🅱🅔🅝 @ben_mathes Twitter profile | Pikagi

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@ben_mathes

3,180

Followers

903

Following

4,184

Media

34,153

Statuses

I'm probably not here very much anymore. EIon's addiction has him f'in everything up. Also I partially agree with you and that person you hate.

the internet

Joined March 2008

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

Hi I’m Ben. I’m a mix of overthinker, wild adventure, but also the reliable one that will dig drainage ditches around your tents in the rain next to the hot springs while we are 🤯 in the wilderness. Attached are some of my fave tweets (of mine). DMs open.

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Last Seen Profiles

@turkokuranist

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@MeeqoStore

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@dea_semok

@SxnNato

@SxnNato

@erle_erle

@creativemints

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@ba1_151

@chas_dave

@EjangPenin21950

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@yuu_aura11111

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@colinor11

@pan_tian9088

@chimpikajp

@eva_nice15

@ben_mathes

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4 years

Zuckerberg is famously into the classics. Thiel studied under Girard and champions him. "Tech needs liberal arts" seems to really mean "I want tech people to conclude the same things I do from these topics".

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Dan "Quietly Quit" Hon

4 years

This is why we need humanitiea in tech, not that these leaders are smart enough to understand why. The world doesn’t work this way. These people can’t handle a messy, complicated world & want to reduce it to order & neat abstractions. They want control when it’s not possible.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

2 Years at Google. What I thought my time would be spent on: 60% product 30% org 10% admin What it was spent on 60% org 30% admin 10% product

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

Tried to label the neighborhoods pithily for a friend considering moving to SF. How'd I do? (yes ofc it oversimplifies)

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

One of the best insults I’ve ever heard from an academic was “they’re all reference and no inference“

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

My god this is an awfully specific ad for a bus stop

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

@HotForMoot Half her age plus seven

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

Well, if you wanted good news, this is about the only kind we're gonna get in a clown/dark timeline: The 🍆💊 are great for alzheimers

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Giant Study Finds Viagra Is Linked to Almost 70% Lower Risk of Alzheimer's

Wait, what?

www.sciencealert.com

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

@rashiq You were kind enough to put that specific order amount in so hopefully they can isolate. 3 years later. Junior analyst: “why do our scripts exclude all orders of $1872?” 90 years later, w/ lots of inflation. “How come our 1-2k$ budget menu never converts?”

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@mualphaxi @TaylorLorenz It is, after all, cited!

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

I swear to god lifting heavy should be an Rx we default to for a lot of you g men wayyyyy before any pills.

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@ben_mathes

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3 months

@Lib_Development @kitten_beloved I suppose if your response to big problems is "but we can't do big things", then yeah, we won't address big problems.

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

@kane @emissionite I want a David lynch movie about whataboutisms, where the plot keeps forking to a new main character when that character enters a scene and makes a whataboutism and the movie drops everything and goes and does that. Once every five minutes for 2 hours.

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@ben_mathes

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3 months

We spent a couple months finding/designing it after the decision, but yeah. wifeguy and all that.

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@ben_mathes

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2 months

@sfchronicle It’s a new dorm in a college town. You should probably check the source definition for convulsive or political. The fact that it’s not expected is an indictment of how much Berkeley homeowners want to pretend it’s still 1975.

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@beetlechocolate Seen in jackson hole:

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@wesyang It was perma-on in my rural New England upper-middle class household. Loved it. Now when I listen I feel like Im being targeted for memetic host potential.

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

Man, Big Sky was no joke

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@tiredgenerally Lawns should be largely illegal.

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@ben_mathes

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5 years

“most people don’t respond to most economic incentives” is totally compatible with “economic incentives rule the world and control everything around us.” - @slatestarcodex

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Financial Incentives Are Weaker Than Social Incentives But Very Important Anyway

NYT: Economic Incentives Don’t Always Do What We Want Them To (h/t MR). For the first time in history, the title actually understates the article, which argues that incentives can be surprisi…

slatestarcodex.com

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

Maybe the “power of positive thinking” folks are just “the nerd in the group will finish the project” but for their whole life.

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

@arctanno Story is he quoted “cartago delenda est” when google launched Google + in a company wide meeting.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@benhamner

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@ben_mathes

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9 months

@kane And a huge net win for the US to be that safety force. But it shows up in indirect ways (reserve currency, and what that unlocks, for example). Whether the current electeds can both (a) recognize that and (b) retain it is the best proxy I know for whether the US deserves it

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@devahaz Seacliff and pac heights sipping tea while people fight over the mission. Let’s put some condos along El Camino Del Mar.

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

12 weeks in, bones not healing as well as hoped. It's... strange to know a piece of your neck is just kinda floating

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

Man, Big Sky was no joke

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

Investigative journalists got Theranos wrong for several years while nearly all of Silicon Valley got it right (no smart money was involved, when legacy DC folks were!) Legacy media is still trying to stick blame on Silicon Valley. block misinformation and move on.

@eringriffith

erin griffith

3 years

How Elizabeth Holmes Soured the Media on Silicon Valley

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

@ThatShawGuy @webdevMason that last sentence is what kills it for most.

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

I am not necessarily supporting either with this. And the "humans are more complex than a data model allows" angle I have a lot of sympathy for. Just saying that "read the literature" aint a solution.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@vgr Modernism: kill 50% on bottom of spreadsheet Post-modernism: kill 50% that lose the language power game Postrationalism: kill 50% w the wrong vibes idk meta-modernism: debate which measure should pick, while the postmoderns kill 90% cause math is a construct anyway

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

Why does spoiled milk in the form of cheese smell good? Culture. It’s a pun im reading @BretWeinstein and @HeatherEHeying ’s book I regret nothing!!! (Seriously it’s so good go get it now)

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@SQLSuperVillain @waiting2compile “Also you get 1-2 orders of magnitude less equality than us”

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@ben_mathes

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5 years

Grant me the mind to hedge the bets I must balance, the heart to commit to the loves I must leap after in faith, and the wisdom to know the difference.

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

Just a girl, standing in front of a slide, begging our supervisors to pass @LondonBreed ’s Housing for All legislation and not make the city lose out on hundreds of millions of $ in transit and housing $. (👏🏻, @anniefryman )

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@xkcdComic I love the optimism of nothing in 2022

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@jake_gotta @spenisland Shhh some people don't know about density and walkable cities. It's not fair to them.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

I work at Google, and also want to try and get the leadership at Google to stop abdicating editorial decisions to institutions that failed us during the pandemic like the CDC/WHO (as per Michael Lewis��s latest and much more) #howCanIHelp

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@devahaz yep.

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Inside Ivy Getty’s fantasy wedding weekend in San Francisco

The bride wore Maison Margiela by John Galliano for her ceremony officiated by Nancy Pelosi at City Hall. After, guests gathered for a reception at the Getty Mansion.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

Everyone wanna be a Data Scientist, nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass version control, repeatable workflows, and getting the f out of notebooks.

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

@NathanpmYoung "What are the spacial coordinates of your current center of mass, expressed to the nanometer?" Pretty sure this would ID everyone, assuming the same reference frame.

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@KaseyKlimes This would probably be ~illegal in California but a boy can dream

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

16k administrators for 15k students at Harvard (IIUC) reminds me of whalefall on the brand and reputation of the university.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@p_millerd many things. Mostly define by “would have not done it this way if my product wasn’t a standalone company”. Eg how OKRs are conflated into all of planning, task tracking, and cross-org accountability. fighting duplicate efforts, selling ideas to decision makers, status updates

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@McStempel Billboards in Palo Alto: “Don’t get caught sharting your pants! Low-QPS sharded fault tolerant databases from DBSysshard!”

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@ben_mathes

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5 years

@bryce @benshapiro Interviews of @EricRWeinstein and his brother @BretWeinstein . Both deeply progressive, far sharper thinkers than Ezra Klein, and also friends with Ben Shapiro.

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@ben_mathes

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7 months

@TheFederman The supply/demand flat earther

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@ben_mathes

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3 months

@kaseyklimes Constitutional monarchy it is!

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

as a non-practicing intellectual,

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@MasterTimBlais Blizzard tunnel I-80, midstorm

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@graue @jilltucker Do you have sources for how Lowell was a segregated school based on merit?

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

So I met like 20 people for the first time tonight. All friends through this bird app. everyone saying this is a hellsite is using it ~wrong. Y’all were lovely. Thanks @Duderichy for instigating

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@Altimor @kevinakwok did. Slack is the “else” case in your companies process. It’s the air raid interrupt when normal processes fails. And it’s so slick everyone defaults to it. So it’s air raid interrupts non stop.

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

@benthompson “Democracy dies in downward-sloping engagement numbers”

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

After 15 years of startups my net worth was less than my starting annual comp. means vs median outcomes, preferential attachments to those who win big early, and VCs diversified while you make concentrated bets. Can still be worth it. But know before you go.

@garrytan

Garry Tan

1 year

There is a crazy amount of talented folks locked up in corporate big tech jobs that don’t let them build the way they should. I’m hoping a lot of them actually come over to startups, and they realize, oh, this is what it’s like to run fast again.

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

Poast oldest photo you have of yourself as an ~adult. This is 2003.

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@ben_mathes

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7 months

@Duderichy They add value. They just do it by telling the client the thing they wanted to do anyway and providing cover to the client by saying "an external firm recommended we do this". Which, ofc, they don't do *at* 36k feet. They do it by showing up on site pretending to care

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

I have not deep dived. But the gas car ban perfectly pattern matches a lot in this space: a feel good and well-intentioned measure that will backfire from second-order effects and ignorance of complex supply chains.

@alexandrosM

Alexandros Marinos 🏴‍☠️

2 years

Banning gas cars is the dumbest idea ever. Not only are they on the way out anyway, but forcing people to buy EVs can't accelerate the transition, since EVs are already supply limited. The only thing is does is make people bitter & give government types unearned bragging rights.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@cauchyfriend People forget he’s from Miami

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@ben_mathes

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7 months

@kaseyklimes Also, we had laws and still have laws about this for owning radio stations.

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

I've had 3 jobs in a row where, essentially, I was working on the epistemics of the company. Not cause I wanted to, but because that had to be solved before I could do the object-level job.

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@jake_gotta @spenisland inb4 someone says "LA is more dense than NYC" no. "actual" LA. not LA city proper. Santa Monica, Hollywood, etc. all count.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

This is *one* aspect of my job, folks. Other tidbits: Go away for one day, 400k+ commits from google engineers. The products I work on... the compute they lever... it's [redacted]. holy @&*balls.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@DeanPreston Yeah let’s ask them

@byJoshuaDavis

Joshua Davis

3 years

Each time Dean votes against SF apartments he increases gentrification & displacement in Oakland’s BIPOC communities.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

Getting my second vaccine dose today when do I get to start licking strangers?

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@visakanv I knew this intellectually, and then some friends and I did a *two week* motorcycle trip down the west African coast… and only went this far

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@deepfates Yep. tweeter buried this key point. They found _one_ creepy place. And stayed there.

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

Handy guide

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@ben_mathes

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6 years

Yep. Doing power laws right feels wrong (at first). Looking for your next tech job? A VC searches for months on investments. And they are diversified WAY more than you. Don't decide your next several years on a week of search. Doing power laws right feels wrong.

@mmay3r

Michael

6 years

If quality of opportunity follows a power law, you should spend almost all your time searching.

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@ben_mathes

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6 months

@botoxedbuddhist this is low-quality bait, irrespective of anything else, and why you are now muted.

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

@VividVoid_ There's a strong analog here to the original postmodernists and their intellectual descendants.

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

Whoever says they enjoy exercising in the morning because it gives them energy for the whole day is not doing any kind of progressive load. I’m always wrecked, and suspect you would be too if you were working hard enough to progress at anything.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@zachshakked So copying is bad when other people do it?

