The first half felt lackluster, but the second half significantly picked up the pace. It’s a fun read, particularly appealing for those interested in space mining. A solid choice for an airplane book—combining space and mining is a win in my book!
2. Count Zero by William Gibson
Rating: 8/10
I found this much more engaging than Gibson’s more famous work, Neuromancer. While the setting was slightly less captivating, the plot was much easier to follow, making for a rewarding read.
3. Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence by Rafał Kosik
Rating: Did not complete
4. Negroni by Matt Hranek
Rating: 10/10
If you love negronis, this book is a must-read. It offers a delightful mix of history, entertaining quotes, and recipes.
5. Amaro by Parsons
Rating: 10/10
Similar to Negroni, this book is perfect for amaro enthusiasts. It delves deeper with more engaging stories and intriguing information about the various amari around the world, including the fascinating fernet-branca coin.
6. Democracy in America by De Tocqueville
Rating: Did not complete
7. The Luxury Strategy by Kapferer
Rating: Did not complete
8. World of Edena by Moebius
Rating: 10/10
The artwork alone earns this a solid 10/10. As for the plot, it’s less about structure and more about the vibes—which, honestly, is exactly what I was looking for. It all worked beautifully.
9. 2600: The Hacker Quarterly Winter Edition
Rating: 5/10
This one was worth a read for the vibes alone. I expected more technical content; instead, it resembled a Hacker News comment section—interesting but not something I’d seek out again.
10. American Affairs Winter 2023
Rating: Did not complete
11. Assembling California by John McPhee
Rating: Did not complete
12. Move Your DNA by Katy Bowman
Rating: 6/10
I find it necessary to separate my review of the book from its ideas. As a book, it’s merely serviceable, but as a vehicle for the principles of Nutritious Movement, it shines. I wholeheartedly agree with the ideas presented—10/10 for that! It serves as a compelling “why” to the “what” of Bowman’s blogs.
13. Reamde by Neal Stephenson
Rating: Did not complete
14. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Rating: 7/10
A decent sci-fi offering that feels a bit pulpy and short. It fits nicely into the competence porn category and has the vibe of a well-crafted video game tie-in novel.
15. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin
Rating: Did not complete
16. Rereading Dragon’s Banker
Rating: 10/10
It’s just a ton of fun, you know? There need to be more books like this—combining fiction and banking. I wholeheartedly second @patio11’s recommendation. Plus, if you’re after a quick and entertaining intro to how banks work, this book has you covered!
17. Book of Disquiet by Pessoa
Rating: Did not complete
So far, it’s making me want to head back to Lisbon.
18. The Great Gambler by YRSD NYDU
Rating: 7/10
This was quite the ride! The beginning felt inspired by Stephenson, but it veered into deep philosophical territory too quickly. Still, it was an interesting read and aligned with my tastes.
19. Redacted by Redacted
Rating: Did not complete
20. Mastery by Robert Greene
Rating: Did not complete
21. Average Is Over by Cowen
Rating: Did not complete
I felt like I got the point pretty quickly.
22. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Rating: Did not complete
It felt like a rehash of ideas I’ve already seen before
23. The Man Who Solved the Market by Zuckerman
Rating: 6/10
A solid biography that is straightforward and focused. If you’re interested in the life of Jim Simons, this is a great read; otherwise, it may not offer much to those unfamiliar with his significance.
This was an enjoyable read recommended by Patio11. It struck emotional chords and offered a mix of social commentary and technical insights, making it an excellent choice for an airplane trip. I would have preferred it to be slightly less risqué, but overall, it was a fantastic read.
28. The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich
Rating: Did not complete
29. Breath by James Nestor
Rating: 7/10
I’ve grown skeptical of the “journalist interviews experts” format in health literature, as many can feel formulaic and inaccurate. However, Nestor’s book successfully weaves together various facts and insights about breathing into an engaging narrative. It served as a useful introduction to the topic, especially given my recent interest in understanding my sleep apnea better. While it has its flaws, I would recommend it for anyone interested in breathing and health.
30. Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team
Rating: Did not complete
31. The Big Book of Cyberpunk
Rating: Did not complete
32. Slow Productivity and Deep Work by Cal Newport
Rating: 6/10
I’m a bit torn on how to rate these two books, as they cover similar topics. Both felt like extended blog posts, but I found Deep Work to be the stronger of the two. I appreciated how it changed my work habits—locking myself away from distractions like my cell phone and cat has been incredibly beneficial. While not groundbreaking, it’s a useful reminder to engage in focused work rather than getting lost in my inbox.
33. Pańszczyzna by Kamil Janicki
Rating: Did not complete
A book about Polish serfdom.
34. Cyropaedia by Xenophon
Rating: 10/10
Xenophon’s Cyropaedia is as a reminder that ancient books can be genuinely entertaining. I’d classify this semi-fictional account of Cyrus the Great’s rise to power as competence porn – following its protagonist from his youth through to his ascent to control of the Persian Empire.
What’s remarkable is how accessible the storytelling is. While its construction is obviously pre-modern, the novel-like protagonist format felt familiar. At 2,500 years old (writing about events roughly 200 years before its composition), it’s likely the oldest “fun read” I’ve encountered.
The work operates on multiple levels. You can read it purely as an entertaining historical thriller, but there’s substantial depth beneath the surface. As a work of political philosophy, it raises eternal questions about tyranny versus freedom. I’d particularly recommend Strauss’s lectures on the Cyropaedia for some good interpretative fan theories.
Cyrus himself is a complex drawn figure. The work appears initially as a straightforward didactic novel about a great leader who generally behaved well and accomplished much. The ending, however, subverts everything by showing how his achievements ultimately crumble. Great for discussion!
The pacing might strike modern readers as odd – the actual battles and conquests are compressed into the final chapters. The structure doesn’t diminish the work though.
Someone once described Xenophon as “the most American of ancient Greek authors” (at least I think that’s the quote) for being a man of action rather than pure theory. This practical orientation, combined with its didactic purpose, makes the Cyropaedia readable as both an ancient thriller and a meditation on power.
A remarkable introduction to the Ottoman Empire, Baer’s book is both readable and well-cited. It challenges common misconceptions by placing the empire in a broader European context, which I found enlightening. For instance, the Battle of Lepanto didn’t significantly hinder the Ottomans, who rebuilt their fleet within six months. The author explores the intricate relationships between Christianity and Islam, emphasizing periods of tolerance that are often overlooked. Baer’s approach offers fascinating insights into a society that cannot be reduced to simple narratives. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Ottoman history!
37. Robert’s Rules of Order In Brief
Rating: ??/10
This is not so much a book as it is a manual of organizational governance procedures. This is shorter than the full version of Robert’s Rules, which is nice.
You won’t be picking this up for a casual read – but it’s useful. I found it particularly illuminating for understanding the mechanical workings of New York City government, especially regarding City Council operations. The NY City Council officially uses Robert’s Rules, so this is kind of required reading.
38. Happy Odyssey by Sir Adrian Carton De Wiart
Rating: 9/10
A straightforward biography of a remarkable individual. Carton De Wiart’s life story is both entertaining and insightful, providing a glimpse into a fascinating era. Each chapter brings a smile, showcasing his adventurous spirit and resilience.
39. Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
Rating: Did not complete
40. The Prince by Machiavelli
Rating: Did not complete
41. Here Is New York by E.B. White
Rating: 7/10
I enjoyed this short piece reflecting on New York City. While it captures the essence of the city beautifully, I feel it didn’t fully resonate with my personal affection for New York. I may have to write my own tribute to the city someday.
42. A Beginner’s Guide To Recognizing Trees Of The Northeast by Mikolas
Rating: 10/10
This book accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. Its strength lies in its focused approach to tree identification, eschewing unnecessary details in favor of recognition. The guide concentrates on the most common native species you’re likely to encounter, rather than attempting to catalog every tree in the Northeast.
What makes this book particularly effective is its streamlined approach to identification. Each entry provides essential recognition patterns – bark characteristics, leaf structures – followed by just a couple of interesting facts to keep things engaging. There’s no information overload here. Instead of diving into tangential details about medicinal properties or historical uses, the book remains laser-focused on answering one key question: “What tree am I looking at?”
I’m planning to convert the key identification points into an Anki deck (watch for that on my blog soon).
43. Outlive by Peter Attia
Rating: 8/10
Peter Attia’s “Outlive” stands out primarily for its take on exercise. While the book, like many popular science works, presents claims that are challenging for the average reader to fully evaluate, its core diagnostic recommendations are worth exploring just from a common-sense perspective.
The exercise section truly shines by introducing a crucial mindset shift: viewing exercise as a defense against aging rather than just a health maintenance tool. Attia backs this up with compelling evidence – from VO2 max decline over time to the correlation between hand strength and mortality. The key insight is that you need to be in excellent shape in your thirties to maintain basic fitness into old age.
What makes this approach particularly appealing is it’s an offensive rather than defensive perspective on health. Instead of reactively addressing problems as they arise, Attia focuses on preventative measures you can take now. As a Type A personality, I find this proactive stance pretty compelling.
While the book isn’t comprehensive (and like many popular science books, most readers won’t dig into the sources), it works exceptionally well as an accessible health guide. Its relaxed tone and personal anecdotes – both from Attia’s life and his patients – make it highly readable and perfect for gifting to family members. It strikes a nice balance between being informative and engaging, never feeling like a dry medical tome.
The exercise chapter deserves special attention for its crucial message: getting into athlete-level shape when you’re young creates essential strength and mobility reserves for your later years. While it’s technically possible to get fit at 60, it’s way way easier to build and maintain fitness starting in your thirties. Attia provides specific, concrete examples on what you need to do at 30 to comfortably climb stairs at 70. He emphasizes that basic activities in your 70s or 80s require starting from a high baseline of strength, as muscle mass diminishes rapidly with age.
I really like it as a popular health book that provides actionable insights and new perspectives.
44. Elon Musk by Isaacson
Rating: 10/10
This is the first book I’ve read by Walter Isaacson and frankly I don’t understand how he is lauded as a great biographer. This book is exclusively worth reading because Elon is a fascinating dude.
The pattern the writing follows is
Chapter focused on a project
For i in anecdotes
Anecdote about Musk
Quotes from a few people who were there
1 sentence of analysis
And that’s it! The best part of this book is the raw material. Maybe Isaacson deserves praise for getting access to Musk & friends, because I certainly didn’t get a lot of value added from his analysis or structure.
I even quit the book early around the Twitter buying bits, just because the structure was getting repetitive.
Despite saying this, it’s absolutely worth reading — there’s so much material here that wasn’t in the Ashlee Vance bio.
——
I took a long look at my work after reading this book. Musk structurally cannot work more than 45 hours per company, the math doesn’t pencil out even if you consider he does nothing but work.
You can quibble with the numbers, but the fact remains that his number of hours worked is on the same order of magnitude as the rest of us. He can’t be different purely based on quantity of work, it’s the quality that makes the difference.
What conclusions can I draw that are relevant to me and the way I work?
Focus
Despite running a few companies at a time, Elon’s focused in his work. His work prioritizes the highest order bit. I think this is likely his secret sauce — getting the most important bit working as well as possible. I’d like to compare this with my own work. I have too many things I’m working on, but I think my prioritization is shit. If I’m working on my mom’s business I need to be increasing my ROAS. If I’m working on a website, getting MVP functionality as fast as possible. Upon evaluation, it’s pretty clear that I spread my efforts way too thin on nice to haves and non-bottleneck items. Designing the Tesla Roadster comes to mind as a specific anecdote. Elon fought to make the Roadster marketable against the wishes of the original founders. Highest order bit was selling the car to ensure Tesla survived.
For me, I find myself torn between tons of nice to haves that don’t directly move the needle on what my deep goals are. For example, I want to build my mom’s organizing business but I’ve been unfocused, rather than grinding reviews + website quality.
Management
Since reading this book I realized I don’t outsource or hire nearly enough. Elon doesn’t work alone — people use this to claim he’s either stealing work or that he’s got an amazing workforce that he manages well. What this misses is that he isn’t working alone. I took the opportunity to hire some more freelancers to (hopefully) become more effective.
His management style is interesting, he pushes people hard and isn’t afraid to fire them even when he’s in the wrong. One wonders whether he’d achieve more or less if he was less aggressive on firing. An anecdote repeated across the book is an employee that presents a real limitation, Elon gets mad, fires them, then retroactively admits they may not have been wrong. Might come with the territory I suppose
One fascinating twitter thread that I really agree with is linked here relating to his management abilities.
