Vanitas, Still Life with Books and Manuscripts and a Skull, Edwaert Collier, 1663

Kevin Kelly is the the co-founder of the magazine Wired. He is also an artist and author of 14 books. He also has a good newsletter called Cool Tools.

He's also popular for sharing 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice on his 68th birthday, which turned into a book: Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

He also gave 101 more advices when he turned 73 recently.

In the Knowledge Project podcast, he shares the value of deadlines:

"It took me a long time to figure out that I needed deadlines. Deadlines were the difference between a dream and something that you complete.

And what happens with deadlines is that you’ve got to ship, you have to abandon the project, and it’s not perfect. Because it’s not perfect, you kind of have to be ingenious about making it a little different.

And I find that the deadlines force me to make decisions that you don’t have enough time [for]; you never have enough time. And so you think of something to—I wouldn’t say it’s a shortcut—you think of a way to finish it, and those little decisions are what make it a little different."

And on changing someone's mind

The best way to have any hope of changing someone’s mind is to try to listen and truly understand why they think what they’re thinking and how they got there. You can’t reason someone out of a notion that they didn’t reason themselves into.

Thomas Gainsborough, Conversation in a Park (1746)

Conversations with people that follow Grice's Maxims feel great; violations are like someone stepping on your foot in a dance.

The maxim of:

1. quantity: where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
2. quality: where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
3. relation: where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.
4. manner: when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.

As the maxims stand, there may be an overlap, as regards the length of what one says, between the maxims of quantity and manner; this overlap can be explained (partially if not entirely) by thinking of the maxim of quantity (artificial though this approach may be) in terms of units of information.

In other words, if the listener needs, let us say, five units of information from the speaker, but gets less, or more than the expected number, then the speaker is breaking the maxim of quantity. However, if the speaker gives the five required units of information, but is either too curt or long-winded in conveying them to the listener, then the maxim of manner is broken.

The dividing line however, may be rather thin or unclear, and there are times when we may say that both the maxims of quantity and quality are broken by the same factors.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mother and Child, 1881

Some quotes about mothers from The Marginalian on this important day where we're reminded that we are forever indebted to our mother (and father) for all that they have sacrificed for us.

On realizing that our parents are just human

One of the hardest realizations in life, and one of the most liberating, is that our mothers are neither saints nor saviors — they are just people who, however messy or painful our childhood may have been, and however complicated the adult relationship, have loved us the best way they knew how, with the cards they were dealt and the tools they had.

In The Measure of My Days, Florida Scott-Maxwell shares the most important thing to remember about your mother:

A mother’s love for her children, even her inability to let them be, is because she is under a painful law that the life that passed through her must be brought to fruition. Even when she swallows it whole she is only acting like any frightened mother cat eating its young to keep it safe

the delicate balance of intimacy and dependence

It is not easy to give closeness and freedom, safety plus danger.

and the parental expectations that all of us live, well into adulthood.

No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. It could not be otherwise for she is impelled to know that the seeds of value sown in her have been winnowed. She never outgrows the burden of love, and to the end she carries the weight of hope for those she bore. Oddly, very oddly, she is forever surprised and even faintly wronged that her sons and daughters are just people, for many mothers hope and half expect that their newborn child will make the world better, will somehow be a redeemer. Perhaps they are right, and they can believe that the rare quality they glimpsed in the child is active in the burdened adult.

And Mary Gaitskill, in Take My Advice: Letters to the Next Generation from People Who Know a Thing or Two, gives advice for when your parents are dying:

My advice here is very specific and practicable. It is advice I wish someone had given me as forcefully as I’m about to give it now: When your parents are dying, you should go be with them. You should spend as much time as you can. This may seem obvious; you would be surprised how difficult it can be. It is less difficult if you have a good relationship with the parent or, even if you don’t, if you’re old enough to have lost friends and to have seriously considered your own death. Even so, it may be more difficult than you think.

Concluding that we are not born alone:

They say that you come into the world alone and that you leave alone too. But you aren’t born alone; your mother is with you, maybe your father too. Their presence may have been loving, it may have been demented, it may have been both. But they were with you. When they are dying, remember that. And go be with them.

And Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott on mother as a pillar of society.

In a piece titled "The Mother’s Contribution to Society," from his book Winnicott on the Child, he writes:

It seems to me that there is something missing in human society. Children grow up and become in their turn fathers and mothers, but, on the whole, they do not grow up to know and acknowledge just what their mothers did for them at the start.

Ordinary good parents do build a home and stick together, thus providing the basic ration of child care and thus maintaining a setting in which each child can gradually find the self and the world, and a working relationship between the two. But parents do not want gratitude for this; they get their rewards, and rather than be thanked they prefer to see their children growing up and themselves becoming parents and home-builders. This can be put the other way round. Boys and girls can legitimately blame parents when, after bringing about their existence, they do not furnish them with that start in life which is their due.

the overlooked value of the home to the welfare of society

We know something of the reasons why this long and exacting task, the parents’ job of seeing their children through, is a job worth doing; and, in fact, we believe that it provides the only real basis for society, and the only factory for the democratic tendency in a country’s social system. But the home is the parents’, not the child’s, responsibility.

and the recognition of "the immense contribution to the individual and to society" the "ordinary good mother" makes simply by virtue of her devotion to the child.

Is not this contribution of the devoted mother unrecognized precisely because it is immense? If this contribution is accepted, it follows that every man or woman who is sane, every man or woman who has the feeling of being a person in the world, and for whom the world means something, every happy person, is in infinite debt to a woman.

I'm also amazed by Edna St. Vincent Millay’s deep bond and rare relationship that she shared with her mother, who uses the terms "dear", "dearest", "sweetheart", and even "my Best Beloved" in herbeautiful letters that you can find in The Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Since this was about mothers, a few writings on raising children I want to save for future reading:

• On Children: Poignant Parenting Advice from Kahlil Gibran
• How to Raise a Child: 10 Rules from Young Susan Sontag
• Crescendo: A Watercolor Ode to the Science, Strangeness, and Splendor of Pregnancy

Alphonse Mucha, Zodiac, 1869

Some quotes I liked from this book I flipped through in Tsutaya bookstore.

"My stay in Paris, the walks I took, the monuments and museums visited, awakened my artistic sensitivity. No academic education could have inspired me so strongly and lastingly."

– Victor Horta, 1939

"The more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint. Their wings are my protest in favour of the immortality of the soul."

– Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1881

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul."

– Edvard Munch, ca. 1898

"All humanity inspires me. Every passerby is my unconscious sitter; and as strange as it may seem, I really draw folk as I see them"

– Aubrey Beardsley, 1894

"Reason informed by emotion - expressed in beauty - elevated by earnestness - lightened by humour - that is the ideal that should guide all artists."

– Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1902

"To every age its art, to every art its freedom.

– Motto above the door of the Secession Building, 1898

"Simplicity lies not in omission, but in synthesis."

– Koloman Moser, 1905

"It is upon us architects that falls..the duty of determining, by our art, not only artistic, but also the civilising and scientific evolution of our time."

– Hector Guimard, 1902

"Only that which is practical can be beautiful"

– Otto Wagner, 1896

"The aim of my work: the study of nature, the love of nature's art, and the need to express what one feels in one's heart."

– Émile Gallé, 1884-89

"Design is not about decorating functional forms - it is about creating forms that accord with the character of the object and that show new technologies to advantage."

– Peter Behrens, ca. 1907

"My lifelong quest has always been in pursuit of beauty."

– Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1916

"Art is the Flower. Life is the Green Leaf. Let every artist strive to make his flower a beautiful living thing, something that will convince the world that...there are things more precious, more beautiful, more lasting than life itself."

– Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1902

"There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature. Therefore, buildings must have no straight lines or sharp corners."

– Antoni Gaudí, ca. 1892

"Whoever wants to know something about me - as an artist, the only notable thing - ought to look carefully at my pictures and try and see in them what I am and what I want to do."

– Gustav Klimt, date unknown

"Let the designer lean upon the staff of the line - line determinative, line emphatic, line delicate, line expressive, line controlling and uniting."

