Happy birthday to Carrie Brownstein, Gwyneth Paltrow, Lil Wayne, Avril Lavigne, and many other fascinating people.
Issue #172: Vitalik Buterin criticizes "decentralization" and the process vs. results.
By Harris Sockel
Two days ago, in a distant land called Wednesday, we asked you to share your favorite writing wisdom. There are over 837,000 stories about writing for the media. We can't look at them all ourselves! Here’s what you had to say.
Rhea Barden suggests setting a simple word limit: for example, 500 words a day. I’ve never done this, but I know many people who have! In a podcast with one of my favorite writers, Ava Huang, she explained that once she set a goal of 1k words/day, she started getting the words out, even if they were garbage at first.
Through Bridget Cougar, this is like a Kurt Vonnegut quote.
If you can write one short story a week, it doesn’t matter what the quality is, but at least you’re practicing, and by the end of the year, you’ll have 52 short stories, and ignore the 52 bad ones. You can’t.
Many of you emailed us saying, “Read it out loud!” Hans suggests not starting from scratch. Writer Jerry Michalski sent us an entire second brain featuring Philip Hamburger’s “Ass on Chair” mantra. And Mernie Buchanan said, “Peer pressure and feedback!” Her writer group meets at the library for two hours every week. “Other hacks are secondary to [joining a writer group]. Really.”
One tip I loved from chemist and research software engineer Madeleine Sutherland: write your paper (or blog post) as a children’s story first. It helps simplify the ideas, and you can always add details later.
Archive: From the archive: “Decentralization” unmasked.
Seven years ago, at the age of 19, programming prodigy Vitalik Buterin changed the air to clarify what “decentralization” actually means. It’s not as simple as “a system with no single owner.” It’s non-specific and doesn’t capture the nuances of blockchain.
Instead, there are three types of decentralization.
- Architectural: spread across multiple computers.
- Political: multiple individuals control the system. No one can do what the entire network wants.
- Logical: the way it operates differs across various parts of the system.
For example, English is decentralized on all three axes (there’s no central “owner,” and the rules are inconsistent and always evolving). Most corporations are centralized on all three. Blockchain is decentralized: architectural and political decentralization is combined with logical centralization.
Your daily practical wisdom: results in the process vs. results
Intentional work, daily intentional tasks will always yield more than big shiny goals.
Quiz: Zoom in
Below is an enlarged version of an image related to one of the stories we featured in this week’s newsletter. If you know what it is, email us at tips@medium.com. The first correct guess will win a free Medium membership.
Deepen your understanding daily with the Medium newsletter. Sign up here .
Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis edited and produced this.
Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email: tips@medium.com
Read without limits or ads, support great writers, and join a community that believes in the human storytelling with a membership .