Taylor TroeshModify

2026-01-31 08:00:00

2026-01-25 08:00:00

1. They're not even real trees
2. Cockroaches live inside them, meaning your home will likely be infested if you have palms in the yard
3. They are a pain in the ass to maintain, and it costs a lot to get someone else to do it
4. Wasps nest in the leave fronds
5. They provide way less shade than large trees like maple or oak
6. Most species are generally ugly. I can't speak for other tropical places in the world, but the ones in south Texas look scraggly and gross
7. I hate them

via r/unpopularopinion

I have case studied [anti-palm-tree sentiment] quite well and I have discovered multiple causes. Palms do not produce in our latitudes anything with economical interest (fruits, oil). Palms do not produce big colorful flowers. Palms do not create deep shade. Many of us (if not all) try also more marginal spss which do not have a very decorative effect (if not at all). Palms need more care in summer, when people want to go on vacation and of course they are more or less cold sensitive. Many palms have spiny leaves and their fronds are not suitable for composting, so a dicard of pruned leaves is a problem itself. Now if you add recent problems with pests in Europe (rpw and paysandisia), meaning dead, ugly plants (whose removal is also troublesome- have you ever tried to cut down a freshly dead CIDP?) or constant spraying, which neighbouts have to endure, all becomes explicable.

via palmtalk.org

I just despise palm trees. They're so stupid, so incredibly dumb, I hate them. They think they're so cool with their fronds and weird scaly bark. They try so hard to look nice but guess what? It isn't working. They're the tree equivalent of a skin disease. They just look stupid. Why do they grow leaves just on the top? Out of all the diverse branch and leaf designs in the tree world they chose the bowl cut?

And hey, fun fact: they aren't even real trees. They're a variety of overgrown grass! They're phonies, fakers, shams. They're just giant grasses trying to make it in the tree world and they can't. It's just not their destiny, and yet they fight so hard. It's a little funny, a little sad.

You ever see a good Douglas Fir? Or a hearty maple? Now those are real trees. Big strong trees. They know their place in the world and they embrace it. I can respect them, unlike palm trees.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can tolerate them in their natural habitats, I respect mother nature. But I especially hate when they're brought into a completely separate climate. I live in the Pacific North West, and I still see palm trees. They don't belong here! And they can't properly grow here (not that there's anything proper about them anywhere) and they just end up stunted and uglier. I hate them, I hate them so much.

Every time I see one rage just begins to rise, just a little. I'm not overwhelmingly angry, but it's a cold hatred. Me and the palm trees are at a stalemate. I can't legally attack them, and they can't move, but I have no doubt if they could they would attack me and I likewise would attack them. If my friend was cursed into the form of a palm tree, I'd do everything in my power to change them back because no one deserves that pain, but failing that I'd put them out of their misery. I don't believe in a palm tree hell: they already exist in constant pain. I pity them, yes, but I hate them.

If there is a creator, either I fail to see their designs or they're a cruel maker for inventing such a horrible creature/plant. Their presence is a punishment both to themselves and the world, a divine reminder of man's mortality and our hubris. I hate them, I hate them so much.

I exaggerate a small bit but I do hate palm trees. This is not a meme. If I had one wish, even if I were on my deathbed, I'd wish them all to die and we'd perish together rather than I waste my wish on self-preservation. And you should hate them too.

via r/teenagers

2026-01-06 08:00:00

Hey. It's been a while.

I've been meaning to reach out, but work and the kids -- you know how it goes.

I think about you surpringly often. Yesterday I saw a lone coconut at the grocery store and I literally guffawed. After all these years, I still don't know how to open a stupid coconut. I hope coconuts still baffle you too. I miss being idiots together.

The truth is, I've been avoiding you. I miss you, but I'm afraid that you've changed as much as I have. I don't want to admit that maybe our magic is gone forever. Wallowing in nostalgia has been easier than feeling like this and writing it down.

I know that someday all my best memories will be behind me, but I'm not ready for that to happen yet. Not yet. Not this year.

Anyway, I'm feeling more optimistic now after a few glasses of wine. I've got big plans for 1996.

Let's catch up soon?

Happy belated new year.

2026-01-02 08:00:00

9 hours ago, I boarded a 14-hour flight from SIN to SEA.

"We thank you for choosing Singapore Airlines. At this time, Premium First-Class Air Alliance members may board the flight. Also, slow people and noisy people may board at this time. Oh, and Taylor Troesh, please see us at the ticket counter."

Uh oh. I do not like hearing my name on airport loudspeakers.

"Taylor? Hello, thank you so much. Sir, we need your help. A family with toddlers accidentally purchased non-adjacent seats. You are currently seated in 52K, and we would like to move you to 31E. We understand that 52K is a window seat; 31E is a middle seat. Would you be willing to swap seats so this family can remain together?"

