2025-07-11 22:09:49
I've run out of thoughts; consider this an open thread for your thoughts, see you in the comments.
2025-07-09 22:07:27
The finest internet writers have converged on the wisdom that most advice doesn't work due to some combination of being bad, incomplete, inapplicable, confusing, difficult, unpleasant, or all of the above.
This means that we should expect that a lot of the advice that does work to be relatively small wins – the value of the outcome should be small enough that it only just overcomes the friction of implementing it, or e.g. spending the time to read a blogpost containing it.
So without further ado, here's a thing I believe is of limited (but positive) value but often true and not widely articulated: when you're doing someone a favour, let them know it's a favour.
Too often, I've seen (or been involved in) a dynamic where Alice asks for Bob for something that is somewhat-costly for Bob, Bob decides to do it on a one-off basis, but Alice doesn't realise this and just thinks the request was granted because it's either customary or costless.
In the worst case, Alice then starts doing the thing (or asking for it repeatedly), or even tells other people they can ask or do it. As a result, either Bob gets increasingly vexed, or Alice becomes unhappy when the "right" gets taken away.
And this doesn't do anyone any favors.
The whole thing can be fixed by Bob just saying up front "I can't generally do that, but as a one-off favor I'll do it just for you." This allows Alice to either withdraw the request or appreciate the favor, building up the web of small gifts that social goodwill rests on.
2025-07-07 22:03:22
Many many years ago I created a lighthearted game by the name of Person Do Thing. It sits at the intersection of philosophy experiment and stupid party game, asking: what is the smallest set of words that you can use to describe everything?
Here's how it works: you try to describe a term using only a very small set of other, simpler words (like Person, Do and Thing). So, for example, if you want to describe website, you might say "person in place and many-person in other place, person use thing do thing like-say thing, other person see."
As shown above, you will sound like an idiot but in an inexplicably hilarious way. You will mind-meld with friends to find strange, poignant ways of evoking common experiences. You will laugh, curse, and transcend to a higher understanding of language, the human spirit, and (ultimately) yourself.
More than a decade later, the game is finally getting the high-quality physical-embodiment it deserves. Here's what it looks like in action:
Look at those people for a moment. No really, look at them; they are having unbearable amounts of fun. They are also incredibly attractive, and clearly lead phenomenal lives: they are adored by all who meet them, and bring joy to the very fabric of the universe.
Is it possible that all you need in order to be like them is to spend $20 on a board game? At that price, you can't afford not to try it. You* can be like those people by pre-ordering the game now:
*unfortunately this is only true if you live in the US; if you live elsewhere, you can at least express interest with your email address here. But if you have friends in America who you wish could be happy, you could forward them this note and/or buy them the Christmas gift of a lifetime.
Good person want feel more good and think more good? Get Person Do Thing, say no big thing, make many person think good.
2025-07-04 22:46:32
This guest post by Mark A Brew is the first in our Requested Posts series.
The Tolix chair was built to endure welders, storms, and salt air. Today, it endures brunch. It was designed for labour, but now it props up lifestyle. And in that way, it mirrors the world it inhabits: where spaces perform productivity, and steel is just another aesthetic.
This is the story of the Tolix Marais A chair: a chunk of galvanized steel born in a French factory, now quietly embedded in the global grammar of taste.
It starts with Xavier Pauchard, a zinc roofer in Burgundy who, in 1907, discovered that dipping steel in molten zinc stopped it from rusting. This gave birth to a flood of durable goods—buckets, tubs, tools—and eventually, one of the most quietly influential pieces of furniture in design history.
In 1934, Tolix launched the Model A: all-steel, weatherproof, stackable. By 1956, it had evolved into the definitive Tolix A—a post-industrial design that could stack 25 high and outlast a war. The chair spread through France like an appliance. You found it in cafés, hospitals, ferries, factories. Not boutiques—buildings that sweat. It wasn’t just furniture. It was part of the job.
Then the 1990s happened. Metal was out. Softness was in. Tolix went bankrupt.
Enter Chantal Andriot, the company’s former accountant, who bought the brand in 2004 and revived it by not fixing what wasn’t broken.
She kept production local, commissioned tasteful variants, upgraded machinery—just enough to call it “artisanal.” A chair that once did work now just looked like it might. And in a world that confuses aesthetics with ethics, that was more than enough.
What followed wasn’t a comeback. It was a migration. Tolix didn’t return to the workplace. It moved into concept cafés and high-rent Airbnbs. Not because it was ergonomic. Because it looked like it remembered a time when things were.
The Tolix A didn’t succeed because it was comfortable. It succeeded because it looked serious. Like it had done its part. Like it had survived something—maybe a ferry terminal, maybe an honest day's labour. It was steel as signifier. The flannel shirt of chairs.
And so it settled in, quietly, into the curated corners of modern life. In a Helsinki barbershop, someone gets a €48 beard trim while seated on galvanized steel. In a Brooklyn wine bar, guests sip “natural reds” while perched on repurposed postwar austerity. There’s a rooftop brunch in Lisbon where the sun ricochets off 40 brushed-metal backs, blinding three influencers mid-selfie. In a coworking loft in Singapore, 200 Tolix chairs sit beneath a neon sign that says: “Do what you love.” The chairs oblige, silently.
The Tolix doesn’t just furnish these places. It completes the illusion. It cosplays utility. A chair built for sweat now signals “focus” in rooms where no one’s allowed to talk above a whisper.
It is not democratic like the Monobloc. It doesn’t follow you to the beach or into a village hall. It’s what a hedge fund manager imagines a welder might have sat on. Steel cosplay with a French accent.
And yet: it performs. It lets the room say, “we take things seriously here,” without committing to anything that might involve noise, dust, or heat. Like Helvetica. Like reclaimed wood. Like standing desks in offices where everyone’s sitting down.
Eventually, it forgot it was French. Now it’s just... present. In Buenos Aires. In Shoreditch. In Anna Wintour’s office.
Vice, perhaps speaking for all of us, once ran a piece titled: “Dear Restaurants: This Chair Sucks.” Fair. But also, how many objects reach global saturation with no logo, no campaign, and no consistent manufacturer? The Tolix chair pulled it off by being the perfect mute accessory: industrial, photogenic, narratively vacant.
The Tolix isn’t just everywhere—it’s doing a job. Not the one it was built for, but one that pays better: it signals effort in spaces designed to avoid it. It gives restaurants, offices, and curated homes the look of industriousness without the inconvenience.
You don’t choose it because it’s comfortable. You choose it because it says, “work in progress.” It’s visual shorthand for grit, purpose, and a touch of European steel, delivered flat-packed and vibe-checked.
That’s why it endures. The Tolix chair doesn’t work anymore. It just looks like it did. Which, for most people, is close enough.
2025-07-02 21:34:38
Nepotism is not great. I have at-least-some proof of my longstanding commitment to this principle: when I accidentally joined the pre-rush info-sequence for a college frat, a speaker came in and explained we should join (in part) because he'd gotten his first job through a Brother who took a chance on him despite having no skills or qualifications. I put my hand up and said "isn't that bad, though?" and was promptly encouraged not to rush.
Still, nepotism has some good features in contexts where the alternatives are also bad, and I think they're worth thinking about.
First: until you've hired and managed people, it's hard to understand how many people fail at one of two very basic hurdles.
The first is just "show up consistently and do roughly what you say you'll do." Everyone struggles with this sometimes, but it's kind of shocking how hard it is to find people who clear a basic reliability bar. And for a lot of parts of a lot of organizations, it's better to have someone who consistently does a B-grade job than someone who mostly does an A+ job but sometimes flakes completely.
Of course, nepotism doesn't necessarily solve this: some nepo hires do a C-minus job and flake constantly, but believe they're unfirable. But "selective" nepotism can help: you hire someone who either 1) you know is responsible, 2) is embedded in your community such that their cost of being irresponsible is much higher than a random Jo's.
The second basic hurdle is Not Causing a Crisis. As a manager, it's really important that your employees don't set the joint on fire / steal all your money / stab you in the back for lolz. And again, selective nepotism can ameliorate this problem: if you hire somebody embodied in your social network, they may face bonus incentives not to entirely F things/you up.
(It feels notable that all of this seems dependent on living in an atomized world where people's reputations don't necessarily follow them; there's probably a lot more to say about this, across love and work and everything).
A different benefit of nepotism I've come to appreciate more and more is within systems where the only ways to succeed are seemingly 1) be a ferocious, amoral shark, 2) be a nepo baby.
Savvy readers will notice that the nepo-babies here will most likely be the children of ferocious amoral sharks, but i] sometimes a domain only becomes cutthroat later, such that the parents might be nice as well, and ii] there's at-least-some-chance that the apple will stray from the tree, whereas anyone new who enters the field will only get to the top by stomping on the faces of those below them.
One nepo child who I think used their powers for good is Ronan Farrow, who helped expose Harvey Weinstein. His book Catch and Kill is littered with advantages he got through having famous parents, including meeting lots of powerful people since childhood, getting an MSNBC show of his own in his 20s, and having a wealthy friend's high-security apartment to hang out in while being tailed by Weinstein's goons, etc. (Admittedly he also gets betrayed by one of these powerful family friends, a feminist lawyer who pretends to be a listening ear but it turns out is directly spying for Weinstein).
At various points in the book I thought to myself
1) Farrow is very brave to use his advantages like this,
2) I'm not sure how anyone without those advantages could have successfully battled the combined powers arrayed against him (Weinstein, Weinstein's lawyers who I am scared to name, and Hillary Clinton, among others).
I sometimes (sometimes!) feel that the same dynamic exists for politicians: that the only ways to get to the top are either to be a malignant narcissist or to have the right surname. And while of course it's possible to have the right surname and be a malignant narcissist, the set theory here implies that our only hope is the occasional nepo baby who has the network of their parents but the morals of a good human being. Here's hoping.
2025-06-30 22:16:05
Suppose that people's success is a factor of multiple traits and talents. The less of any one talent someone has, the more of another they'd need in order to explain their success.
This has an awkward upshot: if you truly believe that your political/romantic/artistic enemy is an idiot, you should be more impressed at their success, and more eager to figure out what axis they're uber-talented on to make up for their idiocy.
"[rival party political leader] is an absolute moron."
"If he's so dumb, how did he trounce you so thoroughly at the last election?"
"Oh, because the voters are also dumb."
Probably the most productive response to the success of people who strike you as talentless is to figure out which talents they have that you don't appreciate. But this is also the least fun response.