The Swyx Mixtape

Audio source and show notes: https://simplify.simplecast.com/episodes/kathryn-mannix-how-to-die-well"Dying is not as bad as you think": https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/dying-is-not-as-bad-as-you-think/p062m0xt/player

Audio source: https://www.jordanharbinger.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-cosmic-queries-for-the-acutely-curious/ 22 mins inTranscript[00:21:14] I would love to know how you develop your skills to be able to explain and communicate complex ideas effectively to the everyday person or any suggestions for people struggling in this area, because you must have worked really, really hard to be able to go, "Okay, your level of understanding is right here because you're 16, 12 or 41, and you just don't have a good science background. I'm going to now make this digestible for you." And you do that seemingly on the fly on talk shows like on the Daily Show or on TV, possibly even live. So it's not like, "Oh, Hey Neil, we're going to ask you all this stuff, come up with a clever sounding soundbite." Like you got really, really good at that through a lot of hard work I assume. [00:21:55] Neil deGrasse Tyson: Well, first thank you for not saying, "Oh, you're so good at it. It must be natural." [00:22:00] Jordan Harbinger: I know it's not — no one's that good at that naturally. [00:22:03] Neil deGrasse Tyson: Thank you for granting me the expectation that it's the product of hard work. So that's my first, thank you. Second, I remembered — you know, I go back. I'm an old man now. So let me go back many decades. And I started explaining things to people because they'd asked, "Oh, you're a natural physicist. I have this question." And I would monitor their attention span, their eyebrows, would they lean into the conversation or are they easily distracted? At what word did I utter did they then lose interest? By the way, any writer thinks this way all the time, because the moment you lose someone in that sentence, they're gone. They're never coming back to your novel. Hence is the important review of a novel — it was a page turner, right? Where you kept wanting to hear more. So somehow the author has gotten under your skin in a good way and keeps you coming, sentence by sentence, idea by idea. So there I am explaining things and not everything is working, the words I'm using that they're not understanding. So I'm taking mental note of this because I say to myself, if this happens again, I want to avoid those pitfalls. I mean, why not? If it's done incrementally, how much effort is that? [00:23:15] But you also have to pay attention to body language. You have to monitor, are they interested or not? And if you're not, it's just like the professor facing the chalkboard or the class, if you're not even looking or paying attention, you will fail because you're not going to be reading what works with them. So I make note, "Oh, this works for person of this age group, but not this age group or this kind of background or if they're from this part of the country. Okay, or this part of the world, all of this is an assembled encyclopedia — that sounds so antiseptic — an assembled toolbox for me to reach it — utility belt. There you go. [00:23:54] Jordan Harbinger: There you go. Yeah. [00:23:55] Neil deGrasse Tyson: I'm Batman. Everybody wants to be Batman. It's my utility belt. And I find out what their interests are and I clad the science that I'm describing on what they came to me with. Are they fluent in pop culture or are they religious? Are they ambitious? Are they not ambitious? All of these things shape what words I choose and hardly anything I ever say, do I say without having first written it down. [00:24:23] Jordan Harbinger: Really? Like even the soundbites on like a show you'll have written that in the past and used it on before. [00:24:28] Neil deGrasse Tyson: Yes. But I've worded differently. I'll say, I've written so much about all of these topics that when the topic comes up, I just access a carefully worded sentence that I spent time composing. So if science writing was just communicating information, you can just staple together Wiki pages on all the science topics, but well-written books don't read like Wiki pages as useful as Wiki pages are. You're not reading them to be page turners, right? You're reading them to get specific information. But if you're going to write a book or give a lecture, you want the words to matter to flow, to attract someone's interest.[00:25:08] And so I'm going, "Oh, I have a better word that's shorter and less complicated. Let me use that. Yeah, that works." But now the next idea that follows it, these become templates within me and I have a good random access memory. Because if you spent that much time composing a sentence, you're going to remember that sentence. You're going to remember what the machinery was that went through your head. And I've written about basically every single science topic that I talk about publicly. So that helps a whole sentence is, can come out fully composed primarily because I already went through that same thought process. Unless you ask me a question that's so out of far left field, but then I can sort of assemble. I have words with me and I have, I can do this on the fly. I don't fear that. In fact, I welcome it. It gives me a new pocket in my utility belt to field questions of one nature versus another. [00:25:58] Jordan Harbinger: On the flip side, if you encounter a topic in your life that you're not familiar with, which I assume happens, you know, just from anybody who reads, what's your process, to then understand that topic? Are you using something similar that you would use to teach other people to remember things yourself or wrap your mind around topics? [00:26:13] Neil deGrasse Tyson: No. No, it's not about memory. Memory is good to have. It's good to have a good memory, but you know, it's even better to have a good understanding. [00:26:20] Jordan Harbinger: Understanding, yeah. [00:26:21] Neil deGrasse Tyson: When you have an understanding of something, you don't have to remember it because you just understand it. So I'll give, I think, a good example. So if you walk into a bookstore and you say, "Okay, where are your cookbooks?" "Oh, there'll be here." And there's an entire section of cookbooks regional, fast cook, slow cook. By the way, there are more cookbooks than there are elements on the periodic table. So what's going on there? The recipes are things you kind of memorize. Whereas if I say, "Where are the books on all the known physics in the universe?" Well, it's one corner of one shelf. There's like electromagnetism. There's gravity. There's light and it's that. And so I can come to you with a deep understanding of all manner of things that go on in the universe that derive from these four books. That's an understanding. I didn't memorize the books. [00:27:12] Jordan Harbinger: Right. [00:27:12] Neil deGrasse Tyson: It's not about memorization. It's about understanding how and why things work so that when you encounter something you've never seen before, you can invoke the principles of how and why things work to fully understand what's happening. And it empowers you to evaluate situations that you've never been in before. Let me take a quick side ramp here. Imagine two people in the workplace, all right. So the boss comes up and hands the worker some tasks. And the worker says, "I've never done this before. This is not in my job description." And the person de...

