2025-07-31 21:00:00
One strategy we often find helpful with our kids is the "do over": something didn't go well, let's try again. Two examples:
Nora (4y) can't yet cross streets on her own, but we're starting to practice. Walking to a farther park, a walk where we often practice, she asked Julia "when we get to the little street can I cross it"? Julia said "we'll need to check in when we get there". But Nora did not check in, and 'practiced' on her own. Even though this was on a tiny street, this was still really unsafe and is something she very much needs to not do. I caught up, spoke to her firmly, she burst into tears, I walked her back, and we did it over together. As soon as she had the chance to demonstrate doing it correctly she cheered up dramatically, and then we had a good time at the park.
We're in a hurry to get out the door and I put Nora's coat on her. She bursts into tears: "I wanted to put my coat on myself!" I ask "should we do a do over?" She says yes, I take her coat off, she puts it on, she's happy.
These sound very different, but they're really two sides of the same learning process. In first case I wanted Nora to learn something. If I had just spoken sternly to her about not crossing streets solo I don't think it would have sunken in as well. Making it inconvenient, getting to the park later than if she'd done it the right way, having the time walking back to reflect on her error, and then doing it the right way, all contributed to taking it seriously and learning.
The second case is much more minor, but it's just the other way around: if I'd just apologized to Nora and said she could put her coat on next time I would have learned less, and she would rightly be less confident that I would actually follow through.
I think this is a neat symmetry, but to be fair it's not always why we do the second category of do overs: sometimes we're just trying to resolve a meltdown. For example, say there's a miscommunication where it turned out the kid had a very strong preference but we didn't ask and they didn't tell us. Sometimes a do over would be about practicing what good communication would have been:
Nora: I didn't want my cereal in this bowl, I wanted a large bowl!
Me: Would you like to do a do over?
Nora: Yeah
Me: If you want your cereal in a specific bowl you'll need to make sure I know that.
Nora: Ok
Me: Should I get you some cereal?
Nora: In a large bowl!
Other times, though, the kid is too fragile (perhaps very hungry), we don't have time, or I'm being a lazier parent. In these cases the do over is just a way to calm them down (and clear the way to not being so very hungry):
...
Me: Would you like to do a do over?
Nora: Yeah
Me: Should I get you some cereal in a large bowl?
Nora: Yes!
This version is still helpful; the kid ends up happy and fed. You don't have to take every opportunity to model ideal communication. It's not always clear in the moment what ideal communication would have been, especially as kids get older and interactions get more complex.
With all of these different applications of do overs, a key thing that I like is that it quickly breaks the bad pattern and replaces it with a better one. You're not digging into what should have happened, you just jump back and try it again.
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2025-07-29 21:00:00
I fly to a lot of gigs, and I check a bag with my pedalboard. Airlines generally limit checked bags to 50lb, and I'd like to be able to get as much stuff as possible into that 50lb; how light can a suitcase be?
I'm currently using an old Samsonite clamshell that I found on the side of the road. I like how sturdy it is, but it weighs 12.2lb. That's almost a quarter of my 50lb budget allocated to the case!
It looks like a cheap modern hardshell would be 9lb ($70), saving 3.2lb. That's pretty good, but can we do better?
I did some looking for light options, and as far as I can tell Samsonite is the company making the lightest options by a good margin. They're also very expensive, with current-generation options going for $600 at full price. Here are the options I see under 7lb that would fit my 23.5" x 17.5" pedalboard:
Samsonite Lite-Shock 75cm, 5.5lb ($403)
Samsonite Cosmolite 3.0 Large Spinner, 5.8lb ($330)
Samsonite C-Lite Large 28", 6.3lb ($355)
Samsonite Firelite 28" Spinner, 6.7lb (discontinued)
Samsonite Proxis Medium Spinner, 6.8lb ($439)
These are all pretty expensive, but I'm going to keep an eye out for used ones. Any other models I should be checking for? Should I be worrying that these suitcases are giving up durability for weight?
2025-07-21 21:00:00
Epistemic status: making things up
About six months ago I got interested in glycol vapors for reducing infections in crowded indoor spaces. I decided to give it a try, but it went poorly.
I was going to order some propylene glycol, but noticed that I already had some polyethylene glycol on hand. I figured that since people recommend propylene glycol, dipropylene glycol, and triethylene glycol for infection control, since "polyethylene" is just "propylene" with more syllables (how different could it be?) that it would work even better. In retrospect this was a very bad idea.
I had heard that you could use a regular fog machine, but these are designed to vaporize a liquid, and the polyethylene glycol I had ("Miralax") is a powder. Instead I decided to enlist one of my kids to slowly pour it into a box fan. This didn't work at all: instead of making a pathogen-reducing vapor it made a mess. To my surprise the powder settled quickly, and it was clear this hadn't worked. It really got everywhere (I can feel some under my feet right now) and it has been a pain to clean up. Worse, our cats seem to have eaten some, which has been an even larger pain to clean up.
While I still think glycol vapors are potentially a valuable tool for limiting the spread of disease, I'm going to wait for official recommendations before experimenting more. And avoid substitutions.
2025-07-20 21:00:00
The most common feedback I get about my writing is that people like my posts but the fraction of interesting posts is too low. Some of this is hard to avoid, because I write about a wide variety of things and what's interesting to one person is dull to another, but I still think some of my posts are much better than others. I currently cross-post everything to Facebook, LessWrong, and Substack, in addition to posting links to Mastodon, and Bluesky; I'm going to switch my Substack to just getting the best 10-25% of posts, about 2-4 per month. If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, consider subscribing there.
If some of my posts aren't so good, and all of my posts take effort, you might wonder why I don't just write the good ones. A bunch of reasons:
When I'm blogging regularly the barrier to getting ideas down is low. Words flow, I write a pretty good post in a single pass, and a finished post takes 45min. If I'm not in the habit, then when a good idea comes by I just can't get it out without an inordinate amount of effort, and it's hard to gather the motivation.
I ~can't write without making it public. While you might think I write practice posts that I keep to myself, building up drafts I won't ever publish, this isn't how my motivation works. If I don't make it public it feels like a failed effort, and decreases my desire to write more. This is part of why I find any kind of pre-review so painful.
I still feel good about even my less interesting posts. Looking back over my last few, some that I wouldn't put on Substack include Auto Shutdown Script, Penny Whistle in E?, and Does Sort Really Fall Back to Disk?. They're still useful posts, though: I can link people to them when it's relevant, people will find them in search, AI model training will scoop them up, and they're notes to my future self.
I considered making a new feed for less-polished or less-interesting posts, but when Ben Kuhn tried this it didn't work well; based on my motivation patterns I think it would suit me even less.
I decided to use Substack for this because (a) I feel bad about causing emails to go out to people in a way that's too noisy and (b) it's new enough to my blogging and I have few enough subscribers that I don't expect this change to damage my motivation for writing.
(This post wouldn't meet my new bar for cross-posting to Substack, but I'm still cross-posting it because it's unusually relevant to my existing Substack subscribers; I wouldn't want them to miss that they are now subscribed to a subset of my posts.)
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2025-07-19 21:00:00
Content warning: risk to children
Julia and I know drowning is the biggest risk to US kids 1-4, and we try to take this seriously. But yesterday our 4yo came very close to drowning in a fountain. (She's fine now.)
This week we were on vacation with my extended family: nine kids, eight parents, and ten grandparents/uncles/aunts. For the last few years we've been in a series of rental houses, and this time on arrival we found a fountain in the backyard:
I immediately checked the depth with a stick and found that it would be just below the elbows on our 4yo. I think it was likely 24" deep; any deeper and PA would require a fence. I talked with Julia and other parents, and reasoned that since it was within standing depth it was safe.
We discussed boundaries with the kids (no going through the gate or out the driveway, stay within the fence, stay out of the pond) and then let them play on their own. They were in and out of the house all week and, while with this many people around they were rarely alone, we also weren't ensuring they were accompanied.
Yesterday evening my aunt noticed our 4yo was walking on the fountain rim, and called me over to say this looked dangerous. Checking, I initially didn't see her at all. Then, in an image burned into my mind, I saw the top of her head moving in the water. I sprinted over, jumped in, and despite the shallow depth immediately fell full in: very slippery on the bottom. Still, I got her out quickly, and to my relief she was breathing, normal-colored, and immediately started crying.
With the timing of my aunt's warning and how long it took me to get there, I think she was likely in for about fifteen seconds. It seems she held her breath and didn't take in any water.
After she recovered she told me she was trying to push her legs down and stand up, but they wouldn't go down. I don't know if the problem was that she was wearing a very poofy dress (pictured below), or that she doesn't have enough practice maneuvering in water to manipulate the natural buoyancy of her body, but either way she was stuck in an L-position with her legs sticking straight out in front.
In addition to being physically fine she also seems not to have been affected emotionally. We were near more water today, wading in a stream, and she didn't seem fearful:
I'm feeling very lucky that my aunt happened to see her in a risky location and that I was able to get there in time, and I'm kicking myself for conflating "shallow enough to stand" with "shallow enough that a surprised and disoriented kid coming in at an awkward angle will reliably be able to stand."
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2025-07-08 21:00:00
I recently read an article where a blogger described their decision to start masking on the subway:
I found that the subway and stations had the worst air quality of my whole day by far, over 1k ug/m3, ... I've now been masking for a week, and am planning to keep it up.
While subway air quality isn't great, it's also nowhere near as bad as reported: they are misreading their own graph. Here's where the claim of "1k ug/m3" (also, units of "1k ug"? Why not "1B pg"!) is coming from:
They've used the right axis, for CO2 levels, to interpret the left-axis-denominated pm2.5 line. I could potentially excuse the error (dual axis plots are often misread, better to avoid) except it was their own decision to use a dual axis plot in the first place! Hat tip to Evan for pointing this out in the substack comments.
The actual peak was only 75 ug/m3 and the subway time averaged below 50 ug/m3. While this isn't great, I don't think this is worth masking over.
Since I'm making a big deal about this error, though, I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight: I decided to replicate their work. I used the same meter they used (a Temtop M2000) and took the same subway journey (round trip from Davis station to Kendall station on the MBTA's Red Line). To be generous I took my time in the morning, intentionally missing a train at Davis and then lingering in Kendall after my train departed until the following train had also departed. Here's what I found:
Decent replication! And really not that concerning. Lower particle levels would of course be better, but I'd wear a mask when cooking before I'd wear it on the subway. It's possible that other subways or stations are worse, but I haven't seen evidence of that.
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