Its the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025! I’ve changed up how I do daily notes, and in part this will change my weekly notes format. The unstructured version of daily notes means I should make it easier on myself to publish this.
Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity.
News
Some random news stories this week
- CNN launches a digital paywall, charging some users to read articles for the first time | CNN Business
- Russian air-defense system downed Azerbaijan plane, sources say | Reuters
- Winning ticket for $1.22 billion lottery jackpot sold in California, Mega Millions says | AP News
- Norovirus cases are surging. A doctor explains what to look for | CNN
Notes from the week
A night dinner of pastas. It would be great to run this.
- Pasta Girlfriend
- Ali LaBelle | À LA CARTE — THE HOLIDAY PRINT ISSUE since the very beginning of my newsletter, i’ve dreamt of finding ways to bring it to life beyond the… | Instagram
Latent Space talked about paper club during NeurIPS. This conference is for PhDs to talk about their research, especially in the ML and AI space.
This post is rehashing an earlier one about learning AI. It’s updating with what to learn now with the past 6 months of AI updates.
I read a bunch of items from Derek Sivers again. Mainly because I re-read Directives and wandered around recent writing. This was one and there was another contemplating end of life matters.
I’m not sure why I was thinking of Strong Towns again. I certainly want to write down the main thesis. Also recap the book
A redditor made a few Obsidian Themes. It looks pretty good on MacOS.
I’m working on using Anki, and this came up while I was figuring out how to craft flashcards.
Ashley Stimpson’s “Awestruck,” featured in Johns Hopkins Magazine,
As 2025 starts, there are many listicles that start appearing. Here’s one that seems quite interesting for [[CSS]]
I used Fish years ago. Interesting it is now 4.0
There are some old homes in the UK for a small price but look spectacular.
In electromagnetic signals from our brain, the rate of input might be slow, but there’s also a benefit.
There’s a mental model or principle lying somewhere inside of this. We need to check.
Good to keep up with trends and predictions. Although, we know predictions aren’t always right. Understand the basic assumptions
I think it would be great to create a default app list, not the ones you want it to be.
- My default apps of 2024
- One of the apps mentioned was Puzzmo. I’m not as big of a fan of this one.
- My Subscription Stack (June 2024) - Monica Lim
- What Productivity Apps Are You Using in 2025? : r/ProductivityApps
Worth re-looking at unemployment trends as I may need to look for another job in 2 years.
The people list of some importance. Worth checking through, although it would be great to see profiles of each person
I love this as sometimes it’s not the big things we find joy in, but the little joys like re-learning Python. This is worth looking at.
I think it might be worth subscribing to Bluesky or Mastodon and trying out some of these blogging events, take “Blogvent” as an example
Spotify’s plot against musicians
David Brooks writes about what the religious experience looks like.
Criterion Collection has a wonderful collection in their publication, “Current”, from this past year
Using a Raspberry Pi 5 to showcase a mini-computer build called Pilet
David Cain experimented with the year of depth back in 2017. I want to read more about how this affected him. I’m going through one of these types of years to really slow down and understand things deeper, not as much as I can. I suffer too much of that and the [[2025 Year of Capacity]] is acknowledging I can’t do, read, consume everything
Celine Nguyen wrote about calendars and this specific design was interesting. It made me think about that full calendar and how to really visualize it
- Tézzo Suzuki is Working ☠️ OH no Type Company
- Amazon: 2025 Yearly At a Glance Wall Calendar 12 Month, Large Full Year Wall Calendar 2025 One Page
Simon Willison summarized his year with LLMs and is kinda a great voice in consolidating and synthesizing what it might mean
There are home hackers that are creating their own magic mirror. This would be an amazing side project.
Here’s an AI article that I didn’t read.
Tim Urban’s idea of a controlled dopamine hit makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe this is how we slow down.
- Tim Urban on X: “24 thoughts that gave me a dopamine hit this year” - X thread
rounded-sm up resources regarding Ollama
- Ollama - Get up and running with large language models.
- What does people actually use Ollama and local LLM’s for? : r/ollama
Sometimes the boring stack is better. Rogério talks about different project make-ups and how it’s difficult to find the right balance while the product makes money.
A software developer is more than their code ability. Addy Osmani talks about the other type of skills that AI isn’t going to necessarily replace in you
Switching from casual to real usage, I want to understand actual workflows. Authored by Fernando Borretti.
I read this blog post, and it irked me. I dug a little deeper, and making bold statements without understanding the repercussions make me resent I was reading this at all. Sure, there’s “doing Elon’s bidding” with the new DOGE, but it goes way deeper than that. The need to continue hustling (i.e. hustle mode) vs. taming the ego really showed here. This person was putting out their thoughts, so I understand this isn’t supposed to be relatable. But their public persona is what really bothered me.
- I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life
- I am rich and have no idea what to do | Hacker News
This is specific to analytics on AWS pages. We should see what they are
I probably should look at this soon and try it out. Not a someday build, but in the learning category. [[Someday Topics]] may need a different note
Something to look at for longer term prospects for work
Simon Willison goes through why it’s probably not companies rushing to turn on your video or microphone
Data Visualization awards. I forgot about this, and maybe I should collect them in my vault?
Where in the world to go to. Not as comprehensive as the 1000 places to see before you die, but yet a good thing to review.
I think if I did my 100 days of note-taking I’d feel better instead of skipping out once we had house stuff to deal with
The new 2025 list has been released
Recommendations
- Book: Algorithms to Live By
- Book: Escaping the Housing Trap
- Person: Dr Becky Kennedy is a parenting expert that might be worth checking into
- Podcast: Episode 05.21: 2024 Review – Quiet Little Horrors
- Podcast: Latent.Space 2024 Year in Review - by swyx & Alessio
- Gabby Bernstein’s New Book: Self Help
- Podcast: Grief & Pizza | Building Experiences with Joel Hooks
- Home Cooking podcast is back with another episode! Episode 18: Frankly, We Have a Lot to Ketchup On (with Latif Nasser) — Home Cooking
- Book - The DOSE Effect Book - Tj Power - DOSE stands for the following
- Dopamine - How to build a healthy relationship with your phone and improve your attention
- Oxytocin - How to build your inner confidence and strengthen your meaningful relationships
- Serotonin - How to elevate your energy levels and improve your mood every single day
- Endorphins - How to destress your brain and improve your physical health and longevity
Obits
Former President Jimmy Carter dies today
By suicide. Really sad. Way too young.