– Walter Crane, 1892

"I have never seen a black and white artist with a more stupendous imagination."

– Lord Dunsany, 1905

Detail of Pythagoras with a tablet of ratios, numbers sacred to the Pythagoreans, from The School of Athens by Raphael. Vatican Palace, Rome, 1509

Barbara Oakley shares how she rewired her brain to become fluent in math.

She talks about how schools focus too much on understanding and not enough on repetition and fluency, that students have to grasp the fundamental essence of an idea, even though that can quickly slip away without practice to consolidate them.

Students who have been reared in elementary school and high school to believe that understanding math through active discussion is the talisman of learning. If you can explain what you’ve learned to others, perhaps drawing them a picture, the thinking goes, you must understand it.

Japan has become seen as a much-admired and emulated exemplar of these active, “understanding-centered” teaching methods. But what’s often missing from the discussion is the rest of the story: Japan is also home of the Kumon method of teaching mathematics, which emphasizes memorization, repetition, and rote learning hand-in-hand with developing the child’s mastery over the material.

In the current educational climate, memorization and repetition in the STEM disciplines (as opposed to in the study of language or music), are often seen as demeaning and a waste of time for students and teachers alike [...] What this all means is that, despite the fact that procedural skills and fluency, along with application, are supposed to be given equal emphasis with conceptual understanding, all too often it doesn’t happen

The problem with focusing relentlessly on understanding is that math and science students can often grasp essentials of an important idea, but this understanding can quickly slip away without consolidation through practice and repetition.

Worse, students often believe they understand something when, in fact, they don’t. By championing the importance of understanding, teachers can inadvertently set their students up for failure as those students blunder in illusions of competence

This echoes the ideas in this video by the Math Sorcerer: Stop Trying To Understand.

She explores the connection between learning math & science and learning sport. By using the procedure a lot, applying it in many situations, you will understand both the why and how. Stop focusing on understanding.

When you learn how to swing a golf club, you perfect that swing from lots of repetition over a period of years. Your body knows what to do from a single thought—one chunk—instead of having to recall all the complex steps involved in hitting a ball.

once you understand why you do something in math and science, you don’t have to keep re-explaining the how to yourself every time you do it

The greater understanding results from the fact that your mind constructed the patterns of meaning. Continually focusing on understanding itself actually gets in the way.

When learning Russian, she focused on fluency, and not understanding of the language. She didn't want to simply understand Russian that is heard or read, she wanted "an internalized, deep-rooted fluency with teh words and language structure". How does she do this? By playing around with verbs, using them in sentences, learning when to (and not to) use them.

Fluency of something whole like a language requires a kind of familiarity that only repeated and varied interaction with the parts can develop.

I wouldn’t just be satisfied to know that понимать meant “to understand.” I’d practice with the verb—putting it through its paces by conjugating it repeatedly with all sorts of tenses, and then moving on to putting it into sentences, and then finally to understanding not only when to use this form of the verb, but also when not to use it.

This led her to the fundamental core of learning and development of expertise – chunking, which is how experts become experts, by storing thousands of chunks in their area of expertise in their long-term memory.

Chunking was originally conceptualized in the groundbreaking work of Herbert Simon in his analysis of chess

neuroscientists came to realize that experts such as chess grand masters are experts because they have stored thousands of chunks of knowledge about their area of expertise in their long-term memory

Whatever the discipline, experts can call up to consciousness one or several of these well-knit-together, chunked neural subroutines to analyze and react to a new learning situation. This level of true understanding, and ability to use that understanding in new situations, comes only with the kind of rigor and familiarity that repetition, memorization, and practice can foster

She applies the same strategy of language-learning into learning math and engineering. She played with the letters and alphabets in an equation, and build chunks around them.

I’d look at an equation, to take a very simple example, Newton’s second law of f = ma. I practiced feeling what each of the letters meant—f for force was a push, m for mass was a kind of weighty resistance to my push, and a was the exhilarating feeling of acceleration.