Audio source: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/740/there-i-fixed-itTranscriptAs long as he could remember, going back to when he was a child, Sam was scared of spiders. But not scared in the normal way, where lots of us don't feel great when we see a big spider, or a snake, or a big bug, or whatever.SamIt invaded all aspects of my life at all points in the year. I was thinking about spiders all the time. Any room I walked into, I looked in the corners. I looked under the table, crouched down. Every night before I went to bed, I fully unmade my bed.Walking down the street, I wouldn't walk under anything that-- I would try to avoid right angles to the best I could, because that's where a spider is going to make its web.Ira GlassBut you were scared that one would fall on you? Or just because that's where they are?SamWhether or not it would fall on me was really irrelevant. Just seeing a spider, not moving, moving, large, small, it just created a feeling in my body that was just-- I would shake. I would throw up. I would faint. And of course, if you're constantly going through your life looking for spiders, you'll find one.Ira GlassAs a kid, he didn't do sleepovers, didn't do summer camp. Other kids made fun of him. People did not understand. People pitied him.And when he grew up, it did not go away. His fear ruined dates. He once found a spider the size of your thumbnail in his car and sold the car that day.SamI had went to psychiatrists for exposure therapy. I had went to psychiatrists to talk about it. I couldn't watch an image of a spider on a TV screen.Ira GlassLet me ask you, does this name mean anything to you?SamHmm?Ira GlassPeter Parker.SamNo. Oh, oh, Spider Man.Ira GlassYeah, could you watch those films?SamNo, absolutely not. I don't even know if Spider Man has anything to do with spiders, to be honest.Ira GlassAnd then, he was seeing a hypnotherapist, and it was going nowhere, when he read in The New York Times about this new treatment for phobias that can get full results in just one day. And he reached out to the doctor behind it, a psychologist, Dr. Merel Kindt in Amsterdam. And she invited him to be part of a study and get the treatment. He figured he had nothing to lose and flew to The Netherlands. A film crew captured what happened during his treatment for a documentary series called A Cure for Fear.Merel KindtYou're doing fine.SamI'm so nervous.Merel KindtYeah, it's OK.Ira GlassSam and Dr. Kindt stand outside the door of her room. She opens it. He looks in. There's an aquarium with a brown, furry tarantula, maybe 4 or 5 inches in size.Merel KindtYes, there's a spider in the tank. But let's not wait too long. So it would be very good if you can already walk in the room, and then I close the door. Very good, great. We're doing very well.SamI think you can hear that I was breathing hard, and I'm feeling that there is adrenaline. I crouch down, my arms crossed.Ira GlassDr. Kindt then opens the door of the tank.SamOh, whoa, god. No, no, no, you're not going to make me look in there, are you?Merel KindtYes, I'm going to ask you.Sam[HYPERVENTILATING]Merel KindtSo please come with me. So step in here, and then close it. Very good. And then, can you also--SamOh god!Merel KindtVery good, very good. Yeah, come. And--SamNo! Don't make me go in there!Ira GlassThen, to get the spider to move around this tank, she sprays it with water. And every time she plays it with water, the spider waves its legs or moves around a little.SamYeah.Merel KindtOK. How high is your distress right now?SamIt's like 100.Merel KindtOK, but it's very important not to move away.SamOK, I'm not moving away.Merel KindtAll right, spray it a bit so that--Sam(SCREAMING) Oh, god, no! [WAILS]Merel KindtYeah, that's very good. OK.Sam[HYPERVENTILATING] I gotta go!Ira GlassSam, I'm wondering, like when you scream like this, I'm wondering what goes through your head.SamThat I feel like I can feel it on me, that I'm going to be attacked by it. None of this is rational, right?Ira GlassMm-hmm.SamI know it's not--I know that the thing isn't going to jump out of the tank and move like 4 feet in the air and jump on me. I get that. But it doesn't matter, because I feel that the absolute worst things that can happen are going to happen and are, in fact, happening.Ira GlassThe reason Dr. Kent wants him to max out on anxiety like this is that she wants to trigger the memories and feelings of fear of spiders that are stored in his brain. And then, when his brain goes to store this big new terrible experience with the old ones, it has to re-save the old memories. And she gives him a drug, a beta blocker called propranolol, that disrupts that process. And I know this sounds so simple. How can this be real? But by disrupting the way that the brain re-saves those memories, she neutralizes them.The very next day, Sam returns to the same room. He walks right in. His breathing is normal.SamThere's fear in that-- well, I don't know that there's fear. I don't understand my feeling, because I've never been like this before.Nothing physically, internally, was happening that used to happen to.Ira GlassYou didn't feel the fear?SamI didn't feel the fear. And when she said--Ira GlassNo adrenaline?SamNo adrenaline at all. I felt, I guess, excitement that this was new.

