I hope someday any normal Linux software will be usable in Apple hardware. Unfortunately, there are hurdles.

One of the biggest hurdles was getting code accepted into the Linux kernel.

This became very frustrating for the previous Asahi Linux lead developer. He would push upstream code and the Linux developers would not accept it.

Why didn’t they accept it? Because it was written in memory-safe Rust and not in memory-unsafe C. Old Linux developers don’t want to deal with Rust. So they just refuse to include Asahi Linux updates into normal Linux software.

It’s a meme of sorts. Some time ago, someone sent that message again and again to lots of people.

A cute squirrel that seems all innocent but actually is also a bottle opener

This totally happens in code where functions have plenty of side effects. And thats why functional programming can lead to fearless refactoring!

The goal is to have a good working environment to live good lives and do good work.

The fact that your boss pulled in other coworkers could be interpreted as a red flag, as something fundamentally wrong with your boss. However, without more information, I think this situation could be workable. In other words, there are things you can do.

Again, the goal is to have a good working environment to live good lives and do good work.

I think a good working environment is one where errors can be talked about openly and without fear. I do not think the solution is “praise publicly criticize privately”. I think the solution is for your team (including your boss) to create psychologically safe environment. How? By emphasizing the goal, the purpose of your work. By admitting to mistakes or lack of knowledge to accept fallibility. This is especially helpful if your boss does it. By appreciating when someone openly shares concerns or mistakes. By creating rituals or habits of inclusion, such as well run meetings or effective information-gathering methods.

Do all of those recommendations sound hard to implement and naive? I think for many teams they are. But the reality is that psychologically safe teams exist, and they perform better than teams that don’t have it.

If it’s hard to implement it, why am I bringing it up? Because I think it’s important know exactly what went wrong with your meeting with your boss. It’s better to have an accurate map that shows a steep canyon than a fake map that shows a nonexistent bridge.

So what do you do?

Here are a couple of suggestions:

• learn about psychological safety. Amy Edmonson is the authority on the subject.
• learn to have Crucial Conversations. It’ll help you now and it’ll help you forever.

If you vibe with what I’m saying, let me know and I can give you more suggestions. At the same time, it’s totally understandable if you don’t think my path is viable.

There is a group that does studies on different apps. They look at how much time people spend using a language-learning app and how much each minute of studying adds to a standardized language test. Turns out, Rosetta Stone and LingQ are the most efficient per minute spent in those apps. If I remember correctly, both are privately held companies, which I see as a better sign than Duolingo’s public listing. I don’t know about their privacy policies, though.

To evaluate “clanker” as a word, I think it’s worthwhile to evaluate its function in context.

So, what function is saying “clanker” serving? When someone uses it, what stories does it make more or less likely? Does it bring more stories of kindness, playfulness, and empathy? Or does it bring more stories of cruelty, aggression, and callousness?

I will not answer those questions in this post, but I think those are a good starter point to evaluate “clanker” as a word.

To understand your question, do you mean in general? Or to go into the details of how it looks to apply the ideas? In general, I’d say my advice is to read the book Crucial Conversations and the book The Fearless Organization and learn the ideas in there. How does it look? From afar, Crucial Conversations and psychological safety look like better conversations. I can’t say they’re perfect, but at least I avoid some pits I fell into before.

Oh, and I can think of a few more:

• learning calligraphy
• learning my times tables even better
• learning about psychological flexibility and becoming more psychologically flexible
• mindfulness meditation
• using pomodoro timers and actually taking breaks
• using Getting Things Done in a psychologically flexible way
• hosting friends much more often
• learning to cook tasty vegetarian or vegan meals

Some time ago I learned about psychological safety and Crucial Conversations. Since then, I’ve seen them improving my life.

To test whether they actually work, I did a little experiment in my life. For some time, I played a little game where sometimes I followed the opposite advice to see what happened. And yeah, I saw the conversation quality go down. It really is not inconsequential to have a common purpose and being open to wild takes.

So yeah, I realized how powerful Crucial Conversations and Amy Edmonson’s research are and applied them to my life. And naturally my quality of life improved quite a bit.

Finding a good therapist. Within those sessions, some moments stand out: the ACT exercises that were experiential. Those exercises transformed many fucked up beliefs. I went from “the world is shit and I’m fucked” to “the world’s complex but I commit to be a kind person”.

I can’t recommend it enough: experiential ACT exercises.

Emily Nagoski’s Burnout has some practical advice, but the single most powerful thing you could be doing right now is mindfulness meditation.

Why? Because burnout usually comes associated with a set of bad experiences that we learn to shut out. That is why we need to re-learn to experience life instead of shutting it out.

How can you do it? I personally like the Healthy Minds app and program, but there are plenty online.

Other tips? Yes. Do Loving-Kindness meditation too. It makes you happy quickly and improves your relationships with people. This, in turn, improves your work.

How am I so sure? Check out Sonja Lyubomirsky’s meta-analyses. In them, she shows that the data overwhelmingly shows that happiness is associated with, temporally precedes, and experimentally induces success in work, relationships, and many other domains of life.

Finally, I’d suggest learning the basics of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Why? Mindfulness will reconnect you with your experience and avoid rumination, but ACT will also ask you to find meaning in your life. Work can be meaningful if you’re not ruminating and you do the necessary values work. I love Hayes’ A Liberated Mind, but, again, there are other resources out there.

As the other comment says, Anki already changes dynamically so that you study the hard stuff more. Just make sure to mark whether you got the answer and how hard it was to get it.

Now, here’s something that could help you, perhaps more than any multiple choice exam could ever help you with: when studying, make sure to not only blurt the answer but also use elaborative recall. In other words, make an effort to think and do so mindfully (rather than mindlessly).

Why? You learn through effort and through mindfully (and not mindlessly) connecting the new knowledge with what you already know.

You could even structure your elaborative recall through Visible Thinking Routines.

How does that look like?

• You start your study session.
• You get an Anki card.
• You remember this card clearly, and so you say it out loud and then check.
• You get it right. No need for elaborative recall. Better to focus your energy elsewhere.
• You get another Anki card.
• This one’s tough. You’re unsure.
• You say out loud why it could be any of the two answers you think could be right.
• You get the answer and sure enough it was one of the two you thought.
• You decide to do elaborative recall so that you learn this well. To guide your elaborative recall, you decide to use the thinking routine “Connect-Extend-Challenge”.
• So you do elaborative recall through a thinking routine. You do it by talking out loud or writing it out.
• This step may sound silly but make sure to celebrate so that you feel pride and satisfaction for doing something that takes effort (especially if you’re struggling with the habit of studying).
• Then you move on to the next Anki card.

Anything is possible if you can do anything…

Where’s my Lemmy Gold when I need it

I’m glad we both want to see fairness and kindness in the world. I see you interpret cruelty, abuse, and dishonesty’s effects as respect. I see it a bit differently. When I see cruelty, abuse, and dishonesty, I usually see fear, terror, hiding, lying— anything but respect.

If I see a serial killer who tortures people, I would never respect them. I’d probably fear them. But fear is not respect.

To me, respect is deep admiration. It involves feeling aligned in values, feeling that someone is doing things right and well. If someone is doing things wrong and cruelly, I’d feel deep disrespect towards them.

I suppose our cultures have wrongly conflated respect and fear. People don’t command respect. They deserve it and earn it. They deserve base respect for the mere fact of being human trying to be happy in a brutal world. And they earn admiration-like respect when their hearts are aligned with virtue.

This post tickles a fond memory of mine. I was talking to a right-wing libertarian, and he said there should be no research done ever if it couldn’t prove beforehand its practical applications. I laughed out loud because I knew how ignorant and ridiculous that statement was. He clearly had never picked up a book on the history of science, on the history of these things:

• quantum mechanics. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have semiconductors in his phone, or if he didn’t have access to lasers for his LASIK surgery (which he actually did have), both of which are technologies built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
• electromagnetism. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian was having his LASIK surgery and the power went out without there being a generator, a technology built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
• X-rays. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have x-rays to check the inside of his body in case something went wrong, a technology built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
• superconductivity. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have superconductors for an MRI to check the inside of his body in case something went wrong, a technology built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
• radio waves. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have radio waves for his phone and computer’s wifi and bluetooth to run his digital business, technologies built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.

Ah that makes sense. Maybe it’s a European/US difference, but it could be just a Time Timer thing. My air fryer is from an American company and it has the same timer as you (wind it up clockwise, then the hand moves counter-clockwise).

I wonder if both types of timers (wind up clockwise and wind up counter-clockwise) seek to distinguish themselves from normal clocks in different ways:

• Wind up clockwise timers (like your stove and my airfryer) let you know it’s not a normal clock by flowing counter-clockwise.
• Clockwise timers (like a Time Timer) let you know it’s not a normal clock by having a red disk slowly become smaller.

Earplugs come in different sizes. Maybe it’s a matter of experimenting?

Ah. To set up the timer, you do pull the hand counter clockwise, as if you were pulling a spring-loaded car backwards for it to move forward on its own. After you release the Time Timer, its hand will move forward on its own, normally, clockwise.

It is a bit unusual, but the point of the timer is to see how much time you’ve got left. It’s like a battery charge percentage. You know that when the battery reaches zero, you’ve got to charge it up again.

I hope the explanation helps. If not, feel free to ask or to check out the videos in the Time Timer website. After all, it is a strange product.