Andrei Stoica

These stories often feature exaggerated elements of rebellion, autodidact mastery, subversive hacking, heroic confrontations with villainous teachers and schoolyard bullies, genius non-neurotypical personal innovations and breakthroughs, and powerful experiences outside formal learning. These stories often sound like self-serving tales told by midd... See more

While my current studies have no live teachers in the loop, each time I sit down to study something seriously, I’m reminded of how much I’m practicing behaviors first learned under the watchful eye of good teachers. We tend to remember the exceptionally charismatic (which is not the same thing as good ), and exceptionally terrible teachers, but muc... See more

I’m in 3 weekly study groups (on governance systems, robotics, and distributed computing) with friends, run a serious book club that takes on fairly weighty reads, and am working slowly through a few courses (two electrical engineering courses from MIT Open Courseware). On the practical front, I haven’t done this much hands-on hacking, building, an... See more

I design apps for a living. But I've never seen ANYTHING like the @notboring apps. They're redefining what "good design" means with physics, weight & movement. Let me show you how they make their apps feel alive (and what designers & founders can steal from them): 🧵 https://t.co/PSp1DQg0Xl

Eventually, with the restaurant about to close and reality setting in, I begin to pack my things. I put on my coat, stuff my journal and pen back into my messenger bag, and empty out my tray above the garbage can. The thoughts begin to cascade: the irony of this happening right now is so painfully clear, how could I have been so naive in this city,... See more

If the societal remedies inspired by a degraded discourse of doom leave much to be desired, then the individual actions prescribed by this degraded discourse only generate further discontent. If your city truly is doomed, then amidst heightened pessimism about governmental efficacy, exit seems the only logical choice. During the pandemic, the media... See more

What bothers me most about this inflammatory language is that it provides ideological cover for only the shittiest of knee-jerk solutions. In the Progressive era, Beauregard observes, commentators believed problems could at least be fixed. Terms like “crisis,” “doom loop,” and “urban death” carry a far more intractable connotation or at least sugge... See more