Interesting Things I've Read (or Watched) /

Linkdump: Interesting Things I Looked At (Very) Recently (2025-08-12)

Most of these are from today, but some are from yesterday, and a few are from last week. The descriptions will be short, since I am short on time.

r/datascience, How to get a job in data science - a semi-harsh Q/A guide

This reddit post seems both hilarious and useful.

Milan Cvitkovic, Things you’re allowed to do

Interesting list, go look at it. Seriously. Did you know that you’re allowed to just… do things?

Ben Kuhn, Why and how to write things on the Internet

Damn, I haven’t read Ben Kuhn’s blog in years, but I still think there’s lots of interesting stuff on his blog. I think this is a really good article about why and how people should approach blogging. It’s also making me want to blog more (which is dangerous… I have other stuff to do) and do more low-effort blogging (which is hard for me, because I have quality standards, alas).

Ben Kuhn, In defense of blub studies

Tl;dr: all systems are learnable, and you should aspire to learn the systems you work with on a regular basis very deeply, since it’ll help you understand and fix problems much faster.

Ben Kuhn, Impact, agency, and taste

I need to write about this article in more depth sometime. Tl;dr: the best way to be effective is to take ownership of projects, figure out where your skills are most useful and apply them there, and fix important problems without getting into other people’s way.

Farnam Street Blog, Compounding Knowledge

Tl;dr: some knowledge is useful to keep in your head, because the more of it you have, the better view of the big picture you have. When making critical decisions, you want that big picture to already be in your head. You do not have time to try to construct it one the fly by looking at a bunch of files and documents. Plus, you’ll have no idea what the right stuff to look at is, and by the time you look at it, it’ll be too late.

Nelson Elhage, Computers can be understood

Tl:dr: you can understand almost everything about computers by reading documentation, or when that fails, reading source code, or when that fails, reading reports written by people who have reverse engineered stuff, or when that fails, reverse engineering stuff. Also, you should build mental models of how systems work. Just don’t get so deep into the weeds that you become incapable of working with systems you don’t fully understand.

Now, if you’ve ever talked to me, I have probably tried to convince you that I don’t know how anything works. That is because I have not done the stuff that people who write blog posts like this advise. My mental models are sketchy, if they’re even there. I need to go figure out how to be technologically literate.

Rob Henderson, Sex Differences Don’t Go Away Just Because You Want Them To

What it says on the tin. I personally think this is worth a read.

Sriram Krishnan, How to write a cold email

What it says on the tin. The secondary piece of advice one should attach to this (which alas, I don’t think is in this post) is to follow up with people who don’t respond to you, you idiot!

Nate Soares, Obvious advice

Tl;dr: always try the obvious advice (or solution) first.

Julia Evans, How to ask good questions

Tl;dr: choose the right person to ask and ask them at the right time; do some research first; make sure to tell them what you think you know so you’re on the same page and they can correct you if they need to; tell people when you don’t understand the words you’re using (tip from me: did you know you can ask people to back up when they’re explaining things and you need then to fill in some gaps?); write up answers to questions you have and share them with others, it’s helpful!

I love a good question. I will probably do my own version of this post someday.

Julia Evans, How to answer questions in a helpful way

Tl;dr: try to understand what the person is actually asking you and help them clarify if necessary – you really want to get to the core of their confusion; it may be helpful to figure out what they already do know and understand; sometimes you just need to point them to the right piece of documentation or the right keyword/phrase to look up; explain yourself when you do things; make sure you actually answered the person’s question, by asking them whether or not you answered it; don’t act surprised when people don’t know things.

Julia Evans, So you want to be a wizard

Alternative title: how to become knowledgeable about technical things. Big ideas:

Venus Theory, Why YouTube Wants Your ID Now

This video is a fever dream. It also has a lot of phallic jokes. Consider yourself forewarned. The title is accurate, though. We all love algorithmically enforced “safety”, don’t we? YouTube is about to become a nightmare that asks you to submit government-issued ID or credit card information if you want to bypass its AI that uses context clues to a) decide whether or not it thinks you’re an “adult” and b) decide what content is “age-appropriate” for you. We live in a present-day dystopia, baby. The future is yesterday.

Louis Rossman, Change your profile picture to clippy. I’m serious

My friend sent me this video and maybe you should watch it too. I did not know the history of this clippy thing, and it’s really interesting! Just beware that this video is, you know, a manifesto.

Alright, that’s a much longer article than I was expecting and I spent way more time on it than I was expecting. Oh, well, at least I learned a few things. And maybe writing the tl;dr sections will actually help me remember these ideas.

Huh, maybe I should try doing the tl;drs for academic papers as well.

 Interesting Things I've Read (or Watched)