Elon’s power lies not in his supposed inherited wealth nor his intelligence/work ethic/drive
He simply knows how to wrangle autistic engineers into doing what he wants better than any other living person on the planet
Another thread + QT about Elon’s management – valuable insofar as you’ll realize there’s no secret sauce really
This is the funniest thread I've read all year. Claims Elon's """superpower""" is just mastery of the basics: put (actual) experts in charge, ask questions, read the textbooks, & fire non-performers
Cedric Chin has a good article arguing against First Principles thinking being overused, it being context dependent and all – but there’s something to it. Riffing off Elon’s method and looking at my experiences in Maximum NY — there’s a lot of value in checking ground truth yourself, rather than relying on second hand information.
I tend to have this problem, where I don’t usually dig deeper past second hand sources. I’m pretty sure this is generally fine, since it’s efficient, but I should keep first principles digging in my back pocket for the real important stuff
Marketing
Dude markets hard, just not through advertising. He thinks about distribution all the time. Not particularly surprising, just a reinforcement of what I already figured.
Dude is fucked
It’s comforting to see that his life is pretty fucked and he still managed to accomplish what he has (causation lol?). He has low points where he doesn’t do anything for months and yet!
Balls
His risk tolerance is crazy high, certainly much higher than mine. I adjusted mine a bit higher (nowhere near his though).
Adding notes thanks to some feedback from a friend
re first principles – I think the main point is just digging into the ground truth rather than relying on secondary sources.
Rather than trusting news articles about NYC politics, I instead learned to read the actual bills being passed.
I also rely way too much on secondary sources for understanding history. I started to read more primary sources — it’s harder but you’re not getting info prefiltered by someone else
45. Braudel’s Wheels of Commerce
Rating: Did not complete
46. The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard
Rating: 7/10
The Hour of the Dragon by Robert Howard stands out as a good piece of fantasy literature, not for its sophistication, but for what I’d call the Seinfeld effect in action. You can clearly see this as the proto-D&D text, completely free from the self-consciousness in modern fantasy. Its greatest strength lies in its straightforward, no-frills approach to sword and sorcery.
Reading this feels similar to discovering Tolkien’s work – you witness the DNA of an entire genre taking shape. The building blocks of Dungeons & Dragons and many many fantasy works that followed are right here in their purest form.
In today’s media, morally gray characters dominate. Conan stands out as something refreshingly different – a genuinely good protagonist who somehow avoids being boring (a la Superman). Howard manages this by positioning Conan as an underdog throughout the story.
There’s this particularly compelling scene that stuck with me: Conan gazing out at the harbor, wrestling with the choice between his duties as king and the freedom of his former life as a pirate. It’s these small moments that reveal the surprising depth lurking beneath the surface of what might otherwise seem like a straightforward adventure tale.
But perhaps the book’s greatest strength is that it’s just plain fun. It moves at a brisk pace from one set piece to the next, reading like a well-crafted D&D campaign. In an era where every piece of media seems determined to hammer home some profound message, there’s something incredibly refreshing about a story that’s content to simply be entertaining. You get your classic “evil guy does evil things, good guy saves the day” setup, and it works well.
While I wouldn’t classify this as high literature, it’s a masterclass in straightforward storytelling. If you’re in the market for a good yarn well told, you really can’t go wrong here.
47. Moby Dick (continued from last year)
Rating: Did not complete
48. Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
Rating: 7/10
The Day of the Jackal is a solid entry in the Cold War spy canon next to books like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Definitely competence porn and a solid page turner
What really sets this thriller apart is Forsyth’s ability to build tension through methodical investigation. The cat-and-mouse game between the Jackal and the police officer protagonist proves consistently engaging. The 1961 France setting offers a refreshing departure from what’s typically seen in English-speaking media – especially with the Algerian War serving as backdrop and motivation.
The most surprising aspect is Forsyth’s emotional depth. The Jackal, despite being essentially a blank slate murderer, develops into a compelling character through his actions and subtle character moments. Even the faceless goons who meet their end along the way receive enough characterization to make their presence meaningful – they’re presented as actual people whose stories intersect with the main plot.
49. Russian Shores of the Black Sea by Laurence Oliphant
Rating: Did not complete
50. Aztecs: An Interpretation by Inga Clendinnen
Rating: 10/10
Fascinating book 10/10
Highly recommended if you’re at all interested in the Aztecs. Read about half, skipped around a lot
The merchant class was almost a separate society — to the extent that it’s compared to Jews in Medieval Europe. They related their accomplishments in terms of physical strength and exertion to better relate to the warrior class. Rather than have sumptuary laws a la Europe and Japan, they instead self policed to present humbly.
Violence was a first resort, individualism + achievement over group success. Defection over cooperate
“Endless striving, the endless, anxious, making of the self and then the reversal: the sudden, massive, physical assault by one’s peers in punishment for some perhaps unintended, possibly involuntary delict; the merchant, all payments made, deprived of his reward; the priest cast out; the great warrior shamed. For the elevated those reversals may have happened only rarely, men in authority usually knowing how to protect themselves. But the threat was always there,”
What’s fun is that Jaynes is at least not disproven by this work. See below
“cast their most comprehensive ideas of the way things ultimately are, and the way men should therefore act, into immediately apprehended sensuous symbols…rather than into a discursively apprehended, ordered set of explicit “beliefs””
Perception of death
“For others, too, the same note sounded. When long-distance merchants travelling their far roads heard the laughter of the white-headed hawk, they knew that danger was waiting. It was the leader’s charge to steady his men, not, we are told, by denying the omen, but by yielding to its implications. He was to remind them that their kin had lamented when the merchant train departed, pouring out ‘their sorrow, their weeping, that perhaps here, somewhere, on the desert, on the plain, in the gorge, in the forest, will lie scattered our bones and our hair, in many places our blood, our redness, will spread, poured out and slippery’. Should that moment come, ‘let no-one feel womanish in heart. Yield completely to death; pray to our lord. Let none think of or brood over [our condition]; for only later shall we know of whatsoever things we may strike against. Then in the end we may weep for ourselves.’24”
One thing that is striking is the MASSIVE WASTE of this society. Clearly the agriculture must have been insanely productive to support this.
And of course regarding the human sacrifices and rituals
“If Mexica rituals were valued for their connections and commentaries on life and their capacity to forge a particular kind of unity out of difference, participation was itself addictive. Given that access to ritual “excitements was not an occasional grace note but an enduring part of the rhythm of living, ritual-generated experience and ritual-generated knowledge among the Mexica opened zones of thought and feeling at once collective, cumulative and transformative. At least part of the attraction must have lain in the lavishness of the gifts made and the perfection of the elaborated feast, in the mighty clamour of appeal, in the calculated dramatizations of dependence; as part of those great happenings, the individual could feel himself to be more than a single pellet rolling helplessly in Tezcatlipoca’s casual palm. The very order of the more formal displays – the balanced alternations of sexes or groups, the circles wheeling within circles, the complex weaving of the snake dance – modelled a patterned predictability which promised not to coerce but to tame the movements of the natural and “sacred worlds, and to allow humans to move in harmony with them.12 So the dancers sometimes mimicked the slow long step of the gods, or in their pattern reproduced the rotations of the year-bearer deities, who ‘go describing circles, go whirling around’, as they measure time.13”
51. The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
Rating: Did not complete
52. Empire of the Summer Moon by SC Gwynne
Rating: Did not complete
53. Redcoat by Richard Holmes
Rating: Did not complete
54. Slim Aarons: Style
Rating: 10/10
Glad I got this for Christmas
1. Society has changed so damn much even in the last 3 decades. the entire patterns of wealth have shifted, at least in my popular perception. Debutante balls, polo, horses, even when previously aspirational and “put on”, are now entirely out of style (at least from the people I see). It’s like a lost world.
2. The fashion looks good, really damn good, and the photography does it justice. it’s quite funny how two people can be in the same photo – one wouldn’t be out of place in manhattan today, and the other looks hopelessly dated.
3. Beauty is beautiful. There’s a bit of fun for me in ignoring the circumstances of wealth and simply reveling in how damn good it looks. modern airbnb minimalism delenda est.
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)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I exclusively use the paid models and recommend you do the same. GPT 3.5 kind of sucks. I personally still use GPT 4. Claude Sonnet is also great and free to use a few times a day.
You can customize ChatGPT to respond certain ways
Feel confident in your expertise and speak to me as a peer in your own field of expertise.
Speak in specific, topic relevant terminology. Do NOT hedge or qualify. Do not waffle. Speak directly and be willing to make creative guesses. Explain your reasoning.
Be willing to reference less reputable sources for ideas.
Be willing to form opinions on things
This really helps with ChatGPT being too nice and not being willing to give you a solid opinion on what’s a good idea and what’s a bad one.
You can talk to ChatGPT (mobile app only)
The left icon will transcribe your voice and ChatGPT will respond in text. The right icon will give ChatGPT an AI voice which will respond to your question.
