Notices by Raghav Agrawal (impactology@mastodon.social), page 2

Learning & Agency

Learning doesn’t end with school; access is open, modular, and flexible. Skills are recognized by what you can do, not where you studied. Curiosity isn’t penalized by cost or prestige filters.

Welfare outcome: Distributed capability; lifelong autonomy in shaping your future.

Health & Mind

When you feel sick or anxious, you can see someone without financial dread. Medicine, counseling, or rest doesn’t require bureaucratic negotiation.

Preventive habits (sleep, diet, exercise) are supported by the built environment.

Welfare outcome: Predictable care, not catastrophic care. Reduced allostatic load (chronic stress burden).

Welfare succeeds when good lives become easy to maintain and bad outcomes become hard to fall into.

It’s not about distributing money, it’s about distributing predictability, repairability, and agency into the everyday texture of life.

When you think about it what exactly is the end goal of welfare, of social good, can we describe it in concrete mundane routines and touchpoints and outcomes?

If we strip the moralism away, the end goal of welfare can be described as:

A society where the average person’s daily routines contain fewer avoidable frictions, fears, and dependencies and more reliable pathways to self-directed stability, dignity, and contribution.

I wonder if Silicon Valley has become more credentialist and elitist compared to the countercultural days of stewart brand's whole earth catalog because we have now have more Indian leadership in tech companies.

@skinnylatte Aren't people also competing to get into prestigious universities and companies there? Isn't it also status obsessed?

What are the main causes of bugs and factors that render code unmaintainable?

What defines bad quality code, and why is it considered poor?

Why do top-tier performance engineering consultants succeed in creating performant, scalable, maintainable code, while others can't?

What prevents good code from being written or perpetuates bad code?

Why is earning a degree so focused on memorization when real industry work relies on connecting concepts, not recall?

Why is baseline intelligence measured by what you can memorize for tests when these skills have little to do with actual workflows?

How do game designers develop their imagination to come up with totally wild game mechanics?

There was this game long back called patapon where characters proceeded based on drumbeat! Like you had to match the commands in a rhythm to create a drumbeat and only then the characters moved forward

Then there was this game locoroco where you had to tilt your screen (was on psp) to move the character

@clarity What kind?

Here I am thinking I'm unhireable because I don't have a bachelor's (dropped out) and this guy is absolutely crushing it despite having a criminal record.

US job market rocks! This can only happen in US. I love this about America, it gives people second chances.

To make amends, to make broken men unbroken again

https://x.com/DionysianAgent/status/1945080137743016177?s=19

Really love the layout of this South African publication The Continent. It publishes stuff that can fit on a mobile screen shareable via WhatsAp

"The Continent is an award-winning African newspaper, designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp"

This format allows it to escape censorship – a PDF can be shared manually between phones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Continent_(digital_newspaper)

Wobbly Economics – Part I : Why Frederic S Lee was the greatest heterodox microeconomist you’ve never heard of by John Michael Colón

https://strangematters.coop/frederic-s-lee-profile-part-one/

"At bottom universities are not about academic freedom, they’re not about open inquiry, they’re not about public service, they’re not about educating the masses, they embody or accomplish none of these except as an accident to their primary function"

Cool Jobs: Scientific glassblowers shape science

https://www.snexplores.org/article/cool-jobs-scientific-glassblowers-shape-science

"Beakers, pipettes, flasks and more. Few people realize that skilled artisans make most scientific glassware by hand (and mouth). This career truly marries art and science. Some people came to glassblowing after training in science. Others started as artists who realized their craft could help advance cutting-edge research"

Meet Kevin Moeller, scientific glassblower | Argonne National Laboratory

https://www.anl.gov/article/meet-kevin-moel

Want to work with friendly, experienced peers in a chill, manageable work setting that really encourages deep craftsmanship and intuitive skill-building in software.

Honestly, school and college, especially in India, don’t really push for that kind of excellence.

I think that daily collaboration with talented, kind people in a real business environment will help me level up way faster than just courses.

What would a Manhattan Project-scale initiative for building open-source appropriate technology, guided by critical technical practice (Agre) and tools for conviviality (Illich) be like

@clarity

Basically you're talking about this kind of dynamic in relationships right hehe?

I love the concept of chosen family in queer spaces, like finding deep connection amongst people via a common struggle but does classism exist in those queer spaces?

Like do poor queers get treated differently from the filthy rich ones?

Is anyone livestreaming their product-building or freelance/design/dev work like an open kitchen?

Like doing twitch livestreams showing how they code, design, build something from scratch

I’d love to watch, follow, or learn from people doing this.

@clarity Thanks Clarity!

(btw I just love your name, it's so thoughtful)