I memorized the equation so I could carry it around with me in my head and play with it. If m and a were big numbers, what did that do to f when I pushed it through the equation? If f was big and a was small, what did that do to m? How did the units match on each side?

the truth was that to learn math and science well, I had to slowly, day by day, build solid neural “chunked” subroutines—such as surrounding the simple equation f = ma—that I could easily call to mind from long term memory

So, focus on building well-ingrained chunks of expertise through practice and repetition.

Understanding doesn’t build fluency; instead, fluency builds understanding. In fact, I believe that true understanding of a complex subject comes only from fluency.

gaining fluency through practice, repetition, and rote learning — but rote learning that emphasized the ability to think flexibly and quickly.

Fluency allows understanding to become embedded, emerging when needed.

Takeaways by Claude 3 Sonnet:

• Practice > understanding for building true mastery
• Classroom "understanding" can create an illusion of competence
• Repetitive practice builds neural "chunks" that allow rapid, intuitive expertise
• Experts draw on vast memories of chunked patterns/subroutines
• Fluency is key - understanding follows fluency, not vice versa

If you're looking to start on Twitter, here's Henrik's user manual for Twitter.

you use it as your notetaking app, saving thoughts you like

reply to ppl who's thoughts you resonate

when you've replied to each other a bit: go to dms

after some dms: do a call

be friends

I still find it hard to post my thoughts freely. I've been posting quotes, projects, and pretty images, but not any original thought. I'm insecure about my thoughts not being good enough to be shared. But my goal when I'm back in SF is to tweet more, engage more, and make more friends and meet them IRL to make use of every second there $^{[1]}$.

More useful links:

• How to Twitter Successfully | near.blog
• how to be yourself online - by christineist
• The Serendipity Machine | Notes on Using Twitter
• A Guide to Twitter - Tasshin

[1]: I've estimated that I will burn ~$80k USD for a year, and that divides into $0.0025/s and $9/hr. If I ever find myself procrastinating, wasting time, or being too comfortable in my comfort zone. I will revisit this number.

Leonardo Da Vinci, A star-of-Bethlehem and other plants c.1506-12, Red chalk, pen and ink | 19.8 x 16.0 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 912424

Drawing, like music and dance, needs to be taught and practised throughout an artist's life. It is my firm belief that drawing is one of the most direct ways of engaging with the world and that using the most limited of means can lead to the most beautiful results. Furthermore, I am certain that drawing from observation is a central element of success across a broad scope of practice - from architecture, design, fashion and engineering, to tilm, animation and the wider creative industries.

– HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES, Royal Founding Patron of the Royal Drawing School

I read this quote while flipping through the pages of the book Ways of Drawing: Artists' Perspectives and Practices by The Royal Drawing School at Tsutaya bookstore in Pavilion Bukit Jalil.

It's a beautiful book with a wealth of drawings, prints, and paintings by established artists past and present. It covers the various techniques, approaches, and philosophies behind the art of drawing, and explores elements of drawing, such as line, tone, and composition.

I loved the "In Practice" section which has activities ranging from a recipe for making oak-gall ink to ideas for drawing from poetry.

I've been coding this new app with W for the past few days and this idea intrigued me. I've been taking inspirations from other apps to design the look and feel of the app, and I wonder if it's just based on my expectations because I'm a user of those apps, and whether they're transferrable if you're not a user.

It feels familiar to me, but it might not to others. However, since those apps are popular, I think it's safe to say it's good design to copy from.

When a user comes to your website and tries to do/use something, they come with preconceived notions and expectations, based on past experiences.

There's a term for this, it's called Jakob’s Law, and it's coined by Jakob Nielsen, a User Advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group which he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman (former VP of research at Apple Computer)

The law states:

Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.

A few takeaways:

• Users will transfer expectations they have built around one familiar product to another that appears similar.
• By leveraging existing mental models, we can create superior user experiences in which the users can focus on their tasks rather than on learning new models.
• When making changes, minimize discord by empowering users to continue using a familiar version for a limited time.

Some examples:

• Form controls: form toggles, radio inputs, and buttons originated from their tactile, analog counterparts
• YouTube redesign: easing users into a new design, giving them the choice to preview (and revert), to gain familiarity and to submit feedback; empowering users to switch when they're ready.

More

• End of Web Design
• Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design
• The Power Law of Learning: Consistency vs. Innovation in User Interfaces
• Jakob's Law of Internet User Experience (2 min. video) (Video)

Check out Laws of UX for more.

I had a chat with Troy, DS manager @ Kevala.

A few things I got out of the chat:

On Kevala

• key mission: make energy data more useful and drive decisions in energy policy and utility decisions
• customers: They work a lot with utilities as their main stakeholders, as well as some state and federal regulatory bodies
• offerings:
  • They have a user platform that shows granular data on the electric grid, including high voltage transmission lines and lower voltage distribution lines
  • A key data asset is their granular data on the lower voltage distribution lines that feed customers and EV chargers
• example works:
  • One of their data science teams models different energy resources like rooftop solar, batteries, EVs, and EV charging infrastructure
  • They help utilities plan their grids and identify where new energy needs will arise at a granular level
  • They can help utilities understand impacts on revenue and customer bills from technology adoption

resources

• News sources
  • Canary Media | Covering the clean energy transition
  • Utility and Energy Transmission & Distribution News | Utility Dive
• Course
  • Electric Utilities Fundamentals and Future Course
• Communities
  • Young Professionals in Energy- SF Bay Area
• Datasets
  • Grid Status API – ex: forecast electricity price in Texas
  • Energy Information Administration (EIA)
• Book
  • The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future by Gretchen Bakke | Goodreads

DS projects in energy

• Forecasting:
  • Forecasting energy demand
  • Forecasting electricity prices
• Optimization:
  • Controlling/optimizing different energy assets like batteries, EV chargers
• Other Applications:
  • Image recognition (e.g. analyzing satellite imagery)
  • LLMs (e.g. parsing regulations/zoning PDFs)
  • Graph analysis (representing utility grid network as a graph)

What he looks for when hiring

• clean, documented, production-quality code that can be collaborated
• Familiarity with version control, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP)
• Already thinking about evaluation metrics and how to assess model performance
• Able to discuss next steps - other modeling techniques, deployment considerations
• Thinking holistically about the entire solution pipeline beyond just modeling on laptop, i.e. big-picture thinking about full lifecycle of a data science solution

projects he would work on

• EV Charging Analysis
  • Analyze data on locations of EV charging stations
  • Look at characteristics of neighborhoods that lead to more charger deployments
  • Examine speed of charger rollout in different areas
• Transportation/Mobility Analysis
  • Use datasets on people's travel patterns and destinations
  • Analyze bike networks and most used routes/locations
• Battery/EV Charger Optimization Modeling
  • Model integrated battery and EV charger systems
  • Optimize battery usage alongside EV charging patterns
  • Factor in pricing signals, grid carbon intensity by time of day
• New York City Subway/Transit Analysis
  • Mentioned NYC has open data on subway schedules that could enable analysis

what keeps him up at night

• The massive scale of EV charger deployment needed to support transportation electrification goals
• He cites a target of 1.2 million chargers needed in California by 2035/2040, but currently only around 100,000 public ports
• Acknowledges utilities were not designed for this magnitude of new electric loads
• But he finds it exciting that utilities are open to changing their processes to accommodate this transition

advice for a master's student

• Make the most of being in the Bay Area for networking and events outside just your masters program
• Attend energy/sustainability groups and events to learn from other professionals
• This exposure helped give him a better understanding of why energy is used/deployed in certain ways

Art Critic (1955) by Norman Rockwell

Social psychologist Anatol Rapoport’s rules for criticizing something:

1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, "Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way."
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

Via Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, by Daniel C. Dennett.

Some other quotes from the book:

No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.

Philosophy—in every field of inquiry—is what you have to do until you figure out what questions you should have been asking in the first place.

Carpenters don’t make their saws and hammers, tailors don’t make their scissors and needles, and plumbers don’t make their wrenches, but blacksmiths can make their hammers, tongs, anvils, and chisels