[HN Gopher] Flounder Mode - Kevin Kelly on a different way to do...
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Flounder Mode - Kevin Kelly on a different way to do great work
Author : latentnumber
Score : 308 points
Date : 2025-07-03 15:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (joincolossus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (joincolossus.com)
| pclowes wrote:
| This was a breath of fresh air.
|
| The tech sector has grown and changed so much. It has gotten much
| more "professional" which is arguably good but it this in turn
| promotes a fair amount of "corporate stooge" behavior. I am
| guilty here for sure, it is really easy to focus on levels, promo
| packets, OKRs, especially as you age and responsibility grows and
| forget what make this industry amazing in the first place.
|
| Good reminder to focus on direction and interests and what you
| feel should be built. Reminds be a bit of the opening section of
| "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" which I only came
| across because I liked other Stripe press books.
|
| You also meet more interesting and passionate people if you pick
| a direction vs a destination.
| zebriez wrote:
| Brie, author of the profile here. Funny you mention Art of
| Doing Science and Engineering. There was a footnote to You and
| Your Research in an early draft but it hit the cutting room
| floor in edits. (Also, I helped get Stripe Press off the
| ground-including tracking down rights to Art of Doing Science
| and Engineering-so it warms my heart to hear that's how you
| first came to the essay/speech).
| pclowes wrote:
| Thank you for all your work! I have several Stripe Press
| books, especially enjoyed Revolt of the Public and Pieces of
| the Action.
| coffeemug wrote:
| When I met you at Stripe you seemed to me the person with
| strategic foresight and iron discipline-- the kind that gets
| endless opportunities without even trying. I was hopelessly
| floundering by comparison, and not in a good Kevin Kelly way.
| I don't know if people will think of you in 300 years (the
| day is young!) but you were definitely a role model for what
| discipline and great execution look like.
| ashwinsundar wrote:
| I always wondered why Stripe Press was a thing. Why was a
| financial services company publishing books about the lives
| of great engineers? I'm very happy you did though, the books
| themselves are a great read, not to mention they are very
| beautiful. I really liked "The Dream Machine" in particular
|
| Why did you want to start Stripe Press in the first place?
| How did you get the support to do it?
| chr15m wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this, great article!
|
| You describe a way of living that is probably much more
| common than the ramen scurvy CEO lifestyle, but it doesn't
| get written about because people want to read about financial
| success and winning at zero sum games.
|
| The typical "success" archetype is often at the peak of some
| hierarchy (e.g. CEO) where the vast majority in the game
| literally cannot occupy the top positions. So in those
| situations most participants are losers. Sounds like you
| found a way to quietly opt out of that framing of success
| e.g. in your time at Stripe.
|
| Thank you for normalizing shiny object syndrome floundering!
| cjbohlman wrote:
| Really enjoyed reading this article, thank you!
|
| Reminds me a lot of Ryan Norbauer's writings
| (https://ryan.norbauer.com/journal/the-outsider-option-why-i-...)
| on why he sold half his company and the satisfaction he got from
| being able to focus on doing the work that he considered fun.
|
| I hope to engage my interests and hobbies in this way, super
| thankful that I have the opportunity to try.
| AIorNot wrote:
| This so much! great article and Kelly sounds like the type of
| person I would love to meet..
|
| - having just endured time in a startup that was all about PMF,
| metrics and the 'growth flywheel', that pushed aside human
| intuition and creativity in place of 'winning'. It's indeed such
| a waste of humanity that the Reid hoffman's and Bezos's of the
| world can push inhuman cultural tropes of "winning" over our
| humanity. Just who is winning, the board, the VCs certainly not
| the person who loses his soul? On top of that, in today's world
| AI Slop and social media and lunatic linkedin influencers pushing
| those same memes hyped to eleven by AI tools, relentlessly on
| young founders and engineers via push notifications. day and
| night -what message do we deliver to ourselves?.
|
| Amazon for all its technical chops and innovation and LinkedIn
| are anti-patterns in that regard. Do not follow.
|
| Also, its too bad that silicon valley is so ageist that the
| lessons and wisdom of the older generation tend to get forgotten
| or cast aside-wish that we could at least take advantage of
| capitalism in our culture instead of it taking advantage of us
|
| When we lose the pleasure of finding things out, going with our
| passions and intution and lose our love of creativity and
| invention, curiosity, patience and empathy we loose who we are as
| a human in society
| dannyobrien wrote:
| Just after I took on my new role, I wrote to Kevin Kelly and
| asked if I could meet him (I assumed he wouldn't know who I was,
| even though we've met informally, but he did). I wanted to talk
| to him about talking about how to be optimistic about technology.
| At my heart, I still remain positive about the contributions and
| opportunities of technology, but I've increasingly struggled to
| know how to convey, qualify or transmit that. He immediately
| accepted, I visited him in his tower, and we had a great,
| sprawling conversation. Like this author, he renewed my
| confidence in that framing, and the importance of it existing in
| the world. That single conversation has kept me going more than
| anything else over the last three or so years.
|
| I realise in reading this, that I never wrote after the fact to
| say thanks for that: so, thanks, KK, for everything.
| flir wrote:
| Since you're here, can I ask if you're still writing/publishing
| anywhere? Long-time fan.
|
| (Alternative comment: I think oblomovka's down).
| dannyobrien wrote:
| i am! oblomovka runs off a machine on my desk, which tends to
| crash whenever I walk out of my house, like today. However,
| this is an excellent notification that I'm now writing enough
| to maybe make it a bit more resilient.
|
| (For real dannyobrien completists, I also write small more
| regular email newsletter at https://buttondown.com/dannyob of
| my work within the Filecoin Extended Cinematic Universe
| (which includes IPFS, libp2p, iroh, Bluesky, Spritely
| Institute, Guardian Project, Internet Archive, Prelinger
| Archive, DWeb Community, Foresight Institute, EFF, Muckrock,
| etc see https://ffdweb.org/projects ,
| https://fil.org/ecosystem-explorer , https://directory.plnetw
| ork.io/projects?focusAreas=Digital+H... ). It's pretty lowkey
| though.
| flir wrote:
| Many thanks for the links, I'll dig into them.
|
| > oblomovka runs off a machine on my desk, which tends to
| crash whenever I walk out of my house
|
| Your essay on moving to the edge when everyone else is
| moving to the centre had a big effect on me at the time. I
| think it was prescient.
| dannyobrien wrote:
| though those crashes show the limitations!
| egypturnash wrote:
| Is this a story about Kevin Kelly or is this an autobiography? It
| purports to be the former but it's largely about the author's
| work history. It sort of gestures vaguely at being an interview
| with Kevin but there's only about four paragraphs in the entire
| article that contain quotes from him in response to things the
| author asked, and most of these are about his collection of
| knick-knacks.
|
| I kept on waiting for a series of questions that acted as
| springboards for long responses from Kelly that included him
| talking about the value of an approach to work that he calls
| "flounder mode" but they never came; the only appearance of
| "flounder" is in the title. It's an extended intro to an
| interview that never actually comes. You talked with Kelly all
| day and hooray, great for you meeting one of your idols! But you
| barely tell us a single thing he said.
| deepGem wrote:
| I first thought this is about Kevin Kelly. Then somewhere
| midway I thought I was reading an autobiography. It was only
| towards the latter half that I realized this is the author
| talking about Kevin Kelly and visiting his house.
|
| Even though the language is very simple, the writing is quite
| convoluted.
| ashwinsundar wrote:
| If you want a list of quotes by Kevin Kelly, I'm sure they are
| just a Google search away. Sometimes, the reader has to do a
| little work - in this case, to determine what 'Flounder' means.
| Perhaps it means just that, which is to fumble around
| awkwardly, kinda like a fish out of water? It's kind of a murky
| word, and we don't really know how to use it in a sentence. It
| actually matches the whole tone of the article pretty well,
| especially when the author talks about how they may have made a
| huge mistake with their career by bouncing around and trying
| whatever seems interesting.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| K I thought I was crazy but you nailed it . What did I just
| read
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Perhaps the author decided to demonstrate the point instead
| of writing about it.
| zem wrote:
| it's an autobiography with the lens of "here's how my
| philosophy of life has been influenced by kelly". I found it
| more interesting than your summary led me to expect!
| jollyllama wrote:
| He seems like a really cool guy but I also was hoping for a
| definition of "flounder mode".
