2026-01-19 19:04:50

I often feel that I've changed so much over the years that I'm not really "the same person" in a meaningful sense as I was even two years ago, let alone ten or more.

However, something really lovely that's happened to me multiple times over the years is reconnecting with very old friends who I'd completely lost touch with, and finding that we get along really well (again).

Since some of those friends also say they feel like "a different person" from who they were when we met, there's actually something weird about this.

There's a couple of "easy" explanations:

1) We haven't changed nearly as much as we think we have, so basically it's the same two people being friends again and there's no big mystery;

2) We've changed a lot but there's some unshakeable "core" to each of us that made us friends then, and makes us friends now.

3) Actually it's selection bias – while I haven't seen these old friends in X years, I only end up re-meeting with a non-representative subset who are unusually likely to be the sort of people I like spending time with now. (And if I re-meet someone and we no longer get along, they drop back out of my life and don't seem as salient).

All of these might be part of the truth, but I have a fourth explanation that I find much more interesting:

4) a large part of friendship is "expectation of friendship" – if you're confident someone likes you, and is going to act friend-ly towards yo, then you'll be more open and vulnerable and supportive with them... which will make them more likely to like you, and more likely to be your friend. Meeting up with a very old friend gets you both started at a really positive equilibrium and your new friendship becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, even if you've both changed so much that it's like two new people having a whole new relationship.

[editorial note: this post is self-plagiarized from something I wrote ten years ago, as a few of my posts here are – in this case it seems relevant that I still identify with it!]

2026-01-16 20:34:36

Here's a mini life-tip: when someone does something that bothers you, and then they say "sorry" / "I hope that's ok" / whatever, TELL THEM IT BOTHERS YOU BUT IT IS OK.

e.g. if they're late and that bothers you, when they say "sorry I'm late," you gotta say "thanks, I appreciate the apology" rather than "no problem".

Telling people "no problem" is training them that it's not a problem, and honestly there are many things in this world that bother some people a lot and genuinely don't-bother others at all, so in many contexts it's reasonable for people to interpret you saying "that's fine" as meaning that you are one of the people for whom it is fine, and then do the thing again in future.

It is difficult to successfully convey "yes I dislike the thing you just did, but it's not the biggest thing in the world, it's ultimately fine just not ideal" – I don't have a good phrasing for this, which is probably why people say "no problem." But you gotta convey that you were bothered but forgive them, rather than there wasn't a problem in the first place, if you want things to change.

Why don't dogs catch colds more?

They're constantly sticking their faces into other dogs' faces, surely their germ-transfer level should be similar to toddlers'?

Or do dogs catch tons of colds, and I'm just not aware of it?

Can the people who make labels and the people who make rules about labelling please come together to label psychoactive products better?

We can argue about whether the legalization of marijuana has been good or bad or mixed overall, but it should NOT be possible to accidentally drink a THC soda while thinking it's just a regular soda, this is bananas.

It should also not require 10 minutes of careful label-reading at a store to figure out whether a beer is 1) non-alcoholic, 2) non-alcoholic but yes-THC, 3) yes-alcoholic, no-THC, actually just a regular beer, but weirdly placed in the non-alcoholic section with a name that contains Zero.

Also, THIS RULE INCLUDES ASHWAGANDA AND WORMWOOD and whatever other legal substances they're putting in psychotropic drinks now. I don't even know which one of these things #$%s me up so much, because the drinks all contain 17 different psychoactives and I don't have the patience to test them individually, but it's a meaningful amount of #$%ed up, and (again) this really shouldn't be something people can stumble into unawares. Thank you.

2026-01-14 19:43:30

Imagine you have a university which tenures 1 new professor every year. Professors each stay for about 60 years before retiring, so at any given time you have about 60 tenured professors.

For as long as anyone remembers, the university has been systematically biased towards Big Endians (being, of course, people who break their boiled eggs at the big end) and systematically biased against Little Endians (who break their boiled eggs at the little end), such that 90% of professors are Big Endians.

