My Dad is notorious for giving homemade gifts, often only tangentially related to the holiday

My sense is he mostly gives 🎁s he knows he'd enjoy making, to people he enjoys thinking about while he makes them

Today is his birthday
I like writing 🧡
So this will be one about him
I do not think I have met a man who was more successful by his own standards than my Father.

It's the standard I've used for guiding my life and choosing my goals, but I've not seen much written about before.

Follow it, and you too may live to become a mascot for frozen fish.
The most important lessons aren't the ones you say with your words, they are the ones you live out, the example you set for others.

The implicit lesson I learned from my Father is that only two things really matter - one is living a life that will lead to interesting stories.
Now, the beer commercials were a bit over the top, but it is true that he was "The Most Interesting Man in the World"

A good example - in his late 20s he rode his bicycle around Ireland, drawing pictures of castles.

When he ran out of money, those sketches got him a job.
I've probably heard and told the story of how he got that job dozens of times - because it really shaped my model of how to assess risk, how to spot opportunities, and why luck favors the prepared mind.

See, Ireland in the 80s was booming, but not exactly economically.
Now a notebook filled with old ruins from a draftsman without a diploma is not much

But one night, walking the streets of Cork after pubs closed, my Dad noticed a light on in an Architect's office

A πŸ’‘ that late means on thing. Probably. They have work

The next day he applied.
A few days later, he was in a pub again, debating whether to spend his last pound on another drink, or on the payphone to find out if he got the job.

He choose to make the call, thinking there was some chance that if he got the job, the bartender might buy him a 🍻 to celebrate
Anyway, he got the job, the guy who hired him was my Mom's brother.

They jump into things quick, but job is not one that is going to last, and America beckons him home.

Fortunately, he was a something of a writer, and was able to tempt her to the US of A
Anyway - I had grand plans to include actual life advice here, but I'm out of iconic images we would put around the house to harass my dad with growing up

and given example he set of waking up at 4am for his 2nd job to provide for us as kids, should probably get to work now.
So Happy Birthday Dad.

Since other point of thread was homage to this scene in Ned Devine, and since it's still so far from done, seems you'll have to live quite a bit longer.

I don't make the rules

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More from @Conaw

10 Jun
An America that takes this path is not just turning off a beacon of hope...

It is a constructing a lighthouse, a warning for would be immigrants:

"Stay far far away from this rocky shore, for it would rather smash in the skulls of your babies than acknowledge their difference"
An America that would choose to hold back the next Ramanujan is an America that is cashing out its share of the future.

On second thought, Fine. Fuck it. Let it burn.

We're overdue for a dark age anyway.

Read 4 tweets
4 Jun
This, except I am painfully aware every day of how we haven’t solved the problem that drove me to work on this.

Success is the small improvements compounding, hard won victories that let you take on ever harder parts of the problem.

[[Beginning of Infinity]] ish
Shoutout to all my exes that were willing to use @RoamResearch to try and resolve our disagreements

Namaste to everyone who ever put in work to try and find out what the hell I was talking bout.

Hopefully the bright side of having hard-mode problem is that solutions will scale
Also much love to everyone in #roamcult who reads my tweets charitably and with assumption of positive intent, and to @EpistemicHope and rationality.org for pioneering work on [[Double Crux]], one of best processes I’ve found for thinking together

rationality.org/resources/upda…
Read 7 tweets
1 Jun
I think about this a lot, but have to side with John Hammond
Monday morning quarterbacking, but the park probably would have gotten into the black with just triceratops and brontosaurus.

I question ROI of Velociraptors, or why you wouldn’t wait 5 years to breed them and have the announcement bump up return visits
I also question staffing decisions - besides the key man risk in IT, what kind of head of security waits until the target is in sight to load his gun?

Was she really that clever, or was this fellow simply a dunce?

Anyway the answer is still always to bring back dinosaurs
Read 4 tweets
26 May
The thing people actually fall in love with with Roam are the ideas, memories, and work they put into it.

Only a reflection of what you put in

If your work is spiritually dead, it’s much easier to sneer and blame β€œthe system” than to face and question yourself and your choices.
β€œYou work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.”
Read 7 tweets
23 May
Big if true.

Shame Twitter is poor fact-checking UI, this is definitely verifiable for someone with time/ability.

A small Roam graph making would be beautiful to see

Buy when there is 🩸 in the streets.
Read 4 tweets
20 May
Time for my "Conor is in same room as a 16 y/o" speech

I STRONGLY considered attending @LambdaSchool after selling my first company.

Chose not to go because required waking up at a specific time every day.

STRONGLY prefer my kids wind up going to LS vs debt-shackling college.
If you, or anyone you love, is wanting to transition from a bullshit job into tech - and you do not have ton of engineer friends who will mentor you, and ton of experience in teaching yourself hard material, and years to spend wandering interwebs...

@LambdaSchool is where I'd go
One last thing

If you're the kind of entitled asshole who can't figure out that 70% graduation rate, and 87% placement rate DOES NOT MEAN you are guaranteed a job...

and so you sue and defame

Please
please
PLEASE!

take a $200k loan for that BA in art appreciation instead
Read 4 tweets

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