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I'm glad I threw that wall of text into an LLM for a summary
| before wasting my time reading it only to be annoyed that the
| concept is never explained.
| gleenn wrote:
| "G-Chat with Charleton, in which he would interview Google
| executives while sitting with them in a two-person snuggie." What
| a sight that must have been haha
| blendo wrote:
| He's quite religious:
|
| https://www.christianitytoday.com/2011/07/geektheologian/
| yeeetz wrote:
| Many successful American tech founders and entrepreneurs have
| strong religious or spiritual beliefs -- I believe it's part of
| the unique competitive advantage and edge in this industry
| Quarrel wrote:
| Many successful American tech founders and entrepreneurs
| don't have strong religious or spiritual beliefs. Both are
| true.
|
| I think finding self-motivation in life is important,
| particularly for entrepreneurs, but there are many sources.
|
| I've never thought the SV / San Fran scene was particularly
| religious. I'd have guessed religion was under-represented
| there compared to the rest of the US.
| iddan wrote:
| Spirituality doesn't have to be religion and most certainly
| not an Abrahamic religion.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There's often more overlap with plain old Prosperity
| Gospel Protestantism than many people realise -
| especially in the sense that the definition of success is
| likely to be narrow, material, and individual.
|
| There's usually a lot more "I'm entitled to love and
| money and I will wish them into existence for me
| personally" than "I think everyone should have good
| affordable public healthcare, so I will work hard towards
| making that happen."
| corry wrote:
| As an outsider but someone who spent a fair bit of time
| there in the tech scene, it seems like there's a really
| interesting piece waiting to be written about the
| juxtaposition of SF/SV culture (tech hedonism,
| psychedelics, affluence, utopian thinking, dislike of
| authority, social justice) and a seeming rise in leaders
| being openly religious (usually Christian).
|
| Or maybe it was always there and now it's just more obvious
| since you can scroll a big name VC's IG account and see him
| posting Bible verses from his SoMa office.
|
| I find it actually kind of nice that these things are
| mixing.
|
| Maybe the world is poorer if people with different
| metaphysical beliefs completely self-segregate into closed
| communities, especially during these times of great change
| where our understanding of consciousness, physics, AI, and
| everything else is rapidly undermining a lot traditional
| positions on both sides of the aisle.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I wonder what the correlation / causation is on that versus
| having a supportive family and community.
|
| That is, if you took someone who's an atheist, would making
| them religious (left as an exercise to the reader) make them
| measurably more successful? Or is it that people who already
| have supportive families tend to come from religious
| families, and tend to inherit their parents' religion?
| robertritz wrote:
| As someone who isn't particularly religious, but grew up in
| a religious household, and as someone married to a very
| religious person (different religions), I believe it's all
| about outlook.
|
| Religion tends to give you several quite positive beliefs
| about the world that aren't entirely logical. Things like
| karma, the golden rule, belief in a plan, etc.
|
| Generally speaking I also believe that religious people are
| more willing to trust and forgive. These are all pretty
| positive things.
|
| And finally I believe religious people have a higher sense
| of duty to others, but the better term is probably
| responsibilism.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| An atheist's principles usually have to be deduced at the
| source, by e.g. talking to the atheist. This isn't hard,
| but it does take time. It usually doesn't scale to other
| atheists.
|
| A moderately devout Christian's principles are likely ones
| you already know in some low resolution through cultural
| osmosis. This is reason enough to suspect that, ceteris
| paribus, people will prefer to engage in voluntary trade
| with the Christian over the atheist. It is less because of
| the Christianity itself, than because trying to follow a
| known standard for good conduct reduces transaction costs.
| panza wrote:
| What a nice companion piece to the article. KK is full of good
| vibes.
| kaiwenwang wrote:
| As a young person in the United States, the main concern is that
| if you aren't one of the greatest at what you do, you'll be
| doomed to a life of increasing poverty: food derived from
| vegetable oils and chemically bleached wheat, apartments of grey
| laminate flooring and concrete, crime, people who derive their
| actions from social media, a 60 minute commute---as the real
| world: nature, people who are present, quality food, becomes
| increasingly out of reach.