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@Carnage4Life smart criticism internally is more like "there's huge incoherence in execution. A swag budget of 2k is cut while a handful of execs are spending 50k to go meet in person while everyone else's in-person meets are cancelled"

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

Noticed several TPOT folks that grew their followers too much. Past some threshold move from interesting and complex into engagement bait audience capture. Seen it happen a couple times. And I got blocked for mentioning it to them. Good stuff.

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

@michael_nielsen @devonzuegel This is the “wishing for more wishes” answer, no?

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@acesounderglass Not as obscure as you may think but Shannon (info theory) Ableson & Sussman (SICP fame) Galois (abstract algebra) Gauss, Euler (number theory undergirds all cryptography) Cantor (infinities)

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@mualphaxi @TaylorLorenz Tho if she was 43 in 2022 she’d have been born in 1979

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

@nikhilshinday @mcbyrne @Instacart Missing the point on purpose for The Take was the whole point of her tweet.

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

I want a chrome extension that replaces "many people are saying" and "studies show" with "I'm tricking you into thinking that..."

@EpsilonTheory

Ben Hunt

4 years

The go-to move by sophists like Vox and Trump is to claim that “many people” are asserting their made-up premise that justifies an otherwise ludicrous position. Why? Because common knowledge game. Because of the power of the crowd watching the crowd.

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@ben_mathes

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10 months

@VividVoid_ I assume you've come across "Internal Family Systems", yeah?

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@chiefofstuffs The thing you’re looking for is a Village

@kaseyklimes

kasey

4 years

This is the village in Germany where my parents met in the 1980's. It is called Imsbach, population: 971 The longest walk you can take while staying in the village is 15 minutes. a thread about villages/

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

Malcolm Gladwell‘s latest podcast episode is all about how a good story that’s completely made up is better than fact. That is just way too on the nose for him.

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

@isosteph Jokes on you I get that with thousands of followers.

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@ben_mathes

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3 months

@timhwang All the safecracking shenanigans really make sense with this kid’s smirk

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@ben_mathes

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6 years

roses are red violets are blue This is a Robert Caro valentine So first I need to talk about the complicated history of valentine’s day, so that when I get to finishing my valentine’s poem you’ll understand the real weight of it. In 1870 on the banks of the Pedernales river...

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@ben_mathes

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5 years

Be your own alt account. Be your weird self in the great weirding. Creates a proof-of-work threshold for others to understand you. Defense through illegibility to the masses. Freedom to be yourself to those that know/get you.

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

Gonna try the 🔒 thing for a bit to try and be more personal. My brother got married last weekend. I snuck into the bar. My heart is full.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

@lpolovets @zaid I mean more about how startup equity outcomes for employees are usually well below FAANG. And my startup bets didn’t pay out and I’m not 25 anymore.

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@ben_mathes

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5 years

As soon as your users ask for your communication tool to have snoozing, mark-unread, etc features then you know it’s no longer delightful. Then it’s a todo list.

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

pretty things on the timeline time (I went for a usual 2 hr hike w a 40lb pack on)

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

@lucapenati @petegilligan @rubenharris show me you don't understand the impacts of marginal increases in behaviors without telling me you don't understand etc etc etc

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

As is usual with amazing new fundamental new breakthroughs: * it’s a bigger deal than you think * it won’t be in any of the ways top pundits are saying

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

4 months ago: broken neck. Today: able to play squash for 90 minutes, lift, down a smoothie, then ride for 90 minutes up twin peaks and out to the ocean and back. Hi, body, great to have you back. It’s a great world out there old buddy, let’s keep exploring.

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@ben_mathes

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1 year

@ByrneHobart @amelapay The pain of losing dogs with their relatively short lives always makes me think of this bit of tumblr gold:

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@ben_mathes

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6 years

@MongoliaLive @kevinakwok man diplomatic immunity has really gone downhill.

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@ben_mathes

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3 years

I tried to pretend to be a thinkfluencer. How's my brand photo?

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@ben_mathes

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4 years

@Altimor Me, a google PM, finishing my work yesterday at 8pm: “huh. This is a company with 120k employees I wonder if generalizations might be a bit broad”

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@ben_mathes

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2 years

How do you pick a house that optimizes for the _least maintenance_

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