Quotes

AI can replace most of programming, but programming isn’t the job. Programming is a task. It’s one of many things you do as part of your work. But if you’re a software engineer, your actual job is more than typing code into an editor. The mistake people make is conflating the task with the role. It’s like saying calculators replaced accountants. Calculators automated arithmetic, but arithmetic was never the job. The job was understanding financials, advising clients, making judgment calls, etc. The calculator just made accountants faster at the mechanical part. AI is doing something similar for us. ...

If everything is slow-moving around you, it is likely not going to be good. To fully make use of your brain, you need to move as close as possible to the speed of your thought. – Daniel Lemire, Why Speed Matters.

For most of humankind, and for tens of thousands of years, the idea that humanity includes every individual on the face of the earth has not existed. This designation stops at the border of a tribe or linguistic group, sometimes even at the edge of a village. — Paraphrased from Claude Lévi-Strauss, Race and History, 1952 (full quote and context) I guess my beloved Star Trek future—post-scarcity, post-conflict, beyond divisions—is still far away. ...

The woods, the jungle, the forest are the boundary between the wild and the civilized, a place of shelter and legendary fears, of hiding and losing oneself. A place of wonder and unease. [..] But what a mythical power lies in this tangle of nature, shadows, and roots, where the unconscious of the world can be found. – Vinicio Capossela

I think of it [the usefulness of writing] like breathing but for ideas. We do so much reading all day—there should be a natural balance with producing words too. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale… Joe Boudreau in On 10 Years of Writing a Blog Nobody Reads, an article I agree 100% with.

If you want to understand time — which is how you come to befriend life — turn to stone. Climb a mountain and listen to the conversation between eons encoded in each stripe of rock. Walk a beach and comb your fingers through the golden dust that was once a mountain. Pick up a perfect oval pebble and feel its mute assurance that time can grind down even the heaviest boulder, and smooth even the sharpest edge. ...

The theory that people no longer read as much as they used to is put forward by people who no longer read as much as they used to. – Francesco Farabegoli

The old timers who built the early web are coding with AI like it’s 1995. Think about it: They gave blockchain the sniff test and walked away. Ignored crypto (and yeah, we’re not rich now). NFTs got a collective eye roll. But AI? Different story. The same folks who hand-coded HTML while listening to dial-up modems sing are now vibe-coding with the kids. Building things. Breaking things. Giddy about it. ...

The lies we tell others are for survival. But the lies we tell ourselves… those can kill us! A quote from Ragazzo by Zuzu, which I read recently.

In the last year, a mindset shift and approach appeared as a very simple idea: just do one thing, that I want to do today. The one thing can be small or big, easy or labored, fleeting or long. I carve out time to go play drums for two hours, go for a bouldering session, do a shorter 20 minute run, read a page of a book, eat something I’m really excited about, and more. Even on the most difficult day, I can adjust and find the smallest thing that I am excited about and do it. ...