| chr15m wrote:
| "the greatest at what you do" is by definition a zero sum
| framing that will lead 99.999% of participants to view their
| lives as a failure. It is literally madness to make this your
| goal.
|
| The alternative is to choose to be very good at what you do,
| which has a good chance of success if you try hard at something
| you care about.
| kaiwenwang wrote:
| I feel like very good isn't enough as employers want the best
| candidates but not the average candidates, and if you're sort
| of in the middle then the so-so companies don't want you
| either because they think you'll leave.
|
| Something about the increased social stratification of our
| times, which also has to do with increased transportation and
| communication.
|
| Might also depend on your locale. Plumber in Germany might be
| better than SWE in Texas.
| chr15m wrote:
| Hiring is not a zero sum game (growth of the
| company/economy through good hiring means more positions
| are created). I've hired software developers before and
| what I was looking for was somebody who commits code that
| works and is good quality. I don't care about their ranking
| on some imaginary programmer hierarchy. You probably don't
| want to work at a company where they do.
| kaiwenwang wrote:
| No, not a fan of Leetcode either, nor imaginary measures
| of social prestige.
|
| We may not necessarily disagree with any of each other's
| points, but lack of mutual context and having different
| lived experience makes our words have different meaning.
| chr15m wrote:
| Yeah true. Thank you.
| raddan wrote:
| Not to mention that motivated humans are amazing learning
| machines. The supposed trend of replacing entry-level
| programmers with AI is pure insanity. Sure, code of
| indeterminate quality (let's assume for a moment that it
| is good) will get written. But a company is its people,
| and you are shutting the door to new ideas. I can't tell
| you how many times I've seen the neophyte, who was maybe
| considered a bit of a dope after they were hired, in
| their second or third year stumble on a great idea that
| energizes everybody. People can change. A good
| organization recognizes this and nurtures them so that
| both change for the better.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| >employers want the best candidates but not the average
| candidates,
|
| This is just flatly false. Employers want candidates at all
| ability levels _given a competitive price_.
|
| You can be pretty bad at your job and still have a steady
| stream of work if you're cheap, for example. The Hacker
| News crowd loves to poop on these guys because we are
| almost by definition a quasi-professional platform, but we
| are far from the median take on this.
|
| >Might also depend on your locale. Plumber in Germany might
| be better than SWE in Texas.
|
| If you truly believe this, and think the difference is
| substantial, make a 5 year plan and move to Germany. Talk
| is cheap.
| kaiwenwang wrote:
| Added you on LinkedIn if you'd like to chat about your
| experiences moving to Finland. Yes, I might've been too
| non-specific with my wording. My communication style
| tends to link disparate topics together, which seems too
| hyperbole when people read into the words themselves.
| pragmatic wrote:
| Woah that's bleak.
|
| You don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the
| other people the bear is chasing.
|
| The bar is so low in corporate America you could trip on it.
|
| Just try to be halfway competent, do something useful at work,
| read a book or two about your industry. You're already way
| ahead.
|
| Don't fall for the hacker news bs.
|
| Lots of millionaires out here that never had a successful
| startup.
| kaiwenwang wrote:
| I've tried to be as accurate as I perceive it, and the
| descriptions of the environment are accurate to the locale of
| most of the United States.
|
| If the bar is that low, then the environment is sure to be
| like the first place I described.
| danparsonson wrote:
| "Most of the United States"? You're covering an awfully big
| area there - how much of it have you actually seen for
| yourself vs learned about second hand through news and
| social media?
|
| As for the skills bar, if you're intent on being hired by
| the likes of OpenAI then sure, you'll need to aim high, but
| for the majority of jobs, being reasonably good, friendly,
| and reliable will definitely be sufficient; the challenge
| is then mainly about seeming slightly more appealing than
| the other candidates for a position.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| Sufficient is irrelevant when the interviews are 10x
| harder than the actual job. Employment is a competition.
| How else can you explain the credentials arms race for
| low skilled labour?
| kaiwenwang wrote:
| As an adult I lived in Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio for
| internships and visited the major cities: Seattle, SF,
| Chicago, NYC, Boston, DC, Dallas, Philly.
|
| Most of the United States is suburbanized, and if you
| want to rent an apartment near the city it tends to be
| that gray laminate style I've described for $1500/mo with
| roommates.
