerequisites such as learning to read kanji in Japanese before speaking a word of it. Just talking to someone feels both too easy and too embarrassing – it feels harder to stare at a textbook and psychologically safer.

The language learning method that works is the one that is effective (are you improving at communication?) and engaging (will you continue doing this?). That’s why I suggest Italki to everyone, because it’s tough to beat 1-1 speaking for effectiveness and (for me at least) the social relationship you develop with your teacher is enough motivation to continue scheduling lessons. You can add on top of that some more practice, like watching movies, reading books you enjoy, or playing games. Don’t do fake stuff, like reading books for language learners. Do stuff that’s interesting to you.

So why are schools so bad at teaching language? I think part of it is that there’s a lack of 1-1 instruction in the target language, since there’s only one teacher per class. The instruction is also ineffective. Schools teach language as a set of rules and words to be memorized explicitly, rather than as a system of communication that your brain can naturally absorb. My assumption is that modern language learning techniques come from the the way Greek & Latin were taught. From what I gathered, Latin was used as a way to teach grammar, linguistics, and Latin reading all rolled into one. In that context, it makes sense to begin with grammar, especially since most people aren’t looking to go around chatting in Latin (I would love to though, sounds cool af). My guess is that the instructional method for Latin was adapted to other live languages some time in the 20th Century. My assumption is that if students were more focused on comprehension and communication than studying textbooks they’d have better results, predicated on their desire to learn of course. Language learning in American public schools is a remarkable failure – I don’t know a single person who learned a language from classes in school.

Quick history of how I came to these conclusions if you’re interested. From here on out, it’s just context.

I learned Polish from my parents because they apparently refused to speak to me unless I spoke Polish to them when I was a kid. I think this is necessary because I heard there’s a pruning phase in a kid’s like ~5 years of age where kids try to stop speaking “unnecessary” languages. If you make it past that age, it’s likely that the parent language will survive. I’ve also heard that school teachers inform immigrant parents to stop speaking their native tongue to assist in English acquisition which is frankly an insane thing to say. Kids will learn English any way you cut it since they spend 8 hours in school a day.

I learned Norwegian when I lived in Norway for a year. I spent a few months at a school for immigrants where I perfected my Polish, since every immigrant group clustered together and spoke exclusively their native tongue. I learned just enough Norwegian to pass a test before the deadline for transferring out. I was lucky enough to escape to a real Norwegian school, where I proceeded to actually learn Norwegian. I had to communicate to people, which is the best motivation you could have.

As an interesting note, most Norwegians speak perfect English because TV has American shows subbed and not dubbed. Countries that have dubbed shows have much lower levels of fluency in English.

I finally learned Polish grammar explicitly when I went to school in Poland. Let it not be said that I think grammar is useless! I just think grammar is useless if you can’t yet communicate.

I took like 7 years of French or something like that and I could ask for directions to the bathroom when I visited Montreal. Great success.

Right now I’m learning Russian. It’s easy for me since I speak Polish, but regardless I’m still certain that the principles I laid out here are correct. I do Italki once a week, I play Cyberpunk 2077 in Russian a few hours a week, and I say dumb shit to my gf a few times a day.

Special mention of Anki. Spaced memorization is indeed a fantastic hack. Michael Nielsen has the canonical article on it, which you should totally go read. My only note is that you should go do it. Feel free to do it in whichever way makes you actually stick with it.

If you want more

AJATT – some guy learns Japanese through full immersion

Stephen Krashen – Says you can learn language exclusively through comprehensible input. While I think the general idea is sound, I don’t know if I’d take his word as dogma.

Kato Lomb – She’s clearly some flavor of genius, but I really like the way she frames language learning. (Time * Motivation)/Inhibition = Result

Steve Kaufmann – He makes interesting youtube videos that are a good way to dip your toe into the theory behind language acquisition

Benny Lewis – Preeminent language hacker. The take away should be that you should seek to use your language as much as possible without inhibition.

General note: you may see it’s mostly food and not sites lol. Portugal is best for eating, chilling, and walking around to see the pretty buildings and nice views. All the museums we went to had a lot of old broken clay pots and models of ships so not much there. 

Lisbon 

Food

The top two are the most important on this list – must go

• Pastéis de Belém for egg tarts, “donuts”, cappuccinos 
• Churrasqueira da Paz for piri piri chicken and steak !!! 
• Cervejaria Ramiro for seafoods
• Academia de Sabores for feijoada (meat and bean stew) 
• Cascais Remo for classic Portuguese food
• If still in season, the oranges are as sweet as candy. Freshly squeezed orange juice at most cafes is great 

Sites

• Castelo de São Jorge and Jardim do Torel for views of the city 
• Jerónimos Monastery
• Oceanário de Lisboa (10/10 aquarium) 

Supermarkets

• Continente Bom Dia (chain store for groceries) 
• Pingo Doce – American size store 

Sintra (can be skipped) 

Food

• overpriced and touristy

Sites

• Quinta da Regaleira (good for a half day activity – very pretty grounds) 

Porto

Food

• Sol e Sombra Bifanas for marinated pork sandwich 
• Since Sol e Sombra appears to be temporarily closed, Conga is a good alternative
• Gazela for cachorrinho (kinda like a sliced hot dog – good snack/quick lunch) 
• Marisqueira Antiga – kinda far out but great seafood
• Casa Viuva – great home style food, the alheira was mindblowing, cash only
• Casa Expresso – more home style food, cash only
• Padaria Cristal was our favorite pastry shop
• Confeitaria do Bolhão for pastries/cafe 

The Black Company by Glen Cook

I had read this book maybe 6, 7 years ago, so this was a reread. The book was better than I remember – a great subversion of the fantasy genre. The book is about a mercenary company contracted by evil people to help achieve their evil goals which keeps it fresh. While the characters and setting were good enough, I think the plot was what kept me reading.

The writing style was not my favorite but serviceable. It’s nothing fancy, with a bit of unreliable narrator thrown in.

War crimes exist in this universe – the change in tone makes it significantly different to other fantasy novels.

The “just a guy caught up in important events” was another really awesome technique, although it’s a bit quieter. The mercenary company just isn’t that important (until it is) and it has a long and illustrious history it’s not really living up to. The protagonist isn’t even that much of an important member in the Black Company. Just that structure gives it an edge over works in the genre.

Other than that the world is recognizable, the actual story is pretty straightforward, and the characters aren’t very special. I think, though, that this works to the book’s benefit. It struck out into the Vietnam War novel structure with a classic fantasy novel and I think that’s enough innovation to warrant a read. Great book 8/10.

Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K. J. Parker

This was a weird one. While I enjoyed it, I’d absolutely forgive someone for giving it a very low review. I think that it was extremely targeted towards my enjoyment of competence porn and that’s why I liked it. Other than that, there’s just not much to look for here. The protagonist is a little… off putting and there’s a racial subplot that’s written a little meh. The setting is a literal copy of Roman and Medieval history, down to copying the Golden Horn Chain. It was also written to feel a bit cartoonish?

I did, however, get exactly what I came for. The plot revolves around the protagonist taking charge of the undefended capital city of an (extremely Roman seeming) empire against a barbarian horde. There’s a hell of a lot of preparation and planning to be done to defend the city and that’s what I came to read. The book covers bureaucratic proceedings, coinage devaluation, preparing city defenses and many more competence porny things. It definitely hit right for me, but I’d hesitate to recommend it unless you enjoyed stuff like Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth or Dragon’s Banker by Scott Warren. 7/10, hit the spot.

The Secret World of Weather by Tristan Gooley

Fantastic book! I love Tristan Gooley’s books – How To Read Water was incredible, but it wasn’t very relevant to my life. He writes great books about developing a practical understanding of nature, not just a scientific one. Too often books about nature just give you the science without the application of the science.

As an example – you may understand clouds forming from convection, where warmer air, being less dense, rises in the atmosphere. This rising air cools and its moisture condenses into water droplets or ice crystals, forming clouds. Knowing this though you wouldn’t necessarily get that cumulus clouds form over hot spots like parking lots and don’t form over cool spots like lakes – providing you with a reflected map of land you can’t see.

I enjoyed this book a lot, but I think this was very targeted to my interests. If you’re curious about understanding the natural world and applying that knowledge to your daily life I can recommend it. The writing style is crisp and engaging, the pacing is good, and there are enough images to get the point. Gooley doesn’t shy away from science – it’s just that it serves the practical knowledge that other books lack.

