On my last gap year after high school, I ran a not-for-profit conference in San Francisco. What we planned on being a 150-people event went viral and we got 1,300 applications within weeks. We spun up a full-scale team — most of us were on a gap year after| Isaak.net
I’ve got an unusual educational background. If you’re curious, here’s a quick rundown. High School As many, I started absolutely detesting high school early on. Classes, classes, regurgitation. Regurgitation, regurgitation, vomit knowledge. It was too dull, too easy. I needed more stimulation. I needed| Isaak.net
Estimates for achieving intermediate fluency in Mandarin Chinese range up to spending years and around 4000 total hours (2,200h classroom hours, 1,800 outside). I did it in 1500 hours total and less than a year.[1] --- There is a lot of disagreement on language proficiency estimates. They are| Isaak.net
I got pretty good in Mandarin within 12 months of rigorous part-time study. I'm not even close to perfectly fluent, but I got far into intermediate fluency. Read my personal story of learning Mandarin here: isaak.net/mandarin This post on my Methods of Mandarin (MoM) is for| Isaak.net
Jetlag sucks. But jetlag isn't created equal. It's easy to stay up six hours later, but it's impossible to fall asleep six hours earlier. Going westwards is easy. Going eastwards is hard. Really hard. Arising from the legends of traveling Starcraft pro-gamers who need to be in top-tier shape, I| Isaak.net
Thanks for key conversations & early feedback: Andrew Payne, Luke Piette, George Church, Michael Retchin, Flora Guo, Merrick Smela, Greta Tuckute, Misha Yagudin, Tyler Cowen, Helena Rosengarten. Many people naturally sleep only 5h hours a night. Could we make a therapy to induce this? Ozempic but for sleep? Meet my| Isaak.net
A rant. 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 Horn of Africa. Dawn of mankind. We barely learned to walk upright. As every species awakens, so do its demons. Algae, Which learned to pierce cells. Which learned to hijack| Isaak.net