Larry Mcenerney's lectures on how to write effectively are gold for getting better at writing.
There's a lot packed in his lectures, but a big core idea is that you should use writing to help you do your thinking. With complex subject matter, writing is thinking. The thing that we've been taught is writing is more akin to publishing (i.e. the editing you do to share your thoughts with other people after you've finished writing and thinking for yourself).
If you've got more time, you should watch the whole thing, it's a masterclass in understanding what writing actually is, and what it does for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM
The twitter link only shows one snippet for me. Do you have the others?
He mentions being forced to write an outline before the essay, and doing it the other way around. I've heard this so many times that it makes me wonder, why is that even a thing? Like, where did that practice come from, and why are we still using it in schools?
Are there really people who prefer to do it that way? Is it even possible to do it that way? It sounds like, first you come up with the software architecture, and then you write the software, and of course the architecture is perfect the first time! Whereas, in reality, any time you build something nontrivial, the process of building it inevitably reveals flaws in your initial best guess about how to build it... just as nontrivial writing will reveal gaps in your knowledge, or flaws in your logic.
Regarding outlines, when I was younger, I was always frustrated by the idea that I should somehow be able to summarize something I hadn’t written yet. It just did not compute.
In my professional life, I’ve found that I do start with outlines, but only for specific forms of writing. I spent a bunch of time writing instructional/tutorial content. Stuff like “How to achieve <outcome> using <feature(s)> in <product>”.
I was starting from a position of having expert product knowledge and having to boil that down into a useful post for people who were either beginners, or had knowledge of the product, just not how to achieve <outcome>.
Starting with outlines helped me think about what things this audience would find most useful before diving into the writing process. But that was just a starting point, and the outline would evolve quickly as I got into the actual writing process.
Outside of this, I’ve never found outline-before-writing useful, and see this as an iterative or post-writing exercise if I want to see a high level overview/arc of the content.
Great video. I especially appreciated how much does his point about "instability" has in common with what Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park creators) said about storytelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDJEjT2kKqY
I hope the safety conversation doesn't die. The societal effects of these technologies are quite large, and we should be okay with creating the space to acknowledge and talk about the good and the bad, and what we're doing to mitigate the negative effects.
In any case, even though it's repetitive, there exists someone out there on the Interwebs who will discover that information for the first time today (or whenever the release is), and such disclosures are valuable. My favorite relevant XKCD comic: https://xkcd.com/1053/
I get that but it just overshadows the technical stuff in nearly every post. And it's just low hanging fruit to have a discussion over. But you're probably right with that comic, I spend so much time reading about ai stuff.
This reminds me of a powerful post I read a while ago with the charter to "Half-ass [your projects] with everything you've got!". Pre-commit to what level of quality you're looking to achieve and then strive to do just what is necessary to get there: https://mindingourway.com/half-assing-it-with-everything-you...
This is amazing! And SSL option right off the bat too? Well done. Feature request for Postgres: it looks like this version mostly displays tables in the 'public' schema. Would be great if it could display all tables and views in all schemas present in the database
Another alternative to Internet archive is perma.cc. A webmaster can write to IA and request that they pull archives off their site at any moment: https://perma.cc/
Gordon Brander's pattern wiki is probably the best contemporary example I can think of that implements the Zettelkasten pattern: http://gordonbrander.com/pattern/
I think part of what can make the concept hard to see in practice, is that it's both the Zettelkasten artifact, and your methodology for adding and linking concepts when you're learning
I'd punt on offering free trials and instead offer a 30 or even 60 day money back guarantee. This is effectively the same thing but gets you access to money today as opposed to 30 days later. Learned from this terrific video from Jason Cohen: https://vimeo.com/74338272
Link to snippets of his talk if you're short on time: https://twitter.com/LBacaj/status/1668446029610352641
If you've got more time, you should watch the whole thing, it's a masterclass in understanding what writing actually is, and what it does for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM