2026-07-28 23:11:48
Last week I asked you to answer a poll question about whether you know what you want or struggle to get what you want – thanks very much to the 170+ (!) people who responded.
It's part of an idea I've had for a long time, which is: there's so many interesting things about how people think/feel/are that I don't actually know, and huge categories of questions that I feel like nobody talks about. Most of my questions are about small-ish internal social phenomena that are kind of hard to pin down, or which I assumed were True For Everyone until I brought them up with someone who felt the opposite.
So I'm making a Thing: essentially it's a weekly poll where you get one (1) question and then one (1) prediction for how other people will answer. I'm calling it People: What Are They Like?
It'll come out through atvbt but as a separate newsletter: you can subscribe or unsubscribe from each of the three newsletters (this one + the normal blogposts + the interactive online widgets) at your leisure, just click the link at the bottom of this post if you'd like to opt out.
Next week's question is here, and last week's results are below.
Let me know if you have thoughts/questions/comments of course!
Last week's question:
Thinking about your life as a whole, which of the following feels more true to you
Your prediction for other people's answers were:
What's the breakdown by people's own answer, I hear you ask? The answer is "eh": basically both sides estimated their own side was a 54% majority, where in practice the "know what I want, struggle to get it" group were a 53% majority in this sample. So that group technically predicted the outcome correctly, but I'm wondering if "my group is a slight majority" will just be a recurring feature of predictions regardless of the truth; hopefully in future I'll have better tech to analyze this kind of thing.
There were very many interesting comments, I've uploaded those (anonymously) to the post below.
One common comment I'll mention here: a few people asked for a third / other / neither option. I deliberately didn't provide one because I feel like "other" provides too easy an out, I actually wanted to see what people would answer when forced to choose which feels "more true" for them. One thing I've learned from game design is that people often want to bail early on any discomfort, and will take an out if offered, but if they're forced by the design to sit for another 10 seconds they actually make some interesting discoveries. Feel free to argue about this in the comments, or if you have ideas for how I can get the best of both, etc.
2026-07-27 19:11:05
We're in a weird place with AI now where some people are doing 1000x more with it and also 85% of people don't use it at all. I really don't know where any of youse are on this, so I don't know how useful it is for me to suggest AI things to try.
Still, in case it's useful: if you're AI-curious but not sure where to start, one suggestion I have is AskMaps on Googlemaps. AI is good at a few different things, but one of them is searching a messy and unstructured heap of data in a way that wasn't possible before. Maps is a great way to have that experience as an entry point to figuring out what AI is/isn't useful for.
For example, you can ask the AI questions like "I'm driving from Philly to Johnson City, what cool attractions are there along the way? I like quirky museums and bizarre roadside monuments". The AI will give you a shockingly good answer; I and mine have been to several awesome places this way.
You can also ask it things like "what cool events are happening near me today? I'm interested in country music and acrobatics" and it will likewise give you a surprisingly good result.
The crux here is that all this information already existed in the ether, but there was no way I could realistically sift through it previously, so I missed out on lots of events and activities I would otherwise have enjoyed. Maybe if I was on holiday I would spend 3 hours looking up things to do each day, and click through all the different web pages to find out which things are closed on Tuesdays and which special events are happening just tonight. But realistically I wasn't going to do that on Sunday morning when I'm like "I have two spare hours now, is there anything happening near me?"
Once the cost to search this messy data goes down from 3 hours of your effort to 3 mins, you unlock the ability to do things you couldn't previously. What new things are possible that weren't previously once all map and event data are meaningfully searchable?
And then: what other areas of life are like this, where a bunch of messy data existed but it wasn't practically worthwhile to search it, and now it might be?
This AskMaps trick has had a very meaningful impact on my life already, because I did literally ask it "are there any exercise classes happening near me today" and ended up with a class starting 30 mins later and a new hobby. As usual, I think it's important that while you can certainly use AI to fall into a hole of alienation from your fellow humans, it is also possible to use it to connect with other humans much better, and on an individual level that's (at least for now) a choice you can make by how you use it.
