Betterment

What’s the funniest number? Yale physicist Emily Pottebaum proposed the Perceived Specificity Hypothesis, which states that “for nonnegative integers 100, the funniness of a number increases with its apparent precision." She surveyed 68 acquaintances and found that: Among integers divisible by 10, 0 is funniest. Odd numbers are consistently funnier than even. “Furthermore, the most oddly specific numbers — odd numbers with a degree of specificity of 2 — are the most funny, according to the data presented here.” The degree of specificity characterizes the distance between an integer and the nearest multiple of 5: So 3, 7, 13,...

As part of my Foundations project, I read 102 books over the past twelve-and-a-half months. That includes seven textbooks and dozens of academic books, in addition to the popular science and self-help books I selected for each theme. Those interested in brief reviews of each book can check out my reading lists for each topic: […]

We talk about networks but we are rarely clear about what we mean. A specific sort of network is the grid, and even that idea is complicated by two competing meanings. There’s the benign and …

I live a full and active life. In fact, I’m probably more engaged than I’ve ever been, with faith that at least some of my ideas will play out in constructive ways over the coming years…

It’s easy to come to the conclusion that people with means and high cultural status choose things that are better. Organic vegetables instead of junk food. But there’s a long history of…

I’m visiting with American friends who are staying in a rural farmhouse in France’s Dordogne valley. The house, which might be several hundred years old, provides faster internet access…

When we win by having someone else lose, we set up a conflict. It’s clear, direct but not generative. But when we win by confronting our fear, everyone benefits. Often, people who choose to b…

“I’m applying to work at Disney, do you know anyone who can give me a reference…” “My two partners and I are planning a new company, can we ask you for feedback on our…

A review of George E. McCarthy's Shadows of the Enlightenment

On Instagram, Tokyo-based entrepreneur, Aziz Nishanov talks about the deliciously weird Japanese ads we keep on seeing online. He says the reason they’re

Born from the Japanese art of sashiko, visible mending enables crafters to eschew fast fashion and make mistakes beautiful.

Our biggest commitments, the things we are most dedicated to, rarely pay us back in equal measure. That might be the point.

Convenience is seductive, and we trade precious things away for it all the time. Part of the reason it dominates our lives is that we only consider the cost once. After that, it continues to remind…

Parties are a public service; here's how to throw them.

This article is part of a series on the Sens-AI Framework—practical habits for learning and coding with AI.AI gives novice developers the ability to skip

The Limitations One Imposes & the Possibilities the Other Enables

Helping people, you maximize your impact

Here is a realization I made recently. I'm sitting in a room full of smart people. On one side are developers who understand the ins and outs of our microservice architecture. On the other are the fro

In my last post I wrote about using Piper to convert test to speech on the Mac and my helper utility, for Piper, Pan. In this post I am going to explain the main reason I had to want to do this, and it is all based around creating a personal audio feed.

With this guide, I will take you into the exciting deep waters of both the Zettelkasten and thinking skills. Having read this article, you will both know the theory and the practice, the art and the science of atomic note-taking.

This is the quickest and most direct way to manage. In the short run, compliance is predictable and might even be effective. Over time, it’s always outdone by the generative and resilient alt…

Having "the nerve to renounce even one’s most celebrated beliefs in deference to truth" is "intellectual heroism," writes Shai Tubali.

Discipline is a lie.

You’ve probably seen headlines like these in the last year or two: Wall Street Journal: “Even Harvard M.B.A.s Are Struggling to Land Jobs.” Fortune

On an airplane, we notice even tiny changes in acceleration (including direction) but we’re completely unaware that we’re traveling at hundreds of miles an hour. “Compared to what…

The Japanese call this phenomenon “Ma”, which translates into “space,” “gap,” or "interruption." It’s everywhere in Japanese art, from the emphasis of the

Start where you are. Start with what you’ve got. Start now. Now is the perfect moment. It only feels ‘fast’ if we’re rushing. Don’t rush. But act. With deliberate prog…

The next dish. It might be better than the one you have now. The presence of the next dish, its possibility, corrodes our experience. “Compared to what?” keeps needling us. The next ema…

How we research, write, and read with AI—or not. Some tricks and recommended apps and services to leverage AI as a thinking assistant.