“Standing Before The Deathspren Was A Tiny Figure Of Light. Not Translucent, As She Had Always Appeared

father and daughter ⛈

i like working at plant store. sometimes you ring up someone and there's a slug on their plant and so you're like "Oh haha you've got a friend there let me get that for you" and you put the slug on your hand for safekeeping but then its really busy and you dont have time to take the slug outside before the next customer in line so you just have a slug chilling on your hand for 15 minutes. really makes you feel at peace with nature. also it means sometimes i get to say my favorite line which is "would you like this free slug with your purchase"

It really hurt when Hoid respawned after being vaporized and immediately frantically wanted to go back. He's been such a strange character in these 5 books. I've never been able to unhear him saying he'd let Roshar burn before he let Odium free (presuming that is what he meant), but when push came to shove even he admitted that he didn't know if he could do that. He loves that world. He loves the people on it. He didn't want to return because he thought he actually had a chance at stopping Retribution, he wanted to return because people he loved were there and he didn't want them to suffer alone.

It's only after he realizes that Roshar actually has a genuine chance at winning that he stays where he is. Because Dalinar did something wonderful and frightening and brilliant, and Hoid can use that.

He can do more to help by influencing the other worlds to grow in the ways they need to, and trying to convince the other Shards to listen. And so when he does come back to the place and the people he loves, he will be prepared to help them win.

“Strangely, treating knowledge as an end in itself reaps the kind of practical rewards that valuing merely instrumental knowledge may struggle to produce.”

- from “How We Lost Our Focus (and why it should scare you)” by Unsolicited advice (https://youtu.be/oxJkj-C4vjs)

Honestly it is my opinion that knowledge and learning and thinking and all that they entail are valuable in and of themselves: that is to say I take the original poster’s idea a step farther and value ‘useless degrees’ even if they are objectively useless from a practical sense. For me knowledge is an end unto itself, valuable because it is and not because of what it might do.

It’s also worth noting that a lot of very valuable math with a lot of practical applications now started out this way: as purely abstract and only valuable in and of itself. So it seems to me that this perspective doesn’t harm applying the concepts in the long term, but actually helps it.

It seems to be the case that by only chasing what is immediately useful we will miss vast amounts of information and thoughts and development that will become useful or even needed later down the line.

Standard cat behavior

Adorable! I love them

letterpress postcards by Pottering Cat, Japan

I know, I know, gatekeeping the outdoors, that's supposedly bad, right, but I think if you show up to do a hike and you brought a portable speaker with you to play music while you hike, I think, like hear me out, there should be a gate, and someone at the gate should keep you from doing the hike.

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I like the direction this is going in, but I think it’s missing some nuance.

My main critique is that this fails to realize just how complex computers really are. Because of this complexity there has to be different layers of user interaction with varying complexity, and consequently, control.

As someone who has dabbled in programing, I can give some insight as to why some tools are made exclusively for command line: gui's are not easy to make. Even harder if you want it to be any good. When I want to make a tool or program to do something for me, I don't choose to make it only accessible from the command line because I want to disadvantage others or otherwise maintain a status quo where I have an advantage, I do it out of practical necessity; programming is a hobby I use to accomplish things when I can't tools that do what I want, and as a hobby I don't sink enough time into it to make everything into polished gui's. There is something to say regarding companies who have the resources deciding not to make a gui when they could, but that's not an issue I'm aware of.

I really love the critique of how computers are currently structured, specifically folders and file structures. For files and folders that the computer is directly using (say by the os or applications) I would say folders are probably a decent way of ordering things. Or that is to say I can't think of a better way to structure things in an efficient way for the computer to access. (I know your critiquing the focus on efficiency, but for resources used by the computer itself, not the user, efficiency is important. Poor efficiency results in worse system performance, and so is not desirable.)

Returning to files (or equivalent concept) that are used by the user, there really is no reason why they should be ordered the same as the operating system does it. There is a pretty good argument that they shouldn't be ordered in such a way, which I believe is what is being argued above. I personally order my files and notes in folders mostly out of a practical need. There are alternatives though, look into Personal Knowledge Management systems and the tools that make them possible. My personal favorite is Obsidian, and in there I don't order files using folders, I use tags and note metadata. To track books I'm reading for example, I have a '#books' tag to designate the notes, and then I use a combination of properties ('status' with 'reading', 'read', 'tbr' or 'progress' with the number of pages I've read so far, etc). I can then use special searches to create lists of notes to surface information or content that is useful and easy to find. To make my point, I think that there are tools allowing users to already go beyond the hierarchical file/folder structure. They might have farther to go, but I think people are interested enough in them that they are improving.

Should using the command line be necessary? Honestly, no. It probably shouldn't. Should the command line not exists? Also no. Because of the complexity of computers, I don't think we should try to remove that lower level. Should we improve the higher levels? Give more control to users without requiring them to go to harder to use mediums, such as a command line? One hundred percent!

I would also agree that command line and computer system management stuff does have a steep learning curve. And unfortunately I don't see that going away; it's sort of in their nature to be hard to learn. Maybe I'm being a broken record, but computers are complex. That doesn't mean that the user interface (gui 99% of the time) should be difficult to learn. And to the point above, that control should require a steep learning curve.

There is an argument to be made though regarding giving command line tools and interaction some grace. If the goal is to make user interfaces that are easiest to use for different individuals, that is what works for one person might not work for another, so we need several options for different individuals and tasks, then I would say command line interfaces should be included in that. I would say that they can be the best tool for some people and for some tasks. Not all tasks, and not all people though, which ties back in to the necessity of using them if you want to do certain things. Perhaps that shouldn't be necessary.

It is also worth pointing out that due to the complexity of computers, if the user had easy control over their entire system, they could very easily mess it up in irreparable ways. Because of this it might be a benefit to have difficult interface options such as command lines that have a steep learning curve, because it requires by nature that the user knows, to a degree, what they are doing, and are thus less likely to case permanent damage.

That was a lot. Thanks for reading this far!

My boyfriend @aborigonalguppyrabits and I were discussing cosmere reading order and decided that it was best expressed as a flow chart. The project got a little out of hand. Obviously there’s no right way to read the books, but we thought we’d offer our solution.