Marginalia
Highlights and commentary from the community
“put down the recipe and pay attention”
This is travel advice too. Put down the guidebook and pay attention.
from “The Grandmother Test” by Isabella Rossi“She watched the dough, not the clock”
My grandmother cooked the same way. There is a wisdom in attention that no recipe book can capture.
from “The Grandmother Test” by Isabella Rossi“the line goes vertical”
The most terrifying data visualization in existence.
from “Reading the Ice Cores” by Tobias Engström“The ice does not care about politics”
This is the fundamental challenge of our time — facts do not care about our preferences.
from “Reading the Ice Cores” by Tobias Engström“something that predated memory”
This phrase haunts me. I keep coming back to it.
from “The Space Between Floors” by Emma Blackwood“She stepped out because the alternative was to step back”
This single line contains the entire emotional arc. Masterful.
from “The Space Between Floors” by Emma Blackwood“we are implementing theories of justice — whether we intend to or not”
The ML fairness literature is essentially applied political philosophy. Most ML engineers don't realize this.
from “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence” by Nadia Kowalski“Every AI system encodes values”
As an engineer, this keeps me up at night. The values we encode are often our unconscious assumptions.
from “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence” by Nadia Kowalski“Get the typography right, and the rest of the design falls into place”
Same with naming in code. Get the names right, and the architecture reveals itself.
from “Typography Is the Foundation” by Sophie Laurent“Typography is the voice of design”
Beautifully put. I never thought of it this way, but now I cannot unsee it.
from “Typography Is the Foundation” by Sophie Laurent“the physical manifestation of close reading”
I fill every margin of every book I love. It is how I process.
from “The Lost Art of Close Reading” by Marcus Rivera“reading as conversation, not consumption”
Hermeneutics in a nutshell. Gadamer would approve.
from “The Lost Art of Close Reading” by Marcus Rivera“Close reading means sitting with a passage, turning it over in your mind”
This is what I try to do with code. Every line deserves the same careful attention.
from “The Lost Art of Close Reading” by Marcus Rivera“The best engineers I have worked with share one trait: they are relentlessly curious”
As a beginner, this is incredibly encouraging. Curiosity I have in abundance.
from “The Architecture of Clean Code” by Alice Chen“strategic patience”
This concept maps beautifully onto philosophical epistemology. We should defer belief commitments too, until we have sufficient evidence.
from “The Architecture of Clean Code” by Alice Chen“Architecture decisions are the hardest to reverse”
Same in data science — choosing the wrong data model early on creates technical debt that compounds for years.
from “The Architecture of Clean Code” by Alice Chen“Refactoring is not a luxury — it is a necessity”
I wish more engineering managers understood this. Refactoring time is not 'wasted' time.
from “The Architecture of Clean Code” by Alice Chen“The best code reads like well-written prose”
As a designer, I see the same principle in visual design. Clarity is the ultimate goal in any medium.
from “The Architecture of Clean Code” by Alice Chen“Every function name, every variable, every module boundary is a message to the next developer”
This is exactly right. Code is literature — we just forgot that somewhere along the way.
from “The Architecture of Clean Code” by Alice Chen“Just”
checking that the superscript icon switch works
from “Testing Post” by Nicholas Blanchard