There have been times when I was working on some problem and I was shrugging of a certain part of the problem saying I don’t have time to fix that and then proceeded with some workaround for that instance, and the problem re-occurred in a different instance and I did the same again, and it repeated quite a few times. And then, when I eventually figured out the mechanics of the thing, I was like it wasn’t that difficult actually, I should have learnt it earlier.

But there’s an underlying logic for this avoiding figuring-out-problem-from-first-principles behavior. The brain does this to avoid spending cognitive energy on very second problem you see, but only on problems that are recurring. However, the problem here, is that the internal tally for how frequently recurring a problem to figure it out should not be 10 or something; 2 is just a fine enough number, and if you’re really lazy, then 3.

If you want a convenient way to get and read all new things I post on this site, you can use an RSS reader. The URL of this site’s RSS feed is:

https://weblog.tamseel.pk/rss

These days almost all sites use email newsletter as a means of staying in touch with users. But RSS works on an inverse philosophy. The site shouldn’t keep user in touch. Rather, the user should stay in touch with the site.

Email Newsletters are a push mechanism where you give every site your email address and they send in updates any time they want in your inbox. This is the push mechanism.

RSS is a pull mechanism. Here, I give you my RSS feed url. And you can add this feed to an RSS reading app and your app will fetch new items from the feed periodically, that you can read any time from that app.

The RSS approach was more popular in old times. But the shift happened as the competition for users’ limited attention started becoming fierce. In the pull mechanism, it is up to user whether to open their RSS app or not, and whether they want to get on notifications or not, and all sorts of options like that. The intention lies upon the reader.

With emails, the email lands in your inbox whether at that time your intention to read is or isn’t. For me, often times, I get a newsletter, I don’t want to read it right away, so I swipe the notification away, and I forget, and since more stuff keep coming in, the old newsletters are pushed downwards and remain unread in the inbox. So, I thought of making a new email address just for newsletter, but boy, the number of email addresses I have is already too high. I should stop workarounds and look for proper solution and the proper solution is very old and simple, i.e. RSS. That gives me full control over what I receive, how frequently I receive it, and how I am notified of it. Of course, you can unsubscribe to email newsletters as well, and tinker with your email settings, but come on, go look at your inbox. I can’t stand having that kind of inbox. At the moment, I don’t have enough actual data to tell how the experience of shifting to RSS has been, but I will write about once I have.

Now, I know, some people might not have any problem with instant updates at any time, well they can set up their RSS reader app, to check for updates more frequently and set up notifications for it.

If you want to read a better version of this posts, and a list of some rss reading apps (I haven’t tried them yet), read this:

https://ncase.me/rss

I have seen it happen many times, and I myself have even been on the receiving end. A possible reason is that when a person is confused and you tell them, hey, X has said something good about just this kind of problem is kinda redundant and useless. If you have internalized learned wisdom well, you probably would be very well able to speak it out directly (because you had actually applied it and seen it work, (or if something not experimentable, you’d have followed a thought experiment and reached the same conclusion independently)).

This is useful to know when you’re helping other people solve their problems, because I have this instinct to point people to original source where I read/heard the concept, and it is useful in some cases, but in most cases it isn’t. Or I should say, pointing to original source is useful at the end of conversation or after the idea has made sense to the other person not before it.

I unblocked x today to export my tweets (so that I can import them here), but I wasted next half my hour scrolling through it. Earlier, when I had blocked it I had written something like “it is ironic because the content on my x feed is actually interesting”. But now, I feel like, even though the content might be interesting in itself, but for me specifically, it unarguably was having an adverse effect at least the way I was consuming it.

I have been using the word “interesting” as a catch-all for all things good or things that I think are worth pursuing further. But, it isn’t a good idea to keep pursuing things which are interesting in themselves, but have a net negative effect on you.

The primary problem with our (university) students is that they don’t want to think what reality is, they want to be told what reality is. Unless a disposition towards thinking is sustained and not killed until a student reaches higher education, the profession of professors is cursed for thinking people.

Unless I engage in serious thinking and serious reading, I cannot do serious writing, and thus, I should refrain from writing (or at least serious writing) at times when I’m not doing serious thinking.

 I like email as a medium of communicating with friends (and strangers on the internet). That is because, it has two desirable properties:-

1. Email encourages long form text. Text message is a good medium for fast conversation, but in short form, you can rarely convey a full chunk of thought. So, emails are good for that.
2. Email encourages a more thoughtful reply rather than instant reply, which for me is a very important thing. As a friend used to say:-

Late replies over dry replies anyday.

In a sense, I use emails as a substitute of letters. Earlier, I used to think it was nostalgia, but I realized it actually has a functional value.

The problem is, I am an outlier in using emails in this way. So when people think of emails, all they recall is their inbox littered with boring corporate/legal/OTP kind of stuff. So, it is understandable why they think of it that way.

But there’s a simple solution to this.

Create a separate email address that you use for nothing else but talking to your friends. Believe me, when you will open that inbox, you will never feel like how you use to feel now.