Do the Opposite - Selective Ignorance & von Neumann probes

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On Books
This month I've read 2 (short) books by Steven Pressfield - one of my favourite authors. I want to recommend one of them today, a book called "Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t" (ironically, I am writing about it here) - the other one was "The Artist's Journey".

The book teaches us how to structure our writing in such a way that it will hold the attention of the reader. Its lessons can be used for many different media: writing a book, an article, a blog post, a sales pitch, a marketing campaign or even your next tech talk.

Some of the takeaways:
1) Your work needs to have a concept and a theme. Often it's the most difficult question to find an answer to. Steven says that when he has an idea for a new novel he wants to write, he spends a lot of time pondering "What's the damn thing about?" Often the whole universe of the book and its characters are just a set of decorations, a shell to present "the core", the main idea.
2) Don't be afraid of the first draft, or the second, or the third. Writers often have 12, 15 drafts before they get to the final version. As you write, be ok with certain parts of the text, or the story being "TBD", or not fully formed yet - as you go through it more and more times, the missing parts will "unravel" before you, similar to how you would paint a wall: you keep adding layers until all the gaps are filled.
3) You must follow a Three-Act Structure. No matter what the genre of what you are writing is (even if it's a marketing brochure) you should have the "intro", the "build" and the "outro" parts. If you think of your favourite movie, you can trace exactly where these parts are.
4) Hero’s Journey - A character needs to go through changes; the trials and tribulations that make them stronger, more empathetic, more resilient, etc. The Hero's Journey is what makes Breaking Bad so interesting and the James Bond movies so boring: 007 never changes, whereas Walter White is a completely different person by the end of the series.
4) Other concepts: Inciting Incident, Narrative Device and more

You can find my notes here (I've recently discovered that through Goodreads+Amazon Kindle integration I can make notes public)

P.S. I've also finished listening to "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi, but I will write about it in the next week's newsletter.

No More Google
A collection of alternatives to the Google's products - if you are concerned about your privacy, or if you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, check it out! I, personally, have switched to using Firefox instead of Google Chrome in the beginning of the year, and haven't looked back. The experience is on the same level of quality and speed, and sometimes even better (the plugin selection in Firefox is amazing). If you care about the Open Web and don't want to have another "Internet Explorer" situation on our hands - when the developers only cared about how their website looked and worked only on one browser, and ignored all others - "Why bother with other browsers because more than 90% of people use [x] anyway?" The more variation in browsers there is, the better it is for the health of the Web and of the open standards that make it possible.

Articles:
Why You Should Stop Reading News by Farnam Street (Shane Parrish)
If you are still reading the news, here is a convincing article by Shane Parrish (who is insanely smart) that will tip the scales towards what Tim Ferriss calls "Selective Ignorance". Teach yourself to consciously filter the information that you are consuming. Nobody will do it for you, moreover, there are companies whose entire livelihoods are built on making people consume mindless content (like Buzzfeed for example). It's fine in short bursts (i.e. watching a funny video) but very harmful if we fall prey to the attention-capturing tricks that they use.

Don’t listen to those productivity gurus: why waking up at 6am won’t make you successful by Aytekin Tank
The main idea here is that all of us are different and early mornings as a way to increase productivity won't work for everybody. Everyone has their own rhythm, and you can find yours. Have the courage and kindness needed to listen to your own body and your own emotions.

I, for example, have the best productivity from 11pm to 3pm, but I can't do that every day. I am still experimenting a lot with this, and so should you - try to find what works best for you.

AI won’t destroy us, it’ll make us smarter by Alex Bates
A refreshing, positive perspective of looking at the changes to society that will be brought on by further development of AI.

Tweet that made me think:

Link to the tweet

Videos:
1) Michio Kaku: The von Neumann Probe (A Nano Ship to the Stars)
I've learnt about the concept of the von Neumann Probe from a book called "We are Legion (We are Bob)" by Dennis E. Taylor - a fascinating book, very lighthearted and fun sci-fi. If you enjoy Star Trek or Star Wars, you will love it. I won't go into detail on the plot of the book (maybe in another newsletter ;) - but in the centre of it is a von Neumann Probe - a ship that can make a copy of itself.

Thus, if humanity launches such a probe to a nearby star system, it can collect material and build its own copy, making it 2 probes, which can go and explore the Galaxy further. In order to achieve that capability, we would need to vastly improve 3d printers, create robots that can combine the parts together as they are being made, etc. From the description of the video: "[...] a von Neumann probe, which is essentially a virus, a self-replicating probe that can then explore the universe near the speed of light."

2) Can you fry gnocci? (Hilarious video)
This video is just for fun - watch what happens when the cook tries to do that - his reaction is priceless. :)

Ethos:

Quotes:
Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people.
– Nido Qubein

A novel is like an acid trip. For the first forty-five minutes you’re thinking, “Hmm, this isn’t so intense. I can handle this.” Then you look down at your hands and flames are coming out of them.
– Steven Pressfield, on writing novels
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Keep doing the opposite,
Alexander Kallaway
Website: dotheoppo.site
Twitter: twitter.com/ka11away