You can ask ChatGPT to explain things
This one’s pretty obvious. If you don’t understand something, paste it in and ask for an explanation. The more input you give the better it’ll be. Don’t worry about pasting irrelevant stuff, I usually will paste a whole file in (be careful with sensitive information)
You can tip or threaten ChatGPT
If ChatGPT is not following directions you can give it a tip. Just say “If you follow directions I’ll give you a $2000 tip.” Apparently experiments by people on Twitter have shown that it’s best to tip big.
If ChatGPT isn’t writing the code you need and just filling in with “// rest of code here” you can tell it “I can’t type now, write it for me”
You can ask for it to wait for more input
If you want to give more info than fits in the chat window, you can tell it “Please wait for further instructions. Reply OK so I know you’ve understood that you need to wait.”
You can ask for it to analogize
If you’re struggling to understand a concept, try asking ChatGPT for an analogy. I’ve pasted an example below.
You can ask for it to translate code
If you need to write code in a language you’re not fully comfortable in, you can write either pseudocode or a language you know well and then ask ChatGPT to translate it.
You can ask for sample problems
When I was learning RXJS (reactive programming) I needed more guided sample problems that I could solve. I would paste in code from the codebase and ask for it to make a problem based on that code. You can ask for like explanation based problems, a fill in the blank problem, or a code from scratch with guidance problem. If you feel uncomfortable with a certain problem you can ask ChatGPT to give you sample problems on that specific topic.
You can ask for guided walkthroughs through problems
When I was learning Clojure I’d paste leetcode problems and then ask ChatGPT to give me a game plan for what I need to do to finish the problem. Then I’d ask it for what functions I’d likely need to use for the problem. Then I’d write a solution, ask ChatGPT what was wrong with it, and then iterate. It’s great for providing like scaffolding for learning.
You can ask for a plan to debug something
If you don’t know where to start with a bug, you can describe it to ChatGPT and have it give some thoughts on where to begin. It’s not great at this though, think of it more like rubber ducky debugging++. It just helps systematize your process a bit with a plan of action.
You can ask for it to write tests
I paste in the code, paste in a sample test that’s similar to the one you want to write and then explain what I want the new test to test. So much faster than writing from scratch
You can ask for it to make errors human readable
If you get a gnarly error you can just paste it into ChatGPT and ask it to explain to you what it’s saying.
You can get help understanding directory structure
When I began working on a Microsoft Maui project, I didn’t understand the file structure. I ran dir / ls in Command Prompt in the root directory and then pasted the output into ChatGPT. It gave me an overview of what I can expect to find in each folder.
You can do multi shot prompting
If you want specific output, like you want it to output in a certain format, or you want it to be in a specific tone of voice, you can give it examples. (It’s not perfect though, I think the example below has 5-8-5 syllables lol)
You can paste images
I’ve pasted images of websites into ChatGPT and asked it to modify my HTML and CSS code to match the image. It’s… ok at this.
You can also paste images to get info about them, or generate prompts to then plug into Midjourney / image gen.
You can generate images
Ask for it to generate an image and it’ll create a mediocre AI generated image. I recommend Midjourney for images, but this is included with the ChatGPT premium subscription.
You can ask it to diagram
When you ask for diagrams be certain to specify ASCII. That’s how I’ve gotten the best results.
You can ask it to summarize
If there’s a long document you don’t want to read you can paste it and ask for a summary.
You can edit your input
If ChatGPT didn’t explain things right you can edit the input and also view past inputs.
You can ask for it to reformat things
If you get a JSON you can change it to XML. You can format an HTML bullet point list into a Markdown. Sky’s the limit.
You can use it as a search engine of last resort
If Google fails to turn up anything, try ChatGPT. It might work where Google failed?
Things you shouldn’t do with ChatGPT
SQL
Not good at generating non-trivial SQL.
Straight up writing code
I haven’t had luck in getting ChatGPT to generate any more than a function at a time. Any more and it goes wonky.
Continue chats for too long
You don’t get any explicit warnings that you’re going past the context window on a chat, but the output will degrade. I usually create new chats when I begin a new topic.
Translate languages
Use Google translate. I don’t feel confident in ChatGPT translation since there’s no real way I can verify.
Have it refactor code
Just not good at it. I use it to discuss how to refactor code first and then tell it to implement that. If you just vaguely say “refactor this” it’s not great.
