Betterment

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out why people get frustrated with each other. There are infinitely many reasons this can happen, but a specific dynamic I’ve noticed in the kinds of projects I work on is the friction between people that thrive on context and people that thrive on direction. I […]

Certainly the industry is transforming, however, the people and organizations falling into the trap of no longer reading and writing code only do so at their peril.

Seventeen years of note-taking distilled: use connected links instead of folders, keep your notes in plain text Markdown, and publish your second brain to learn in public.

Legitimate opposition spurs innovation, even if it irks

Insights You Can See. Gapingvoid works with leaders to design culture intentionally.

While not a clinical diagnosis, experts say it’s an accurate description of a cluster of symptoms that often appears in aging men.

Find out why treating your to-do list like a never-emptying bucket can be counterproductive. Learn how to manage your tasks and reduce stress for a more balanced approach to productivity.

From a personal Obsidian vault to an enterprise company brain: how agents write context on versioned branches, typed graphs keep it consistent, and merge.

The best writing advice I’ve received doesn’t cost anything, and sometimes doesn’t even involve writing.

Combine building with developing people, replacing the manager whose value was mostly routing

There is a company in Japan that makes the seasoning in your instant ramen and the insulating film inside almost every advanced AI chip on the planet. It is the same company. Ajinomoto is best known for inventing monosodium glutamate, a little pot of which lives next to my cooker. (My father-in-law mistook it for […]

A health crisis can make you think about a lot of things.

After 25 years with TDD, we are now parting ways. The incremental TDD steps were great for human cognition, but didn't survive the transition to agentic coding.

Are you really struggling in life? You can’t keep a job, can’t make friends, can’t find a significant other. You might be contemptible person.

What would you do with a billion dollars? I am occasionally asked by young people for my life advice. Could I counsel them as they decide what to do? They are thinking of going into something new. Or thinking about … Continue reading →

“And it is so simple… You will instantly find how to live.”

“The happy man needs friends,” or so says Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle divides friendships into three kinds: friendships of utility, of ple...

Thoughts on continuing to build on principles that have been refined for years even before LLMs gained popularity.

Looking for answers — and finding hope —in the cyberpunk of the past, present, and future.

When I started using Obsidian, it was a niche tool for people that were into Zettelkasten and Dark Mode. The Obsidianmaxxing scene seems to have migrated from Second Brainers to the AI technorati, …

I’ve been trying to connect with a journalist who reached out a few days ago. He’s working on a story from way back in my career – the early days of Wired, circa 1995. It’s …

Speak to a doctor about longevity protocols and prescriptions.

We risk replacing genuine knowledge with ‘work slop’.

The cardinal rule of meetings with your direct reports is that you are always on the same side of the table. From the moment you walk in to the moment you leave, every single thing that your team does is a reflection and extension of you.

A guest article from Alex Koutmos on using Livebook as a learning tool for Elixir

Why your best improvement might be a deletion

9 eye-scanning patterns, 10 ways to adapt the text for max readability.

As traditional handwriting is progressively being replaced by digital devices, it is essential to investigate the implications for the human brain. Brain ele...