Recently there has been a moral revolution, and it's been agreed that Little Endians (who are half the population, after all, and hold up half the yolk) clearly ought to have equal representation in positions of power and prestige. In an attempt to accomplish this, Little Endians are preferentially hired for the next few decades until the professoriate is split 50-50.

What happens next?

Well, the younger half of the professoriate is now overwhelmingly Little Endian. If you now switch to alternating Big and Little Endians among your new hires, 30 years from now you'll have 75% Little Endians and only 25% Big. It will take another 30 years again to achieve equality – that's 90 years since we started the attempt.

Can you get to sustainable equality faster? Sure you can: instead of redressing the historic injustice by tipping the scales in favor of Little Endians, you can just switch from 90/10 to 50/50 from the moment the revolution starts. But this has two major problems: you'll continue having massive (although diminishing) over-representation of Big Endians for decades, and it'll still take over fifty years to achieve equality.

What are the alternatives?

You could hire only Little Endians for 30 years, then only Big Endians for 30 years, and then alternate going forward. That would give you 50/50 splits after 60 years, but leave a lot of unhappy and unlucky wannabe professors who happened to be born in the wrong few decades each time.

You could speed up the turnover by term-limiting the professors instead of giving them lifetime tenure – if tenure only lasted 20 years, you could get to equality within 20 years.

You could fire ALL your professors and start over at 50/50 immediately.

Or (more gently) a bunch of the older Big Endians could nobly retire early and have their positions filled by Little Endians, which weirdly rarely seems to happen even among Big Endians who passionately support Little Endian equality.

As far as I can tell that's the entirety of your options, given the constraints. You can like these outcomes or dislike these outcomes, there's no claim here about what's good/bad/fair/otherwise, but just mathematically I think this is the option-set: it takes a generation to replace a generation.

2026-01-12 19:06:49

Here's a few complaints you could make about modern schooling, which basically come down to the reward structure of essays, exams and projects not-matching-well with the reward structure of the modern white-collar economy:

• results are capped, not-matching the real world environments where a single win can pay for 99 losses.
• projects are largely fixed, rather than the student deciding what is ultimately worth working on
• your results often depend on impressing one fixed person (the teacher or examiner), rather than getting a small % of a large population to buy what you're selling.

There's a few things to say about this.

• The meta-reward structure of schooling looks a lot more like the winner-takes-most tournaments of white collar profession: the real game is not getting an A on your papers, it's getting into an elite university, and that's an extremely competitive tournament with uncapped rewards, your own choice of extra-curricular projects, and at least several somewhat-heterogeneous judges who can come to different conclusions.
• Maybe not that many white collar professionals are actually in the Make Something Many People Want game? Maybe most are actually in the Impress One Powerful Person game? Not just within corporations, where it's possible to succeed while creating 0 (or negative) value, so long as the right higher-up likes you; even startups can succeed in some sense without making something customers want so long as the right investor likes them a lot.
• Another is that these complaints about the reward-system depend a lot about where you are in the white collar economy. If you're a low-level worker at a big anonymous company, maybe your life is a lot more analogous to the standard schooling reward system. I am far too lazy to find the citations for this but there's some kind of link between modern schools, armies, and large organizations, where obedience and hierarchy are the ultimate goals. The complaints you hear about the incentive system of schools is coming from people who actually lead extremely anomalous lives.

There are actually a bunch of childhood activities that are more analogous to the reward structure of modern tournament professions: things like sport, music and debate. Some of these (likes sports) are judgeless and objective, whereas others (like music and debate) still have the issue of being judged by individuals rather than a market where you only need a few true fans.

2026-01-09 19:57:59

Please find below some letters of invention from ATVBT Readers, inspired by a Scientific American edition from 1854. ALL LETTERS HAVE BEEN HEAVILY REWRITTEN FOR MY AMUSEMENT, do not blame the authors. Yours v aff, Uri Bram, Editor, Scientific Atomsvsbitian.

SIRS--

All the discussions on whether AI use is moral has got me thinking about situations where we could argue AI use is the most morally justifiable.

Videlicet: AI should be used to replace child actors.

