people always ask me how I keep my orchids alive and blooming for years. it's easy, as long as you follow these four simple steps:

1) never think about your orchid. if it catches you thinking about it, it will die 🧵 2) every few days, place an ice cube in the orchid's pot. this is not an effective way to water an orchid, but it's fun to do

something I've observed a number of times: getting promoted can be demoralizing, especially at senior levels, for people who are highly goal oriented. it's counterintuitive. here's what I think is going on: 1) you spend a lot of time planning for this goal (maybe years). once you get it, you no longer have something to plan for, especially if you've been promoted to a level senior enough to not have clear next steps for a next promotion.

Starting today, we're experimenting on Chrome stable with a Following feature. You can choose websites to follow, and their RSS updates will appear on Chrome's new tab page. We've been working on this for a while & I'm super excited to hear what people think 👇 It's on already for some % of people, or you can enable it in chrome://flags under "web feed" (Chrome 94+ for Android). To follow, click on the three dot menu and use the Follow button at the bottom. iOS version coming soon.

My 9 book picks for engineering leaders 👇 The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier. An experienced engineering manager describes the core roles, relationships, and responsibilities of TLs, TLMs, and engineering managers. A strong recommendation for any new or mid-career engineering leader. oreilly.com/library/view/t…

Folks often ask me what I do at work. What even IS an engineering director? I don’t write code all day anymore, so it seems very mysterious. Here’s my answer: people, processes, priorities. (1) People. Hiring, career growth, happiness, performance management, compensation, team culture, psychological safety, coaching the managers in my org. This is perhaps the most visible and obvious aspect of management.

Achieving Mindfulness: An Introductory Guide For Parents In Small Apartments & Crowded Homes 🧵 1) Start your mindfulness journey with a shower. Count to three as you breathe hot steam in, then let it out. Stay in the shower until a child breaks a limb or your spouse’s spirit, whichever comes first.

Ransom notes in different styles. Let's start with an Instagram influencer A ransom note in the style of Dorothy Parker

At-home preschool is getting intense. Does anyone know the name for a number that can be factored into a step shape? Also, is there an O(1) algorithm to check if any given N is a step shape? I'm stuck Triangular number, thank you!

We've managed to keep our house smoke-free this year. Important because my son has asthma. Here are my tips: 1. Find and seal all the places where air can enter your house. Old leaky windows. Bathroom, kitchen, laundry fans might vent outside. Attic drop-down doors. 3M sells a window insulation kit that's 💯. amazon.com/3M-Indoor-Insu…

Tried to teach the dog the command "drop it" by offering him a treat if he dropped it. Now he searches for important things, brings them to me, and holds them hostage in his mouth until I give him a ransom Two Berkeley PhDs and Google engineers in our house, and the dog is smarter than us both

The world gets a glimpse into tech CEOs' homes. What do we see? 🧵 Zuckerberg:
- Completely neutral, personality-free background
- No sunburn, thanks to dedicated use of sunscreen

For three years, I have been training an intelligence on how to make pizza. Today I let it loose to see how it would do on its own: 1. He began with an egg glaze on tortillas. A bold start.

Sometimes I hear Californians talking about racism as a somewhere-else problem. Remember that today's disparities between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto are a product of segregation (blockbusting, redlining, harassment, underfunding schools): techcrunch.com/2015/01/10/eas… Plus:

- Many houses around the Bay still have (unenforceable) CC&Rs prohibiting their sale to non-white people.

- Some of the houses on my block were taken from Americans of Japanese descent during WWII. We had to check historical records to make sure our house wasn't stolen.

Having a little chat with my new friend Anthony, who is definitely from the United States of America Los Angeles. What should I ask him about? Woah! In LA, Starbucks is a delivery company. Things are really different down in SoCal.

I am literally trapped in my house, so: time to install & review Parler. What is the free speech app like? 🧵

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1276200378296664066

To get an account, you need to agree to their TOS. It is a PDF written in LaTeX. Did they...did they hire a math PhD student to write their TOS?

thank you to whoever at this travel website decided they should overlay mexican slang words atop random photos and art. let's start with: PENIS
theculturetrip.com/north-america/… ASSHOLE

I was afraid to seek medical care recently because I was worried about getting COVID too. But it actually was very safe and fine. I thought I'd share my experience in case anyone else is worried: My doctor's office has virtual clinical visits, and our pharmacy has a drive-through. So the first line medical care was simple and smooth.

Hello, Copper! Copper is a two month old Goldendoodle and my new bestie. thank you to @wslack for the name -- Copper is short for Copernicus

https://twitter.com/wslack/status/1256980580018917377?s=19

zoom calls with a dozen preschoolers april

Getting a new dog is hard. I got Punky when I was fresh out of college, and she lived with me for a formative decade of my life. She was the sweetest pittie. Her heart started failing, and she was ok for a while, just slow and lazy instead of spry. But at some point she started aching and biting when anyone jostled her. Then she nipped my son. Once as a warning, then hard enough to bruise next time.

pizza is so fucking hard to make. it should cost $1,000 a slice. the dough is so sticky. goddamnit. how do you get it thin? it's all stuck to me. i am full of pizza rage. i'm going to charge my husband $10,000 for this pizza what are your secrets, pizza people???????