Some excerpts from 28 slightly rude notes on writing. I worked in the Writing Center in college, and whenever a student came in with an essay, we were supposed to make sure it had two things: an argument (“thesis”) and a reason to make that argument (“motive”). Everybody understood what a “thesis” is, whether or not they actually had one. But nobody understood “motive”. If I asked a student why they wrote the essay in front of them, they’d look at me funny. “Because I had to,” they’d say. Most writing is bad because it’s missing a motive. It feels dead because it hasn’t found its reason to live. You can’t accomplish a goal without having one in the first place—writing without a motive is like declaring war on no one in particular. ...

“we all filter reality through the same set of feeble sensory organs, so any attempt to portray being as we understand it bears intrinsic limitations.” Lucia Berlin vs Raymond Carver by Julien Levy Apr 23, 2025 We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. – Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind. – David G. Allen ...

CFG in SSA form A CFG in SSA form is a representation where each variable is assigned a value only once within the CFG, and each use of a variable refers to the most recent definition, ensuring simpler analysis and optimization. CFG: control flow graph SSA: static single assignment A CFG is a graph that represents the control flow of a program. Nodes in the CFG represent basic blocks (sequences of instructions that execute sequentially without branches), and edges represent the possible execution paths between those blocks. ...

this is a good piece of advice for investment. it was written in November 2014 by Jason Zweig. I was once asked, at a journalism conference, how I defined my job. I said: My job is to write the exact same thing between 50 and 100 times a year in such a way that neither my editors nor my readers will ever think I am repeating myself. That’s because good advice rarely changes, while markets change constantly. The temptation to pander is almost irresistible. And while people need good advice, what they want is advice that sounds good. ...

Martha Gellhorn How did I come across Martha Gellhorn? It was a search of politics and coward to bring her quote as follows. Chuck Schumer, current Senate minority leader, is a coward like many others. Politics really must be a rotten profession considering what awful moral cowards most politicians become as soon as they get the job. – The Face of War Then other quotes are so good. Add it here. ...

design of a product To design a successful product is an iterative process. How to get it right? Here are two pieces of advice. One is from the Gmail creator Paul Buchheit. What’s the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product – the rest is noise. For example, the original iPod was: 1) small enough to fit in your pocket, 2) had enough storage to hold many hours of music and 3) easy to sync with your Mac (most hardware companies can’t make software, so I bet the others got this wrong). That’s it – no wireless, no ability to edit playlists on the device, no support for Ogg – nothing but the essentials, well executed. ...

Notes: John W. Gardner was the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson, an activist and author, and recipient of the 1964 Presidential Medal of Freedom. This speech was delivered to McKinsey & Company on November 10, 1990. Speech Transcript I’m going to talk about “Self-Renewal.” One of your most fundamental tasks is the renewal of the organizations you serve, and that usually includes persuading the top officers to accomplish a certain amount of self-renewal. But to help you think about others is not my primary mission this morning. I want to help you think about yourselves. ...

ugly code Perfect code doesn’t guarantee success if you haven’t solved a real problem for real people. Pursuing elegance in a vacuum leads to abandoned side projects or frameworks nobody uses. By contrast, clunky but functional code often comes with just the right compromises for quick iteration. And that in turn means a lot of messy code powers products that people love — something that’s a far bigger challenge. Are you shipping a product and racing to meet user needs? Or are you building a reusable library or framework meant to stand the test of time? ...

Enron story Enron was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 in Houston, Texas. It started in energy, commodities and services. The company filed for bankruptcy on Dec 2, 2001 while employing about 20,600 staff with a revenue of $100B in 2000. Enron scandal was the biggest audit failure. John Arnold was born in 1974 and growed up in Dallas Texas. He graduated in 1995 from Vanderbilt University with a degree in math and economics. He was former Enron executive. He made three quarters of a billion dollars for Enron in 2001 and was awarded a bonus of $8 million. His firm, Centaurus Advisors, LLC, was a Houston-based hedge fund specializing in trading energy products that closed in 2012. ...

how VC works? where VCs get their money, a high-risk asset? The job of fund managers is to ensure that giant pile of money grows. At the lowest end, it needs to grow in line with inflation, 9% annually in US for example. VC is spread-betting across a large number of startuos. They are trying to deploy a fund into a set of startups that matches their hopes, dreams and ambitions. Ultimately, there are just two goals. The lowest possible goal is to return the fund. ...