nikhil.io

one hundred and seventeen things tagged “quotes

On Knowing Everything When One is Young

When he was young he had prided himself on being clever. Walking down the street, not even thinking anything, just walking along like every other moron, he’d had a distinct sense of how clever he was. He’d never done anything with that cleverness except write stupid articles and make occasionally…

On Mullets

People ask me why in 2023 I’m still rocking a mullet. Easy answer. Without the lettuce I’m just a guy that says dumb shit all the time. When I say dumb shit with the mullet, it’s like my face is saying one thing out front, and my mullet is apologizing out back. My mullet is “Dumb shit out front, I…

On Morals versus Ethics

What is the difference between ethics and morality? A morality functions according to principle, while an ethics functions according to experimentation. A morality presupposes a discontinuity between principle and action, while an ethics presupposes a continuity of action and character. A morality…

On Living

What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immerse…

On Criminal Nature

The reason republicans get so incredibly huffy when any of the tools of law enforcement are ever turned upon them is they think “criminals” as an inherent class of people (who they of course could never be part of) rather than a descriptor for someone who commits illegal acts. @opinonhaver Not t…

On Sitting on your Arse

I like nothing more in the world than sitting on my ass doing nothing. And it’s not my fault I have this attitude, because I happen to have an amazingly comfortable ass. It may not look like much, but if you could sit on this baby for two minutes, you’d realize that getting off this ass would be a…

On Fear (and Lethargy)

The question is, what does it mean to be living a fear-based agenda? Then your life is always constricted. Then it’s sabotaging the expression of your possibilities in life. Jung said once, in a book published in 1912, “The spirit of evil is negation of the life force by fear.” That’s strong langu…

On Living Together

You’ve said that, despite being married three times, you’ve been in love only once. Do you think you might have a particularly higher bar than other people? No, I think I’m not that interested. I’m much happier on my own. I can spend as much time with somebody as I want to spend, but I’m not looki…

On Old Gods

In the succession of religions, there are only so many ways the old gods can end up. They can fade away, in which case they are lost to us for good; they can be held up to scorn as pagan demons who persisted in their old, evil ways; or they can be recruited into the new faith as its servants and d…

On Unorthodox Marx

He leads the existence of a real bohemian intellectual. Washing, grooming and changing his linen are things he does rarely, and he likes to get drunk. Though he is often idle for days on end, he will work day and night with tireless endurance when he has a great deal of work to do. He has no fi…

On Luxury

Danny Pudi keeping it real. /misc/l/larry-ducktales-danny-pudi.mp4 “Uh… a luxury you can’t live without.” “A luxury I can’t live without… Coffee. I really like it.” “Luxury… you can get it anywhere.” “Ah I guess, yeah. Like good coffee…” “I love coffee too.” “I like nice socks.” “Socks. Your socks…

On Garlic

“Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago and garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting. Please treat you…

Buy Good Shit

Neil Panchal on substituting shitty, ineffective, and expensive consumer-grade items with their industrial and military grade equivalents. Emphases mine: The average consumer is an idiot, so the bean counters keep milking them. Let’s stick RGB lights in what used to be the BMW, you know the ultima…

On Never Giving Up

Whenever I get discouraged and want to quit something, I remember the words of my then 3 year-old after she puked carrots all over the living room floor: “I’m gonna need more carrots.” Jessica Valenti Now write down “You’re gonna need more carrots” on a sticky and look at it from time to time ♥️…

On a Program’s Scope

“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.” Coined by Jamie Zawinski (who called it the “Law of Software Envelopment”) to express his belief that all truly useful programs experience pressure to evolve into toolki…

On A Good Burrito

I remember the very first burrito I had in the Mission District in San Francisco. My friend warned me that it would be “around the size of your forearm” and that, if I tried to finish it in a single sitting, I would be an idiot. It was, I did, I am 🙏 i do not fuck with any burrito without heft. i…

On Space Lasers

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites…

We Love America the Mostest

I’m always curious what exactly Conservatives mean when they say they “Love America” because you hate most of the people who live here, you hate the civil liberties afforded by the Constitution, you hate the separation of Church and State. You might claim to love its economy but you hate all of th…

On Winters

Taken completely out of context, for the letter itself is a lot of bro-y “locker room talk.” My mind is dried up, exhausted. I’m disgusted to be back in this damned country where you see the sun in the sky about as often as a diamond in a pig’s asshole. Gustave Flaubert, Letter to Ernest Chevalie…

