My father’s two fundamental rules for computer programming were Optimize Later and Optimize Never; and this, like so much advice about programming, also goes for life.
May 252020
Being
Identity, that spectator of what he calls himself,
That net and aggregate of energies in transient combination.
—Cunningham
May 222020
Just as there are ideas so mad that you must be clever to believe them, so there is behavior so weird that you must be clever to engage in it.
May 202020
Local maxima are the root of all mediocrity.
May 112020
Whoever can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities, and everyone can be made to believe absurdities.
May 042020
First you remain silent in the face of absurdities, then you utter them, and finally you believe them,
Apr 272020
Hidden depths are only unrecorded thoughts, which have ceased to exist.
Mar 272020
No social system can withstand a horde of vandals hell-bent on doing good.
Mar 102020
Identity politics debase not politics but identity.
Mar 032020
Ideology readily replaces identity: both hinge on what and whom to hate.
Feb 182020
If you have become what you used to hate, you didn’t hate it all that much in the first place.