1. Child actors are well known to go off the rails later in life, very likely due to the fame and pressure that children should not be experiencing.

2. Child actors aren't renowned for their acting ability, so being replaced by AI won't be a big loss.

I am, have been, and shall continue to be,

Sir James Nicholls, Wolverhamptonshire

SIRS--

Whereas people regularly encounter situations where they need to share something;

and whereas that Thing cannot always be physically split into equal pieces;

and whereas a perfect substitute is to determine the thing’s value, and share that equally, such that one person gets the Thing and pays everyone else for their share of the thing’s value;

Therefore, permit us to share our most marvelous invention, thus being https://tinylvt.com, a structured way to share Things with People.

Examples of things to share include, but are not limited to:
- the exclusive use of a common area
- a nicer bedroom
- the right to decide which movie to watch on behalf of a group
- Lincolnshire

Yours humbly,

The Ten Log Ten Society, High Warbledon

SIRS--

Should there not be a button that can be stuck on or screwed into the wall or countertop that, when pressed, will cause one's cell phone to beep (regardless of whether it's on silent, etc)?

Said button must be securely attached so that it cannot be moved, and (therefore) cannot be lost: my very own FitBit had a much-used feature that caused my cell phone to beep. I loved that feature, but I hated wearing a FitBit. Therefore, I sometimes now charge my old FitBit just to find my phone.

Inquiring minds wish to know--why does such Button not already exist? Does Apple not allow its development? Or do people lose things less frequently than I do?

I beg to remain, etc, etc,

Lady Morganstern.

2026-01-07 13:12:54

A known financial mistake to be penny-wise, but pound-foolish, that is to say frugal and discerning with small expenses but spendthrift on the big ones.

You might think it's therefore best to be penny-wise, pound-wise, and that could be what's best for your bank account, but it's an austere and joyless way to live for many of us.

I'd argue the most pleasant quadrant is actually penny-foolish, pound-wise. Being penny-foolish lets us benefit from our misplaced intuition to overvalue small immediate gains while still enjoying pound-wise financial security.^[1]

Blogs are filled with guides on pound-wisdom, which may go in a later post if you want my specific take.

So here's my guide to penny-foolishnesss, though a word of warning: ensure you're indeed pound-wise when doing this, lest you end up in the dreaded penny-foolish, pound-foolish quadrant!^[2]

1) Still enjoy coffee

A general heuristic could be to invert all out-of-touch financial advice, like "don't get avocado toast or coffee". These things often don't add up to much, but still feel expensive, perhaps even more so because of the scolding.

If you're really buying $5 coffees daily, get a drink subscription for typically $50/month or less from Pret, Panera, or oftentimes your local indie coffee shop (if you're the discerning type).

In fact, I don’t even usually drink coffee, but when I lived in London, I still got the Pret subscription and drank decaf. The immense feeling of luxury from having free (i.e., sunk-cost) coffee clubs across the city made it one of my best-ever lifestyle purchases (and I wouldn't shut up about it).

2) Buy the “nice” version of things

This can be a generally good financial habit, since these items often last longer and are more repairable, but in some cases, the ROI is unclear. Rather than deliberating, for smallish purchases, just go for it. Even if the item doesn't pay for itself, you get to enjoy higher quality the entire time, and the expense amortizes over a long time/many uses.

Examples: Nice leather shoes, Japanese nail clippers, good bedsheets. Some even include lifetime warranties: Darn Tough socks, Osprey bags.

Yes, sometimes you’ll buy “nice” things, and they’ll turn out not worth it, but that’s the whole point! You get the luxury of doing this and not really caring because it doesn’t add up to much.

3) Follow the “Magic of Tidying Up”

For clothes specifically, try to shoot for a small number of high-quality items you like and actually wear.

You can do this by making your closet a Move-to-Front self-organizing list: Whenever you return an item after laundering/wearing, put it back on one side of your wardrobe. Over time, all the regularly worn clothes will find themselves on one side and the less-used ones on the other. Then try to improve the types you wear and donate the others.

