Appropriating Shepard Fairey's graphical style into a QAnon T-shirt and then wearing it to a Trump rally is an arresting masterwork of postmodernism. One wonders: is the wearer trolling the rally, or is he trolling himself? Perhaps we are all trolls. Perhaps we have all been trolled. HAND.
Ah, propaganda 101: "If you want to influence your enemy, make sure he/she sympathizes with you". I also read an interesting article about this, that conservatives do care about the environment if you give it the correct emotional cue.
E.g. instead of saying they have to save the environment for the future generation (which perhaps generates a guilty feeling), we want to preserve nature to keep it as it is (which they view as a positive thing, preservation of that which is good), they suddenly gave a lot more money to the cause.
Same here in the Netherlands, conservatives here fight for gay rights. Simply because it is part of our tradition. They also fight with all their might for Black Pete, look it up, because there is the constant blame game being played and they feel that the tradition is attacked.
And how much I love the tradition, the current Black Pete has some stereotypes baked in. And am I a nationalist and conservative, a rare breed in my country ^_^
I am curious what happens if there is a positive sound. E.g. tell them to go back to an older tradition, Black Pete as ferocious demon helper of Saint Nikolaas. Would they still oppose change? My guess would be that there is less of an issue then and people will experiment with new image.
I'm not familiar with conservatism in the Netherlands, but I don't think that is accurate description of conservatism in the US. A conservative sees inherent value in clean air, water, land for future generations and for preservation. They are often avid fishers, hunters, outdoorspersons, and want pristine environment both for future generations and it's own sake. They simply disagree on the best ways to go about preserving the environment, and often on the tactics used by liberals (including guilt discussed above) and the proper role of government in said preservation. They like clean water as much as the next person, but don't believe that a city council banning straws at their favorite restaurant is really relevant to that goal.
In the corporate world we learn to take everything we can get and are rewarded for it. For our direct benefit like compensation. Not saying understatement isn't something a good image of a leader requires today, but most people know it is dishonest in practice and are just fine with keeping up appearances.
Why should I not apply that to the resources of our environment? Future generations? Right, they will be okay as it is. Leading by example might help, but modesty isn't something we transport in pop or corporate culture.
Conservatives were the original environment protectors in the US. Probably politics that drove them away from it. In the current political climate dogmatism is spread pretty evenly.
>Conservatives were the original environment protectors in the US. Probably politics that drove them away from it. In the current political climate dogmatism is spread pretty evenly.
I like this observation. We should drive them back again though. I think they are not that hard to move if you bring the message in the correct way.
Conservatives are by nature conservative. They prefer gradual change to over night revolution. They want to see the proof that something will work. Instead of saying “we must eliminate the internal combustion engine” say “we must continue to improve the automobile” and instead of “we need a green economy” “we need an efficient and independent economy”. You do have to live up to your words though, conservatives are also very detail oriented and will call you out if you don’t deliver.
> conservatives are also very detail oriented and will call you out if you don’t deliver.
Do you have any evidence that conservatives are more detailed oriented? Anecdotally conservative US presidents Regan (response to AIDS crisis), George W. Bush (War in Iraq), and Trump (COVID response) did not seem to care about policy details. Policies such as lowering tax rates to increase total tax revenue (Laffer Curve) does not seem detail oriented.
I don't really get this obsession with preserving the status quo. It is not universally good and by doing so we may prevent good things from happening.
Just like how changing things is not universally good. Let's not get into that discussion ^_^ I am a mixed bag on that anyway, sometimes change is good and sometimes preserving things is better.
I would argue that there is a lack of understanding of how well the status quo prevents bad things from happening. We take for granted how many problems we've solved, because many of these problems didn't exist in our lifetimes.
Developing with users. That is one strategy I am trying out now. But these are internal users.
There is no best way to be honest. Sometimes you just have to say, I am not here today. Or I am not here for two hours. But there can always be outside calls or meetings in between. Sometimes it is worth while to recognize the power users and learn them how to do things themselves. This will pay back eventually.
Also make sure you move enough and have time to reflect. And don't be shy to move things of your back upon others. A lot of people are willing to help.
You can follow some methodology, but in the end they are too inflexible or just not right for your situation. So oh well, just reflect day to day and you will learn the patterns.
E.g. Monday is for me meeting day. People come back from the weekend and have new ideas, so I need to talk with them and integrate it.
Wednesday is usually the day to reflect on how things go and to spew out designs and documentation.
Thursday is helping out users day, I sit with them and help them with their problems. This is very insightful. I make tickets for them and write down their problems. Sometimes we code together.
Friday is relax day, I can build a new feature and present it, people don't like to work on fridays, so I can do some hobbying.
Saturday is for deep serious work, nobody works then, so nobody is bothering you. I have Tuesday free.
But this pattern changes often. Sometimes it is just busy. You just have to ride the storm.
That is correct, but it is only half of the story. I think, I have to say it for the lack of a better word for it, but 'spiritual experiences' are worthwhile. They are not void of value.
You shouldn't do it to often. But that is with all drugs.
Well, I honestly can say, that a hole dose of ketamine might change you in ways you can't comprehend before you go into it. It made me view consciousness as something special, not entirely captured by physical laws.
It is hard to explain, but beware before you enter. It changes you.
There's more than a few clues that at least some depressions, or rather - depression like states - on short timescales are closely related to our brains dynamic "electrochemical" state than of anything else, as disrupting the dynamics in different ways appear to - sometimes - profoundly affect depressed states.
On longer timescales it seems even more complex. Similarly to ECT, some people revert to a depressive state somewhat quickly after being affected by various drugs, while others do not.
I sometimes think that when we start understanding depression, we'll have to reevaluate our perspectives on both ourselves, society, and humanity as such much more than most are comfortable with.
Not in any mysterious sense, but more in the sense that depression on an individual level might very well be a symptom of society level issues, as well as it is an extremely debilitating psychiatric condition.
While there are markers for depression in individuals, I can't escape the feeling that to some extent, it's nothing but a convoluted way to encode tolerance levels to what is in reality a "toxic" surrounding. Exactly what the toxicity could be is not at all clear, but I don't expect it'll have a high compatibility with eg economic interests in any way, shape, or form.
This happens to me as well! My working theory is the that I deplete all the dopamine during the run. I'll usually feel total contentment for awhile before it settles in. Since I don't have anything to be depressed about in general, its easy to see it for what it is and wait it out with some nutritious food and sleep.
> Since I don't have anything to be depressed about
I think this is a case where a word is used in two different ways and it is important to be clear to keep the intended meaning clear.
"I'm depressed that she turned me down" is a very different kind of depression than clinical depression. There doesn't have to be any external negative condition to cause someone to have clinical depression.
As far as I know, when people talk about using ketamine to help depressed people, they are talking about hard to treat clinical depression, not the short term state of disappointment or sadness that people also call depression.
There are some links between inflammation and depression. Perhaps taking an anti inflammatory the day after working out would be helpful.
Or instead of training to failure, do one of the work out protocols that specify maintaining control and staying out of injury and inflammation territory, such as the Quick and the Dead, kettle bell protocol.
Routine use of anti-inflammatory medication isn't a good idea for most people. Inflammation isn't a bad thing, most of the time. It's actually a critical part of the body's repair mechanisms.
I was shocked when I dislocated my shoulder and they gave me IV Ketamine. I got that same experience, right there in the emergency room, sanctioned by the medical professionals.
I also received a dose when I broke and dislocated my ankle. The experience was incredible, quite enlightening, despite the fact that most of what I could see was my pain as a sore spot on a multicoloured "wall". To sum up the experience, I felt like "I" was a disassembled geometric form, and my external point of view looked at the form and coldly contemplated, mostly, the pain visible on the wall.
It left a profound effect on me. Gave me a perspective about myself that I can't forget.
If it was legal and there was a safe way to do this again, I'd like to see how it's like when you're not in atrocious pain.
I believe it was exposing you to the underlying geometric shapes (including more complex ones that form screens and mapping references) that exist or form relating to fundamental physics, which our brain's have evolved to not pay attention to or perceive - at least for most people because seeing visually that level of detail would take away from your vision or perception of the present surroundings which arguably is more important for survival; in essence the mind is paying attention to it, however it is overshadowed by the stimuli coming and being analyzed from the physical body - I think this is also why ketamine is finding psychiatric use, as it can clear or remove physical blocks to allow people to see and process underlying energy that they're otherwise blocked from feeling (enough) to process them.
I had a similar experience during the beginning of a ketamine IV infusion that I was doing to see if I could treat central sensitization that I have: as I was disconnecting from feeling my body, I could visualize feelings in my body - literally seeing certain shapes. At one point a fear came to mind and then I could feel and experienced that fear-memory in a perfect sphere traveling down my body until it reached my root (root chakra, groin area) and presumably disappeared or dissipated, as did the actual feeling of fear contained in the sphere along with the memory associated with it.
