Halfhaven halftime
Halfhaven is a virtual blogger camp, an online alternative to Inkhaven Residency.
The rules are simple:
every day post max 1 article with min 500 words (or equivalent effort)
try to get 30 by the end of November (but there are no hard lines)
The invitation links keep expiring, the current one is: https://discord.gg/rZv3a2Jt
If you wanted to join during November, but you couldn’t join because you didn’t have the link, I apologize; I was on a vacation without internet. If you published your articles online anyway, feel free to add them retroactively in Halfhaven with their actual publication date. In general, post a link in Halfhaven the same day you publish the post.
Here are the posts published during October:
a11ce
Adam Shai
Alex Kurilin
Algon
Why’s equality in logic less flexible than in category theory?
What criticisms have been made of Bostrom’s Open Global Investment Model?
Random things I learnt about ASML after wondering how critical they were to GPU progress
Aq
Ari Zerner
duck master
Gyrodiot
ironlordbyron
keltan
Logan Riggs
lsusr (videos)
mishka
Interlude: non-anthropocentric vs anthropocentric approaches
Summary: non-anthropocentric approaches to AI existential safety
Diary: hyperstitionai, agentic engineering, recent papers, NVIDIA DGX Spark
Diary: overview of recent “zzznah” (neural cellular automata, etc.)
niplav
Waiting Outside a Shop Is Rarely Worth It; Public Transport Has Bad Vibes; Doing Cold Approach Every Day Is Pretty Powerful
Edits of Pergraphs, Pascal’s Mugging and Anti-Superpersuasion interventions
“Solving” Pascal’s mugging by making some very strange modifications to the prior
ParrotRobot
Philip
Tassilo
Taylor G. Lunt
Viliam
Feel free to join anytime. If you join later than November 1st, you won’t be able to achieve the soft goal of 30 total articles before the end of November, but a few articles is still more than nothing, if you need the nudge.
Congratulations to: Algon, keltan, mishka, and Taylor G. Lunt—guessing by your productivity so far, you are most likely to have the 30 posts before the end of November. But nothing is certain until you actually do it, and the rest of us may still have a chance.
So far, I’m fortunate to be one of the people on track to meet the post number goal. Here are some thoughts at the half way point:
FUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKK
Writing every day is hard already, writing something I’m ok with putting on the internet is much harder
There are other parts of my life that have taken large hits because of this project. I had an excellent ANKI streak, which I have since lost, and have been struggling to get back in to. Perhaps I just need more Dakka.
I ‘feel’ like I’m not that much of a better writer in the sense of ‘my posts feel worthwhile for others to read’, but I do ‘feel’ I have gotten better at communicating ideas clearly, and spotting mistakes in my communications.
I think I have gotten better at looking at the world, and finding things to write about
I have discovered a deep love for this thing ;
I kinda ‘feel’ more dumb. Perhaps this is downstream of other things in my life, and that much of my studying time has been replaced with writing; and I’ve had to listen to a lot more music to have time to come up with ideas, which has decreased podcast time. But, I feel a bit depressed, and like I’m more of an idiot than when I started.
I haven’t read as many of the other contributors posts as I would have liked to, due to this, and all my other projects eating up all of my time.
I have used the same keyboard for the last 5 years, but since starting this, my mistakes per-line have dropped off significantly. (That does not mean miss-spelling, which I still struggle with)
When I started this, I planned to make many LW posts, among my substack posts, though I have made no LW posts. This is because I think the quality that 2 days allows me to write, is much too low. I just don’t have the Gs to be outputting things I consider LW quality in that time frame. This is a problem specific to me, I think.
YouTube ambient music is going down the drain fast, as AI slop is taking over the algorithm, and most people aren’t noticing. This is relevant, because I basically require ambient music to inspire my writing.
I think Half-Haven was a great idea. I am grateful that it exists. I think I wouldn’t have made so many posts, without the fear of publicly not following up, on something I set out to do.
New love is wonderful kindling for ideas. Even if your ideas don’t seem to relate to love at all. This may be a personal thing; but I find that writing down the things I ‘wish I had said’ are the best writing projects I have created in this month.
I have run a few experiments, and collected data, in an attempt at various blog posts. But running the data, and assessing that data, takes a lot of time, and often doesn’t lead me to writing 500 words, without padding. So, I have not published any new research in this time.
I think I am writing much better ‘first drafts’ than I did before this. I think that has something to do with the time pressure.
I do not yet know if I will continue to post a blog post every two days, after this ends. It is a habit I think is net positive for me, but clearly has some destructive costs.
Yeah, “doing something” and “doing something sustainably” are two different things. I think there is some hope that with enough practice you get more efficient; or that if you get enough subscribers to generate an income, you could use that income to outsource some other time-consuming parts of your life.
The former is about your skills, but to increase your chances at the latter, you also need to promote yourself—the easiest way is to create accounts at various social networks, and share links to your posts.
That’s amazing!
Download the good ones.
I suspect this is a general rule: if you feel that your life is on a good way, you can put more energy into your projects; otherwise your energy and attention are spent worrying about things.
Perhaps once a week would be more sustainable? My first idea was to suggest every other month, but regularity is probably better for creating an audience.
When you say the Discord links keep expiring, is that intentional or unintentional? If it’s unintentional, look for “Edit invite link” at the bottom of the invite dialog in order to create longer-duration or non-expiring ones instead, which can be explicitly revoked later. (Edited to add: this isn’t directly relevant to me since I’m not participating; I’m just propagating a small amount of connective information in case it’s helpful.)
Sadly, the expiration date has to be selected from a list of options, and the only one longer than “7 days” is “never expires”. I do not want to create future tasks for myself (to revoke this explicitly).
I wish there was an option like “14 days” or “1 month”, but there isn’t.
(I just refreshed the link in the article, probably for the last time.)
This is great!
I hope you don’t mind if I post here my own attempt back in August, I think I only managed 27 of my intended 30 posts before my self-imposed deadline in early September.
My main memory of this time is—“geez coming up with post ideas was a slog when I was constrained by only 24 hours for research and multiple drafts!”
Closed Mouth, Open Oppurtunities
Why is it interesting?
Reading Horoscopes and Sun Tzu
What is useful?
Success Stories Teach Less than Failure
Dinner with a Side of Genius
Why did the Simpsons and Mercedes finally stop winning all the time?
Why was Technicolor IB so vibrant?
I love Glib Analogies
Misremembering things on purpose
Answer a question with a better question
A Good Communicator Gives and Takes
Althusser’s Interpellation with the boring stuff cut out
Transcode your videos to keep the Lucille Ball that lives in your computer Happy
A Cover Letter from Waylon Smithers
Reflections on 15 days of writing Blog posts
CEO apologies for Apology
Great Artists aren’t the greatest salesman but the most self-critical
“We’re Not a Cult” (hint, they are)
No, I won’t watch the Sopranos just because I’m supposed to
“All Laws were followed” but it’s still not okay
Aristotle talks keeping fit, royal friendships, and not missing Athens
Goals with or without plans
What if a Baptism of Flame can’t change you?
What if I’m wrong? Negotiate with yourself to avoid making mistakes
Grimoires, Glam Rock and… Grammar?
Blinking Hyperlinks: most cinema was Hyperlink Cinema
Feel free. (This also applies to everyone else who is considering posting their blogging marathon history.)
Yeah, 24 hours for research and writing are a harsh limit. I don’t have a problem coming up on the spot with 30 topics I would like to write about, but each of them seems to require more than a day.
simple manuals for software for children, something I hope could one day be used at computer science lessons: graphic editors, music editors, video editors, introductions to programming—with one article per software, and using the recommendations from AlternativeTo, this is at least dozen articles; but I would have to install the software first, get familiar with it, and maybe decide against promoting this specific software, so I would have to install and learn more than one program a day
following my existing “how to make computer games in Java” tutorials: a snake game (interactive animated), a shooting game (collisions, particles), a platform jumping game (platforms, various simple algorithms for enemies), a tower defense game (local menu: buying, upgrading), an RPG game (maps, dialogs, scripted events) -- but this would take a lot of time; I want to always include a demo
math lessons for elementary and middle school students—maybe five or ten topics, the math is not a problem, but I would have to think about the right way to explain it, and good exercises to use
introducing the Czech tradition of constructivist math education (“the Hejný method”) to English-speaking audience, because the current texts written in English on this topic are too abstract and fail to explain how it really works, so I would show specific lessons and explain why they are like that
some crazy nerdy topics: my attempt to reverse engineer the Vlak (train) DOS game; a 100% walkthrough of Eye of the Beholder with maps and all puzzles explained
Trying to do any of this in one day (especially with a penalty for failure to meet the deadline) would feel like an unbearable compromise on quality. I understand that in some sense this is intentional—the purpose of the blogging marathon is not to write highest possible quality; it is specifically to produce quantity. Because if you have the internal drive for quality, this exercise can help you overcome some mental blocks, and then you will find your own way which includes both high quality and a greater quantity than you had before.
Perhaps a smart approach would be to make a new pseudonymous blog for the purpose of the marathon, write the low-quality articles there, and when the marathon is over, rewrite them to the desired quality on your official blog. Threat the marathon content as a prototype that you will later throw away.
I think both those CS software manuals and tutorials would be an incredible and helpful resource if you were able to find the time.
I suppose I had a different intention with this exercise. My problem wasn’t quantity—I can vomit out words easily and never understood the fear of the blank page. I was hoping, that through brute force writing for the public, I could somehow become a “better writer”.
Perhaps what I really need is a “edit-haven” 30 days of editing, redrafting, critiquing and analysis of my own and other writing with the intent of learning how to better edit myself?
Different courses for different horses, strokes for folks, as they say
I guess they do get some lessons at Inkhaven—and if any of them is reading this: describing those lessons for the rest of us would be a simple way to meet your daily quota. ;)
I am not an expert, but if I tried to give some advice, I would try this:
1) Train your inner LLM. Choose a blogger you want to emulate. Read three of their articles. Then try to write something in the same style. Don’t worry about the content, even if it is factually incorrect or whatever; it just has to look right. Compare the texts, notice the differences, try again. You could use an AI to point out the differences in style.
2) Think about different genres of writing, such as an essay, a manual, a poem, a political call; and try to write each of them. Again, an AI can generate the list for you.
3) Generally, you can ask AI to give you critique. It probably helps if it doesn’t know that the texts are yours. You do not have to follow the advice if you disagree.