4) Get nice consumables

I use this toothpaste (with nano-hydroxyapatite) and Korean sunscreen that doesn’t burn if it gets in your eyes. Consumables have the benefit of being variable-cost (i.e., you pay for how much you use), so the buy-but-don’t-use scenario is capped.

5) Good produce (i.e., fruit, veg, nuts)

This, like the toothpaste, might be more like a health investment than a frivolous luxury, but even if it weren’t, the small cost would be worth the quality. When I say high-quality, I'm talking about stuff you’re more likely to eat rather than some comparative nutritiousness, as that probably dominates the health effects anyway.

If you want good produce and a good deal, ethnic stores/markets (in the US, usually Asian or Latin American) tend to offer the best combination.  Have an LLM help you pick out the good wares if you’re unfamiliar.

6) Discard stuff, knowing you can buy it again

If it's cheap, you can have another delivered to you in 48 hours. Yes, even stuff I possibly just misplaced, I sometimes buy again rather than continue looking for it.

This probably looks wasteful and consumerist, but consumer goods just aren't very carbon-intensive, at only ~0.167 kg CO2/$, while for example a flight is nearly 6x as much at ~0.976 kg CO2/$. A lifetime of wasteful small consumer purchases still likely releases less carbon than a few long-haul flights. Also, as shown below, you can easily mitigate the impact through donations:

7) Donate, rather than sell

Usually, you never actually get around to selling small stuff, and even if you do, arranging the transaction is a headache. Accept penny-foolishness and donate it. Donating used to be a chore, but with apps like Olio, you can more or less order a free pickup like it's Uber Eats. The app is strongly incentivized to prioritize donors over donatees, so the karma system enables donations at your total convenience.

8) Buy multiples of stuff you like

Multiples of stuff will really instill that feeling of mass-produced abundance in your bones.

• Toiletries for your travel bag
• Clothes you like: buy multiples for when they are in the laundry, wear out, the same thing in various colors, etc.
• Items for your not-too-expensive hobbies. E.g.: I have meditation cushions pretty much everywhere I visit, periodically, i.e., home, office, parents’ house, etc.
• For favored consumables with a long shelf life, buy them in bulk to instill a sense of limitless abundance. E.g: I buy Lao Gan Ma in 6-packs.

10) Find small instant-buys

• If it occurs to me that I may read a book, I immediately buy it (digital versions are particularly good for this, as they are cheaper and don't add to clutter).
• Single-payment mobile apps (i.e., not a subscription or DLC). The Apple App Store initially anchored consumers to a ridiculously low price for mobile software, and today you can still buy apps for single-digit prices.

11) Accept one-off ridiculous luxuries 

Occasionally, I'll buy something that seems ridiculous as a temporary item, but is still worth it for the temporary lifestyle upgrade.

• Once, when at a sublet without one, I bought a countertop dishwasher and just let the landlord keep it at the end. Seems crazy, but they are available for <$200, and dishwashers are far more environmentally-friendly than hand-washing.
• Similarly, I ordered a full-sized thermal printer, which I later similarly gave away. They are very compact, come with special paper, don't use ink, and at ~$50 are better than trying to find a library or print shop on those few occasions when you really need a printer.

12) Keep buffer money in your low-yield account

I know you're always supposed to have your money maximally work for you, but having some extra cash as a buffer removes the stress of worrying about specific balances at a low risk-adjusted cost. You'll have to know yourself here, as you could be tempted to spend this immediately; it might require a separate, annoying-to-access account.

Put a dollar value on your time

One of the most valuable perspectives in all this, and one that may even net you out ahead if done well, is to put a numerical value on your time.

If you are salaried, divide your salary by 2000 to get a rough estimate of your hourly rate, e.g. $70,000/year = $35/hour.

However, many time-use surveys show that workers spend a minority of their time on job duties, with only 39% being a typical figure. When you also consider the all-in cost for employees (i.e., benefits) as ~1.3x salary, the above figure could be ~3x too small!

So if your productive time is worth $100+/hour, go ahead and buy that dishwasher.