Ketamine IV infusions are legal and paid for in Canada for pain, and it's legal for psychiatric diagnosis if referred by your doctor - however not covered by our health system. Arguably the health system, practitioners, and regulators don't know enough and so need to move forward slowly until there's time for proper research and guidance.
'I could see was my pain as a sore spot on a multicoloured "wall".'
All other stimuli forming you dissipated, so then you were seeing a flat representation, or screen, a map of your body and then perceived the spot radiating pain as a multicoloured spot on the wall/screen? That's what I took from that description.
I’ve done doses of ketamine like that before and just sort of entered a dreamlike state where I was floating though crystals or something like that. I didn’t have any sort of profound revelation from it at all.
On the other hand the night I did LSD and ketamine at the same time— woah boy. I came out of it saying to someone that we were eternal pure beings trapped in monkey bodies by a cruel and malicious god. I don’t remember saying that, but they told me about it afterwards. It was especially awkward because i was A) making out with her at the time and B) I had just met her at a rave. How I managed to make out with a complete stranger while on a cosmic journey of discovery in another dimension, I have no idea, given that I usually couldn’t accomplish it when I was fully on planet earth. We’re still friends, funnily enough.
Let me try to explain. Ketamine does something with your morals it seems. It does a remoralization in a way. E.g. it won't turn you into something you aren't. It is a relative process. It gives you a space to watch yourself from an neutral judgement free observer point of view.
You somehow find out what is really important to you and what is not and see that really clearly.
That is what happened to me after a couple of experiences. And I acted on it and I am not sad about it. Now, I don't do it that often. But if you choose to do ketamine, you are in for a ride.
Well, it is not an exciting story really. I started from dropping out of university because I got children really early. I wasn't a bad student, but not the top 10 either. I studied physics (EDIT: dunno why I wrote psychology).
I got my first child, second. Then both my parents died, I found out my brother was a pedophile at the same time. He touched my child, I was truly alone now. That was the moment something broke into me. Like crack goes the clock work. I then decided to start a startup right in economical crash, I build an instagram like application. I got hooked on GHB during that time to deal with the pressure. I got my third child. The startup got funded, 1.5 million euros. I broke down, withdrawn and had to sober up within two weeks. I kept going on. The company went down, instagram was first and we lost the race. We even had some Russian oligarch visiting us to buy us, but oh well. Missed that boat. I was left with quite a debt and some problems with the tax office.
So I wrote myself out of my country, I went of the grid. If you write yourself out of the registers, they can't find you here. And it is not illegal. I also had a hash dealer invested in my company. So it was better to hide out.
Then I started up another company, a small game company, which blew up right into my face later on, while getting addicted to opiates and another child. I wisely switched to kratom, but I was clearly broken. I also picked up some bad other habits, like running a small designer drug thing. Well, I don't want to say to much about that.
Then I started to experiment with ketamine. Fun times, stopped the kratom and got a real job for once in my life instead of the cowboy behaviour. I was building search engines, it was not that hard actually and I learned the practicality of knowing how to read and apply papers. University still got something good into me, it learned me how to learn.
Fast forward a couple of years. I had stopped doing drugs altogether, except for snuff. My life was relatively peaceful, but boring. I still had some shadows of the past haunting me, like the taxes. I started doing ketamine once in a while again. It was fun. Then I had the first K-hole.
I stopped snuff and I started working out the next day. I dealt with the tax problem.
I am pretty fit now. I do ketamine once in the three months. And every time, I fix up a new problem I find out in my life. I am now working out the thing with my brother, what happened there.
See, I found the moment that happened I felt truly alone and simply stopped processing emotions and then my life devolved into utter chaos. I just soldiered on without feeling, marching and marching.
Now I am on my way to the top of the company I am in now and even if I fall out of it, I have a pretty good perspective. I am handling a complex merger of multiple platforms. I have time for my family, I learn my kids to shoot with a bow and do little projects with them.
Life is less hard and more fun. I am now planning to study again. And I care for both my nieces every week. So I even have some surrogate daughters too now. What can a man wish for? I only got boys to my dismay. And now I have to stop, because that is too much personal details and some people might pin me down. ^_^
That's it, ups and downs. I think ketamine normalized me, gave me a change to be in society instead of on the edge of it. It is a weird thing. And I don't use it all anymore. It is not needed.
I didn't have real structure inside me. It sounds perhaps weird to you, but that was how it felt. Like I was some sort of chameleon, just going with whatever came upon my path. Life felt as a fast paced river with shit loads of debris in it and I had to try to not drown by grabbing things around me.
That was because I had a relative safe and warm childhood and suddenly when my parents died, I still had my brother. But when my brother went suddenly bad, that was gone too. There was no base to stand on. I just had a child, no papers, no parents and no family I could stand one. Desolated, nobody to lean against and with that the inner structure was gone.
I am grateful I can give my kids a safe childhood now and can restore what I have broken. Now story time is over, I have been far to honest with strangers on the internet. A bad habit :)
Thanks for that. It's certainly anything but a dull story, or at least, mine is quite dull by comparison.
I've tried kratom a few times, but doesn't seem to work for me. Nor pot, for that matter. Ethanol is pretty good, for now, aside from the health effects, though they say it interferes with memory formation, and I think that's true.
Hard to say whether trying ketamine would be worth it or not, though if it becomes a legal treatment, would probably go for it.
Well, the end is anti-climatic. I haven't become a big shot entrepreneur or anything like some of you guys. That being said, I am happy anyway and the story isn't over.
Some critical notes, I see some people find my story exciting, but don't take this as a manual. I want to temper things a bit.
I am very, very chaotic. I thrive where inequalities are and think they are necessary, it is a necessary evil, we need them as human race to progress in my view. The people I look up to are for example John Mcaffee, Elon Musk even Trump. And I have mixed sympathies with the BLM movement and the alt-right. I like conflict, I will search actively for it and if I get bored I will create it.
I don't want a static one world government. I want diversity of cultures, different views on things, ideas that smash together. I don't want America to become Europe. I want to enjoy the wonderfully weird Japanese as they are, although I never really will get them or can become them. I like to work with others that are truly different from me, not some mirror of western values. I want people to have a place which they can call their own, which is very different from other places. I want the west to protect itself, but not impose it values on others. That is how I view life and that is what I want.
It is good that I found peace of mind for myself and my environment now. I will stop the therapy session now. This is what I want to write to my fictional friend. I feel sad and happy now. It is weird. :) And I burned another account and I went a bit in overdrive. That happens when I get in touched with the emotional side of things. I find emotions hard. Sorry for the blog post.
If you do not mind me asking, did you to intend to have the children at the time that you had. Its not very clear from your comment and was just curious. If its too personal, my apologies and please ignore.
No problem. I consider this part of my therapy session now, part of writing a letter to a fictional friend, so lets go personal.
Well, I always wanted children, but not at that moment, I was not ready. I just didn't have the heart to go for an abortion. I did consider it though and that still hurts. It still burns, I never would have forgiven myself. Only in the darkest of hours you should consider that.
We still together and have 4 kids now. I am happy how it all worked out. Could have been worse.
Yeah, I think that's true. I consider myself utterly incompetent for this task, and yet I've ended up with eight step-children over the years. It sucks for all concerned, but something is usually better than nothing.
Very glad for you that it worked out. An abortion one regrets … that would be a dark place. Thanks for responding.
In addition to letters to a fictional friend you could also think of writing a journal for your very non-fictional children. I am sure they would appreciate that when they grow up into adults.
It is about the central municipality citizen registration. Something you have in certain countries of Europe. You ought to be registered in some municipality, but if you write yourself out and never register in another municipality. You are untraceable, you are gone for the system. They call it "ghost citizens".
There is a catch, you will get less pension for example and lose some rights during the time you are not registered. And renewing your passport is not trivial.
You can have a company, but not a regular job. You are in a weird twilight zone then.
Google translate is pretty accurate for Dutch these days. It is an interesting read in how we are organized here. In the nineties the decentralization was even bigger.
Ive read that while they're all disassociatives, DXM is still a pretty different experience from ketamine. I personally havent tried the latter though, so this just secondhand information.
It is similar, but you won't go down like with ketamine. So while you are in fantasy land, you can walk, talk and interact.
It is a fun drug to do in nature far away from the city, talk to elves, clouds and trees. Just lie down, think about silly things and watch the clouds go by, it is very peaceful, almost child like. That is the good side of pcp.
In cities I can imagine it is hellish, but perhaps also adventurous if it is an quite old city with dark alleys. I never dared to do it in cities.
And when you are back, you know it was just fantasy. It is like walking into a book of Neil Gaiman. It stimulates the fantasy and makes you more open to whatever comes up. It lowers your shields of critical thinking. (And that is where the danger lies too btw, so keep notice of that)
In a hectic city that goes wrong, but in a nice safe place in nature. Even if you meet a stranger and have a talk with him, he tells you his story and you marvel in it, it is fine, it is very friendly. Almost magical.
It can be fun, but it can also bite you seriously. Be safe and watch out :) It is not as safe as ketamine and not as safe as LSD. Too much makes you look like some futuristic drunk, so you really need the get the dosage right. It is on par with alcohol (society's favourite NMDA antagonist) with the stupid things you can do on it. Only alcohol puts you down at a certain moment, so it limits the damage. PCP does not, well not enough.
Never did DMT, so can't really say. Sorry :) It is a highly personal experience, which is difficult to share with others though. I think it is similar in the sense, that you can't dismiss it. It is very real for you personally.
I am not a spiritual guy, you know? I think that makes it a bit hard to think about it. It didn't make my spiritual or anything or less grounded in my life.
I have thought a bit about this. I think the difference is this:
Ketamine leaves you in a space where you are alone, in your own universe. And classical psychedelics lead you to a space where you with others. I haven't done DMT, but I did other psychedelics in high dosages. In the end they are similar in a way.
Another way to see it: I feel dissociatives are more suitable for people who make their own values and psychedelics are more suitable for people who follow external values. I think both positions are valid and needed btw, one is just more dangerous than the other. It is easier to stray.
Classical psychedelics feel strange to me, not unwelcome, but I am in alien territory. But dissociatives feel more like home coming.
EDIT: Or perhaps they pull you to those sides. If I need to associate a term pair to the two, then chaos and order are coming to mind. Chaos is dissociatives, and order is psychedelics. But I might be wrong here, who knows. It is very subjective.
I eventually hope to write a book detailing the differences, among other things, however it will likely be years (time doesn't really exist though eh) - but if interested once I finally release it then you can email me matt@engn.com. Contemplating doing a pay-what-you-want model for it or refund provided if you've read it.
Concur. Standard IV dose in humans for general anesthesia is 0.5-1.0 mg/kg. (I'm a retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist who used ketamine for GA in around 500 patients over 38 years, and smaller IV/IM doses in perhaps 1,000 more individuals)
No, I did NOT mean per minute. Ketamine dose for induction of unconsciousness/general anesthesia is 0.5-1.0 mg/kg as a bolus push over a few seconds. Ketamine comes as 100mg/cc and 10mg/cc: I always used the 10mg/cc formulation IV because it was easier to draw up the precise dose I wanted. Loss of consciousness takes 30 seconds to 1 minute for most people. I never used ketamine drips during anesthesia because it was just one more thing to have to track. Boluses every 30-60 minutes sufficed.
For IM use in children and patients with no venous access, induction of general anesthesia is achieved with a dose of 5-10mg/kg. Here, the 100mg/cc formulation is superior since the volume to be injected is 1/10 that required with the 10mg/cc version.
Addendum: one of ketamine's most common uses is in the Burn Unit, as the general anesthetic of choice for daily burn dressing changes, which often require daily doses for weeks. Most people receiving daily doses become tolerant within a few days, such that the dose has to steadily be increased over the period of treatment. A log book of dates and doses is kept at the patient's bedside because different people will be doing the dressing changes on different days.
For example, if on the first day the dose was a bolus of 1.0 mg/kg IV, and by the fourth or fifth day the patient wasn't rendered unconscious by this dose, a supplemental dose of perhaps 0.5 mg/kg IV would be given there and then, and the next day's starting dose would be 1.5 mg/kg. Sometimes patients would end up receiving 2-3 times their starting dose by the time the series of dressing changes was complete.
That seems kinda low. I've personally never seen anyone get knocked out by a single bolus < 1mg/kg. The only citation I can find is 0,5-2,0 mg/kg if primed with midazolam which sounds more reasonable but is still a big caveat.
Ah, I see. I was conflating the IM and IV dosages; 0.5mg/kg seemed much too low to induce general anesthesia from what I vaguely remembered of IM dosages. Thank you for elaborating.
If you want to geek out over the pharmacology, ketamine is mainly an NMDA antagonist, same as the other dissociative hallucinogens, and apparently that's one of the mechanisms of ethanol too, though anecdotally I've only heard complaints about alcohol cross-tolerance issues with GABA agonists.
This whole subject is really interesting and you should at least check out some Wikipedia articles:
I had found the NMDA receptor connection, but so far not any mention of long term (four to six months) of alcohol insensitivity after ketamine use. If there is one, I'm unable to find it.
Some new information in those Wikipedia links, about other neuroreceptors.
I think more conventional entheogens and empathogens like LSD, psilocybin, 2CB and MDMA are far more promising. Bear in mind that violent criminals are highly likely to be mentally ill.
That study looks interesting though some question methods. It’d be interesting to have a thorough follow up and see if it tracks closely with the really positive results of the Concord study.
I'd be worried about the state endorsing or experimenting with this, even as a voluntary measure. Coming withing even an AU of normalizing pharmacologically 'correcting' asocial behavior could put us on a very dark path.
For better or worse, we're very much already on this path. We chemically 'corrected' 'asocial' behavior by chemically castrating homosexuals, the most high profile case being Alan Turing in the 1950's. He is believed to have later committed suicide.
Society's views on homosexuality have progressed since then, but there is a bar for being gainfully employed and housed in the US. Unmediated, some mentally ill people are not able to meet that bar. Too asocial to hold down a job and thus too poor to afford housing. Medicated, they are. If the alternative to being medicated and a productive member of society is to be homeless or in prison, aren't we already there?
For those that are able to finding the right medication, it's life-changing. We should be very very cautious about what the state can force people to do, but we should all strive for a society that's better equipped to handle and treat mental illness and the problems that stem from that.
True, but on the other hand, what if it is an option and we're depriving some people of a normal, happy life by not researching and making available a simple medication to regulate e.g. their thresholds for violence, aggression, empathy, self-discipline, motivation or wakefulness?
We have similar ethical concerns with regard to e.g. cochlear implants. We don't force people to have them implanted, but it would seem cruel to not make them available because the availability may, at some point in the future, make them semi-mandatory.
Yes, lets experiment on prisoners. That seems morally justified as long as you ask nicely. For real, scientific experimentation has to be done with unbiased groups AND a control group. After getting that out of the way then you can include targeted groups. Which prisoners should never belong to, this is how the criminal psychopath stereotype began. also, every country classifies crime and punishment differently making any observation useless. Their status as criminal might be the same but their pathology is as diverse as you can expect. prisoners might be the most violent group you can find but you're still better off targeting violent people in a population.
No distractions and I can program my window manager to organize my windows.
- git
I was once fan of mercurial, but I like git better now. Everytime I find new interesting ways to use it. Also outside it's traditional uses.
- (n)vim
I use other editors, but I turn them into vim. It is easy to use and makes typing in your solution of your problem in the language of choice less boring. (The coding part)
- awk
God, I love awk. It is like the swiss army knife of unix. You can do everything with it.
- latex
If I want to order my mind by writing a bit or making a nice design, create some documentation. Latex is your friend.
- dot
If I want to sketch something, dot will help. Dot also helps with other stuff, dependencies between things. It is easy to write out a dot file.
- profilers
Any fucking profiler will make your a better programmer. It will test your assumptions about the underlying model.
- debuggers
You can't do things without them ^_^
- static type systems
Learn to think in types is a big win and not a weakness. You can encode properties in type systems.
- mathematics
Learn it, use it. It will give you new ways to think. E.g. algebra is about composability. So first thing I do is when I have a problem is write out the data types and think out its algebra. And it keeps your mind active, just churn through some mathematical topic once in a while. I loved type theory. Lambda calculus, abstract algebra, linear algebra and am know learning point set topology.
- esoteric languages
They are fun and force you to rethink what computation is. Design a couple yourself. I can compute in any language with weird constraints. I just need to build a machine in it.
- keep playing around
Not everything you do needs to be a project, just make something useless. E.g. I like jotting down shit in netlogo, which is utterly useless, but fun to watch.
- zsh
Where am I without you? ZSH can interface with everything.
I write small tools from finding ec2 instances in the cloud by tag to presenting searchable menus binded by keys with a little help of small programs.
- the core utils
Learn them by heart, you will never have to click ever.
- Learning new programming paradigms
I loved stack based programming, functional programming, thinking in excel (data flow). There is no one solution to everything.
- domain specific languages
Learn to make them, it is fun and an extremely powerful tool in the programmers toolbox.
- parsers
Don't be afraid of them, they are your friend. And often easier than regexes.
- learn how to search
Big skill, not everybody does this right.
- Programming notebooks
Why is this not standard? Mathematica is brilliant with this and while I don't like python, but jupyter is very good.
- IDE's
They are useful. Don't be vain.
- Make designs
Plan what you are going to make. That helps a lot.
