2026-05-29 19:11:48
I've been reading the internet for more than a decade now, and most of it has washed over me like Tagore's wings. So I'm writing some reviews of pieces that stuck with me.
Elizabeth Newcamp
Like me, you may have long assumed that reality TV shows were not exact descriptions of reality. Still, I thought this was just at the level of selective editing and choice of focus.
In fact, reality TV is not just faker than I imagined, it's faker than I could imagine. As two-time House Hunters participant Elizabeth Newcamp writes:
The first thing you need to know is that in neither episode of House Hunters were Jeff and I actually … house hunting. One time we’d already closed on the house we “chose” in the episode; the other time we’d already lived in our house for a year.
That is, the whole show was filmed as if the couple were looking at options of houses to move into, but they were already living in one of the houses, so (obviously) everything else in the show was unbelievably fake. For example:
The part that really matters, though, is that the interpersonal elements are also, equally fake. "These shows are looking for conflict, so it’s important to be ready to fight a little with your spouse." The producers and participants collaborate on a "storyline", in this case about the wife's overwhelming need for a bathtub. "At the producers’ urging... I hopped into available tubs to try them out and lamented through entire house tours about how I would live, with three kids no less, without a bathtub."
Remember, they already have a home, that they're living in, with a bathtub.
This, of course, has actual consequences. Of course her husband got excoriated on Twitter for "not letting his pregnant wife have the house she wanted;" meanwhile, the writer "was once recognized by a lovely American couple in an airport in Budapest as the “Crazy Bathtub Lady”"
House Hunters itself maybe doesn't matter per se, but reality TV seems to significantly shape our culture, influence how people think about human relationships, and launch certain characters to superstardom. So I think it matters that it's not, in fact, real.
Whenever I see reality TV now, and feel how intensely I feel love/hate/annoyance at certain characters, I try to remember that everything I'm watching is being manipulated far beyond any degree I would have thought acceptable. This makes me kinda sad, and mad, because these people will come back to the real world and be accosted by strangers over stuff they didn't really do.
2026-05-28 19:11:23
There's a type of life event I think of as The Great Disaster.
Like most things in life it's a spectrum of sorts: some disasters are greater than others. But roughly speaking, a Great Disaster is any kind of life event that haunts you and changes you for years afterwards.
The death of a partner or (God forbid) a child is a Great Disaster without question. So is a betrayal from a partner that leaves you untrusting for years ahead. A psychotic episode, or a sexual assault, or a miscarriage of justice can be a Great Disasters in many people's lives.
Many things that are sad or bad are not great disasters. E.g. breaking a leg, or going through a hard but mutual breakup, or losing an elderly relative. These might be tragedies of the human condition, but in some way I can't explain they don't (generally) qualify as disasters, I guess because they don't pose as fundamental a question to the premise of your life.
Apologies for anyone who doesn't like to think this way, but: I sometimes idly wonder about the probability that one will face a Great Disaster in any given year.
Here's a relevant intuition: if the probability for each person to face a Great Disaster is 5% per year, then in any 20 year stretch they'll have a 64% chance of having one; in 40 years it'll be 87% chance; and in 60 years it's 95%.
I made up 5%, I don't know if it's true, but based on these longer-term figures it feels ballpark accurate to me. It seems plausible to me that a small majority of people will face a great disaster between age 20-40, and that very few people will make it through a lifetime without one.
Of course, probabilities are just probabilities, and some people will face multiple Great Disasters within a few years. I sincerely pray these people will get compensated in some way in some life to come, because otherwise it just doesn't seem fair.
Some guy I read or heard once (but alas can't find a link to right now) says that one of the great dichotomies between people is whether or not they've already faced the great disaster of their life. Often I think you can see it in people's eyes, or maybe the lines around them.
2026-05-27 19:11:58
I have long been of the opinion that we simultaneously have Too Much Stuff and also that some objects are miraculously cheap and lovely, so here are some things that have brought me joy lately. (See my previous Holiday Gift Guide for more).
Cotton bathrobe, ~$40
Maybe this is obvious, maybe everyone else knows already, but: did you know you can still just get a cozy 100% cotton bathrobe, as an adult? And you can wear it around your home, like a prince? And that it's cozier than any form of pajama or sweatpant, etc? I did not, and now I do, and am richer for it. (H/T best friend-of-the-blog T.)
I do like this particular brand of floss (Dr Tung's), which expands between your teeth and catches a satisfying amount of debris. But far more than that, I want to share the joy – after many years of not-enjoying flossing – to discover that there's various different kinds of floss, and you can buy 5 different types and try them all, and then suddenly have a floss you do like.
Hobibear Shoes, ~$45
I really like these shoes, which have wide toe boxes and flat soles and which I believe (though am not certain) are much better for your feet in the long run.
I like the whole category of "barefoot" shoe, but I like that these particular ones can go well with casual and somewhat-smart looks, and that they don't look TOO weird from the outside (although I'm sure people can tell that they're unusual by the toe box).
If you're new to barefoot shoes then I recommend phasing these in, alternating with traditional shoes every day or few, to give your feet and legs time to adjust to a lot of new mechanics.
Double-walled drinking glasses, ~$7 per tumbler
These tumblers are double-walled so they insulate both hot and cold. I like them better than mugs for hot drinks, I like being able to see what I'm drinking and how well the tea has steeped, etc. And I like them for cold drinks, they stop my hands from getting icy. So for me they replace all previous types of glass.
Triangular wooden clock, ~$15
High on my list of "it seems impossible that this product could be manufactured and sold to me at this price", though I fear a lot of suffering is involved along the way. I find this clock delightful, and you can turn the light down low to make it a very reasonable bedroom clock for those who want low light at night.
Egg Timer, ~$11
You put this fake egg in with your real eggs and it tells you when your eggs are boiled. This is in the category of everyday technological miracles that I don't think we appreciate enough, I'm grateful for the kind of world where this is possible.
(H/T Recomendo, I believe? Regardless, I recommend them if you like nice things).
p.s. I made these wide landscape images with gemini, based on the product images of course. My motivation was that I think most product images are a bad size/shape for laptop screens, but that a picture paints a thousand words in terms of figuring out if a product might be relevant for you without having to click the link. Good, bad, otherwise?, feel free to let me know.
2026-05-26 19:11:23
One thing that has bugged me for a while is when a brand goes downhill: there's a multi-year period where they can keep charging a premium based on their old reputation before the quality-lowering catches up with them.
I had an idea for a while to make a website to track such things, after several bad experiences of wasting a lot of time online trying to figure out whether positive reviews for a company were sufficiently recent to still be credible.
Anyway, it turns out someone else has already done this and made a website. I have complicated feelings about this site because I'm pretty sure that much of it is AI generated, and/but simultaneously I thiiiiiiiiiiink it's still correct? O brave new world, that has such people/entities in't. (Well: 'tis new to me).
I don't have anything deep to say about it, so this post just exists to direct you to their website. There's a funny unnameable feeling as a writer/thing-maker, where you plan to do something eventually but it feels like a chore, then you find out someone has already done it, and now you're liberated but also redundant.
Worse on Purpose
Ok, one comment actually: this person, or at least their website, seems more anti-capitalist than I am, whereas I'm closer to a cat theorist. I notice that there's a trend in family-run companies getting bought out and then becoming far less willing or able to catch mice, but I also think the world is more complicated than that – it's possible that the companies get sold because they're no longer able to produce at high quality, or that there's a salience bias in which companies we notice going downhill. Also, I suspect our time is most valuably spent on figuring out how to structure the institutions and incentives so the cats keep mousing (e.g. by siccing a bigger cat on them).
2026-05-25 19:11:24
Ok, hear me out. What if the best way to experience ideas (generally) is through conversation – hashing things out together, being inspired by other people's thoughts, reaching new thoughts that neither of you had alone?
And the entire history of aritcle-writing was a compromise for the era's technologies: we couldn't have country-spanning conversations, so one person wrote an article and then other people wrote Letters to the Editor in response, and we did our best approximation with what we had?
(I've been reading old magazines from the 30s-80s recently, and the letters pages are full of long ongoing conversations, implemented slowly. Or think about the Republic of Letters, or the Federalist Papers: long conversations carried out in essay form).
It's fun to hate on social media but: what if it has taken over because it's a closer approximation to conversation, and therefore a better way to develop ideas together?
Maybe the issue with social media is just the way it devolves into, well, strangers shouting at each other, and not having a shared trust base, and the ease with which one person (of any agenda) can hijack the whole conversation. But maybe if you build ways around that, it's actually a great way to think?
I've said before that my favourite social media is 5 person whatsapp groups, and I suspect that if I actually tracked such things a lot of my new thoughts in the last few years come out of those simmering soups.
I obviously don't mean this as absolutely as it's written – there's a different kind of deep thought that only happens when one person focuses on one thing for a long time, and then synthesises it all in one place. But still, maybe we've been letting that ideal get in the way of enabling the magic in written conversation as well.
2026-05-22 19:11:00
Some beloved friends of the blog were conversing about old units that had meaningful but flexible definitions, e.g. a 'pose' was the amount of land a farmer could plow before needing a rest. Here are my suggestions for units of time that ought to exist.
respuence:
abeguence:
saeculum:
saeculaminor: