When was the last time you taught yourself something? What was it?

Right now I'm teaching myself Rails. Tiny Thoughts was my first Rails application. I chose it because the domain was complex enough that I needed a framework with strong conventions, and I'd outgrown what Next.js could give me for server-side domain modeling.

But the more interesting answer is: I'm teaching myself philosophy. Properly, with primary texts, not summaries.

I just finished Plato's Euthyphro. I read it more like a play than a dialogue. What grabbed me wasn't the famous Euthyphro Dilemma, it was the character dynamics. Socrates pretending not to know the answer when he clearly does. Euthyphro's arrogance about piety while prosecuting his own father. The dramatic irony of Socrates being on trial for "corrupting the youth" while the guy who thinks he's most pious is the one who's actually confused.

Before that, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, and a Great Courses lecture series on his philosophy. What grabbed me: the will to power as the thing underneath everything. Herd morality and why the temptation to conform, to be accepted, to avoid isolation is the thing that keeps most people from becoming who they actually are.

I teach myself things because I believe intelligence isn't something you have. It's something you do. And the best way to do it is to pick up a book that's harder than what you're comfortable with and sit with it until it teaches you something.