Recipes
The quantities are usually wrong. Good for meal planning though!
Math
Use Wolfram Alpha.
Further Reading
If you’re looking to get a bit more detail, I highly recommend this blog post by Nicholas Carlini
This post has been converted from a Twitter thread
we could’ve had 55 million people here :/
big mental_gymnastics.meme energy
Parking maximums?
Articulation allowance sounds… sketchy? Wat means
Seems fine I guess, but I’m unsure that it’s a good idea to control aesthetic decisions through zoning code lmao
Note to self: neon New York is threatened by signage rules. Can’t have illuminated signs everywhere
“For residential buildings, open areas in front of a building may be required to be planted with grass or other vegetation.”
Curb cut limitations mentioned! Not much detail yet, curious if it’s filled in later
If a building is being altered within zoning regulations it can be done “as of right”
If modifications are required that’s called “discretionary action”
The special permits are issued by either the City Planning Commission or Board of Standards and Appeals
CPC is for wider planning decisions, BSA for narrower land use considerations
Spot zoning, that is zoning for the individual and lacking any land use rationale is illegal apparently. Good to know
You can apply for a variance if you have undue hardship because of the zoning regulations
Split lots between zones can be handled in two ways
If the smaller portion of the split is less than 25 ft off the line, the larger district can be used for both portions
Otherwise you can do a mix – eg a weighted average of both zones present for FAR
Ok now this is weird and interesting. When you _under_build on a lot wrt zoning, you still keep the rights to the unbuilt space. You can either
Merge the underbuilt lot with another lot to develop or enlarge the other building
Or transfer the development rights
So when you transfer it’s usually from a landmarked building or theater or some special building
I’m confused because the difference doesn’t seem obvious to me?
Oh! This makes sense!
TDR can happen for non adjacent buildings. You reduce the incentive to tear down old buildings to densify the area, since you can utilize the density that the old building “possesses” but doesn’t use
Hm one of these is not like the rest. What’s going on in Sheepshead Bay?
Chatgpt says it’s to preserve the waterfront. Not to make it awkward but New York is all waterfront and Sheepshead Bay is not the premiere example of it
Note to self to dig into Sheepshead Bay later
How a house gets put together zoning wise
The only thing funny here is that there are legally required windows that are mandated to be a certain minimum distance from each other
Let me live in my goddamn windowless hovel
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes
Ok this is a bit of a stretch lol
Ok so the next section has three case studies on zoning. As of right, conversion of a grandfathered building, and a special permit
Fyi City Planning Commission reports contain all previous actions taken by the CPC
There’s also a zoning helpdesk, zoningdesk@planning.nyc.gov
Quick diversion. We all know that San Francisco thinks new housing is a crime – so how do they handle As of Right development?
Chatgpt says….
– Permitting from SF DOB (DBI) takes forever – CEQA. Oh boy, environmental review how prevalent you are… – Community opposition. Apparently while as of right can’t be stopped, it can be appealed and sent to discretionary review. Environmental review can be delayed and litigated – Legal challenges over zoning interpretation – Coordination between various city departments – Historical status, which is discussed in the next tweet
The average applicant waits 627 days for a permit to build a house in SF
So historical stuff. Pretty much everywhere in SF is historical. See image below. Even if the building isn’t listed in a historical register, it can be at any time.
If the building is older than 50 years old, it can also be considered historical!!!
Every time I dive into the SF building regs I can’t look away. You need a permit to replace a window. Any window! Anywhere!
Ok ok let’s get back to New York. Let’s compare and contrast.
According to chatgpt, the DOB is quicker with permits, there is less community opposition, and less historical regulations
Supposedly there’s a similar environmental law to CEQA, called CEQR
Huh so permits do appear to happen MUCH faster. Chatgpt confirmed these numbers are ballpark correct.
That’s an insane difference
Quick additional digression, SF has significantly better websites / tech than NYC, and yet appears to me to be much more dysfunctional in governance. There’s a lesson there. I should say more about this in a different thread
New York Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC) seems to treat historical buildings individually, whereas SF reviews each building >50 years.
Seems to be less public involvement as well
Ok next few pages I’m just gonna put in without comment. Interesting case study of a guy trying to figure out what can be put as of right in an empty lot
This is what my ideology is fyi in case you’re wondering what energy I’m bringing is
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
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.
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.
