Jeff KaufmanModify

2025-01-19 21:00:00

Before our oldest went lactovegetarian I used to make eggy crepes, boosting protein by adjusting the recipe to maximize egg content without giving up crepe flavor and texture. With our youngest, however, I have now (by this metric) the optimal crepe:

Ingredient:

• One egg, beaten

I had been making crepes for Anna and lactovegetarian crepes (milk, flour, flax) for Lily. I would ask Nora what she wanted, and she preferred Anna-style. "Eggy eggy eggy!" I started asking if she would like them more eggy, and she was very enthusiastic. Over time I reduced the non-egg ingredients until it was entirely egg, and she continued to be a fan. It initially surprising to me that Nora wanted to go all the way in this direction, but since sweet omelettes are a thing it probably shouldn't have been.

She usually eats them with nutella and raspberry sauce, and sometimes whipped cream.

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2025-01-18 21:00:00

In general, you're not supposed to wear a beard with a respirator mask (N95, P100, etc), at least not in a way where you have facial hair under the seal:

But how much worse is the fit? A P100 with a beard is going to filter less well than a P100 without a beard, but does it do as well as an N95? Or is it hopelessly compromised? And is stubble as bad as a full beard? Does length matter? In an emergency where I really need my mask for protection should I shave?

Bottom line up front: with my rough DIY test setup I got 80% filtration with a long beard, 92% with a short one, and 99.7% with stubble. But see my note at the end about a weird effect I saw.

What was my test setup? The goal is to measure the difference between filtered and unfiltered air. I have a Temtop M2000 meter, which I'd bought to measure air quality for testing my ceiling fan air purifier idea, so I can use that as a sensor. Burning matches is still a fine way of putting enough smoke in the air that I can see differences. And then I can measure the effect of the mask by measuring at my 3M HF-802SD elastomeric respirator's exhale valve, with the meter in a bag, and seeing how smoky it is (pm2.5). With the filter cartridges inserted I can measure the effect of the mask, while with them removed I'm measuring essentially no filtration. The ratio of particles with vs without the filters is my filtration efficacy.

This isn't perfect:

• My lungs or the the non-filter parts of the mask might be doing some filtration.

• My seal with the bag might not be 100%.

• The bag needs to be unsealed to let air out, or it will burst. But maybe this also lets a little smoky air in.

All of these are off in the same direction, however: my measurement is likely to be a lower bound in filtration efficacy.

To actually build this I made a small hole in a gallon ziplock, and attached it around the vent of my elastomeric respirator. The first time I did this I used packing tape, which didn't work very well and kept coming loose:

I did it again with duct tape:

I made sure to get a good seal all the way around:

Then I realized I wanted to test this with a pretty long beard to start, so put this on hold for a month while growing out my beard. I got to maybe 1 1/4":

Here's it combed to show the full length, though for all these tests I had it flat against my face.

I put on the mask, put the meter in the bag, and the bag started to inflate:

The mask has a fit test button, which blocks the inhalation valve: if you can still breathe in with it pressed you know air is making its way under the seal. I didn't feel much air coming in, but I did feel some.

I took a series of measurements, alternating filter status. Qualitatively, each time I put the filters in/out it immediately changed whether I could smell smoke.

Since I expected the level of smoke in the room to slowly drop over time, doing interleaved measurements was quite important.

With a full beard, it looks like the mask cut pm2.5 from 263.9 to 50.6 (-79%), and pm10 from 404.2 to 75.5 (-81%).

Then I trimmed my beard with a bead trimmer set to 3/8":

This is where I normally trim by beard to:

I tried combing it out, but at this length it doesn't do anything:

I made more smoke and repeated the measurements:

This time the filters brought pm2.5 from 317.4 to 24.0 (-92%) and pm10 from 504.4 to 36.3 (-93%).

Then I used the shaver with no guard to remove as much of my beard as I could, getting down to maybe 1/32" stubble:

And from the front:

More measurements:

The filters now took pm2.5 from 334.8 to 0.9 (-99.7%), and pm10 from 539.1 to 1.2 (-99.8%). This is great!

Additionally, when I tried the fit test button I now couldn't breathe in at all, which actually felt a bit terrifying.

Overall I'm pretty happy with these results, except for one wrinkle: the meter reliably read a higher number when measuring my exhalant than it did in the ambient air. How could that be?

I tried a few more tests:

• Putting the meter in the bag and not blowing in: same as ambient, then slowly decreasing (probably particles settling?). It never plateaued, just kept going down slowly.

• Breathing directly into the bag with no mask: elevated from ambient

• Using an air mattress pump to inflate the bag: elevated from ambient

• Repeating my test in a room with minimal smoke: probably same results but harder to tell because the numbers were small.

Here are the numbers from what I think is the clearest test, using the pump to inflate the bag:

I don't know where this is coming from, but possibly it's due to pressure? I suspect that whatever the effect is it's a scalar effect, and so is compatible with interpreting filtration ratios, but I don't know for sure.

This was also the first time my kids had seen me without a beard:

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2025-01-17 21:00:00

In the aftermath of a disaster, there is usually a large shift in what people need, what is available, or both. For example, people normally don't use very much ice, but after a hurricane or other disaster that knocks out power, suddenly (a) lots of people want ice and (b) ice production is more difficult. Since people really don't want their food going bad, and they're willing to pay a lot to avoid that, In a world of pure economics, sellers would raise prices.

This can have serious benefits:

• Increased supply: at higher prices it's worth running production facilities at higher output. It's even worth planning, through investments in storage or production capacity, so you can sell a lot at high prices in the aftermath of future disasters.

• Reallocated supply: it's expensive to transport ice, but at higher prices it makes sense to bring it in from much farther away than would normally make sense.

• Reduced demand: at higher prices people who would normally buy ice for less important things (ex: drink chilling) will pass.

• Reallocated demand: if you have a chest freezer full of food, you get more benefit from a given quantity of ice than I would with a mostly empty fridge. All else equal, you are willing to pay more for ice than I am.

On the other hand, raising prices in response to a disaster is widely seen as unfair:

• Allocation by price is never great for people who have less money, but a disaster makes this existing inequality more painful.

• Store owners are on average richer than customers, so profits here are moving wealth from poorer people to richer ones.

• Normally prices are kept in check by people shopping around, either by observing prices in a range of places or by talking with friends. These are both disrupted in disasters, which would likely allow sellers to charge more.

So raising prices in emergencies is generally strongly socially discouraged and often also illegal. Stores quickly sell out, there's no increase in supply, and allocation is relatively arbitrary.

Is there a way to get the benefits of keeping prices responsive, while mitigating some of the unfairness?

Consider the introduction of congestion pricing in NYC. Charging money to keep people from overusing a common resource is a traditional economics solution, reducing traffic jams and allowing streets to move more people in less time. While this even helps people who can no longer (or never could) afford to drive, by speeding up buses, it is still often considered too unfair to implement. The NYC approach, however, of charging drivers but then using the money to fund public transit, resolves enough of the unfairness to be put into practice.

What could something similar look like for disasters?

• Sellers can, as in normal times, choose what prices to offer their goods and services at.

• Price increases beyond documented increases in the cost of doing business are taxed at some high rate. Something in the range of 65%: high enough that most of the profits are going to the public, but where it's still worth sellers putting in serious effort to increase supply.

• This tax money goes to help people affected by the emergency.

While this still has some of the downsides of existing price gouging laws [1] I think it's quite a bit better than the status quo.

The biggest advantage is that if the government disagrees with you about how much of your price increase is due to increased costs, it can be sorted out later. There are famous cases where someone tried to increase supply in a disaster by doing something unusual (ex: renting trucks to drive generators or ice hundreds of miles into hurricane-affected areas) and then were prevented from selling. Much better to have a system where we all agree they're good to go ahead and sell, and tax disagreements can be worked out afterwards. It still doesn't fully remove the risk that the government will disagree with you and make your efforts not worth your while, but at least you're arguing with a judge in a courtroom where you can present evidence, and not a cop in front of a mob.

It also:

• Gets us some of the benefits of flexible prices, at least to the extent that sellers believe they'll be able to convince a judge about their increased costs.

• Helps shift culture in a direction of accepting and expecting prices to change based on conditions.

• Transfers money from rich people (who pay inflated prices) to poor people (who receive disaster relief).

Would people be more ok with responsive prices in emergencies if the money were primarily going to disaster relief?