|
| Most of the people who managed to have a family in a
| major city area are doing well for themselves, prior to
| asset and rent inflation because they have accessible
| goods and knowledge to them.
|
| I didn't even know what IKEA was until age 18.
|
| Because the national system of laws and transportation
| forms a certain culture, Costco regardless of the
| location is the same. The STOP signs in the United States
| are all the same. The processing of foods all follow
| certain guidelines. There are certain stores existing up
| to the limits of the locale, and only certain producers
| because society has centralized so heavily. So I think my
| claim of generality is reasonable.
| coderatlarge wrote:
| > Lots of millionaires out here that never had a successful
| startup.
|
| what do you mean by this?
| WJW wrote:
| Not GP, but exactly what he says: don't fall for the HN
| narrative that the only way to be successful in life is to
| found a startup and become a billionaire at 25. Carefully
| and diligently working your way up the career ladder and
| consistently spending less than you earn has a _vastly_
| higher expected value than the startup life, but since it
| can be described in a few sentences and is not very
| exciting you will not find many influencers pushing it.
| coderatlarge wrote:
| thanks for explaining; 100% agree.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| > The bar is so low in corporate America you could trip on
| it.
|
| I talk to incompetent people all day every day but I don't
| know anyone competent who could get the opportunity to work
| here without at least a few weeks of studying and a lot of
| luck. Thousands of applicants for every position and you
| still think meritocracy matters? The only winners in this
| market are people with no self respect and the well connected
| Aurornis wrote:
| > As a young person in the United States, the main concern is
| that if you aren't one of the greatest at what you do, you'll
| be doomed to a life of increasing poverty
|
| In psychology there's a concept called splitting, or
| dichotomous thinking, where a person only thinks of things in
| concepts of their extremes. Either the most extreme good
| outcome, or the most extreme bad outcome. They might see people
| or public figures as either amazing or evil. The Wikipedia page
| has a primer on it:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology) But you
| don't need a Wikipedia article or psychology concepts to
| realize that there are more outcomes than extreme success or
| increasing poverty.
|
| I'm fascinated by how these concepts that were once relegated
| to psychology and therapy have started to become commonplace
| among young people on the internet. They're not seen as failure
| modes in thinking, but rather an obvious conclusion from
| whatever they've been consuming so much of online.
|
| The comment above is a prime example. Even the obsession over
| "food derived from vegetable oils and chemically bleached
| wheat" is a confusing conclusion for me, someone who has had no
| problem avoiding wheat products and eating healthy on a budget
| with even minimal effort. The food topic is particularly
| strange because it's not _that_ hard to learn basic cooking
| skills, buy cheap vegetable, and cook quick and easy meals. Yet
| I continue talking to young people who simultaneously fret
| about food quality while filling their diets with nothing but
| processed and fast foods, many of which are more expensive than
| cooking basic fast meals.
|
| I don't know what else to say, other than the above style of
| thinking is, in my experience, indicative of what happens when
| someone collects too much perspective from the internet and not
| enough from the real world. Given the context of this comment
| section, I can only recommend trying to reevaluate, disconnect
| from the internet a little more, and make an effort to
| reconnect with the real world
| zub-twin wrote:
| It is not a new outlook, soylent green--is people.
| alexslobodnik wrote:
| The binary perspective gives an excuse to give up.
|
| The reasonable perspective does not. It demonstrates that
| though agency is limited it does exist.
|
| Our life outcomes are connected to our actions. For many
| their circumstances make this an unpleasant thought, thus
| binary thinking protect their self-image. For some that's all
| they have left.
| raddan wrote:
| I too am baffled by the prevailing sense of doom that many
| young people have. They certainly get a lot of messages
| about how hard things are, and of course, one's
| circumstances have a big effect on one's future. I am often
| asked in my job as a professor: "if I fail this test am I
| doomed forever?" which strikes me as so miscalibrated with
| reality that I struggle to respond.
|
| Humanity's initial circumstances, by modern standards, was
| pretty poor! What is lacking from the modern day doom and
| gloom is any notion of agency. You can change an awful lot
| in your life if you identify a goal and then ask yourself
| "what do I need to do to get there?" The common objection
| to this line of argument is "well there are people who
| cannot change their circumstances" and maybe that's true.
| But I doubt that's true for most people, and it certainly
| was not true for me. My life is dramatically more
| interesting and comfortable than the one I started life in.
| My main advantage over others is that I had loving and
| supportive parents who encouraged me to dream, and maybe
| that is a big advantage, but what we did not have was much
| money.
|
| The recurring thought I have is that, where I live in the
| Eastern US, most of the houses, which were built in the
| late 1800's to early 1900's, were built with what we would
| now think of as primitive (and affordable) tools. That did
| not stop people from building beautiful things. I have
| learned to use those tools, and while they are slower than
| modern ones, they work fine. It's hard not to get the sense
| that, for all of the complaining about "I will never be
| able to afford a house," etc, there is also not much effort
| invested in seriously considering how one might acquire one
| with limited means. I bought what used to be called a
| "fixer-upper," a house that sat on the market for years
| because of its problems, and turned it into a comfortable
| and pleasant home. I had to sacrifice nights and weekends.
| For years. But I made it happen, and eight years after I
| bought it, my mortgage (which was small) is nearly paid
| off.
|
| Was I lucky? Maybe. But I also coupled that luck with the
| motivation to actively change things. I would love it if I
| could somehow convince people that they really can have
| fulfilling and even happy lives if they are willing to work
| toward that goal.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| Inequality is increasing and we're anxious about being on
| the wrong side. It's just standard (and justified)
| economic anxiety. We're correct to see that the standard
| path through life is increasingly precarious and there's
| no safety net. On the other hand, successful people are
| more successful than ever.
|
| Your students who can't graduate will have to reevaluate
| their entire lives. If I didn't become a software
| engineer I would have to move across the continent and
| choose a new career. I already had to leave all my
| friends and family behind and I'm one of the success
| stories. Sometimes there is a solution but it's not worth
| the trade offs and that's typically when pessimistic
| thinking is helpful.
|
| If you live in a low cost of living area then I have no
| idea though. Those people really are just whining.
| kaiwenwang wrote:
| Feel like binary perspective is a motivation to not fall
| into hell. If I lived in certain places in Western Europe
| or my family was in a developed part of the United States I
| would be fine being a tradesman or simple office job.
| kaiwenwang wrote:
| Sorry in advance if this seems rude. Going to context dump a
| lot of stuff below:
|
| My opinion is based on the real world as I've lived it. I
| cook for myself. I highly recommend
| https://www.centurylife.org/ for anyone else learning to
| cook.
|
| Have also deeply thought about types of cookware: from glass
| to ceramic to clay, have experimented with clay pots such as
| ROMERTOPF (not worth it), dutch oven is fine to pressure
| cookers, or German cookware such as Fissler that has spot
| welded and presents a neat design compared to riveted
| cookware common in the US.
|
| If you go to almost any supermarket (Costco, Publix, Kroger,
| Whole Foods, HMart), the majority of foods people eat are
| derivatives of what I said.
|
| Whereas recipes in the past were limited by the locale, we
| are now limited to the cities we have transportation options
| to.
|
| If you're in a suburb of one of the major metropolitan areas,
| this doesn't apply. In small cities of the United States,
| people might only have Walmart, Amazon, Dollar Generals. So
| people have to cram into cities as the availability of goods
| is limited.
|
| There are only a few suppliers for things---there is not
| unlimited choice from free market competition, a wall of
| supermarket cereals look different but the ingredients are
| fundamentally the same. I can't get good cuts of meat such as
| bone-in shoulder easily. Nor can I get it cut at a butcher
| because USDA guideline has limits on outside meat.
|
| Food is only 3 categories: fats, carbs, or proteins.
|
| Let's consider proteins: The major meat I buy from Costco is
| the Australian grass-fed lamb import. The Sprouts has lamb,
| but it's been sitting on the shelf for a long time. The
| factory farmed pork, chicken, fish, and feedlot beef give me
| symptoms of malaise.
|
| Almost all processed foods are using canola oil, vegetable
| oil, sunflower oil, etc.--the polyunsaturated fats are shown
| to highly depress metabolism, despite what the USDA
| guidelines say.
|
| For carbs, most of the wheat is chemically bleached with
| "Oxides of nitrogen, Chlorine, Nitrosyl chloride, Chlorine
| dioxide."
