To Seeing the Invisible

I have to say Rachel, living in Berkeley--and I guess Silicon Valley in general--means I have the very unique opportunity to be around a lot of smart people. Smart, not as in winning the trivia competitions, but brilliant people who are regarded as the pre-eminent scholars in their field. The Bay is packed with Nobel Laureates, famous researchers, and leading political figures. Just yesterday, I had the opportunity to hold open the door for Richard Karp who has received the Turing Award. Just to make things clear: I am not one of these smart people. This is perhaps the biggest lesson I've learned after three years here. But to be honest, I'm pretty okay with that--there's a difference between being smart and being knowledgeable. What that does mean, though, is that I would be doing a disservice to the ever-so-generous Financial Aid Office if I didn’t learn here. I don’t mean learning in a lecture hall, but I refer to a more personal sense of learning. What is it that s...

Shortest TED talk but one of my favorites. The reason I enjoy TED so much is because I obsess over these questions and quite a few of my own like them. TED is my link to sanity...it's nice to see that I'm not some crazy person but that there are plenty of highly intelligent people that have similar thoughts/questions. You have done such amazing work with TED. I would LOVE to talk to you for just 15 minutes Chris.

Absolutely not. Why the fuck do I have to "Like" your page before I get to see what you're about? To even see the contents of your page? This is the fucking problem with the internet these days -- people completely overestimate social media as a growth mechanism. They see an example of a certain site getting massive growth because it's retweeted 5000 times a second, so they think that Twitter & Facebook is some magical "get my site views" solution. In reality, all they're doing is contributing to the bullshit spam that makes social media such a poor mechanism for growing readership. The signal to noise ratio is so low that the few people who might genuinely be interested in your website never get exposed to it because they're forced to constantly sort through tonnes and tonnes of bullshit spam put out by unoriginal, talentless "PR" agencies who apply the same blanket social media spam strategy to everything they try to promote. Serio...

Turned down Porter Robinson, turned down Shattuck Down Low, turned down 900 Greyson to get shit done. I can't really explain it, but I just need to have these days some time. I can never explain why.. I can never tell if it's the synthetic hum of instructional machines, the sterile fluorescent tube lighting of underground Soda Hall, or that fact that tonight I've joined the ranks of Friday night coders that makes this place so gratifying. I guess some questions are never answered..

Oh god, girl scout cookies . How else do you explain people’s extreme willingness to consume 10,000 calories in one sitting? That shit ain’t no joke. Despite what the boxes want you to believe, the cookies are not made with teamwork, leadership and love. They’re made with lard and a hint of black tar heroin. And then there's Chipotle . Chipotle is not for sissies. Those burritos do not fuck around. First of all, they weigh as much as one of the Olsen Twins. Secondly, they’re 1200 calories, probably more. But you know what? They’re worth it. They’re the best fake Mexican food I’ve ever had. Like Girl Scout cookies, I am convinced they’re also laced with something. Who knows what they’re putting in the sour cream? Probably vanilla ice cream with whipped cream or something. Time to go running now..

There are talks that inspire and urge us all to do more, be more, and you watch them once, they do that, and it helps. But then there are talks that you watch, re-watch, and re-watch again, because there is something that is almost euphoric about them. It's not so much of an inspiration but more of a action driver. Inspiration can be a fleeting feeling, whereas driving action, at least to me Rachel, causes immediate action. After watching this talk, I feel it, I know it, find happiness in the journey and the end result will be incredible. Happiness is not a goal. It's a driving force. Happiness can be the thing that takes us to places we thought we would never go, no actually, the places we thought we could never go. There are times in my own life when I need a reminder of this. Thank you Shawn Achor, you reminded me. Now this is an idea worth spreading.

Shit hit the fan for the social media site Path this week. An independent software dev revealed that Path's iPhone application uploaded users' address book data to its own servers without permission. Wow. So then they came out with this apology . There is one problem here: It was not a mistake. They did this only to cover their asses and that has been the only concern they've ever had. That they already tried to push the opt-in was of course only in fear of what just happened. I'm sorry, I'm all for public apologies and I truly believe that it is in times like these companies have a chance to really prove themselves and really make a mishap something positive (and come out stronger than ever before). And they have tried to do that, for that I give them credit. But. It was not a mistake. And this sentence really shows why: "Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong....