I recently read a book called “More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory” by Franklin Veaux and Eve Ricket. I didn’t know about polyamory before, and always lumped “poly” people with the rest of the sexually deviant groups of society. Because polyamory is a relatively new concept for most of the monogamous world, the authors spend a great deal of time outlining a guide for navigating in the world of polyamory. The upside of being so detailed in helping neophytes navigate complex relationships involving more than two people is that I learned a lot about relationships in general. “More Than Two” is probably my favorite book for navigating my friendships.
Category Archives: Guides
Experience
Being smart by itself doesn’t get you very far in life. After all, when companies hire for senior or executive positions, they often care more about how much relevant experience people have over how smart candidates are. If I’m a company looking to hire someone to build a payments platform, I’m going to choose someone who has successfully done it before rather than a new grad who’s smart and eager to learn.
At the end of the day, companies care about results. Skills and experience that can deliver results are the currency of the intelligence economy. Skills to acquire more skills (metaskills) doesn’t do squat until you gain those value-delivering skills, which requires a lot of relevant experience that isn’t just sitting around like shoe boxes in a clearance aisle. Companies don’t like waiting 3 – 4 years with the hope that someday you’ll be in that position to contribute.
Surprise-o-Meter
Source: Poorly Drawn Lines http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/
Your surprise-o-meter is an internal light bulb that lights up when you encounter new evidence or experiences contrary to your beliefs or assumptions. Epistemic surprises are conveniently valuable for learning because 1. They tend to indicate large shifts in your understanding of the world and 2. They tend to evoke emotional responses, which alerts us to pay attention to what’s causing the surprise. Cashing in on surprising experiences through self reflection can have major positive impact on your ability to learn from experiences.
Detecting Magic
People throw too much magic in their explanations. How does an individual detect magic in their explanations?
What is Magic?
I think of certain technical jargon as “magic” because its intended function doesn’t educate the audience and often acts as a curiosity stopper. I call these words Magic Words because you can substitute any magical term with the term “magic” and still walk away with the same level of understanding.
To use jargon and acronyms that people don’t understand can cause poor side effects. Using Magic Words can make people feel dumb for asking and mental models built on Magic Words as premises can be faulty and lead to errors.
What 200 Hours Buys You
Today, I attended UC Berkeley’s Korean 10A class. Korean 10A is the 3rd level Korean class in UC Berkeley, and would normally require you to take 2 semesters of Korean classes at Berkeley (Korean 1A and Korean 1B), but I blew through both level’s material through the course of summer.
I started learning Korean at the beginning of summer. I had started taking classes at the local Korean community center in San Francisco. I started out in the introductory course, Introduction to Hangeul. By the end of summer, I had skipped four levels and finished the fifth level of Korean. How did I do it? Simple, I spent over 200 hours studying Korean.
How to Keep Your Friends
Table of Contents
How to Keep Your Friends
Summary
Part 1: Building a Great Network
Structural Analysis of One’s Social Network
The Environment Factor
How to Be a Good Friend
Starting with Generosity
Building Trust
Showing Gratitude
Establish Relevancy
Part 2: Planning Social Interactions
Planning a Date
On Spontaneity
Argument for 1-on-1 interaction
If you must go threesome or more
Post Date Procedures
Handing Out Rejection
Part 3: Increasing Your Collision Rate
Liking Their Facebook Posts
Offering Help
Asking for Help
Asking Them For Advice
A Beginner’s Guide to Computer Science
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Intro
- Objectives
- Your Learning Curve
- The Most Important Strategy: Get Started
- Be Part of a Community
- The Mentor
- The Peer
- The Mentee
- Using Your Problem Solving Toolkit
- Googling
- Ask a Peer
- Ask a Mentor
- The Best Tool: Get Your Hands Dirty
- Simplification
- Simplification of the Problem
- Simplification of the Examples
- Visceralization
- Metaphor
- Exploration
- A Coherent Meta-Example
- Semester 1 – Practical Programming
- Semester 2 – Data Structures & Discrete Mathematics
- Onwards
Intro
Learning computer science is one of the most enjoyable experiences in human life, also one of the most frustrating. You came across this page because either you want to learn about computer science, want to learn computer science, or want a computer science job. Whatever your motivation, computer science may seem like witchery to you. Geeks use overly complicated jargon to explain concepts to you. A friend of mine, Michelle Bu (who has an amazing anecdote about being a novice programmer by the way), noted that “programmers have a perpetual competition to see who can claim the most things as ‘simple.’”
What Can You Buy With Your Meal Points?
I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I have way too many meal points than it is necessary for a first-year individual. Usually around this time of the semester I try to think of ways I could spend some of those extra points. UC Berkeley has this policy over meal points to try to promote spending in which if you don’t use all your meal points by the end of the semester, you lose the points. It’s the use it or lose it policy. Under these guiding principles, I bought a yoga mat, a coffee tumbler, several minor sports equipments and packs and packs of candy. But now that it’s the second semester and I already have every fulfillable want fulfilled (along with taking on a low-sugar diet), I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to spend my meal points. There is a finite amount of space in my stomach. As my floormate Patrick Truong has said, “I’m just sad that the Golden Bear Cafe doesn’t sell XBox 360’s.”
