Curious Minds - April 9th (final newsletter)

Happy Monday!

Looks like there was an issue last Monday, and that newsletter didn’t send (just discovered). I may attempt to re-send it (maybe before this one.)

Unrelated, I wanted to announce that this is the final edition of this newsletter. While I have enjoyed putting it together and sharing my findings with you all, I have found the effort/value portion of my maintaining it isn’t quite hitting my expectations.

That said, if you valued certain aspects of this newsletter, please let me know. There’s a chance I might put together something new in the future.

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Something ephemeral

Having just returned from Japan during Cherry Blossom season, I thought it would be worth sharing. While this photo is not mine, I believe I know this spot and have seen many sights like it (but I didn’t have the camera to pick up such a beautiful shot). The cherry blossoms are everywhere and only last around 10 days from blooming to wilting, and it is a stark contrast to the evergreen trees there. In fact, one of the imperial palaces puts them side by side for these symbolic reasons.

Something iconic

The more I learn, the more I realize how many different viewpoints can drastically change how I look at and understand a subject. Staring at a chessboard without knowledge of the game makes it look like a mess of pieces. If you’re an enthusiast, you will start to recognize certain patterns, and the game now tells a story. The most recent viewpoint I’ve learned?

GRID WORLD. A beautiful story of someone’s introduction to seeing life through grids. As a web developer, this became abundantly apparent as most websites are defined through 12 grids. It’s a fascinating read, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Something broken

The last decade has spent a lot of effort trying to scientifically define and reach “flow state,” an often nebulous term. A book I read in the past, Stealing Fire, dove into it in-depth but failed to distinguish causation from correlation in many of their findings.

Programmers often talk about their own version of “flow state”, often described as moments when time slips by and you get sucked into work. It can be easy to get thrown out of flow state, such as by a text message, a co-worker walking by, or any number of distractions. Getting back to flow state can be even harder. One trick? Leave your work broken. I thought it was an interesting article and worth checking out.

Something about hiking

The description of the website says it all:

The USA has its Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail and CDT, New Zealand has its Te Araroa, Italy has its VA Sentiero, France now has the HexaTrek, the great crossing of France through its most beautiful mountains!

I envy the folks who make their life right to be able to take advantage of these beautiful trails. I’ve done many of the shorter ones, but haven’t hit one of these long ones yet.

Something from a hero

"Thus it follows, as the night the day, that in our most elite broadscale education wherein we are trying to make silk purses out of silk, we need for best results to have multidisciplinary coverage of immense amplitude, with all needed skills raised to an ever-maintained practice-based fluency, including considerable power of synthesis at boundaries between disciplines, with the highest fluency levels being achieved where they are most needed, with forward and reverse thinking techniques being employed in a manner reminding one of inversion in algebra, and with "checklist" routines being a permanent part of the knowledge system."

- Charlie Munger

I hope you’ve enjoyed these newsletters. And as a reminder, please let me know if there was anything you particularly enjoyed from these newsletters.

I’m currently excited about pursuing an 80/20 project that consolidates my learnings in various fields into 1-page sheets that anyone can use. It’s not currently planned to be a newsletter, but I’m thinking about it.

Cheers,
Kerry