Awesome

wisdom

Some bits of wisdom: much of it about technology, spirituality, and free sustainable living -- that I've collected and wanted to keep somewhere.

Have suggested reading? Open an issue! :tada:

Healing from Trauma
Sustainable Living
Self Growth
Spirituality
Technology

+: I found particularly insightful; recommended.

Healing from Trauma

+ The Body Keeps Score: the most effective & interesting book I've ever read on trauma. This helped me so much in understanding what trauma is, the depths of how it effects us, and how to start to heal. Highly recommended if you have trauma or even suspect you might.

Sustainable Living

(WIP) + The Bay Area Forager by Mia Andler and Kevin Feinstein
Rob Greenfield
The Moneyless Manifesto by Mark Boyle
Moneyless World
+ The Man Who Quit Money by Mark Sundeen
+ Voyaging on a Small Budget by Annie Hill
(WIP) + Walden by Henry Thoreau

Self Growth

Spirituality

"General" Spirituality

+ A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
+ Peace Pilgrim

Taoism

+ Tao Te Ching

Stoicism

The Enchiridion by Epictetus
Eckhart Tolle on "Epictetus & Stoicsim"
Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
The Discipline of Assent

Buddhism & Zen

+ Fearless: The 7 Principles of Peace of Mind by Brenda Shoshanna
Reflections of Zen
Rebel Budda by Dzogchen Ponlop
+ The Issue at Hand by Gil Fronsdal
+ Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm by Thich Nhat Hanh
Smile at Fear by Chogyan Trungpa
Expect Nothing by Clarice Bryan
Stages of Meditation by Dalai Lama XIV
The Best Buddhist Writing of 2011 by Melvin McLeod (Editor), various
Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
+ Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
+ The Authentic Life by Ezra Bayda
The Zen of You and Me by Diane Musho Hamilton
+ Everyday Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck

Technology

success

Hamming, "You and Your Research" aggregation of marginal gains repititions, not goals plan for failure

"Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day." —Jim Rohn

fundamentals-oriented thinking

Cutting through to what matters

This is not a general disdain for the new: they want to see innovation as much as anybody, but are skeptical of newborn frameworks, tools and technologies that fail to embody the timeless principles that they've found most valuable.

Frameworks descend and burn up in the atmosphere like meteors. Technology changes fast enough that today’s problems are never tomorrow’s problems. Historically, our greatest technologies have been created by those who kept digging until they hit bedrock; who understood foundational ideas and technologies well enough to improve upon them.

You Aren't Gonna Need It

Emtpy Your Cup

Hiding Behind Pillars

problem solving

The "XY Problem"

Fundamental Attribution Error

The 15 minute rule

software engineering

How to be a Programmer

Simple Made Easy

The Value of Values

How Software Gets Bloated

It's hard to get new developers interested in a software project if we force them to not just learn how it works, but also how it got there, because its process of evolution is so critical to the final shape it ended up in. [...] These kinds of clever tricks incur, not a technical, but a social debt that strictly accrues over time.

dumb predictable tools

it's better for your tool to be dumb and work in predictable ways than to implement surprising "convenience" behaviors. The presence of magic numbers set by default is a good indicator that some tool is too "smart" for its own good and will cause you grief.

a note about git commit messages

The Law of Leaky Abstractions

How to Design a Good API and Why it Matters

hacking

"Applied Philosophy a.k.a. 'Hacking'"

How to Become a Hacker

node & javascript

the unix way

Unix Philosophy

The Art of UNIX Programming

UNIX as an IDE

Hints for Writing UNIX Tools

Simplicity Matters

Many Things; in particular:

When frameworks make your decisions for you, you very often won't even realize that a decision has been made at all so it's much harder to identify problems when the assumptions grounded in that technology choice no longer apply.