My favorite role-playing games build atop ethical dilemmas. For example, Undertale's plot is shaped by your commitments to pacificism/violence. Disco Elysium, Bioshock, Fallout, Red Dead Redemption, etc. force players to creatively exercise their moral compasses. I am deeply grateful to storytellers who've helped me discover who I'm becoming.

In table-top games, the Dungeon Master doles consequences for players' decisions. Will you share your dwindling food supplies? Will you harm others in pursuit of peace? Will you eat one marshmallow now or two tomorrow? You're gonna carry that weight.

I'll be home in ~5 hours.

But for now, 52J is empty. The lady in 52H is quiet and smiles often. I am comfortably seated in 52K.

2025-12-24 08:00:00

Some activities have smooth progress bars: rowing, knitting, cycling, climbing, bodybuilding, etc.

For such pastimes, investing a unit of effort reaps a proportional unit of progress. Linear incrementalism is a sound strategy when success is linear. To win at rowing, row harder/better/faster/stronger than your competition.

Golf is not so smooth. Yes, each round is a state-dependent game of error-correction (i.e. Zeno's Paradox). But golf swings are coarse actions -- few swings per game, with no recourse for fine adjustment between swings.

A golf game is 65-75 swings over ~5 hours. A rowing race is 5-10 minutes of continuous effort and micro-adjustments.

Golf-like processes are characterized by mulligans. "Do-overs" are powerful when success is chaotic, i.e. sensitive to initial conditions. Baby steps are futile when your golf ball is already at the bottom of the pond. Linear incrementalism cannot resolve fatal flaws.

Failure awaits those who confuse rowing and golfing. Golf cannot be played in tidy 1-yard increments. Brute force isn't an option -- don't attempt a one-man war of attrition.

Programs like NaNoWriMo mislead aspiring writers. "Write every day" is great advice, but the first 90% of writing a book is often not writing -- it's thinking/planning/researching. There are other golf clubs in that bag. Many writers only start "writing" once their ball is very nearly in the hole.

To use a different analogy: daily habits are powerful, but effort alone cannot transmute lead into gold. To make a golden necklace, you must start with gold. Each phase of mining/appraising/smelting/shaping gold demands unique strategies.

Many creative processes (e.g. writing, entrepreneurship, sculpting, programming) are more like golfing than rowing; they are more chaotic than smooth.

But unlike golf, creative work has no fairways, no greens, no carts, no flags. There are real tigers in those woods. You've got one life and no map.

Luckily, nobody is keeping score. Take all the mulligans you need.

2025-12-23 08:00:00

tl;dr: "Affordance" and "signifier" sow confusion. Say "enabler" and "clue" instead.

Don Norman popularized "affordance" in The Design of Everyday Things. He borrowed it from James J. Gibson's wonderful work in ecological psychology, but the colloquial meaning has diverged from the original definition:

The design community loved the concept and affordances soon propagated into the instruction and writing about design. I soon found mention of the term everywhere. Alas, the term became used in ways that had nothing to do with the original.

-- Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (revised edition, 2013)

To most, an "affordance" is something that invites interaction. Even designers say "logout affordance" when they mean "logout button".

Norman rejected this use of the word:

No, that is not an affordance. That is a way of communicating where the touch should be. You are communicating where to do the touching: the affordance of touching exists on the entire screen: you are trying to signify where the touch should take place. That's not the same thing as saying what action is possible.

Here is Norman's original definition:

The term affordance refers to the relationship between a physical object and a person. An affordance is a relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determine just how the object could possibly be used. A chair affords ('is for') support and, therefore, affords sitting. Most chairs can also be carried by a single person (they afford lifting), but some can only be lifted by a strong person or by a team of people. If young or relatively weak people cannot lift a chair, then for these people, the chair does not have that affordance, it does not afford lifting.

-- Don Norman, Design of Everyday Things

In other words, affordances are freedoms available to agents.

But a button's appearance may not match what it affords. Invisible logout buttons may afford logout; visible logout buttons may not afford logout.

Not only did my explanation fail to satisfy the design community, but I myself was unhappy. Eventually I gave up: designers needed a word to describe what they were doing, so they chose affordance. What alternative did they have?

-- Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (revised edition, 2013)

Norman solved this dilemma by coining "signifiers". Affordances describe what is possible; signifiers communicate potential action.

Now we have two incompatible meanings of "affordance". Purists prefer the original definition, while everybody else uses the colloquial definition.

It's time to deprecate "affordances" and "signifiers". Say "enablers" and "clues" instead:

Caution: when describing people, "enablers" and "disablers" are pejorative terms.

People already understand these words; they work without lectures on ecological psychology and design theory.

Claude Shannon didn't invent the word "information" -- he plucked it from a dictionary.

"Affordance" is a false clue -- it signals meaning it cannot deliver. Definitions only work when everybody shares similar understanding (or agrees that mutual understanding is tenuous).

Will "enabler" and "clue" catch on? Probably not. But at least they mean what they say.