My thoughts on shipping The Coding Career Handbook as a Side Project, and tips and tricks on how to do it well.Audio source: https://modernweb.podbean.com/e/s08e09-modern-web-podcast-sides-projects-with-shawn-wang/

See them sing it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4nYLQsXjoM

Audio source: https://underthehoodpod.robinhood.com/#element-452 (15 mins in)Mp3: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/under-the-hood/the-future-of-finance-with-ApbGyU2DfQE/Why the future is remote work and location independent pay.The backing track to my narration is Algorithms by Chad Crouch.

Source: https://www.thecloudcast.net/2021/06/automated-data-labeling-for-ai-apps.htmlSee also: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2020/04/09/snorkel-training-dataset-management-with-braden-hancock/Software 2.0 is Andrej Karpathy's idea that instead of coding business logic by hand, the applications of the future will be trained by data. In other words, machine learning. But ML is limited by the quality of data available, and there is a lot of unstructured, unlabeled data out there that is still being manually labeled today. Scale.AI is a well known startup that has done very well offering a scalable manual labeling workforce, however they are still bottlenecked by the number of subject matter experts available for labeling critically important data, like cancer diagnosis and drug trafficking rings. In order to get labels from subject matter experts, you typically have to put them through a very tedious process of labeling to build up a useful structured dataset upfront before any useful machine learning can be done.I did some very minor ML work about 5 years ago and found Christopher Re's work on DeepDive at Stanford. It takes a revolutionary approach by making it easy to write the labeling functions themselves. This turns the labeling process into an iterative, REPL like experience where subject matter experts can suggest a function, see its impact right away, and continue refining it, assisted by AI. DeepDive is now commercialized in a startup called Snorkel.AI, so I was very excited to find a clear explanation of Snorkelflow from its CEO, Alex Ratner. Here it is!Transcript[00:01:15] Alex Ratner: [00:01:15] SnorkelFlow is a platform that's meant to take this process of building machine learning models and AI applications. And I get all starting with buildings, the data that they rely on that fuels them and make it, in a nutshell, look more like an iterative software development process. Then you know, this kind of 80, 90% upfront just, hand labeling exercise.[00:01:34]And so snorkel flow supports that entire iterative loop of, actually laboring data. Can be by hand in the platform, but also most centrally programmatically by letting users, what we call labeling. Basic idea, is that rather than say asking your, legal associate at a bank to, or your doctor friends to sit down and, label a hundred thousand contracts or a hundred thousand electronic health records have them, right.[00:02:00]Sharistics are bits of their expertise look for this keyword or look for this pattern or look for this, et cetera. I'm like a bridge from old, expert knowledge type input. Modern machine learning models using one to power. The other. So a snorkel flow is an IDE basically, and has a no-code UI component as well, but let's not people either via code or by pushing buttons for even, non-developer subject matter experts say to.[00:02:24]Programmatically labeled their data by writing these labeling functions and then uses a bunch of modeling techniques. A lot of which was actually, the work that, that the co-founding team. And I did in, in, in our kind of thesis work around how you take a bunch of programmatic data and clean it up and turn it into a final.[00:02:41]Instead of clean training data for machine learning models, and then actually in snorkel flow, you can, autumn, basically push button train best-in-class open source models. You can then analyze where they're succeeding or failing and, and use that to go back and iterate on your data.[00:02:54]And there's a Python SDK throughout the whole thing. So many of our customers will mix and match. Will you start.  Create the training data set and then train the model on some other system, et cetera. But what's normal flames of support. Is it basic iterative development process where, you know, rather than just spending months to label a training at once and then being stuck with it and having to throw it out and start all over again, anything in the world changes your upstream input, data changes your downstream objectives.[00:03:18] Change, making it again more like an iterative process where you push some buttons or write some code. That label the data. You compile a model or train it, but you can think of it like compiling and then you go back and debug by, by iterating on your data, everything centers and snorkel flow around looking at your data and iterating on how it's labeled to improve models.[00:03:38]Brian Gracely: [00:03:38] I'm curious. So you mentioned you mentioned in there's a there's a Python SDK, which for anybody who, works in data science, data modeling, right? Python is your language to Frank sort of the language you use or are you a couple of them, that's the language that, you how you do your program, but I'm curious, like in today's world, Do data scientists consider themselves programmers or is there still Hey, look, I work on the numbers, I'm good at building models and the numbers, but I don't think of myself as a programmer.[00:04:08] Like how do you bridge those two worlds together or do you not really have to bridge them together? How much does the data scientists have to go? I have to focus on numbers and models versus I have to focus on programming, something to do stuff. What's their world look like?[00:04:21]Alex Ratner: [00:04:21] It's a great question. I think I, I haven't been are currently I'm part of four or five different data science institutes or something. And I don't even still know. I mean, the data science is such a broad umbrella term. There's so many different varietals of us and, and types.[00:04:35] And so I do think there's a very broad spectrum of, the data scientists. An ML engineer and just, loves writing codes are the one that, to your point really just wants to push some buttons and get back to the numbers and the modeling and the outcome. And, we definitely, try to support the range through a layered approach.[00:04:50]And, we, we have , but on top of that, we have a a no-code UI that allows you to write these wavelength functions without writing code. So for example, if you're trying to train a CA a contract classifier and snorkeled flow, you can, write Lateline functions based on clicking on keywords or pressing buttons with kind of templates for types of patterns or signals you want to look for.[00:05:11] So, No we try to support basically, if you want to move fast and you're a non developer, or you're just not looking to spend time there, you can just do it in push-button way. But then if you want to go and customize or inject custom logic or really get creative, you can always fall back to the Python SDK.[00:05:27] And so, I mean, I think a lot of the what we're trying to accomplish in the very beginning, right? Raised me abstraction know level at which you're interfacing with and programming your machine learning model or your AI application. And the first step is the hardest, right?[00:05:39] If you think of the way that hand labeled training data is, it's like the machine code, or really actually, just so you know, I think of it as like the ones and zeros, literally for binary classification cases. Yeah, a lot of the effort behind the circle project and the company is just, or was just getting from that layer to the layer of...

I've moved back to the US! Just a quick audio update + announcement that I'm taking this week off because of lack of equipment.The backing track to my narration is Algorithms by Chad Crouch.

I joined Alexey Grigorev's DataTalks.Club podcast to talk about my viral essay on How to Market Yourself (without Being a Celebrity).Links:- How to Market Yourself without Being a Celebrity (tweet thread) - DataTalks.Club Video and Transcript- The Coding Career Handbook - special discountTimestampsMarketing ourselves (1:15)Components of personal marketing (5:00)Personal brand for an average developer (7:06)Picking a domain: what to write about? (13:13)Being too niche (15:30)Finding a good niche (17:15)Learning in public (18:23)Borrowed platforms vs own platform (20:11)Starting on social media: Picking what they put down (22:48)Career transitioning: mutual exchange of value  (23:50)Personal marketing for getting a new job (33:30)Getting hired through the back door (37:50)Finding content ideas (39:45)Marketing yourself in public — summary (40:10)Open-source knowledge (41:11)Internal marketing: promoting ourselves at work (45:09)Signature initiative (49:30)Public speaking (53:30)The backing track to my narration is Algorithms by Chad Crouch.

The theme song of humanity.Audio sources:Baba Yetu at Cadogan HallOfficial music videoBaba Yetu at LlangollenLyrics“Baba Yetu” is essentially the Lord’s Prayer sung in Swahili. The title translated means “Our Father”.Baba yetu, yetu uliyeMbinguni yetu, yetu amina!Baba yetu yetu uliyeJina lako e litukuzwe.Utupe leo chakula chetuTunachohitaji, utusameheMakosa yetu, hey!Kama nasi tunavyowasameheWaliotukosea usitutieKatika majaribu, lakiniUtuokoe, na yule, muovu e milele!Ufalme wako ufike utakaloLifanyike duniani kama mbinguni.(Amina)Our Father, who artin Heaven. Amen!Our Father,Hallowed be thy name.Give us this day our daily bread,Forgive us ofour trespasses,As we forgive othersWho trespass against usLead us not into temptation, butdeliver us from the evil one forever.Thy kingdom come, thy will be doneOn Earth as it is in Heaven.(Amen)TranscriptOn Fridays we feature music on this podcast and today i'm sharing one of my favorite songs - Baba Yetu. If all of humanity ever had a theme song, this would be my pick.This first clip was from a performance with the Royal Philharmonic in London at Cadogan Hall.Baba Yetu was the theme song for the game Civilization 4 and it was the first video game song to ever win a Grammy award. If you watch the official music video that comes with the game, linked in the show notes, you can imagine how it celebrates the crowning achievements of civilization from the taming of fire all the way through to the space race and the information age. But the renditions I feature here are not from the game, they are live performances conducted by Christopher himself. I really prefer the live performances because you get to see how passionate Christopher is about this song, and how much it lifts up the entire chorus and orchestra. As one youtube commenter said, "this is a song composed by an asian guy in an african language sung by white people from a game about the rise of humanity. Now if that isn't awesome I don't know what is."Baba Yetu is the Lords Prayer in Swahili - so literally you are saying "give us this day our daily bread, forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive others" as you sing this song. To close out, here's another rendition I like with a more diverse cast and I love appreciating how a different soloist interprets it.If you have the time, I recommend watching both performances on youtube.