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Robert Lin
@robertl.in
3.4K followers 530 following 1.9K posts
One day, my tweets are all I'll leave behind. Building #atproto stuff in public bc I believe in an open web. 🧬 robertl.in/xna 📝 robertlin.substack.com 🕰️ @now.robertl.in 📜 @history.robertl.in 🦋 Joined: Feb 6, 2024 📍 Cincinnati, Ohio - USA 🍄 Chaga
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 6d
"Beauty, romance, love. These are what we stay alive for…"

For Oct 2025, I'll be posting one of my favorite excerpts every day. Each day, I’ll pull one from memory, look it up, and record it here.

Art is the joy that makes life worth living. Choose beauty.

robertlin.substack.com/p/52-excerpts
#52 | Excerpts
For every day in October 2025, I'm collecting passages that moved me
robertlin.substack.com
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 13h
Tuesday - October 7, 2025

“You dreamed of Fillory then, with a power and an innocence that not many people ever experience. That’s where all this began for you. You wanted the world to be better than it was.” (pg. 389)

The Magician’s Land (2014) - @levgrossman.com
Tuesday - October 7, 2025 “We call it the Drowned Garden, though I don’t know why. The plants aren’t just plants, they’re thoughts and feelings. A new thought happens and a new plant springs up. A feeling fades away and the plant dies. Some of the more common ones are always in bloom—fear, anger, happiness, love, envy. They’re quite unruly, they grow like weeds. Certain basic mathematical ideas never go away either. But others are quite rare. Complex concepts, extreme or subtle emotions. Awe and wonder are harder to find than they once were. Though there—I think those irises are a kind of awe. Once in a while you even see a new one.” Julia stooped to one knee—an awesome sight, given the scale of her divine frame. “Look. This one is very rare… This is a feeling that you had, Quentin,” she said. “Once, a very long time ago. A rare one. This is how you felt when you were eight years old, and you opened one of the Fillory books for the first time, and you felt awe and joy and hope and longing all at once. You felt them very strongly, Quentin. You dreamed of Fillory then, with a power and an innocence that not many people ever experience. That’s where all this began for you. You wanted the world to be better than it was.” (pg. 389) The Magician’s Land (2014) - Lev Grossman
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 16h
Notes:
1. In the beginning, to get the flywheel going, Substack provided "revenue guarantees" for the 1st yr. The example that CB gives is @mattyglesias.bsky.social

2. Thinking of Substack as "epistemic infrastructure"

3. Substack Defender will defend you against "legal nastygrams" from bad actors
How blogging went legit, with Substack CEO Chris Best
YouTube video by Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie
youtu.be
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 1d
What a coincidence! I literally learned yesterday that A24 (the company that produced and distributed Everything Everywhere All At Once) is also owned by private equity.

I know PE may have a bad reputation but I don't think that alone is reason to be sad. Good work is good work!!
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 1d
Monday - October 6, 2025

“You will never be great. You know nothing of greatness. You want to see? I will show you greatness… This is my museum. Museum of Mayakovsky.”

And he showed them what he’d built in the long Antarctic winters. (pg. 126)

