2026-04-10 19:11:44
Many thanks to all of you who kindly responded to my survey earlier this week about communities. Here were the questions:
(An early version of the survey failed to include "no communities", sorry for those who responded early).
The motivation for this survey was a thought that's chased me around for years, namely: In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson claims that newspapers created national identity.[^1]
Specifically, the development of print capitalism meant that suddenly people across the country were reading the same words over their tea and coffee in the morning, and (per Anderson) this massive shared ritual created a sense of kinship across millions of people who would never actually meet each other, therefore creating the modern sense of a nation: an imagined community, because most of the members are strangers, but no less real for being constructed.[^2]
If you've existed in the modern discourse sphere over the last 20 years, you've possibly already had the same thought I did: if newspapers are dying, and (supposedly) we each exist in our own social media echo chamber, do we still have that imagined community? Does Anderson's model provide a framework for the fracture of our polities: we stopped reading the same newspapers over breakfast, so we stopped feeling kinship with our fellow citizens?
Of course, you may also have had the thought "wait weren't there multiple competing newspapers, often aligned with different ideologies" and also "when Anderson talks about this imagined community, was he actually just talking about property owning men of the time, really?", two valid questions which Anderson may or may not answer in the book, it's been a really long time since I read it and I don't remember, sorry.
Also, thinking about it, it's not obvious if the implication of going from "each country reads its own newspapers" to "everyone in the world is using five giant websites filled with screenshots of each other" would lead to more fragmentation, rather than less.[^3] Couldn't Twitter in theory bring everyone together, since we're all reading the same platform every day?
Anyhow. I don't actually have a thesis, but I can at least bring you the results of my survey; here's the types of communities ATVBT readers [^4] feel meaningfully a part of:
My main note is that "political/ideological community" has the most votes. Which doesn't really surprise me, because in my circles I would guess some form of political alignment is the strongly-held identity I most commonly encounter.
Here are some selected quotes of what you all had to say about your communities. I made the survey anonymous so everyone could feel at ease, but if you want to follow up by email please do, I would love to hear more about so many of these responses. I don't have any theories from them, but if you do please do throw down in the comments....
People who care about internal experience in a similar way to how I do
My "other" includes two others:
1. Community of visual artists in my local community and also stretching back through history.
2. Community of people with neurodivergence and learning disabilities.
alas, it is effective altruism
Odd that class is missing. Is it too gauche to admit it? Yes, but this is anonymous so: I (unironically) identify with rootless semi-neoliberal globalists.
Separately, I also feel kinship with people trained in quantitative methods (e.g. economists, engineers, physicists). Quants vs non-quants is an under-appreciated cultural divide. I am not a STEMlord*; it just functions like the options above in that we see the world in similar ways. * I am especially not a “rationalist.” They’re mostly quant cosplayers.
I feel kinship toward the Jewish community even though I don’t practice the religion as a result. It’s more a cultural kinship than religious.
I feel a kinship with people from my home state (CT), I think mostly because I don’t live anywhere near it anymore so it’s rare to meet someone else from there. Almost like being an expat.
I also feel kinship toward supporters of some sports teams I support (go Mets!), possibly for similar expat-esque reasons.
It seems to be when I’m in a minority, I feel more kinship with people in that minority with me.
A sober community (alcohol free, other than AA)
Community of literature lovers
Brown Women
Hate to say it but financial or work peer group is also my community because we have the same or similar lived experiences in the past 10-20 years
Well, to be honest, none of the above or any other not in this list! And it’s taken a ton of careful effort to get to this point.
[^1]: Assume all my claims about what Anderson does or doesn't say are kinda rough, it's been 15 years since I read the book. I tried to re-read it in order to write this post, actually about a year ago, and kept failing to do it for so long that I've given up and just decided to write this without re-reading him, sorry.
[^2]: not to get political on you, but one of his claims (as I recall it) is that many national conflicts involve people saying "the other side's national identity is imaginary, and therefore not real!", and Anderson's points are a) just because it's imagined doesn't make it fake, and b) your side's national identity is also imagined in the same way, you just don't realize it. [Of course, I'm sure he wasn't talking about YOUR national conflict!]
[^3]: I do greatly enjoy the "five giant websites filled with screenshots of each other" quote (h/t someone called Tom Eastman, apparently), and think of it often, but I also want to point out that it's not true: this is just the Western/American-sphere internet, and there are at least 2 other parallel ecosystems in the Russosphere and the Sinosphere where they use a different set of websites.
[^4]: or at least, those who filled out the survey, which was about 2/3 of those who clicked the link. Goes without saying that "readers of this blog" is not a representative sample of anything, but, you know what they say, you go to survey with the sample you have.
2026-04-09 19:11:52
Sometimes my life feels like a marble going down a run.
Mostly I am just rolling, rolling onwards. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower; sometimes the angle is steep and I build up momentum, feeling the wind in my marbley hair; sometimes it's so near-flat that I'm barely moving forward.
At the moments of stagnation I fight to propel myself (or so it feels) to the next part where the path gets steep again and I can build some momentum, because I'm some kind of magic marble that can direct itself sometimes, when it gathers all its energies, even if mostly it just goes with the flow.
A handful of times in my life I've mustered all my energies and tried to jump the run entirely, tried to cross into another life.
Is that possible? I'm not sure. So far it's never quite worked – I've always fallen back into the person I was before.
Which, to be clear, is an extremely fortunate marble; if this is my run I'm grateful for it. I just wish I understood if it's possible to choose your own path, at all, or if you're just meant to relax and enjoy the ride.
2026-04-08 19:29:09
I basically believe that humans find most pains and inconveniences more tolerable if they understand why they're happening, and (conversely) that one of the cruelties of the modern world is big institutions not-telling us why things are happening.
For example, calling tech support for most big companies involves a variety of humiliations and aggravations, but one of the big ones is that a customer asking "ok but why did you do this thing?" is so often met with "I understand your frustration and apologize for any inconvenience" or some other non-answer to the basic question.
(I actually want to positively commend Amazon here – for whatever other flaws they have, it's normally possible to reach a human there and when you ask why are you doing this? they'll give you an answer that makes you go hmm, ok, I feel like this could be done better, but at least it's not totally capricious).
I feel this a lot with apartments and other buildings, where I have to live with the consequences of some unknown previous constraints and simply do not understand why. Why is this electrical outlet placed in a spot where you can't actually reach it? Why does this apartment have a random additional wall cutting an otherwise well-sized room into a smaller room and an unnecessary corridor? Why does this otherwise-nice building have hollow metal doors that feel like they belong in a fallout shelter?
There are probably always reasons for these things, either structural or financial or regulatory, and it would be so much easier to live with the weirdness if I knew why it was like this. Relative to the thousands of hours that developers spend on the building, an hour or two to write a Letter To Future Tenants is nothing. When I rent a new apartment, alongside the keys could be a letter from the architect saying "I wanted to put the window at a normal height of course, rather than have it start 1 ft off the ground. But there's actually a regulation that each room must get at least 1.5 hours of sunlight at noon on the day of the equinox, and given the orientation of the building the only way to achieve that was to give you this crazy low-slung window which you can't easily look out of but where the neighbours can see you naked from your knees to your chest. Sorry!"
I fear that in a litigious society this can never happen: providing any kind of explanation for anything gives someone an opening to challenge that explanation, and probably just saying "it is what it is" is always safer. This is why interacting with bureaucracies is like trying to climb a smooth wall with no handholds, and I guess it makes sense but it also drives me nuts. (See! At least it's an explanation).
2026-04-06 19:43:17
Recently I went to a convention in a mid-sized city which relies heavily on tourism (from conventions and other events). I was in a cafe eavesdropping on a couple of locals who were clearly in the business, discussing the drop in revenue in the last couples years. "I think we gouged a little too hard," said one to the other.
From my brief experience of the place, this seemed evidently true – the only surprise was to hear someone saying it. At the convention center, no external food was allowed, pizza slices cost $8 and bottles of water were $5. I am truly fine with being gouged a little at a convention, it feels like it's part of the experience, but this felt indecent.
It's generally risky to have opinions about other people's business practices, because they both 1) have a lot more data than I do, and 2) have a much better incentive to get things right. So it's possible that they're making the correct decisions to maximize their profits, which (as local monopolists) inevitably does not align with my interests as a consumer. But I often get the feeling that businesses are miscalculating the long-term impacts of their gouging: overcharging people might maximize your profit-per-customer in the short term, but if you scare away your customers then in the long term it's not worth it.
For example, I often have this suspicion about the rampant inflation in default tips on the little screens at checkouts these days. One barbershop I went to offered default tip options of like 30%, 40% and 50%. I will never go back there, literally because the tip-screen felt so inflated that I just don't want to deal with them any more. And I think this might be where the errors creep in: the proprieters get very good data from their software on how much profit-per-customer has increased thanks to these tip defaults, since most people are too polite or awkward to enter a custom tip amount lower than the options presented on their screen.
But the system doesn't (and can't) give them data on how many customers don't return because the pricing feel exploitative. There is something about it that goes beyond the money and into a primal instinct about justice and fairness, the kind of thing that makes undergrads participating in behavioral economics experiments reject a non-zero payout just because it feels like the other party is being a dick.
There's plenty of other businesses that, from the outside, seem to be overgouging. I've heard it said about movie theaters, that ticket prices are high enough that young people don't get into movie-going, and while this might be profit-maximising for the cinemas in the short term, it's going to cause their ruin in the long run. (I've also heard it about Hollywood, as a film-shoot location: they have so many unnecessary costs and obstacles to shooting films there that they strangled the golden goose).
You might argue that this is a tragedy of the commons, in that the separate theater companies are profit-maximising in the short term and nobody has an incentive to look after the long-term health of the industry. But I've also heard this claim about Disneyland – tickets are no longer affordable for families, which means that Disney makes more money in the short term through affluent childless adults, but might be eating their own seedcorn when the next generation no longer cares about Disneyland-going. And Disneyland seems like a sufficiently unique, market-power-having and long-term planning institution that they ought to be able to strategize for the long-term.
Again, these businesses all have more incentive and more information than I do, so maybe they're indeed doing what's best for them and it's just not best for me. But I suspect that like the people I overheard in the mid-sized convention city, they will eventually come to the realization that they gouged too much, and should have gouged more modestly.
2026-04-06 14:04:26
First, let’s get this out of the way: Umami is not a vibe; it’s one of the 5 fundamental tastes, triggered by specific compounds indicating the presence of protein.
This is a guide to integrating those compounds into your cooking. Think of it as something extremely concrete, like salt or sugar, not abstract like “presentation” or “mouthfeel”.
You should umami your food for the same reason you should season it; mammals like it, so it will just taste better.
The second reason, though, is that Westerners tend to chronically under-neglect this, so there are probably extremely low-hanging fruits to improve your cooking both absolutely and relative to those around you.
The easiest way to umami stuff is just to add MSG (and yes, this is perfectly safe). As a rule of thumb, put about 1/3 as much as you would salt. Do the final salting after adding the MSG, as it already contains some sodium and can also independently increase the perception of saltiness.
Like all cooking, taste and adjust as needed.
You can add MSG directly to any liquid, like soups, sauces, and stews, but it has a weird texture, so you’ll need to dissolve it in something first in other cases.
MSG really improves eggs, for scrambled or an omelet, add it when beating the eggs. For fried eggs, sprinkle some on the eggs immediately after adding them to the pan when the top is still liquid, so it can dissolve.
It is also my secret ingredient for salads that will make people wonder how this salad is so much better than every other one they’ve ever had. Add it to the dressing and apply just before serving.
Meats are generally Umami enough already, so don’t add it to a steak, hamburger, roast chicken, etc. However, fake meats really need it and improve enormously with some MSG. Again, apply before cooking so there is some moisture for the MSG to dissolve to avoid its otherwise crystalline texture.
The nice thing about MSG is that you can control exactly how much umami you’re adding, but not bring any other flavors along.
That said, various foods already bring umami, so how much MSG to add will depend on the existing level. Again, as with all cooking, taste as you add!
Most cuisines have at least one ingredient that contributes to umami, so if adding MSG, consider how much other ingredients already contribute. If you can’t or won’t use MSG, these are the ingredients you’ll use to get it:
There are more, but these are the most common. As a general rule, any fermented protein exists specifically to add Umami.
Umami isn’t fuzzy chemically (it’s glutamates and related amino acids), but I admit it can be fuzzy experientially.
To home in on the experience, when tasting a food, first notice the upfront flavors and basic tastes, such as acid and sweetness. After these have passed, wait for a sense of fullness or satisfaction. That's the Umami.
It can be hard to recognize at first, so try experimenting by taking a spoonful of something savory but without umami ingredients (say, a lentil soup), then add some MSG and taste it again. The new and different will be the umami.
When learning to recognize this, use MSG because other ingredients will confound the experience with added flavors or salt.
That's it! You've learned the second-easiest cooking hack out there!
(The first is to use enough salt. You're welcome.)
2026-04-03 19:36:01
One thing I've wondered about basically since college, where I struggled to memorize the required quantity of Stuff, is whether there are better ways to memorize Stuff. I have tried spaced repetition software like Anki, and my sense is that it works if you can bring yourself to do it, but I am unable to bring myself to do it, and therefore for me it doesn't work.
But since we have recently (?) entered (??) a brave new world (???) where LLMs can just make you all kinds of creative (????) product on demand, I decided to ask my friendly local language model to write me some songs. First: US states by average income
Second: some important equations from physics
Third: the poem Design by Robert Frost, which I have long loved but struggled to remember
I am not a good prompter, neither a good educationalist, so I'm not convinced I'm prompting this model very well nor that I have the right sense of what the ideal type of song for memorization would look like. If you have better ideas, please let me know.
p.s. some pre-llm prior art: