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By Mike Ravdonikas, VP of Communications at @telegram. Productivity, books, thoughts (and some poetry on strictly regulated occasions)
Today is an important day: 36 years ago, on October 10, 1984, Pavel Durov was born, setting off the chain of events that culminates in me posting this message – and you reading it.
Thought I’d use this opportunity to shed some light on some of the lesser known facts about @durov.
Happy birthday, Jefe. 💪
I'm 35 today; so if you haven't got a present for me, read some of my poetry.
https://telegra.ph/metamorphoses-1N-07-16 #verse
Some priceless animated stickers from Pablo Stanley (I wonder if he has a Telegram channel I missed). I mean, a drumming butt... What hath God wrought!
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Having read some of the comments on Twitter today, I decided I need to talk to you about something very serious. Pass it on.
https://telegra.ph/Beware-of-T-03-25
A little productivity lifehack, in case you're into analog stuff as much as I am:
- Set the timer on your phone (or watch, or ) to 15 minutes.
- Write today's tasks on a notepad/page (a .txt file also works, but it's much less fun than an actual piece of paper lying on the table next to you).
- Draw a dustbin (for wasting time on junk you weren't supposed to be doing) and a couch (for having a legitimate and relaxing break).
- Do stuff.
- Mark tasks with a check as you finish them.
- Whenever the timer ends: put some marks next to the stuff you've been doing in the last 15 minutes (I use a dot for ~5 minutes; 3 dots combine vertically into a line for 15 minutes; 4 lines are circled and make up a full hour)
- Set a new timer for 15 minutes, stand up, (take off your glasses if you're wearing any), move around a little, assume proper posture again.
- Ask yourself: what was I supposed to be doing?
- Do more stuff.
On second thought, this hack doesn't look so little when laid out like that. But it sure gives you some good stats to reflect upon at the end of the day.
OK, another hack: Most days, you don't have THAT many different kinds of stuff to do. For this reason, I usually make a new headline in my "Book of Work" once a week (e.g., "Week of June, 18") instead of having a separate list for each day.
- Add stuff under the headline as described above.
- At the end of the week, mark all unfinished stuff with an X.
- Write a short summary of the most important stuff you've done, not necessarily selected from the tasks on the page.
- (If this is important, also briefly mention the things you couldn't accomplish. I usually leave that info for the monthly summary; things you've been trying to do for a month and couldn't are worth noticing.)
- Start a new week.
- If you need to finish something from last week, write it again under the new headline.
This way you'll always have firm ground under your feet – and solid results to get back to and feel inspired (instead of feeling that an entire week went by, wasted on doing who knows what).
OK. This post took almost twice-15-minutes to write. Let's walk around the table and get back to the real stuff...
As seen on an elevator wall:
YOU ARE A SLAVE OF THE (SYSTEM is already crossed out and FIRE ALARM written instead)
Read this when you have a moment. Then read what's in there when you have a month or two. They're good.
http://telegra.ph/Recommended-Reading-01-31
Just in case you missed the news last week:
http://telegra.ph/whatsapp-backdoor-01-16
Morphine is a nice extension that will help you stay focused on whatever you're doing:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/morphine/fbnpehpbojenlldmfcopeajkichnnjpo?hl=en
- You choose a list of websites that often distract you and get in the way of getting things done.
- The extension blocks them so you can't open them just like that.
Then comes the twist:
- While you're online, you accumulate "minutes" (by default you get 1 minute per 10 minutes spent doing something different).
- You can spend your stockpiled minutes to access websites on your blacklist for a while.
- When you open a blacklisted page, you can choose how much of your "saved time" you want to spend there.
- Once the allotted time runs out, the site becomes blocked again.
Very simple, very flexible, very useful.
Bonus: This extension only requires the rights to "read your browser history," which is important. Never install extensions that can "read and change all your data on the websites you visit." (Unless you want them to post shady ads to your official social media accounts if they get hacked; happened to Telegram's Twitter once thanks to a translation extension.)
Used to rip me to shreds, this one. Popped up on shuffle just now — to remind how good it is to be whole.
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Wanna watch a movie about Markus? Well, watch this one. Actually, watch this one even if you don't wanna watch a movie about Markus.
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Hobos put their sleeping bags over subway ventilation grills in the downtown area. At -10° the warm air is steaming up visibly from the bodies scattered here and there. In some cases, the owner went away for a few minutes, leaving the sleeping bag behind – a crumpled pile.
Walking down these streets at night, I can't get rid of the feeling that I'm the guy from DOOM and recently discovered the rocket launcher. Or was it Quarantine?
They asked me to test something about notifications. Let's see how that works. Meanwhile, enjoy this Lao Tzu, as translated by the brilliant Stephen Mitchell.
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My wife on me putting together a press comment in the middle of the night:
“The New York Times? That pitiful newspaper, read by what, two people?.. out of ten?.. OK”
By the way, channel stats are now available for channels with 500 subscribers or more.
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Sad to see Facebook slammed for about the only thing they don't quite deserve to be slammed for.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/26/voter-manipulation-on-social-media-now-a-global-problem-report-finds/
"Let's place very important decisions in the hands of people who are easily manipulated – and then try to prevent highly motivated parties from manipulating these people. Or rather, let's just pressure somebody else into solving this for us. Somehow."
I think that electoral democracy (along with many other kinds of democracy) is not a fit form of government for the modern ultra-connected age.
Just as the rise of mass media enabled the present day democracies, the rise of global internet acess is likely to eventually phase them out – and enable something new.
A user sent this. I’m glad that somebody finally figured out what happened to Privacy in WhatsApp’s DNA. 😌
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One more life hack in addition to the two above ☝️Use the “work mode” in Telegram Desktop!
Open Settings and type “workmode” on the keyboard (if you’re old like me, you remember this iddqd drill). This will give you a button at the top of the chats list that switches between showing all chats and only those for which you have notifications enabled.
Zero time to set up and very flexible: if the things you’re currently doing require frequent access to a certain muted chat, just enable notifications for it temporarily.
Finding imperfection is easy – and sometimes useful, inasmuch as it helps you discover how you could do better.
But practice also finding the good in even imperfect objects. Learning to salvage beauty from everything that surrounds us is as much harder, as it is more valuable.
(This skill also makes you a better conversation partner – after all, grumbling is only fun when you’re the one who’s grumbling.)
If there's a hell and I ever get there, the first thing they'll ask of me will be to come up with a list of rules for who gets in and who doesn't. And then with another list of clarifications for an infinity or two of borderline cases.
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How terrorists can use encrypted messaging apps and what all of us can do about it:
http://telegra.ph/Dont-Shoot-the-Messenger
Finished "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson today.
It's funny how American authors are rarely satisfied with merely creating imaginary worlds and, having established them, immediately dip them into chaos. Dream landscapes, drug trips, visions, parallel realities, twisted time travel, collective conscience, total break down of order, civil wars, you know the drill.
Zelazny, Gibson, Stephenson, Herbert to a degree, and Philipp Dick above all else, the devourer of his own worlds. A strange culture-wide fascination with dismantling systems once they've grown past a certain point rather than seeing them unfold, and grow, and bloom. A pessimistic trait, if not outright paranoid.
Doesn't mean I didn't like the book though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age
Not a single fragment of this film is original. Ironically, this also happens to be the case with many of the lives we people live. Although this meta-story does have a twist most of us will never go through (at least literally):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaKx_XzmBEw
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
IMDB ▶️ Trailer 📽 Watch
Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Actors: Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes
A Hollywood fixer in the 1950s works to keep the studio's stars in line.
Avoid News
by Rolf Dobelli
https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf
Amen.
Newsflash on the subway: "Five radical Islamists sentenced to 10 years in Bangladesh in connection with 2005 bombings"..
Never thought Bangladesh was such a hell for radical Islamists that they ship them there instead of prisons. 🤔
America was built on beautiful principles. Reality takes its toll, of course; and the contrast with those principles may make it seem more painful than elsewhere at times. But the beauty remains and gets even sweeter in its utopic coating.
Look, for example, at this finely-crafted decision by the Supreme Court on whether it is OK to use enhanced vision for surveillance without a warrant. True elegance and style:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-8508.ZO.html
(Spoiler: It's not. Can't fool the 4th amendment.)
Telegram Stickers Essentials.
Here's what you need to properly communicate using stickers.
1. Fallout stuff. Especially 👍, 🎉 and 😝
/channel/addstickers/vault_boy
2. For the bearded part of your personality. 😎, 😐 and 💪
/channel/addstickers/borodist
3. For the furrier part. 😁, 😀, 😴/channel/addstickers/Stich (this pack could have easily been smaller, true)
4. And never, ever leave home without senor Pepe. Take the classic ones, not the silly glossy remakes. /channel/addstickers/rarepepes
You're all set. Compliment with these few from Vicky and Animals:
