Positive thoughts ... think positive thoughts

I spend so much of my mental energy criticizing and critiquing. And while it is good to be critical and in some self-aggrandizing way I would like it to be seen as evidence of my intelligence, the more honest analysis is that it’s simply a manifestation of immaturity, boredom, and trauma. The truth is not everything is bad. Not everything needs fixing or a hot take. For the most part, my world is at peace. The electricity works. I can get all the things that matter to me. I have my health and most importantly, the people I care about like and love me. It’s a wonder I spent the better part of an hour this weekend thinking about what I was going “take down”, the administrative class, the cultural inadequacy of childrearing, algorithmic capture, etc. Each subject upon further scrutiny rung inauthentic and hollow. Frankly, a part of me didn’t care, and I didn’t know enough. I just wanted the joy of the animating heat of righteous anger.

So instead, I want to share something that made me happy and hopefully will make you happy too. I recently stumbled onto Kay Lack’s YouTube channel, an absolute diamond in the rough. Now bear with me for a moment. It’s the most accessible assortment of computer science theory lectures I’ve ever seen. It’s so well done that I’m pretty sure someone who didn’t major in CS can follow and learn something new and interesting. That’s saying a lot. CS Theory is by nature inaccessible even for CS majors and the mere proposition that someone could make it accessible for the layperson is an alchemical magic trick. All in all, I’m glad that I live in a world with people who are this frighteningly intelligent, endlessly patient, and uncommonly generous that they use their time to make quality content like this.

I’ll start you off here with 30 mins on grammars and parsing. By the end, you should understand how all programming languages are built or be pleasantly confused. 😊