|
| https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B.
| ..
|
| The wheat and the corn give me symptoms because I am fairly
| aware of my body's reactions. Some person might be extremely
| unhealthy and live in a slum (from my perspective) and say
| that they're fine, and we would both we right because each
| perspective is relative to an individual.
|
| Many are increasingly unable to afford to even transport
| oneself in the United States without a car or gasoline
| because of the suburbanization of infrastructure yet cities
| are increasing in price.
|
| The internet affects the real world because federal laws,
| which be written in places far away from where you live,
| affects people's behaviors and how they can do things.
|
| You categorize me as a surface-level thinker prone to the
| emotional dramatics derived from the internet not having
| deeply thought about the reality and nature of things, but I
| would hope that the above comment dispels such
| preassumptions.
|
| Seemingly widening inequality and inability to land
| meaningful jobs as a lived experience for people I know makes
| my concerns reasonable and truthful based on lived experience
| (young 20s).
| iddan wrote:
| I'm not from the US, but from my visits there and continuous
| reading of the living conditions in America this comment seems
| painfully true. As someone living in Israel I'm grateful we
| don't live in those extremes.
| mindwok wrote:
| A very cathartic read. I enjoyed this, and I really related to
| the author's anxieties.
|
| Our economics has created a collective belief that if you aren't
| trying to be the best at playing the game, then you will be left
| behind in poverty. Mediocrity is shunned in Silicon Valley, and
| the rise of social media has only inflated that idea. We're
| increasingly checking our humanity at the door so we can be
| great, and sacrifice ourselves at the altar of capitalism. For
| what? So we can look ourselves in the mirror and believe we are
| one of the special chosen ones?
| cushychicken wrote:
| There's a lot to love about this.
|
| I particularly like feeling like you need permission to show
| optimism and enthusiasm about your work.
|
| I also particularly like this bit:
|
| _"Greatness is overrated," he said, and I perked up. "It's a
| form of extremism, and it comes with extreme vices that I have no
| interest in. Steve Jobs was a jerk. Bob Dylan is a jerk."_
|
| ...but mostly out of a sense of confirmation bias. It 's nice to
| know that there are smart, accomplished people out there who
| share my view that Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan are jerks.
|
| One thing this helped crystallize for me, in my position as a
| nascent team leader, is the position that: "If something about
| your daily work sucks, let's talk about it. That's the first step
| to seeing if we can fix it."
|
| This seems like - not a panacea? But a solid strategy to help
| uncover many problems in an organization.
|
| Enjoyed the read. Thanks for posting.
| endymion-light wrote:
| That's a great attitude to have I think.
|
| It's definitely something that I was guilty of really early
| into the development idea, sleepness nights, 80 hour weeks,
| this idea that greatness must be achieved.
|
| But actually, chilling out, taking time to think about where
| you actually want to be past accolades and achievements is
| really important.
| srean wrote:
| My first thought looking at those magnificent mellow glow
| photographs -- how does he manage to keep all that dust free.
|
| Beautiful read.
| robertritz wrote:
| Hired help. Does wonders for stress.
| jebarker wrote:
| I too would like to hear more from people with similar approaches
| to work, career and technology to KK. However, it seems like
| there's a large amount of survivorship bias at play when people
| talk about just following their interests and it leading to
| financial security and work freedom.
| spyckie2 wrote:
| It's not quite about following your interest. It's learning how
| to take an interest in your interests, IMO.
|
| Basically if you pursue your interest half heartedly or without
| the rigor and discipline that you would under pressure of work,
| you would probably never do anything interesting with your
| interests. But if you held yourself to the same standard of
| excellence in your interests that you do in work, then your
| interests will take on a quality that allows it to stand on its
| own.
| robertritz wrote:
| Meh I took a serious left turn after college and my first few
| jobs. Much happier now.
|
| Work on Capitol Hill for less than a year then tech outsourcing
| then consulting. Realized it was boring, useless, and mind
| numbing and moved across the world. Now have multiple
| businesses, more than 30 employees across those business, and I
| get to have fun. It's stressful sometimes but I think we've
| kicked the stress finally (at 37). Now it's just fun and we get
| to see what we can pull off when we want to.
