94 / Culture Viruses

Hey hey, hope your week was good! 🙌🏻

Toot of the Week

a guide to greetings: "hi guys": excludes non-guys "ladies and gentlemen": excludes non-binary people, and men who aren't gentle "hey folks": a bit too predictable "hello fortnite gamers": surprising and equally offensive to everyone, the ideal choice — @Ninji@vulpine.club

Favourites

• Culture Viruses (staysaasy.com)

  This article describes three cultural viruses and how to build a good immune system.

• Best printer 2023: just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine (theverge.com)

  Nilay Patel writes the best product review of the year so far, seriously go read it!

• 8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year (hbr.org)

  Neil Pasricha in a very motivation article with tips to read more books.

Culture

• Don’t use stale bots (fvsch.com)

  Florens Verschelde about the negative effects of stale bots in issue trackers.

Software

• Rust's Two Kinds of 'Assert' Make for Better Code (tratt.net)

  Laurence Tratt explains how they use assertions to make their programs more safe while still being cautious of performance issues.

• Repeat yourself, do more than one thing, and rewrite everything (programmingisterrible.com)

  Tef takes each of the three mantras and explains why they often fall short and the real mantra is: it depends.

• Typescripting the technical interview (richard-towers.com)

  Richard Towers tells the very entertaining story of a fictional interview where the question is solved entirely in types with ancient runes. I can also recommend the original.

AI

• OK, it’s time to freak out about AI (nonzero.substack.com)

  Nonzero about the potential dangers of AI that get more realistic with every new model (although I think LLMs aren’t the thing we should be scared of).

• Design-by-wire (matthewstrom.com)

  Matthew Ström about the future of design with advanced AI. Thanks, Jan!

• ChatGPT as muse, not oracle (geoffreylitt.com)

  Geoffrey Litt has tried using ChatGPT as a conversation partner that asks questions.

Cutting Room Floor

• When our persona becomes our prison (vanschneider.com)

  Tobias van Schneider about the danger of locking yourself into the niche that made you successful.

• How to craft a harmonious life (psyche.co)

  Jessica de Bloom and Merly Kosenkranius explain how striving to live a harmonious life is a better model than just work/life balance.

• Tom Sachs Promised a Fun Cult (curbed.com)

  Katy Schneider and Adriane Quinlan about working conditions at Tom Sachs’ cult, I mean studio.