Betterment

As a young man, Jack London joined the crew of a schooner bound for seal hunting in the Pacific.  When his ship pulled into port in the Bonin Islands, Jack gazed with wonder upon the jungle-covered volcanic peaks and breathed in the exotic scent of the tropics. “It was my first foreign land,” he remembered. […]

A well-placed hook to the head can knock a man out, and one delivered to the kidneys or liver will bring the strongest of brawlers to their knees.

Posted on Friday 4 Aug 2023. 1,290 words, 8 links. By Matt Webb.

At the dawn of the plastic age, it was a cheap substitute. The word “plasticky” is not a compliment. Over time, the plastics industry developed new finishes, colors and most of all, cul…

Some fields of endeavor continue to narrow down the unknown, in search of the recipe, the efficient method of industry. And others live on Feynman’s expanding frontier of ignorance, where eac…

Then neither is “yes.” Enrollment requires choice. PS one of my all-time favorite encore episodes of Akimbo is out this week: How to get into a famous college.

How was your last weekend? Pretty ho-hum, again? Tired of the same go-round of restaurants, landscapes, and entertainment options in your town? Why not take a road trip this weekend? Drive somewhere, say, eight hours away? Does that strike you as nutty? Do you find yourself thinking, “Oh no, that’s too far. I couldn’t possibly!”? […]

There’s a difference between intellectual and smart. A plumber is smart, they know how to do a skilled and effective job on the task at hand. Intellectualism isn’t about practical resul…

Let’s say you have a certain way you set up your project folders, and you want a “project blueprint” so you don’t have to manually create that particular folder structure again and again. Workflow Built-in Ask for Input action: It prompts you for the project name. Built-in Text action containing your vault name. Built-in Set Variable action for storing your vault name in the variable “Vault name” Create Folder action creates first project folder. Create Folder action creates another nest...

On doing glue work, a critical role that is too often considered expendable.

An analysis into a prevalent cognitive illusion about the nature of success in many fields.

Let’s say you have a chance to become a vampire, where you’d get the immortality and the supernatural powers, but you wouldn’t have to hurt anyone. Would you do it? It would be a hard decision to make. Not only will the transformation involve a radical change in your habits — moving from sleeping at […]

In response to a tweet of mine, someone pointed me to the thought-provoking 2001 paper Bad is Stronger Than Good: Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. … There appear to be more words for negative than positive emotions. … bad [news] events are more newsworthy and attract more reader attention.

There’s often a choice between following the cultural dictates of a given group or seeking out demonstrable facts and the scientific method. Which do you expect most people would choose? Whic…

Be kind to your future self — future-proof your notes to be of service to you.

Tufte sidenotes are a unique annotation method. They make notes more useful by providing additional info in the context of reading flow.

There are two kinds of coincidences. The first is the one that we often talk about. It’s the make-believe magic of two things occurring that we didn’t expect to occur. When you and your…

In the Orthodox Church, Easter and Christmas are preceded by 40-day seasons in which adherents forgo certain meals and abstain from particular foods. These fasts not only serve as a means of spiritual preparation; they also add poignancy to the feasts that follow. Our culture’s secular feasts, like Thanksgiving, are not preceded by fasts. Instead, […]

But not all real problems lead to good businesses. There are problems all around us. People need housing, health care and food. They want delight, belonging and status. When a company shows up in t…

It’s simple: This surgery will fix your problem and you’ll be better. It’s complicated: Changes in lifestyle, diet and attitude will, over time, help you feel better. Or… Ou…

What do we get in exchange for our work? There’s pay, of course, and the satisfaction of a job well done. There’s stress and human interaction, learning and physical exertion. We get th…

Browse any type of media from the last few days- TV, Twitter, Instagram etc- and you’ll see endless posts about the new Barbie movie. It seems the entire

Of course, we think we’re right. That’s why we’re sharing our opinion. But when there’s a disagreement, or we’re predicting the future, it’s likely that someone …

The podcast host and columnist caught up with GQ about his daily routine: the importance of sleep, (mostly) staying off Twitter, and surrendering the illusion of control.