I’ve been reasonably successful in implementing some of the weather reading into my life. I can now discern how long rain can last, as well as what weather is coming next. I’m halfway through creating a quick reference guide to weather reading inspired by this book for myself and when I’m done I’ll insert a link here.

The value that this book provides over the Weather Channel is related to local forecasting. Gooley has a great chapter explaining that while meteorology is a solved problem for wider areas, there’s tons of alpha in understanding your local area’s weather – which may be very different than what the forecast says. I think this is where the value lies for me (other than scrying clouds being damn fun). I learned that the warmest place to sit in the woods during winter is on the south slope of a mountain under an evergreen tree. I learned that you shouldn’t camp in even a slight dip in the ground if you want to keep warm. These sorts of local tips are super useful and interesting to me. 9/10 highly recommended. I took off a point because I felt like it could have been cut down just the tiniest bit.

Musashi by Yoshikawa

Not sure what to think of this book. I’m about a third of the way through. I think this may be the case of the right book at the wrong time – I would have really enjoyed this in my college years.

As it stands though, I could tell it was serialized – which is not good. It has the same issue of unnecessary length. It feels like reading a long manga (which may be why it adapted so well, although I’ve never read Vagabond). There are some great moments but man it’s just packed to the brim with filler. I’m still sort of chugging along with it. I read maybe a few pages every other week, but I can’t imagine finishing it.

The story itself is a fun romp. I don’t know how to describe it other than as a proto-shonen. It’s workmanlike in prose. The plot and characters felt carpenter-constructed. If I wanted a long adventure story I would be more open to it, but there’s too much story per character development. 6/10.

Coding Career Handbook by Swyx

I read this because I was hoping to find some unknown unknowns about software engineering as a career. It did not deliver on that, but it did give a good roadmap for potential pathways in building a career in software.

It was easy to read – like an extension of Swyx’s blog. I think the book is best explained as a paywalled section of Swyx’s blog – which may be valuable depending on how much you like his articles. I found it valuable as a mindset shift into doing more open source / build in public type stuff. 7/10

Entering the Mind of the Tracker by Tamarack Song

I wish I knew what was going on in this book. I read the first section about tracking two foxes in the woods which was really awesome but there wasn’t much practical information on how you would recreate that tracking yourself. I feel like I missed something here and I’m not getting it. No rating ?/10.

The Atrocity Archives by Stross

I read a few chapters and it didn’t engage me. It felt pretty predictable but I didn’t read very far in. No rating since I don’t think I read enough ?/10.

Cooking At Home by David Chang, Priya Krishna

Great cookbook! This was exactly what I’ve been looking for – maximizing the flavor / effort ratio. This won’t wow you with amazing dishes or incredible technique. It is, however, very good at introducing menus which are tasty and work really well as weeknight meals. The book is explicitly written to be multi-meal friendly, as in you cook a whole chicken to serve as two different meals. Note – I haven’t cooked anything from it yet but I will soon.

I think the real takeaway for me is the mindset shift in mastering the techniques of low effort cookery. I dig the idea of cooking a protein sorta plain and then repurposing it over a few days into dishes. Or of microwaving shallots in some oil to make them crisp. This is the stuff I need for Thursday night dinners after work. The thought process presented is more valuable than the actual recipes for me. 8/10

The Artist’s Way

Wrong place, wrong time for me. I needed this book about 3 years ago. Fortunately I think I’ve made big progress in removing creative blocks in my life and I found this book to be retreading familiar territory for me.

I have, however, found incredible value in morning pages (the idea of which comes from this book). I recommend trying it for a week. An explanation from Tim Ferris. Another from Austin Kleon.

In my experience it’s been part to do list, part solo therapy, part insight generator. I dismissed the claims of it generating creativity before I tried it but I’m happy to say I’m wrong. By writing your stream of thought you can finally free your working memory up and begin to abstract on the rumination. Rather than think the same thoughts repeatedly, putting them down on paper externalized them so I could grasp them better – put them into context so I could exit the thought loop and productively continue.

If you feel stuck and blocked in your creative work I think Artist’s Way could be a great book. Otherwise I think morning pages are all you really need. 5/10 for my particular purposes but I could see it being much higher if my situation were different.

Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids

Why don’t you try a Straussian reading of this? 9/10, very thought provoking.

