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Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

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Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#31

Post by tgb »

text_exch wrote: post #18
overlordalex wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks really interesting! Is it possible to see a sample of previous emails? Are they just links or is there a comment describing them as well? Getting another email 3-4 times a week is a big commitment, and it would be nice to get a sampler of what we're signing up for EDIT: The website also says that it's a link per day, but your comment says "every other day". A daily link would be an even larger commitment

Each email contains the article's title, the genre, and an extended excerpt. I'm not sure how to link to previous emails, but here is a sample of previous links: https://mix.com/thinkingaboutthings . It started out as an every day email, but readers told me that every other day would give them time to read the articles.

I enjoyed the first post I read from this list [1], so I've signed up for the newsletter. But I do take umbrage with some of what it says! When someone asks "Was Brontosaurus an herbivore?" the right answer would be Yes even if brontosaurus as a category of dinosaurs had been removed. (It's still a valid genus name, so the point is doubly wrong. [2]) It is clear that if someone asks about brontosaurus, they mean the animals whose bones were called brontosaurus bones, which were in fact herbivores. The only other possible thing they could mean is "the well-known (but non-factual) dinosaur called Brontosaurus" which is an herbivore in much the same way that a unicorn is an herbivore.

Similarly, the author seems to mistake the difficulty in the question of "What country was George Washington born?" which is primarily the question of what does that even mean? The country that the spot of his birth became or the country which ruled the spot of his birth at the time? In fact, I'm not even sure what answer the author thinks is correct. Washington was a British subject (citizen? not sure) at birth but the "clue" the author provides seems to try to hint that Washington was born "in the US" whatever that would mean prior to the US's existence.

Nonetheless, I stand by the author's overall sentiment that facts should be connected together and not simply memorized, and the other examples were good.

[1] https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/07/was_brontosaurus_a_h... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brontosaurus

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#33

Post by bryanrasmussen »

tgb wrote: post #31
text_exch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each email contains the article's title, the genre, and an extended excerpt. I'm not sure how to link to previous emails, but here is a sample of previous links: https://mix.com/thinkingaboutthings . It started out as an every day email, but readers told me that every other day would give them time to read the articles.

I enjoyed the first post I read from this list [1], so I've signed up for the newsletter. But I do take umbrage with some of what it says! When someone asks "Was Brontosaurus an herbivore?" the right answer would be Yes even if brontosaurus as a category of dinosaurs had been removed. (It's still a valid genus name, so the point is doubly wrong. [2]) It is clear that if someone asks about brontosaurus, they mean the…

The only times I've ever seen the question "In what country was George Washington born?" it's always been a trick question with the answer "hah hah, it's Britain I bet you didn't think of that!" or some variation thereof.

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#35

Post by polote »

text_exch wrote: post #9

I run an email newsletter[1] that aims to highlight the interesting content found on personal blogs. It's a single link every other day to something interesting, the kind of blog posts that you come across every once in a while that really make you think. The overwhelming feedback is that being able to read the kind of non-viscerally-targeted news and analyses that aren't easily found online is incredibly valuable. […

There is also this daily newsletter of hacker news blog posts https://hnblogs.substack.com

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#36

Post by jaybeeayyy »

lwigo wrote: post #34

There was a huge push for "new coders" to start their own blogs about problems they encounter and such, especially as part of the bootcamp that I was working for. I wonder if that is still a thing.

Our bootcamp didn't mention anything about a blog, just having a personal website as a portfolio like usual.

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#37

Post by blackbear_ »

text_exch wrote: post #9

I run an email newsletter[1] that aims to highlight the interesting content found on personal blogs. It's a single link every other day to something interesting, the kind of blog posts that you come across every once in a while that really make you think. The overwhelming feedback is that being able to read the kind of non-viscerally-targeted news and analyses that aren't easily found online is incredibly valuable. […

Sounds interesting! Do you have an RSS feed too?

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#38

Post by thomascgalvin »

lwigo wrote: post #34

There was a huge push for "new coders" to start their own blogs about problems they encounter and such, especially as part of the bootcamp that I was working for. I wonder if that is still a thing.

I wonder if that's for resume padding? People post their blog entries to LinkedIn as social proof of their skills pretty frequently.

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#39

Post by lettergram »

Much of my personal blog is actually ranked on Google for terms. I tend to keep my notes in my blog, I share it on HN and Reddit.

It’s important to develop a personal brand, but also to share knowledge. My personal, unquantifiable goal, is saving a million man hours through my blog posts. So many things are implemented or explored, but never shared. Knowledge in a vacuum is useless to society.

I wish more people would do this (write and attempt to rank content), it’s what makes the internet revolutionary (not the memes or messages).

Re: Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

#40

Post by antasvara »

polote wrote: post #35
text_exch wrote: post #9

I run an email newsletter[1] that aims to highlight the interesting content found on personal blogs. It's a single link every other day to something interesting, the kind of blog posts that you come across every once in a while that really make you think. The overwhelming feedback is that being able to read the kind of non-viscerally-targeted news and analyses that aren't easily found online is incredibly valuable. […

There is also this daily newsletter of hacker news blog posts https://hnblogs.substack.com

Can confirm that this newsletter is awesome. On a side note, the blogs that the newsletter links to often have no comments on Hacker News, meaning that I have often never seen them before.
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