[1] I've previously written about discouraging investments, but another issue is not handling cases where people might be convinced to sell something they wouldn't normally. For the latter, imagine an empty nester couple living in a 3BR in LA. They prefer to have the house to themselves, but for $5k/month would be willing to rent out their guest room. In normal times no one would pay $5k, so they don't bother putting it on AirBnB. With the emergency, however, there might now be people willing to pay this much. There's no way for the owners to demonstrate increased costs, though, so it would probably be illegal for them to list it for $5k both under current laws and with my proposed change above.

Similarly, say I have a bunch of $150 air purifiers because I'm especially concerned about infectious aerosols, and then with a nearby wildfire stores all sell out. By default I would keep them and enjoy my clean air, but I'd be willing to sell a few for $300 each. That would benefit both me and the buyers, but same issue.

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2025-01-16 21:00:00

My neck is not great, and spending a lot of time looking down at my laptop screen really aggravates it. After damaging my screen a year ago I used a stacked laptop monitor that folded up, and it worked well. The main place I tended to use at full height was call booths, since otherwise I was usually at a desk with a real monitor or in a meeting with people where I wanted my monitor not to block my view.

My laptop eventually died, and the new one has a screen again. In many ways this is pretty great: my backpack is lighter without carrying around an extra monitor, walking to a conference room I don't have to worry I forgot my monitor, I'm not fiddling with cables. But I do really miss it on calls in the phone booths.

The booths at my work have a kind of soft material that works great with velcro, though, so I decided to try sticking my monitor up that way. It works great:

These monitors are only ~$50, so after talking with our operations staff we now have them in each call booth:

I'm very happy with these, and my coworkers who don't have neck issues have said they like being able to have notes open on one screen and the call on the other.

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2025-01-14 21:00:00

Until recently I thought Julia and I were digging a bit into savings to donate more. With the tighter funding climate for effective altruism we thought it was worth spending down a bit, especially considering that our expenses should decrease significantly in 1.5y when our youngest starts kindergarten.

I was surprised, then, when I ran the numbers and realized that despite donating 50% of a reduced income, we were $9k (0.5%) [1] richer than when I left Google two years earlier.

This is a good problem to have! After thinking it over for the last month, however, I've decided to start earning less: I've asked for a voluntary salary reduction of $15k/y (10%). [2] This is something I've been thinking about off and on since I started working at a non-profit: it's much more efficient to reduce your salary than it is to make a donation. Additionally, since I'm asking others to fund our work I like the idea of putting my money (or what would be my money if I weren't passing it up) where my mouth is.

Despite doing this myself, voluntary salary reduction isn't something that I'd like to see become a norm:

• I think it's really valuable for people to have a choice about where to apply their money to making the world better.

• The organization where you have a comparative advantage in applying your skills will often not be the one that can do the most with additional funds, even after considering the tax advantages.

• I especially don't think this is a good fit for junior employees and people without a lot of savings, where I'm concerned social pressure to take a reduction could keep people from making prudent financial decisions.

• More issues...

Still, I think this is a good choice for me, and I feel good about efficiently putting my money towards a better world.

[1] In current dollars. If you don't adjust for inflation it's $132k more, but that's not meaningful.

[2] I'm not counting this towards my 50% goal, just like I'm not counting the pay cut I took when I stopped earning to give.

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2025-01-13 21:00:00

There are lots of ways to categorize board games, but an axis I care a lot about is accessibility: how much of an investment is learning a game? Race For the Galaxy and Power Grid are great games, but I'd expect to spend 15+ min teaching before we could play. Set or Anomia, though, I could explain in a minute or two.

Games you can teach quickly are great in a casual context: people wander over, and you can get them playing right away. And one of my favorite casual games is Go.

If you know Go this is a surprising claim: we're talking about one of the deepest board games humans (and others?) play. It's famously complex, with two decades separating computers surpassing humans in chess and then in Go. And yet, if you shrink the board to where a game just takes a few minutes, it's a great party game:

The rules of Go are very simple, and it is only their interaction on a large board that gives Go it's depth. I can get someone playing on a 5x5 in a couple minutes, and we'll usually play a few quick games in a row. At this scale people can draw strongly on their general purpose reasoning while they're building up their intuitive sense. Then I'll get them playing someone else who's never played before. Once black starts consistently winning on 5x5, we go to 7x7. And if someone shows up who already knows how to play we can do 9x9.

The game does feel different at the smaller scale, with more focus on capturing and less on territory, but the learning curve is fantastically welcoming. I think the broader Go community has been making a serious mistake in dismissing sizes below 9x9 as not worth playing.

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