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    Illumination

    medium.com/illumination · Publication · on HN since 2020

    Illumination is a Medium publication of self-improvement, career, business, and general-interest essays by many contributors.

    Visit blogHN submissions
    Career & WorkCulture & SocietyProductivity
    What HN says

    HN mostly links individual pieces, like the one on Google firing all managers, and commenters sometimes push back on the advice and claims in them.

    Stats for nerds
    31HN people shared it
    21linked in comments
    37story points
    Aug 2026last shared
    2020people per year2026

    Top posts on HN

    1. 1
      If you are feeling tired while reading this short article, it’s already
      1 person · 6 points · first shared 2020 · Discussion on HN
    2. 2
      “Mentor is necessary to be Successful”. Really?
      1 person · 4 points · first shared 2020 · Discussion on HN
    3. 3
      Embracing Chaos – 5 Ways to Overcome Fear and Achieve Your Potential.(2020)
      1 person · 4 points · first shared 2020 · Discussion on HN
    4. 4
      Practical Lessons on Receiving Feedback Well
      1 person · 3 points · first shared 2020 · Discussion on HN
    5. 5
      Ugly truths I observed during the pandemic
      1 person · 2 points · first shared 2020 · Discussion on HN
    6. 6
      Why SpaceX’s New Starship Is Made of Stainless Steel
      1 person · 2 points · first shared 2020 · Discussion on HN
    7. 7
      Traits You Should Slowly Remove from Your Day-to-Day Life
      1 person · 2 points · first shared 2020 · 1 comments on HN
    8. 8
      Lucid Dreaming
      1 person · 2 points · first shared 2020 · Discussion on HN
    9. 9
      Hershey’s Didn’t Advertise for the First 70 Years of Its Existence
      1 person · 2 points · first shared 2020 · Discussion on HN
    10. 10
      Realize How Much You’ve Learned This Year: Put Everything into Perspective
      1 person · 2 points · first shared 2020 · Discussion on HN

    What HN people wrote when they linked it

    • piltdownmanAug 2026

      The 'reliable heuristics' for identifying LLM output tend to pattern-match on technical lexicons, adherence to syntax at the cost of parsability, and atypically rigid punctuation and literary contrivances. Typically these form the same rulesett historically used to demarcate the aneurotypical - clear, direct and precise to the point of coming across as mechanical.

      Anybody familiar with ASD would wholly support the claim, and even the most cursory search validates it.

      https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/comments/1q4vh0z/autistic_daughters_writing_keeps_getting_flagged/
      https://www.reddit.com/r/AutisticAdults/comments/1n8hrf6/autistic_writers_who_get_told_they_sound_like_an/
      https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/comments/15sw3ei/have_you_been_mistaken_for_ai_in_education/
      https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/comments/1oh1kk9/update_just_had_a_college_paper_that_i_wrote/
      https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/comments/1vgboem/autistic_writing_style/
      https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/comments/1f1n98g/does_anyone_else_write_like_ai/

      Given a large curated corpus of Reddit posts, it was shown that those posted in autism-centric subreddits—presumably written by autistic people—were more likely than posts from other subreddits to be flagged as AI-generated by OpenAI’s GPT-2…

    • eesmithNov 2020

      Bear in mind that I can't stand the taste of coffee nor like hot drinks.

      The author writes: "I thought like this, until I became a 9–5 workday zombie myself." .. "I wish I had that kind of time, but I find some for the occasional stroll to the local beanery."

      I have a different interpretation - you always deserve a 6 hour work day (or shorter).

      That's two more hours per weekday to brew your own coffee, take a walk, take a nap, hang out, etc.

      While the author appears to have a full-time job plus a side-hustle, if I read https://medium.com/illumination/start-your-side-hustle-as-soon-as-possible-6637420f0455 correctly. ("I have to force myself to relax sometimes. I’ll spend an entire Saturday inside blogging and won’t realize it until it’s 7pm.")

      I grow increasingly supportive of Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" theory, the idea "that over half of societal work is pointless, which becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

    • niwradApr 2023

      I feel that Midjourney v5 really lets you explore different worlds.

      One recent feature the guide missed is the permutation [1] and repeat [2] features. They're quite helpful for power users that want to explore multiple styles quickly.

      Last week I tried putting together a short film using GPT-4 and Midjourney v5. I was stunned by the cinematic frames Midjourney v5 was able to create: https://youtu.be/6O_tOuUcG9s

      I (human) wrote the prompts for Midjourney, though.

      [1] https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/permutations

      [2] https://medium.com/illumination/midjourney-launched-new-repeat-feature-575a07041c2f

    • evrydayhustlingFeb 2024

      Pretty big knowledge miss actually - Lincoln's fighting skills were both legend and a matter of public record [1].

      In his most famous, documented match -- for which some credit him with the invention of the "choke slam" [2] -- the man who would one day write the Gettysburg address challenged onlookers: "I'm the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come whet your horns."

      [1] https://www.britannica.com/story/was-abraham-lincoln-a-wrestler

      [2] https://medium.com/illumination/did-abraham-lincoln-wrestler-invent-the-chokeslam-before-it-was-made-famous-by-the-undertaker-d45fb409b667

    • robenkleeneNov 2022

      Curious what you think of Google's experiment getting rid of managers in the early 2000s?

      I think I originally read about this in Measure What Matters:

      https://www.amazon.com/Measure-What-Matters-Google-Foundation-ebook/dp/B078FZ9SYB?keywords=measure+what+matters&qid=1667403561&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIyLjQwIiwicXNhIjoiMi4yOSIsInFzcCI6IjIuNDQifQ%3D%3D&sr=8-1

      Here's a blog post that seems to summarize:

      https://medium.com/illumination/google-once-fired-all-managers-30f73e862ff4

      (Personally, I came away from reading about this incident thinking most organizations have an appropriate amount of managers.)

    • seabriezJun 2022

      Nothing you said here doesn't not apply to M1 which also overheat under high load and gets throttled, and some of them dont even have a fan.

      https://medium.com/illumination/how-to-solve-overheating-issue-of-macbook-m1-pro-and-m1-max-15d055d17bca#:~:text=It%20is%20necessary%20to%20give,it%20will%20get%20good%20ventilation.

      A lot of these benchmarks run for several minutes and test the system as it OVERHEATs, simulating real conditions and Intel i12 beats M1/M2. So this doesnt change anything or bring any new information.

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