Scottish Sass

Asked about speculation that Mr Trump could travel to Scotland in order to avoid the inauguration, Ms Sturgeon said: "I have no idea what Donald Trump’s travel plans are, you’ll be glad to know. "I hope and expect that – as everybody expects, not everybody necessarily will hope – that th…

On Side-Projects

I stumbled upon a book called Refuse to Choose and it’s about a personality type (that is definitely not ADHD) that happens to want to do a lot of things (sometimes in parallel or in sequence). It was very comforting to know others struggle with this and this book helps you to be ok with it. I wou…

On Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

Science, technology, and economics focus on efficiency, but not effectiveness. The difference between efficiency and effectiveness is important to an understanding of transformational leadership. Efficiency is a measure of how well resources are used to achieve ends; it is value-free. Effectivenes…

On Fiction

It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer…

On Moochers

Many years ago interviewed an older gentleman as part of a study I was conducting. He said “Republicans are people who will withhold food from 100 people out fear that 1 might not need or deserve it. Democrats will feed 100 out of concern that 1 might really need it. @silvercoug With this foll…

On Imagination

The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange. G.K. Chesterton…

On Security Through Obscurity

Security by Obscurity is when you hide how a security measure works, not when you keep some part of it a secret. Daniel Miessler, “No, Moving Your SSH Port Isn’t Security by Obscurity” As a former sysadmin (but no expert on security): This should be read and re-read. After which one should take…

How to Drive in Iowan Winters

If you rarely drive on snow, just pretend you’re taking your grandma to church. There’s a platter of biscuits and 2 gallons of sweet tea in glass jars in the back seat. She’s wearing a new dress and holding a crock pot full of gravy. @Chadsu42…

Supply-Side Jesus

Saith The Lord to Socialist Democrats: ha, nice try. healthcare is about consumer choice. get a job and enroll in a market-based plan. no peter i won’t help you that will only create dependency pick yourself up by your own sandal straps it’s called personal responsibility. i would love to give you…

On Serving Your Niche

“Nina Simone said this and I never forgot it. She said, ‘You will use up everything you got, trying to get everybody what they want.’ You got to focus man. You know what I do?! I super serve my niche.” Tyler Perry, as quoted by Jefferson Ridgeway, “What #BlackAF Taught Me About Serving My Niche”…

Disposable Software

The software industry is currently going through the “disposable plastic” crisis the physical world went through in the mid-20th century (and is still paying down the debt for). You can run software from 1980 or 2005 on a modern desktop without too much hassle, but anything between there and 2-3 ye…

On ‘Finding Someone’

There’s so much more to life than finding someone who will want you, or being sad over someone who doesn’t. There’s a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself without hoping someone will fall in love with you along the way, and it doesn’t need to be painful or empty. You need to fill…

On Masks

Bill Burr on The Joe Rogan Experience: BURR: I don’t want to start this bullshit. I’m not gonna sit here with no medical degree, listening to you with no medical degree, with an American flag behind you smoking a cigar, acting like we know what’s up, better than the CDC. All I do, is I watch the ne…

Always be leveraging

On tech culture’s obsession with quantifying and optimizing every single moment of one’s existence1: I hate this framing. It is pressuring, dehumanizing as it contextualizes human endeavor in transactional terms, usually in a market. I know this goes against the ethos of high-tech, but humans don’t…

The Official Response

WOOLEY. What if the Prime Minister insists we help them? SIR APPLEBY. Then we follow the four-stage strategy. WOOLEY. What’s that? SIR WHARTON. Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis. SIR WHARTON. In stage one we say nothing is going to happen. SIR APPLEBY. Stage two, we say something…

Gender Roles

Sofia Tolstoy, at 19, after the first of their thirteen children: I am left alone morning, afternoon and night. I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture. I am a woman. I try to suppress all human feelings. When the machine is working properly it heats th…

The Unborn

“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t…

On De-Duplication

I’ve usually heard this phenomenon called “incidental duplication”, and it’s something I find myself teaching junior engineers about quite often. There are a lot of situations where 3-5 lines of many methods follow basically the same pattern, and it can be aggravating to look at. “Don’t repeat you…

Process and Tooling

I thought using loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples. I then thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums. I then thought that programming it was cheating, so I learned to play drums for real. I then thought using bought drums was cheating, so I learned to make m…

Richard Serra on Art

Q: Why make art? What do you find by doing it? What does it get you? Serra: I always wanted an alternative existence. And by that I mean I wanted to do something where I could study my own sentiments and experiences. And I found that I can do that in relation to making things and making art in part…

Home

So, here you are too foreign for home too foreign for here. Never enough for both. – Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada and Home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease. – Naguib Mahfouz…

Data, Data, Data

Linus Torvalds on git I’d also like to point out that unlike every single horror I’ve ever witnessed when looking closer at SCM products, git actually has a simple design, with stable and reasonably well-documented data structures. In fact, I’m a huge proponent of designing your code around the dat…

Love, Knowledge, and Compassion

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching…

Comedians and Comics

From an episode of My Next Guest with David Letterman: Letterman: First of all, let’s define terms. Comedian and comic: used interchangeably but mean two different things. Seinfeld: Kind of different, yeah. A comedian is a, to me, a full-fledged, not only a monologist, but someone who can really wo…

Simpler Gmail

Michael Leggett, lead designer of Gmail from 2008-2012 “It’s like Lucky Charms got spewed all over the screen,” he says to me, as he scrolls through his inbox. It’s true. Folders, contacts, Google apps like Docs and Drive–and at least half a dozen notifications–all clutter Gmail at any given moment…

Chernobyl

Chernobyl

(2019)

On Post-Truth What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stori…

Rating: A+

Penny Flip Tip

Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,    and you’re hampered by not having any, the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,    is simply by spinning a penny. No—not so that chance shall decide the affair    while you’re passively standing there moping; but the moment the penny i…

Scaling Mountains

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when yo…

It Will Be Okay

It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. – Conrad, Heart of Darkness (taken completely out of context…)…

Alan Kay on OOP

OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I’m not aware of them. – Dr. Alan Kay on the Meaning of “Obje…

Rōshi Shopsin

A few favorites from a selection of Kenny Shopsin’s infinite wisdom. He ran this diner (which doesn’t really sound like one…) On ambition It’s just an initiation into the idea until the abilities to appreciate life forthe moments in a row starts to make you a deeper and more fulfilled person, and t…

It’s Never Finished

I think my job doesn’t have an end goal. Words like “finished” or “complete” don’t exist. We do our best with today’s menu and entertain our guests. That’s all for today, it’s repetition. – Chef Nozumu Abe, Sushi Noz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wAQxJeyyXo…

Numbering from Zero

Dijkstra on why numbering should start from zero. Numbering is done with natural numbers. Let’s take zero to be the smallest natural number1. For the sequence (2, 3, 4, … ,12), using the convention (2 ≤ n < 13) is appropriate because For a sequence starting with zero, like (0, 1, 2, 3), the left…

The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backwar…

Apu

From Soutik Biswas’, “The Simpsons: Not all Indians think Apu is a racist stereotype” “As I see it, there are two primary products that second generation Indian American comedians sell - the ridiculousness of their parents’ ‘culture’ (arranged marriage and ‘my son, the doctor’ are the commonest tro…

The Wrong Person

We need to swap the Romantic view for a tragic (and at points comedic) awareness that every human will frustrate, anger, annoy, madden and disappoint us — and we will (without any malice) do the same to them. There can be no end to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness. But none of this is unus…

It’s what they do at Google

In addition, engineers have commoditized many technical solutions that used to be challenging in the past 15 years. Scaling used to be a tough challenge, not any more for many companies. In fact, part of my daily job is to prevent passionate engineers from reinventing wheels in the name of achievin…

Brown Problems

From an old (2010) interview with Anand Wilder of Yeasayer PP: What do you think of South Asian artists who have also broken into indie/mainstream music success, like Natasha Khan (Bat for Lashes), M.I.A., and yourself? Is there a different responsibility or consciousness involved with being South…

Happy Popper

I slipped in a final question: Why in his autobiography did Popper say that he is the happiest philosopher he knows? “Most philosophers are really deeply depressed,” he replied, “because they can’t produce anything worthwhile.” Looking pleased with himself, Popper glanced over at Mrs. Mew, who wore…

Stupidity vs Expertise

There are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; h…

Linux and Switching

The problem isn’t CPU power. The CPU on any modern PC is going to blow away the processing power of any sort of network switch you’d care to buy except the really high-end ones. (Really high end. So high end that unless you already know them by name you are not going to want to buy them) Offloading…

Telling People Things

What’s going on is that without some kind of direct experience to use as a touchstone, people don’t have the context that gives them a place in their minds to put the things you are telling them. The things you say often don’t stick, and the few things that do stick are often distorted. Also, most…

Orwell

When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases – bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder – one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of du…

Freeman Dyson on Richard Feynman

When we arrived we were introduced to Henry Bethe, who is now five years old, but he was not at all impressed. The only thing he would say was “I want Dick. You told me Dick was coming,” and finally he had to be sent off to bed, since Dick (alias Feynman) did not materialise. About half an hour lat…