Language and Thought

Perhaps I could lean into my weirdness and curiosity, and earn a living from a small group of similarly curious weirdos. It felt like the permission slip I needed to give it a shot.

Discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital.

It’s possible to paint an dishonest picture of reality without telling a single lie.

the thing is, as an adult, you get to make your own cool. you get to choose your own friends, live your own life. and let me tell you, in my life, where i make the rules, i am the coolest cat around.

being passionate about your hobbies is cool. asking good questions is cool. reading books is cool. taking notes is cool.

thinking of projects and then... See more

Confidence is a necessary ingredient for success in any area of life. So is humility, but if you’re not careful, humility can morph into a kind of imposter syndrome that stops you in your tracks.

The ideas aren’t all gold, but they seem to find the people who want them, and they start to give life.

“The best way to be superhuman is to do things that you love with other people who love them, too.” - Cory Doctorow, Walkaway

There was a time in our own past when the “work ethic” would have been incomprehensible, and perhaps Weber was on to something when he tied its appearance to a religion, Calvinism, which if it emerged today instead of four centuries ago would immediately and appropriately be labeled a cult.

Like most social and political theory, the story Hobbes and his successors told was really unacknowledged autobiography.