Goodbye Eastern Europe

Fantastic, fantastic book. It’s a vibecation through Eastern Europe’s milieu. I don’t dare call it a history book since it flits around, but it laser focuses on informative nuances of Eastern Europe. Through vignettes and anecdotes it builds an image of the region and its people better than any traditional text could. It goes without saying that it’s not comprehensive.

More books could take this format for a pop survey text. Going deep on a few different aspects to paint a picture is useful and fun. Disclaimer – I have a pretty big amount of background knowledge about Eastern Europe and I lived there for a bit. I don’t know how appealing, helpful, or informative this style would be for someone who didn’t know anything but I imagine it’d be engaging and at least better than nothing.

I think I’d recommend this to the casual reader with the warning that this is an airport book that’s a definite cut above average. Fun, informative, but don’t treat it like a textbook. 8/10.

Wizard of Earthsea

This was actually another reread – I read it last in middle school. The story was very familiar, but what was surprising was the parallel between my job as software engineer and magic in the world of Earthsea. Working with computers is pretty much magic but you’re still of the world. It’s just a job but man sometimes it feels like you can bend reality just a bit. The parts where the protagonist is learning and trying out magic do feel a bit like being a programmer.

Other than that, it was a very enjoyable read for me. It feels good to read – I really enjoy the writing style.

The story is a very human focused fantasy plot that has a simplicity which belies the depth of thinking behind it. It brings with it some morals – but I mean that in a good way. What’s really cool is that I could read this in middle school and read this now and both times get a lot out of it.

10/10

Nixonland

The crux of my reading experience was that the content and structure were 10/10 but the writing style on the paragraph and sentence level was a 3/10 for me. This was what brought the book down in my opinion. It just did not work for me. I’ve included some sample text below for an idea. It just felt like the author was trying to be too literary and do too much “show don’t tell” which made it hard to read for me.

Sample from the text:

The contenders dutifully stood hands raised together as the balloons dropped: Muskie, Chisholm, Scoop Jackson, Humphrey, who was flashing peace signs. But the 250 McGovern floor managers weren’t able to whip up the traditional resolution to make the nomination unanimous—something even Barry Goldwater had been able to manage. Too much water under the bridge for that. One hippie’s sign during the celebratory demonstration read simply mcgovern sucks! Another, a black man’s, said don’t vote ’72!

George McGovern was learning what a mess of pottage a presidential nomination could be when your defining trait was supposed to be your purity.

He would now learn how difficult it could be, too, to deliberate on important decisions during a convention in which sensitive debates wasted eleven hours straight.

He received a midnight call of congratulations from Ted Kennedy—still America’s favorite Democrat. McGovern asked him to be his running mate. Kennedy refused, citing “very personal reasons.” McGovern called Ribicoff. Ribicoff turned him down. The campaign had to come up with someone by 4 pm Thursday, the deadline for putting names in nomination. They started assembling a hasty list, which they hadn’t had time to do what with all the credentials fights and platform fights and assuaging meetings.

Other than that though, I highly recommend this book to anyone trying to understand the culture war of 2016 to now. Reading this, if you blur your eyes a little, the text could just as easily be a history of the last decade.

It’s a big book but it’s a super informative tour of the 60’s & 70’s in American history, Richard Nixon as president, and the social movements that ripped America apart during that time.

Key takeaways for me were

• Nixon was much worse than I had thought. Perlstein doesn’t even try to be objective but on the other hand the most damning evidence comes through direct quotes from Nixon himself. If you thought LBJ was bad… I will say though that Nixon had a true once in a lifetime talent at political maneuvering. Watching his machinations was like watching the Bolshoi Ballet.
• The Orthogonian vs Franklin divide in America explains a lot of questions I had regarding American culture and Trumpism. TL;DR low social class versus high in the American style.
• I understood the current milieu with the context of race, safety, progress, and social justice. It explained the motivations of American social movements in a way that made sense to me. Again, Perlstein is not necessarily sympathetic, but he has enough empathy to peer through the worldview of Nixon voters enough for you to understand them. I think that for me this was a good and necessary step in understanding American culture. It even has a bearing on my thinking about urbanism in America. For better or worse the questions of the Fair Housing Act, race riots, and suburban discrimination inform the way cities are today. Great book and so much more than a simple biography of Nixon – it’s a lens through which you can see American society.

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