|
| Most people simply quit or aren't willing to do the
| uncomfortable things. It's uncomfortable to be unbothered. But
| I certainly didn't follow my interests. I used my interests to
| get better at what was in front of us. Gotta pay the bills and
| give people what they want, I just put my own spin on it.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Humblebrag much?
|
| Do you think your employees are where they are in life
| because they aren't willing to do uncomfortable things? Or
| because they follow their interests too much?
| financltravsty wrote:
| Yes.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Of course there's a survivorship bias. Everyone's gotta eat,
| and the path of least resistance is to get a job and do what
| you're told. Finding an alternative path is much harder of
| course, but in the grand scheme of things well supported by our
| industrial prosperity and individualist culture.
|
| If you look around you'll find more people doing it than you
| think, they just tend to be less famous than business moguls
| since peculiar interests are more of a niche thing but everyone
| is interested in material success.
| nathanbarry wrote:
| I love everything that Colossus puts out. Thanks for sharing this
| one!
| joshdavham wrote:
| I really appreciated hearing about the author's journey and
| relating it to my own so far.
|
| It was only about two years ago that I was obsessed with the idea
| of starting my own ambitious startup and "conquering the world",
| but I'm now moreso considering the idea that I can have a
| significant positive impact on the world through building and
| contributing to software in a more "pro-bono" way.
|
| As kk said in the article:
|
| > "I think one of the least interesting reasons to be interested
| in something is money,"
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Very inspiring read. A non-trivial application of it if you work
| in a fairly big org and the product roadmap is non-
| existent/uninspiring: in such context, you will often find
| exciting projects/revenue streams in the cracks of the
| system/market, not by waiting for the product/strategy team to
| come up with these exciting venues (pro tip: they won't)
|
| Find _some_ interest in your current product and go hard after
| it.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Gemini summary:
|
| The article "Flounder Mode" on JoinColossus.com, while ostensibly
| about Kevin Kelly and a concept called "flounder mode," is
| primarily an autobiographical reflection by the author on their
| own career and life philosophy.
|
| The author describes their journey through various roles and
| experiences, from working on Capitol Hill to tech outsourcing and
| consulting, and ultimately to building multiple businesses. They
| touch upon themes of finding purpose, opting out of traditional
| success metrics (like reaching the top of a corporate hierarchy),
| and the importance of pursuing one's interests even if it feels
| "uncomfortable" or lacking immediate structure.
|
| Despite the title, direct quotes and extended insights from Kevin
| Kelly on "flounder mode" are minimal. The article's core message
| seems to be that success can be found by embracing a less linear,
| more explorative approach to one's career, much like a
| "floundering" fish might move around until it finds its way. The
| author suggests that this "flounder mode" involves an openness to
| trying different things, even if they don't immediately seem to
| lead to a clear path, and that this can ultimately lead to more
| fulfilling and interesting work.
| vessenes wrote:
| Downvoted. Anyone who wants Gemini's take on this is capable of
| getting it; what's hard is finding thoughts from other people
| of interest. Please don't post these.
| vessenes wrote:
| Brie, great essay, and salient - thank you! I had a similar set
| of feelings getting to know John Seeley Brown; another legend
| albeit slightly older than KK. Reading his bio on his website
| once just put me at ease; his interests were so varied and the
| work he'd done was so interesting, but the through line was just
| .. him, a person and his interests.
|
| I once asked him about his career and he was very uncomfortable
| with the idea in any sense - he was like "Do I have a career?"
|
| I'd like a follow up from you in ten years, though: or maybe a
| counterpoint about someone else: I've recently been mulling over
| what parts of "just follow your interests" is a super power and
| what part is just ADD/an excuse for not getting through the
| boring parts that lead to long term impact: right now my self
| review is I should have settled down a little.
|
| Thanks again! Fun to read about you and Kevin and see those
| awesome photos.
| mathgeek wrote:
| > an excuse for not getting through the boring parts that lead
| to long term impact
|
| Personally I don't worry too much about long term impact. It's
| incredibly hard to actually predict what will have an impact
| after you're gone, and the world will have forgotten about
| approximately all of us in a hundred years or so. Instead, I
| focus on the idea that folks happily engaged in useful work
| produce useful things.
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