I've started using org-mode couple of years ago, and write documents using the basic features like headers and formatting, links between docs, and code sections, but still haven't figured out which power features are the ones worth investing time into, and would be the most useful. Which further features would you recommend digging into, based on your experience?
I suspect this is an issue for most org-mode users, we all use different things.
I have two real uses for org-mode; I write a "work log", or "diary", every day I'm at work which keeps track of meetings, tickets/issues I work on, pull-requests I review, etc.
Unrelated to that I have a property I rent out, and I keep a table for each year showing rent-received from my tenant. I have a little "database" of previous tenants, and their details.
When I add a new table row for this year, say "January 2026 | Sharon | €1000", that updates the global profit/loss table for the document as well as profit/loss for the current year AND a t able which just lists the tenants I've known, how much they paid, and how many months they rented for.
Both of these two use-cases use very different things. The diary is just a text-block as template, the financial stuff uses multiple tables, custom elisp code, and some summing operations.
I consider myself little above basics even after all this time. The features I use depend on what I'm doing at the time, and so I take a JIT approach to learning org-mode. I'd say just keep the main resources close by as they're very detailed, and search them whenever you're thinking of doing X thing.
I read Harper's Magazine for years without knowing who was behind it. The mixture of literary criticism, political analysis and in-depth reporting Lapham shaped was hard to top in terms of informativeness and calm inquisitiveness, something sorely missing from online media. The one piece of writing by Lapham that is etched into my mind is his introduction to McLuhan's Understanding Media [1], which helped me at last grasp how fundamental and unavoidable the "medium is the message" dictum is. RIP.
What I also find interesting and revealing is how surprised they are when others find their vision of the future (the near and the far) scary and dystopic, and challenge them. I used to tell crypto bros (most of whom have done a quick transition to AI-brohood recently) why and how their idea of the crypto-driven economy sucked, and they would just treat me like a weirdo who just didn't get it. This is all before the big crash, of course. I guess part of it is how crypto was getting insane amounts of funding, which legitimized and corroborated the idea, and also created a strong echo chamber where they were shielded from criticism. Money is great at making you ignore that you might, just might, be completely wrong.
That's why I stay away from endeavors that look too good to be true. I if it's become too popular to quickly and causes people to not question their surroundings or other motives run as far away as you can.
You'll have a much better life doing the right thing, then doing the wrong thing.
The core difference between crypto and tradfi is that crypto is open and hackable (in the creative sense) by anyone without having to receive the permission of the gatekeepers.
To believe that that is a bad vision of the future betrays something of the exact pessimism about humanity and authoritarian bent that this article complains about.
Pessimism is believing that there is no possible positive future for humanity. I don't get how rejecting one option is the same thing. How, again, rejecting one option due to clearly presented reasons is authoritarian is also beyond me.
The ticket controllers were really the worst for a while, fortunately they fired the previous company and started running their own people. There was one poor guy who got beaten to an inch of his life just because he didn't have a ticket with him. What great advertisement for the city of Berlin.
This is why there is a paid app that gives you summaries of books everyone is talking about so that you don't have to read them but also won't be left out. For most popular books these days, totally sufficient.
I remember a colleague attaching a screenshot of the text of a JIRA ticket to a ticket, and setting the ticket text to "read the text in the screenshot". Turns out JIRA crashed when he tried to save a ticket with a long text, with the text box deactivated so he couldn't copy it. His solution was to screenshot the text and use it instead of risk losing it.
Isn't [2] what happens in Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis? Postman is drunk every day at work, and his new boss thinks he's got a drinking problem. Turns out he gets served, or even forced to drink a nice glass of liquor at every stop.
well, they knew most user would addicted to it (and would likely smoke while using them), so they chose to protect their hardware by providing a safe place to dump the ashes
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