Why Sleep Is For The Weak - Astukari Newsletter #87

🔨What I’ve Been Making

New writing: It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally… coming. I’m happy to announce BOYS & GIRLS: PART I, my newest book! You’ll be hearing a lot more details about it soon (as well as some chances to get the book for free), but for now I’m just glad I’m done with the first draft. Before editing, this thing clocked in at 385 pages — let’s see where it ends up!

New video/audio: Not much on the video/audio front since I’ve been working on B&G and JBR, but here’s the newest podcast episode: If I Could Do My Education Over Again

Other projects: We’re finishing up the first JBR Consulting course, “How to start a business as an artist”. We’ve also finished the move from Apalla Docs to the new Astukari Guides page. Notice the new free guides!

📚What I’ve Been Reading

The Mirrortable - As much as I am skeptical, keeping up with new blockchain theory and technology is pretty fun. This new one from the infamous Balaji S. explores a potential way to approach decentralized equity fundraising.

Theses on Sleep - Out of all the controversial, debatable, subjective topics out there, “Getting a good night’s sleep” isn’t very high up on the list. I’ve seen complaints about sleep before, but they’ve mostly been performed by edgy contrarians. This one, however… is different. To be fair Guzey does not outright say something like “sleep is bad”, but rather that a lot of the things we take for granted as facts aren’t as straightforward as we think.

The Factorio Mindset - Those who have been around for a while know I once shared Functorio, and this article is (for the most part) about the same. Videogames have the unique ability to teach a lot if they set their mind to it, and Factorio’s relationship with the programming community is unmatched due to this.

Fake Windows 11 Installers - This is somewhat old news now (I grabbed this article back when 11 was just coming out) but it does give some good insight as to how hackers and other nefarious individuals work. Big thing coming out that everyone wants? Why not put out a fake version to trick people into giving you some quick cash?

Language Homogenization at Harvard - An interesting (though perhaps meaningless) historical trend: the words used in Harvard papers are becoming more basic and standardized. Why is this? Well, who knows — there’s no official decree or event which has caused this to happen. Is this part of a bigger trend?