theneverfox

theneverfox , 8 months ago

I’m not sure how you can spin to be convincing through your arguments… It’s a pretty indefensible position intellectually

This is actually part of a pretty valid strategy. The trick is to flood them with the conclusion - they don’t need to be able to recite talking points, they just need to think “a union could be troublesome”. I’d also spread stories about Union busting (not with a paper trail!) And have dozens of these posters with different, unmemorable arguments

If you convince someone “unions are bad because they have problems with corruption”, they can be sat down, shown the numbers, the transparency measures, and how members could democratically boot out leadership if things go wrong. Their concern is dispelled, and if they accept the argument they’re solidly on team union and distrustful of management.

If you flood them with weak arguments that make sense on the surface but fall apart if you think about them, they’re left with the impression of an argument against unions. They aren’t going to remember it, and if they do it’ll sound like it couldn’t be right to say it out loud, but they felt that way. And they’re smart, so they must have been convinced by a better argument they just can’t remember clearly.

This is what subliminal messaging actually looks like, this shit is evil

theneverfox , 8 months ago

Reading at an xx level isn’t about using fancy words, it’s about reading comprehension. English is a super ambiguous language…

Case in point, the first half of my post is probably about a 6th grade reading level. A fourth grade reader would probably know all the words but struggle to understand my point, a sixth grade reader would understand I’m saying that reading level is important to correctly understand the meaning, and a college level reader would understand that plus understand the implication that English is a poorly designed language that was shaped to promote intellectual elitism

And now I’m just going to spell out the fact that humans communicate at a steady rate through spoken word regardless of sounds per minute - “dumber” people don’t necessarily express less using slang or simple word choices, they just miss out on the full meaning

I could explain all this so anyone who can tie their shoes could understand all of this, but a high enough reading comprehension means I could have stopped at the first paragraph and all of the meaning would have gotten across… Being a charitable reader is a big part of the equation, as is a certain level of general knowledge

theneverfox , 8 months ago

I definitely have. It’s usually when people explain capitalism the way it’s sold to us (like enlightened self interest or misquoted excerpts from the wealth of nations), or with economics bs strapped to the top of it. It’s always “well it’s not like I want people to starve…”

But then when you remind them “hey, there’s more than enough food, and the whole economic system is made up by humans” they treat you like a child for not understanding why their starting point is the only valid one

theneverfox , 8 months ago

You’ve forgotten the second layer of advertising, convincing companies they need to buy ads

theneverfox , 8 months ago

I think chaotic good should be you tie it with a loop. It’s firmly tied closed, but you just have to pull at the end and it comes open

theneverfox , 8 months ago

HOLY DOG SHIT BATMAN… all they did was ask them to stop???

theneverfox , 8 months ago

Well put.

It really is just as simple as “don’t do mental gymnastics”, there’s only a paradox here if you make one

theneverfox , 8 months ago

Rebuild? Checks notes not seeing that step, it just says “cash out”, “promise you’ve changed”, “wait to fall out of the news cycle”, and “repeat”

theneverfox , 8 months ago

“I randomize user submitted data to the corporation selling it, how could this possibly be a problem?”

If you’re smart enough to mangle the data you give them, you’re smart enough to understand the issue here.

Get rid of your sunk cost bias and think it through

theneverfox , 8 months ago

That’s the problem - based on the CEO selling almost all his stock over time and rumors attributed to employees, they knew.

A company turning a consistent modest profit is good for many people, but makes no one rich. It’s a good investment and provides for many people, but is meaningless if you’re already rich.

A company exploding to 100x its size makes a bunch of people very rich and a lot of people more wealthy, but is very rare in this age where the world is already as industrialized as anyone wants it to be. There’s nowhere else to expand, no underdeveloped countries with resources to buy for pennies on the dollar

A company imploding can make a few people rich… but it’s a big guaranteed payout if you see it coming.

That’s the stage of capitalism we’ve been at for a while - cannibalization.

theneverfox , 8 months ago

We could bring everything to a screeching halt and change everything in months if enough of us did that… But only if enough of us were willing to stop paying rent and not being able to afford food. It would take at least a couple weeks, at most until the end of the quarter, before a renegotiation of the structure of society is on the table

Doing anything short of a full drop out in critical numbers will just lead to what we have now - modern capitalism cannibalizing itself trying to keep the exponential growth party going just a little bit longer… except everyone who committed to it end up further behind, sacrificing what they have now to speed up the process a bit

theneverfox , 9 months ago

What’s funny is wearing masks in public was illegal in a lot of places

theneverfox , 9 months ago

That’s an interesting line of thought - see, standard human religions involve actors with often inhuman motivations who often react emotionally… It’s not necessarily locus of control. It’s a powerful actor changing the environment, and as your own actor you can choose to attempt to influence them (through anything from appeasement to outside intercession to trickery), you can adapt your own actions (like changing to more drought resistant crops), or you can throw up your hands and say “times is tough, it’s not my fault - it’s because the gods are fighting”

Then you have the Roman Catholic God (aka the Roman religion deliberately engineered to make for good subjects to an empire and using Jesus’s name).

Almost all religions, including Judaism, have this idea of a creator (translated as master of the universe for Jews, the yawning void ginnugagap for the Norse, etc), but the Creator isn’t really an agent - it’s beyond understanding for even the gods. They’re the source, and living in harmony with their design brings good things and going against it brings misfortune. The creator only interacts indirectly, mostly through creation or emergent properties of systems

Then you have gods - like the God of the Israelites. They have power, agency, have limits (great as their power might be), and can be influenced by individual or group actions of humans.

But then you have the Roman Catholic God - it combines the omnipotence and omniscience of the creator with the agency and motivations of a god, and it is the only supernatural agent, the others are just constructs serving its will

My point being - if you have this one agent creating everything, who cares about you individually and shaped reality based in part on your actions as an individual - is that not an absolute internal locus of control? If your reality is being personally tailored by an all-powerful, perfect agent, then your actions become absolute… You don’t have the power yourself, but your actions and experience become able to shape everything based on the judgement of this all-powerful God

It’s interesting to think about

theneverfox , 9 months ago

I think we tend to drastically underestimate animals… Keep in mind, most of our pets are insanely inbred social animals who are undersocialized and basically left in solitary confinement for most of their life

But AI has led to some interesting results - we can now plot languages as high dimensional shapes in information space, which is basically the core of an LLM. All human languages have similar shapes - so they started to use similar techniques to create language models for animal languages.

We don’t have nearly enough data to train one yet, but already we’re finding that language is everywhere - what we thought were instinctual signals turn out to be a lot more like learned, symbolic languages than we’ve ever imagined

For example, names are everywhere - cats, dolphins, whales, and birds definitely have names… We’ve found language and names everywhere we’ve looked closely enough, and in even plants and fungi this might exist through chemical and electrical signals.

My point being - animals have their own internal model of the world. Do you think programmers are magic when you watch them change a few words and modify a program? Maybe, maybe not. I think artists are magical when they draw something from nothing… It genuinely blows my mind every time, because no matter how much I study it they’re doing something impossible for me

Some animals understand - we had a Boston terrier that genuinely understood vets were necessary, he absolutely hated it but would begrudgingly hop on the table and let them pose him or give him shots… Just like a person, he would do his best to disassociate and do what it took to get it over with ASAP. He wasn’t really an obedient dog - but he was cooperative. He was stubborn as hell until our interests aligned… We established he could scratch the door to come in or out, and he would secretly go off on adventures. One day we found him a mile away from our house, walking down the sidewalk with purpose - neighbors would sometimes tell us they saw him leaving the neighborhood, but he always looked before he crossed the street and used the sidewalk.

Our next dog loved to watch dog shows - one day my sister got a medal, and we put it on her and she smiled like her dream came true… Took it off and straight face. Put a lanyard with keys on her to see if she liked the weight - nothing. Put the medal back on - huge smile

It’s really ingrained in us that humans are unique in experience… We’re not. Animals can learn arithmetic and play video games, they can use Instagram and form rudimentary systems of government (crows are a great case study). Dogs can use pubic transport to travel between their den and hunting grounds. Animals can choose to seek out drugs or commit suicide. They can learn to use money and engage in prostitution, they can learn to cook food, they can seek out humans and ask for help. They can have language and understanding of the world - the big difference is they don’t have the same motivations.

So do they think humans are magic? Some of them do, others figure out how to work the light switch themselves, others just accept that lights turn on when humans are around

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Jumping in to say: fuck the tolerance paradox.

There’s no paradox in tolerance. Tolerance means you accept everyone existing within the societal contract - period. Doesn’t matter if they’re Republican, a racist, or anything else

Behavior out of bounds should be fought appropriately. If someone uses words to express racism, call them a disgusting asshole. If a bunch of neonazis organize for an act of violence, confront it with violence. Respond appropriately.

Conversely, if a racist can be around people of other races without acting racist, accept them in the group to reinforce their rehabilitation. If someone with braindead opinions bites their tongue and keeps it to themselves, tolerate them.

There’s no paradox - there’s acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior. If anyone, displays only acceptable behavior, you tolerate them - full stop. If anyone goes out of bounds, you respond appropriately to correct the behavior - full stop.

The “paradox of tolerance” is people justifying attacking people. This myth does nothing but ensure there’s no way back for people who have drifted out of bounds - it’s a recipe for radicalizing people.

I’m genuinely convinced the “paradox of tolerance” is a psyops designed to fracture society by breeding extremists… If there’s no tolerance when they behave and no way back, what do you think is going to happen? Either their beliefs that they’re under attack get constantly reinforced and they get further pushed out of bounds, or we kill them all before they destroy our society

There has to be a way back, or the only way forward is ideological purges

theneverfox , 8 months ago

I’ve been saying it for a good while now, and almost never get much response -but it’s worth saying anyways.

Please help spread this idea… It’ll never be popular, but it’s important. Far too few people get that, but words that ring true tend to stick with people down the line

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Well first, the big problem is they make promises based off of the estimates we give them, which they then cut down and over promise. It’s a careful dance between giving yourself the padding you need for if something goes wrong, and not letting them think they can cut down on that necessary padding if they find out you didn’t use it.

For us, we under promise and over deliver… Sales over promise, and project managers bid as low as they can to win contracts, and panic when the numbers aren’t working because they cut it too close or didn’t push back/renegotiate scope creep

So then, when the numbers don’t work and their boss tells them to fix it, they go to their team and tell them to make it work. And the only thing they can do is set meetings, make demands, and yell… Sure, you can tell them to go fuck themselves, but at that point you all look bad - if the technical and functional chains of command aren’t separated (more common), they just point at you as the problem to whoever signs your paychecks… Since talking to that person is part of their week and you’re busy working, that’s probably not a fight you’ll win.

If they’re any good, they do exactly what you said - they come over, say “hey, I’ve got this problem… This guy wants this, what will it do to our timeline?” And, by being proactive and trusting the experts, they can just go back to the customer and say “sorry, we went over the numbers and it blows out the budget, these are our options based on my expert and the contract vehicle”

Unfortunately, most people aren’t that good at their jobs. A lot of project managers have an ego and like to do handshake deals… once they start agreeing to things on their own, they put the whole team in a no-win situation

theneverfox , 9 months ago

It’s not nothing…I mean, legally it is nothing, but it sends a message about your priorities. It plants the idea in people’s heads that “hey, Facebook might be doing all these things I don’t want!”

theneverfox , 9 months ago

I mean, it’s not for no reason - if the system doesn’t change, almost no one who doesn’t have strong financial security already has a light at the end of the tunnel. And the system has only changed for the worse for most of us - less freedom, less protection for individuals, and no efforts to reign in corporations. Most young people aren’t going to be able to retire, and most people are unable to get ahead at all

People can’t imagine the structural changes we need to take back control of our democracy and make it work for us again, let alone how to get there… There’s a lot of (designed) learned helplessness. It’s hard for people to imagine things actually improving, we’ve had almost no wins in my lifetime - just going back and forth on social issues as worker rights backslide so far we’ve literally gone back to child labor

theneverfox , 9 months ago

I actually started writing a Godot course at my friends urging after I taught it to him over meets, but hated the sound of my voice and only recorded the first lesson. Is this something needed that I could make actual money on?

theneverfox , 9 months ago

They added subtlety and made a point, you just reacted skeptically to a headline

If you’re surprised by this, you should really put more thought into why your post went negative

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Ok? But like… I don’t know how to say this without sounding harsh, but why would I care that you scoffed when you read the headline?

You were expressing your feelings, but that’s all your first post did. Hell, it’s not immediately clear exactly what you disagreed with. Is the science bad? Is the site untrustworthy? Is the article bad? Or is the only problem that the headline is clickbait?

At least if you said “this headline is bullshit”, someone could have either agreed and moved the conversation towards what the headline should have said, or they’d say “no, it sounds crazy but this is actually legit”

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Absolutely.

Give me 5 years without worrying about the money, and I’ll build a game bigger and fancier than any AAA title (assuming someone else will do the art and story)

I’d build worlds just because I like to feel godlike - I’d write the rules to generate world after world just because that’s what I am, and without worrying about finances I’d hand it off to others to do what they love with it. Other people love writing engines or handcrafting experiences - I love building the tools

I think you’re looking at it the wrong way – AAA stuff isn’t good because of a profit motive, it’s this bad because everyone is trying to minimize the work put in and maximize the profits. If everyone working on games collaborated on a few engines and shared work freely between each other, we’d have way better games

theneverfox , 9 months ago

I was about to ask about your exercise routine, but then I remembered, I have a theory…

What’s your water source like? Have you lived most of your life near a mountain? Not super close to a huge city - smaller cities are fine, but nothing with a crazy population, heavy industry, or heavy agriculture?

Or if you are, which one if you’re ok answering?

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Huh… Well sounds pretty standard on the water front then

But mountain biking might raise a good idea - it’s a workout all about stabilizer muscles, I could totally see how that could be better at preventing injury than the standard cardio and lifting routine

theneverfox , 9 months ago

I mean, the headline is factually correct - maybe there’s an explanation for it (which still raises questions of their reliability for real-time organization moving forward), but it also is extremely suspect seeing as Musk initially was going to buy Twitter to “save democracy” by shaping public discourse, and he’s very anti-union (auto workers in particular)

Better than even odds this was added thoughtlessly during the impersonator checkmark fiasco (which would still be news), but I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt until I hear from some engineers no longer with Twitter

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Hash value? Twitter hosts their account, they literally have to ask Twitter to change the pic.

There’s several ways this could be tracked, but if they claimed somewhere they were hashing values and that triggered it, something very fishy is going on.

Like the only way that could happen is if they changed the file hosted at a certain exact URL (weird, especially for an auto workers union), and despite hosting the pics themselves, Twitter added a periodic check for this edge case. But also flagged that as more suspicious than updating it normally

And instead of keeping the cached version until the new one is reviewed, they changed it but flagged the account. Seeing as they basically pioneered sharding, I find this whole situation pretty coincidental

Usually I’d assume incompetence introduced during the imposter checkmark fiasco after they lost all their best engineers, but Musk has shown himself very willing to put his fingers on the scale…

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Hell no. Musk is, extremely publicly, disproving every myth about billionaires. He’s telling you what he is, he’s showing you what he is. And this is “best businessman, super genius, futurist poster boy for billionaires Musk”

You don’t have to like the situation or the coverage, and you certainly don’t have to like him.

But you need to watch. We all need to watch. We need to sear this in, so next time someone buys the legend crafted by a billionaire.

When people praise Musk or talk about trickle down economics, you need to be honestly shocked. You need to be able to rattle off the stupid and evil decisions that describe his life, and be able to explain how he’s never built a company or designed anything, how the only useful contribution he’s made to anything is hyping things so far he’s being sued for outright fraud

Give him the attention - a lot of programmers have long known he’s a poser, but most of us didn’t make a big deal about it because he was getting people excited for important technology. It was for the common good.

And now, watching him is the common good - let him bask in infamy all he likes, this protracted midlife crisis is possibly the most philanthropic thing he’s ever done

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Did you not read my post?

Let him have his infamy, he’s using it to disprove every positive association with billionaires.

Give him all the clicks, all the views, pay attention - he’s the real time greatest argument there will ever be for not having another Elon Musk. Pay attention, break it down for your dad, spread the word to your friends - it’s very important that as a species, we learn this lesson ASAP. Next time, this lesson will cost a great many lives

Yeah, he gets what he wants, but I have literally, never for a moment, cared what some elongated muskrat wants

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Ah… you’re right, rereading that I totally got that jumbled up in my head, sorry

I might be a little touchy on the topic…I have family members who are smart and educated, but even now think Musk is some kind of genius, maybe with a personality disorder excused by his genius. Telling them about him doesn’t help, but letting him show them his true colors surely will (eventually)

theneverfox , 9 months ago

I think it’s even more important that you come at the topic in a collaborative way.

Everyone has been force-fed the idea that “the other side is totally evil and wants you dead” for years now - people are on a hair trigger ready to be attacked at any moment

Once they’ve decided you’re on the other side they’re not looking for common ground or to understand your position, they’re just trying to win a fight. They’re hearing whatever supports their viewpoint and ignoring any holes you’ve poked in their worldview

I think keeping it approachable is definitely important too, but I think this first step is where things so often go wrong

theneverfox , 9 months ago

I decided to make my own, I’ve had to switch to paying things, but I’m going to get started back on Luna soon. If you’re willing to give me feedback and describe in great detail what you want, chances are it’ll get added into the next version

theneverfox , 9 months ago

So honestly I hate the comment swiping interface, I know what you’re talking about though. I’ll put it on the list for an option but it’s going to be low since I find it to be bad UX - to me, swiping should be to change something on your screen.

The swiping between posts sounds like a great idea though, that’ll almost definitely be in the next version

And sorting? Custom sorts and feeds are like my main design goal, that’ll definitely be in there

The other thing is saving your place - that was my biggest complaint personally. You can already click on anything to see more about it and go back without losing your place

You can even change accounts or sorting methods and go back to where you were - I’m playing with making that more intuitive though, I disabled it for the current version because it was awkward

I’ll save your post and ping you for the next big update

theneverfox , 9 months ago

It comes from a poem. It’s very literal

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Apparently this might have been created recently, even though the phrase goes back at least a few hundred years. Here’s a transcription of the one I was talking about though:

“We are starving. There is no more bread, and we have nothing to eat.”

The rich man said,

“Not my problem you don’t work for your bread,”

as if he did not snatch away the grain by his own greedy hands and create filling bread for his own overflowing mouth.

The poor cried,

“We are dying. There is no more medicine, and we’re all ill.”

The rich man said,

“Not my problem you don’t take care of yourselves,”

as if he did not buy all the medicine and raise prices so high

the gods themselves would not

be able to reach.

The poor people

stopped crying,

and the rich man was satisfied…

Until they came knocking at his door one night;

their faces were sunken,

their flesh decaying,

their eyes sightless.

They were monsters

of the rich man’s

own making.

As they devoured his flesh,

the rich man cried,

“Please, spare me!”

The ravenous zombies said,

“Not our fault

you fattened yourself

for slaughter.”

theneverfox , 9 months ago

IDK what you mean by lack of auto-embedding, the support for it has been pretty fantastic from the start. I literally learned about it because I was looking though supported formats for a library, and it’s been in the list ever since

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Pssh, imagine using a disk instead of a good memory and quick fingers

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Wait, he was voiced by Roland? I thought they were just taking a shot at Roland and Rick and Morty, that’s 10x funnier

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Carrot salad is just shredded carrots with dressing made from mustard mixed with oil, but I’d challenge you to take a bite of that and tell me it’s not a salad.

Now mix up uncut baby carrots, celery sticks, cherry tomatoes, and cucumber slices. I’ll give you a bowl of ranch, and if you pour it in try to eat it like a salad instead of using them as dip, there’s something wrong with you

Salads aren’t about ingredient counts, they’re about preparation

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Avocados also tend to be grown in places where water is less available… If we all became vegetarians tomorrow, avocados would still be a big problem

theneverfox , 9 months ago

I’ve eaten ghost peppers, hard candies made from extracts made from California reapers, and this crazy octopus sauce my sister once got at an Asian market where a single drop in a pot of rice bordered on painful for me… And one time I accidentally put in a splash

None of that bothers me on the way out - capsaicin just doesn’t bother me at all once it hits me stomach. But other things do… Grapefruit for instance

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Wait wait wait, what is this black magic and how have I not heard of it?

theneverfox , 9 months ago

It’s super fucked up how people basically are constantly essentially getting taxed more and more for the right to survive. No one should be profiting off basic needs

That being said, the system is fucked up, and if you’re mainly using their rents to pay for equity, you’re playing by the rules while doing more good than harm. It can still be a win-win, and I think it’s ok to feel good about that

Homes shouldn’t be an investment vehicle, but they are - you should seek to help fix the broken rules, but it’s foolish to just ignore them. Most investments have a similar effect somewhere down the line anyways

But the real question is - are you actually a landlord? Technically yes, but in spirit? If you’re not making much of a profit from rent, you’re not what people mean when they say landlord. The upper middle class has been dabbling in rental properties for a while, but that’s not who the term refers to - it’s people who own enough that the rental income is the line item they’re keeping track of.

The starting line is like 20-30 units, and it’s mostly held by investment groups or families that inherited a town… They’re who own most rental properties out there

If you rent out a few places and don’t put much thought into adjusting the rent, you’re not the problem here. You’re not the one we’re talking about when we talk about landlords

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Yeah, they could’ve been profitable a long time ago if they grew the staff slowly and kept their head down

But they wouldn’t be Facebook level profitable. Their investors don’t care much about them being profitable, they want 100x or bust

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Because we have a soft spot for monopsony for some reason. Probably because it’s how you get the crazy ROI that gave us billionaires… Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon - all of them were able to become the monsters that they are by controlling the link between buyers and sellers

theneverfox , 9 months ago

I started wearing one grocery shopping (apparently no one else here is), and it’s insane to me the looks I was getting.

Some people might’ve thought I was sick and gave me a wide berth and side eyed glare - fair enough, I get that

But then other people stared at me like I was wearing underwear on my head. They seemed confused and uncomfortable making eye contact

theneverfox , 9 months ago

Yes. I liked algebra initially, I hated geometry, I loved trigonometry initially, and through college the only math I fell in love with was linear algebra

Apparently, it was because I was taught “this is for optimization. Look at how you can balance cost, performance, and reliability to find the optimal network hardware based on your needs”. It was like magic, it took a problem I thought would be unsolvable and have no definite answer, and a few hand waves later there you do

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized oh, I actually really like math. I just need a reason to want learn it

theneverfox OP , 9 months ago

I had a contract come up and had to shelve this for a bit, and your comment immediately annoyed me, because it really isn’t what I wanted to hear

But it also stuck with me because it sounded like the advice I throw at new devs starting a project, knowing it’s a PITA up front, but pays dividends pretty quick.
So I looked it up, and despite my bad experiences with docker and kubernetes (I was tasked with doing weird, off label things with them and it sucked), I’ve decided to take your advice and stop looking for docker workarounds

And since it seems like it comes from a place of experience, I figured I’d share a bit more about what I want to do and see if you had any more advice

Basically, I want to link together basic models trained to do different things, with the end goal being something between a conversation partner and an assistant. The idea being I build very specific prompts to bypass the limitations of smaller models - the first goal is to take one LLM and a conventional management program and summarize key information, then use very specific structured prompts to generate a response to be vocalized and metadata that changes the state of the management system.

My thought is to take something like alpaca or falcon 7B to track and summarize relevant information, feed it into another such model trained as a conversation partner with this input and output format, then throw together a web interface and do text<->speech on my phone or dev computer.

When it comes to neural networks and LLMs, I have a good understanding of the theory of them and a great one of how brains work, but I’m mostly looking to use these systems as a black box initially. My initial goals are to generate dialogue trees for games and maybe practice my Spanish with a chatbot - accuracy and capabilities don’t matter too much, I’ve played with projects that could do this by just sending prompts to an endpoint

Down the road, the goal is to have something extremely modular. This tech is moving fast and I envision linking a bunch of modules together to perform different tasks, and as better modules come out or I add/upgrade hardware, I want to be able to write something to act like autopilot in my ide or pilot a model in a game engine

The main objective is to learn and to run agents on my own hardware. I’m looking for a side project that will be useful enough to keep up my interest, but also give me a starting point to modify from so I’m not sitting at a python terminal forcing myself through a tensor flow course before I get to the good stuff

Any thoughts, advice, or projects you think I should know about when starting this journey?