My usual caveat: if you think AI is evil, none of this applies to you! It profits a man nothing to sell his soul for all the world, so certainly not for "fun things to do next week on my roadtrip Wales." But if you don't have deontological objections and just don't know where to start with AI, here's a place to start.
2026-07-24 19:11:04
Look this is just a question I have: why does an hour of certain kinds of flexibility/stretching exercises – such as barre, yoga, pilates – make you sleepy?
Obviously strenuous exercise (like running a marathon) can make you tired, but this is different – if you play it right I think you can get this sleep-inducing effect without even breaking a sweat, and it's very specifically sleepy/drowsy rather than exhausted-from-exertion.
It really feels like it's tied to the stretching or movement, somehow. I think I have this experience more often when I go to a new class after a while and have that "wow we are stretching muscles I had forgotten existed" feeling, though there's so many things going on there that I might well be misunderstanding.
I'm pretty sure I've only had this experience in group classes? Which is probably just because I push myself harder there than when practicing things alone, but you could come up with other stories about the social element I suppose.
Mythopoetically it really does feel like there are certain sensations trapped in our joints?fascia?lymphnodes?nerves, and that if you stretch and move in a novel way you can crack open a trapped tube of sleep-hormones and release it all at once, like turning your pants upside down and having a bunch of coins fall out of tiny side-pocket.
I have asked various people about this over the years, and some of those people have had theories, but I don't get the sense that there's a known answer to this. So if you have an answer, or a barmy speculation, please do let me know.
2026-07-22 19:11:16
There's basically various ratios at which someone else can trade their wellbeing for you own.
There are people who seemingly care ~0 about your wellbeing, only their own; they would happily steal your $1000 suit to use as a floor rag, because the 0.1 units of value they get from that is worth more to them than the 1000 units of value you lose by losing it.
There are other people who are too self-sacrificing: you ask if they have a kleenex and they give you their silk tie. I'm not sure why but this is also very bothersome, to me at least.
I'm totally speculating here but maybe the common amount is for people to care about themselves about ~2x as much as the people around them. These are the people who will cut ahead of you in line (or something) – the benefit they get from that is 1:1 with the benefit lost by everyone else combined – but they wouldn't steal your sentimental watch.
I suspect the most charming conversion rate that someone can use is roughly one-to-one: they basically consider your well-being as much as they consider their own, but not more. I'm not sure that's true, but intuitively it feels true.
2026-07-21 19:11:10
If you're enjoying the blog, I'd be grateful if you'd answer this question I have about how people experience the world, and then predict how other people will answer the question.
All will be revealed soon-ish, promise.
2026-07-20 19:11:19
I have no affiliation with The Original Korcci Microwaveable Silicone Popcorn Popper, No Oil Required, Use In Microwave, Dishwasher Safe (Blue). I say this not as a disclosure, but as a lament. Oh, how I wish my name might share glory with this vessel of silicone and spirit! A good name is better than good oil, says the preacher, but this popcorn doesn't require oil, and therefore its macros are impeccable.
I got the idea of eating more popcorn from a twitter post about some hot old-time actor, I think it was Robert Redford, and how he ate tons of popcorn because it's very filling without being calorific. I just looked it up and apparently there was an entire Popcorn Diet in the 80s, so it's not just him. Look, I don't think you should replace all your meals with popcorn but if you're comparing it with e.g. commercial breakfast cereal there's really no competition:
I do really enjoy how the fiber in popcorn is, you know, experientially integral to the food itself: when you eat fiber-fortified cereals it's somehow obvious that the fiber was isolated from one source and pressed into another, but with popcorn it's like, yeah!, I just ate a piece of hull.
One thing I find kind-of-funny, kind-of-sad is how what we even think to do is constrained by social mores. "I eat popcorn for breakfast" is a weird sentence, I feel weird even typing it, I don't blame you for judging me. And yet "I eat rice krispies for breakfast" is a completely normal sentence that a respectable bourgeois citizen could utter without remorse and yet WHAT IS A RICE KRISPIE MY FRIEND? We do not own ourselves.
Did you know you can pop other grains in your Korcci Oil-Free Microwave Popcorn Popper? Apparently you can pop amaranth, and quinoa, and sorghum, among others. I will try these and report back.