The Magician’s Land (2014) - @levgrossman.com
“But you, Quentin, you I understand. You are like me. You have ambition. You want to be a great wizard. Gandalf, maybe. Merlin. Dumb-bell-door.” “Sure,” [Quentin] said. “Why not.” “But you will not be great. You are clever, yes—you have good head.” He reached over and rapped on Quentin’s head with his knuckles. “Don’t do that.” But Mayakovsky was unstoppable, a drunk best man hell-bent on giving an inappropriate toast. “Fine head. Better than most. But sadly for you there are many heads like it. One hundred. One thousand maybe.” “I’m sure you’re right.” No point in denying it. [Quentin] leaned against the cool, oiled metal of a drill press. It felt reassuringly stable, an ally at this back. “Five hundred,” Plum said generously. She boosted herself up on a table. “Be fair.” “You will never be great. You know nothing of greatness. You want to see? I will show you greatness.” He waved his arm expansively at the darkened workbenches, and all through the room metal and glass stirred and glowed and came alive. Engines moved, wheels turned, flames lit." “This is my museum. Museum of Mayakovsky.” And he showed them what he’d built in the long Antarctic winters. (pg. 126) The Magician’s Land (2014) - Lev Grossman
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 2d
Random thought: I think PC use will actually return en vogue for Gen Alpha+beyond. There's already been something similar that happened for Gen Z w/ digital cameras over smartphones. Fiddling on a personal website will become akin to how some Gen X ppl like to fiddle around w/ old cars as a hobby.
robertl.in
Robert Lin @robertl.in · 2d
Pushed `client-1.11.4` of robertl.in to PROD just now w/ some small cosmetic fixes. (Hovering over tweetId now shows a snapshot of that day's news 📰 + you can now hover over 🖼️ to see images in tweets!)

The best part of pushing to PROD is closing the issue in the Roadmap tracker tho!🥳 #buildinpublic
Hovering over the tweetId now shows a snapshot of that day's news
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 2d
Dialectic by @jdahl.bsky.social is phenomenal. IMO, it's the best podcast currently on right now. I listened to eps with Geoffrey Litt + Billy Oppenheimer recently & loved those.

Have a great flight! (Btw, if you're flying Delta, there's free wifi!)
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 3d
An aside, for anyone else reading this, btw: I highly rec *not* filtering based on random lists from random strangers. I personally don't filter my bsky experience based on lists for this exact reason. There's no way to know what you don't know & once a list gets huge, there's no real way to vet it.
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 3d
👋 @pfrazee.com @bsky.app - a Q: today I was chatting w/
@samwho.dev & he informed me I'd disappeared from his bsky universe bc I'd gotten put on this "The Great AI - NFT - CRYPTO Cull" list which he'd muted. We follow eachother tho. If ppl follow eachother, can that pref override the mod list pref?
Screenshot showing me muted because I'd been put on the "The Great AI - NFT - CRYPTO Cull" list ☹️
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 3d
Sunday - October 5, 2025

"Reduced to its technical essence, it was a problem of resource management, of nurturing and guarding and fanning the little flickering flame of life and consciousness within his body as the entire continent of Antarctica tried..."

The Magicians (2009) - @levgrossman.com
Afterward he remembered almost nothing of the week that followed. The whole thing was very clinical. Reduced to its technical essence, it was a problem of resource management, of nurturing and guarding and fanning the little flickering flame of life and consciousness within his body as the entire continent of Antarctica tried to leach away the heat and sugar and water that kept it burning. The Magicians (2009) - Lev Grossman
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 3d
I ❤️ ChatGPT bc it's a tool that legitimately helps me learn. What a time to be alive!! Any observation you may have, you can immediately ascertain its historical context.

This morning, I learned about Herbert Marcuse. I was thinking ab the great irony of Wall-E plushie dolls being sold everywhere.
I asked: The beauty of capitalism is that it allows space to allow and even co-opt criticism of itself. Whose idea is this? ChatGPT said: A few major thinkers have expressed that idea, but the version you're quoting—about capitalism not just tolerating criticism but actively absorbing and using it—is most closely associated with: Herbert Marcuse (Frankfurt School) In One-Dimensional Man (1964), Marcuse argued that advanced capitalist societies are uniquely capable of containing and neutralizing dissent by: Giving space for criticism rather than banning it Turning opposition into consumer products, lifestyles, or harmless reforms Using critique as fuel for innovation and legitimacy For Marcuse, this ability to co-opt the forces that might overthrow it is what makes capitalism particularly stable. Others who echo the idea: While Marcuse provides the clearest articulation, related themes show up in: Antonio Gramsci — cultural hegemony and absorption of opposition Jean Baudrillard — capitalism commodifies rebellion Slavoj Žižek — “capitalism sells us our own dissent” Joseph Schumpeter — capitalism survives by constantly reinventing itself But if you’re looking for the thinker who most directly formulated the idea you quoted, Herbert Marcuse is the best answer.
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 3d
Lean into the AI overlords!! I've had similar experiences. 😅 Everything is literally about to change - the hype (for once) is actually real!!
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 3d
The daily news snaps look like this. The idea behind this feature was I wanted to situate my tweets in their time and place. Now on any given day, you can see what else was going on in the US/world. I chose WSJ+NYT more just out of curiosity than anything else - I wonder over time how they compare!🤔
The homepages of the WSJ + NYT - October 3, 2025
robertl.in
Robert Lin @robertl.in · 3d
Released `client-1.11.2` of robertl.in today!🎉 First GUI update in over 3mo!🥳 Finally set up the pipeline for automated daily news snapshots (starts on #822: Oct 3, 2025) which'll give you daily snaps of WSJ+NYT. Additionally, I also finally added `ref labels` to tweets (eg. ▶️🦋📰🔗).

#buildinpublic 👨‍💻
{ "dt": "2025-10-04", "version": "client-1.11.2", "notes": [ "make `tids` link to daily news snapshots in Timestream", "introduce `ref labels` for tweets in Timestream (eg. ▶️🦋📰🔗)" ] }
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 3d
This is really cool -- thank you for sharing! TIL!!

Glad to see the Atmosphere (albeit, very slowly 😅) decentralizing!! 🎉
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 3d
Your site is neat! I also spend a lot of my free time tinkering around on my personal site for fun and love when I find other artisan webmasters. TY for sharing!!
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 3d
Ah, TIL! TY!!
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 4d
DR?
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 4d
Saturday - October 4, 2025

"Through all of history, wars were a way to burn off your excess young men, like venting heat from an engine."

I’m Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom (2025) - @jasonkpargin.bsky.social
Key’s theory, which Patrick had mocked as the “Virgin Apocalypse,” was that all modern hate groups were really just incel grievances in disguise. It’s a historical fact that one of the key precursors to mass violence in a society is simply an excess of young, unmarried men. The really unpopular part of Key’s theory, the one that had caused a lot of colleagues to stop talking to her in the hallway, was that the smart societies knew you could deal with this problem simply by finding some excuse to go to war. Through all of history, wars were a way to burn off your excess young men, like venting heat from an engine. I’m Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom (2025) - Jason Pargin
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 4d
Aside from it building much faster, is there a reason you switched? (I'm currently using GitHub Pages so I'm curious!)
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 4d
A more apt analogy, I think, is how many hours people (back in my day!) used to just park themselves in front of the TV & "channel surf" mindlessly. (Or play slots or sports gambling.)

IMO, building a chemical dependency on nicotine is categorically different than scrolling social media.
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 5d
Friday - October 3, 2025

"But I don't think of you."

The Fountainhead (1943) - Ayn Rand
“I see none in discussing it.” “Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.” “But I don’t think of you.” Toohey’s face had an expression of attentiveness, of listening quietly to something as simple as fate. The Fountainhead (1943) - Ayn Rand
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 5d
I have an opposite of this story! I once updated my Google authenticator app and several of my OTPs stopped working. 😭😭😭 Ever since, I now try to never update my authenticator app!!
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 5d
For this to succeed, inference must happen locally. This means in the future everyone'll have the models running natively on their own machines+not turn to services online.

This new "discernment layer" will literally deliver directly to us what articles, books, podcasts, movies, videos to consume.
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Robert Lin @robertl.in · 5d
In the future, everyone'll have their own personal algorithm that they've personally trained. These personal algos will know everything we each individually like/dislike. They'll be the proxy thru which we interact w/ the real world. In the future my algo will filter everything before I ever see it.
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