what i've been reading (43)
english cooking, engineering, a christmas tree
Finish what you started: On building quickly
Priorities change, teams get moved around onto different work, so if we want to ship something we should divide it into the smallest useful set of functionalities we can. You could be building a search feature, and have plans to add filters, exportable results, fancy Boolean operators, but ship out that basic text search first.
Another entry in the bay area house party series. This is 100% exactly what house parties are like in the bay area.
“People say that modern food is addictive,” interrupts Jonathan. “But it really isn’t. It’s shocking how little work people put into optimizing the addictiveness of food. Like, the one thing you learn in every Intro Psychology class . . . “
“ . . . is that intermittent reward is the most addictive reinforcement schedule,” interrupts Hans. “It’s what drives gacha games and slot machines. So we invented . . . . “
“ . . . the intermittent reinforcement potato chip!” concludes Jonathan. “Four out of every five are just plain potato slices. But the fifth has more salt and oil than any of the other leading brands.”
World’s tallest Christmas tree was 212 feet tall.
What’s more, “to make it easier to transport, it had been shorn of all its branches (save a small tuft at its top) before being brought to Seattle, making it look rather like a giant toothpick.”
Jane Grigson: Writing an English Cookbook
Once upon a time, all the food in England was terrible, except in children’s books. The beef was overcooked, the vegetables were overboiled, the custards were watery, and this once-proud country was the laughingstock of the culinary world, especially its neighbor France. But the English did not care. They had survived two world wars, one depression, and a decade of rationing.
52 things Tom Whitwell learned in 2023
Fake belly buttons are temporary tattoo-style stickers. Placed a few inches above your navel, they give the illusion of longer legs. One Chinese reviewer described them as “the most successful invention of 2023.”
