TIL Saab was an aerospace company.
My Dad had a '98 Saab. It had an "S" button on the shifter. It stood for "speed". When we were 7/8 years old we'd beg him to press it and it would speed up 10mph. I got my license in 2011, immediately took that car onto the highway and pressed the S button.
Nothing happened. I went home and read the manual. S stand for sport. It keeps the engine in a higher gear than normal for quicker response
Yeah I remember we had a family friend and they had a Boost button in their Saab. I don't know if it literally said Boost but in my memory it does. We begged him to press it but he told us it was extremely dangerous and would cause flames to shoot out the back. So of course we begged him even more...
> The economic performance of the states and territories still within the US compared to the nations we let go is evidence that American annexation has large positive effects.
“Economic performance” between states and territories though differ dramatically. Look up the GDP of the poorest US state and that of Puerto Rico. And then maybe for good measure a Western European country.
Near and dear to my heart. Would be very hard to add but there's a sensational operation called Mr. Mango (bet the OP has heard of them). Don't know how exactly they do it but Mr (Mango|Lime|Kiwi) sells fresh (often organic) produce at 30% market rate. Big case of strawberries for 99 cents type thing.
This was an excellently written, salient post with some good tidbits.
I've learned some of these lessons the hard way. I'll add a few. Proof of work is important, but it's not about the magnitude of energy you spend. I went through two iterations of reaching out to my college network. The first time I put so much time into handwriting notes and trying to provide my relatable background. 100 notes, not a single response.
The second time I sent emails that were a few sentences. I had a much clearer ask and devoted the effort into fitting my questions into the email. I wanted a conversation really, but I also tried to communicate what I planned to ask.
15% response rate and invaluable conversations. Less overall "work".
Secondly, and relatedly, don't ever waste someone's time. Don't ask for / accept a meeting if you don't have some semblance of a clear ask. It's hard, especially in early stage business where you're trying to discover what you don't know. But you can try to lay out your tier 1 "here's what I think", "here are the follow ups".
I sensed once that I had irritated someone by lacking the agenda. Another time I took a mutual connection up on an intro where I didn't know what I really needed. I regret both of these.
Thirdly try to pay it forward. It won't always come back around, but you can feel more comfortable asking for help and more cognizant of what a helper (so to speak) is thinking
> I went through two iterations of reaching out to my college network. The first time I put so much time into handwriting notes and trying to provide my relatable background. 100 notes, not a single response.
This is a thoughtful gesture, but there are at least two problems with it
First, a handwritten note isn't easy to respond to. With an e-mail, you can leave the message in your inbox until you have time to respond and then it's one click to start responding. With a hand-written letter the recipient would have to context-switch from reading mail to using a digital device and they'd have to transcribe your e-mail address. It's not much work, but it's still work that someone has to make time for.
Second, it's an unusual thing to do. It's important to communicate with people through normal, comfortable communication channels where the etiquette is known. Having someone handwrite a letter and look up your mailing address is unusual. Unusual behavior triggers people's suspicions. You weren't trying to scam anyone, but you should be aware that one of the tricks used in scams is to invest unusual amounts of attention and energy into someone. It can trigger a suspicion that you're really after something else.
Your second round of sending short e-mails had neither of these problems. Easy to reply to, nothing unusual about it. It's the way to go.
When I was younger, I was always paranoid when I reached out to somebody and didn't hear back. Now that I'm older and busier, I totally get it. Clearly state who you are, what you want, and what your timeline is. It's far easier to reply to a message like that, than to parse paragraphs of fluffery looking for an ask.
Solid advice, (but to others reading) don’t optimize for not irritating people.
Especially your professional network. You built those relationships because you wanted to use them in the future, and the future is now… so, tap them! If they don’t like that, no big deal, no sweat, move on.
If you’re irritating multiple people constantly, then yea you’re probably doing something wrong. But if it’s one person once in a blue moon, that happens, don’t over optimize for avoiding that. You can’t make everyone happy
An important step. If you don't it's not dissimilar from pulling up the ladder behind you.
The thing I've found is that often what's simple and easy for me (the person being asked) is difficult or overly cumbersome for the person asking (or even not asking). Often it's due to simply being in the right position or knowing the right people. We're all in this together and there's so much to success that's beyond talent and skill. All the small little actions add up even if you don't get to see how
This is good advice. I run the mediatec workshop at a art university, meaning my daily job involves many student requests. A good request is one where the student thought about what I need to know and which question they need answered. A bad request is a wall of prose that leaves you wondering about what, precisely it is they now want from you, potentially also leaving out key information like duration, place, etc.
My number one tip therefore is to try to put yourself into the perspective of the other side. Did you give them all the information they need to know? Of course you will know a lot of things about your project that are really obvious to you, but that you would need to mention to others so they understand what you are talking about. On the other hand if you want to hire a plumber, you don't need to tell them a long story about the roof of the house. Conceptually the plumbing and the roof may both be house-related issues in your mind, but you're wasting the plumbers time. So that means the time/patience of the person on the other side is a valuable resource.
How to ask for help is an under-discussed important topic.
Women are way better at asking for help and getting it as compared to men.
there's some very well-known psychology tricks that you can use to get better outcomes. Cialdini's book and Munger's speech on psychological bias are first class.
you want to be opportunistic but not too attached to your ask.
ask for a lot and then back off works tremendously better even with kids
perception (looks, reputation, stereotypes) have an outsized impact on outcomes. look at any successful sales department for proof of this. perception can be faked unfortunately.
put hard limits (of time) on your ask. make it clear that its a one time ask.
The most counterintuitive aspect (covered in the article) is that you'll get a yes more often if it's easy for them to say no.
I disagree with everything you said. It's basically just pure luck in terms of something like repairing a flat tire, etc., and then in a professional setting none of this applies at all.
Achilles and the tortoise [0] is usually a fallacy. If the tortoise has a head start, then Achilles will never catch it because in the time it takes Achilles to reach the tortoise's location the tortoise has moved some degree further, ad infinitum. Obviously not real because Achilles will pass the tortoise -- I think a fallacy because the framing creates a fake asymptote (they will both pass the point where they're approaching a tie).
In this case it may actually apply though, no? Open models get better from closed model distillation?
comparing a thought experiment about relative movement through an alleged continuum over the sum of infinitesimal quasi-instants to the release cadence and maturation of open weights to proprietary LLMs is super bizarro guy
From Craig's Wikipedia article [0]. He sure cares about fighting scams. Craigslist != Craig I know, but may these are intractable problems, not that there's necessarily negligence
> In 2022, Newmark committed $50 million to the Cyber Civil Defense initiative.[39] As of April 2022, approximately $30 million of this commitment had been awarded.[40]
> In 2023, Craig Newmark Philanthropies announced it would double its donations from $50 million to $100 million for fighting cyber threats.[41]
> In 2026, Newmark founded a public service campaign, "Take9", encouraging users to pause and think before responding to a text or email to help avoid being scammed.[42][43] A video for the campaign featured Newmark teaming up with Count von Count from Sesame Street.[42][43]
Hard agree. I’m constantly struck by GPT puppets - who apparently can’t synthesize the information in their own brain - that think they’re adding informational value
Yeah, LinkedIn is a cesspool so I shouldn’t go there, but it’s jarring. And to OP’s point it happens in far more sacred places.
Went down the Frenkel (Nullsoft founder) rabbit hole. Check out his forum where they've recently discussed AI bots scraping his forum [0]. Or his question submission page; he hasn't "left a reasonable question unanswered since 2009" [1]
> nothing specific against cloudflare, but the point of the internet is that it's decentralized and I'd hate to contribute against that (though we already do somewhat, hosting on aws etc). anyway our homegrown solution is working nicely these days! for now
- Justin January 2026
From the article it says the officer has to appear in court for each DUI arrest...which leads to overtime pay. The officer made 319 DUI arrests of which 174 cases were dismissed. The more arrests, the more overtime pay so there's an incentive to arrest people even if they are not drunk. This is how he's making $250K.
The less you have to buy, the more money you have. Or the more stolen goods you sell, the more money you have. Or the more stolen goods you can give to others, the more goodwill you can get with them and possibly favors which can save you money elsewhere.
Are you implying there's a link between having money and being immune to corruption? In the US, just look at the federal government or titans of industry, like Elon Musk.
For every DUI arrest made, state police troopers must appear in court, and in evidence motions filed with the court, attorneys have said this has led to a staggering amount of overtime pay for Trooper Bradley.
State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year."
Nothing happened. I went home and read the manual. S stand for sport. It keeps the engine in a higher gear than normal for quicker response
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