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:
| My Term | Norman's Term | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| enabler | affordance | what an agent can actually do with an object |
| clue | signifier | perceivable hint about what's possible |
| disabler | anti-affordance | what prevents an agent from acting |
| anti-clue | perceivable hint that misleads about what's possible |
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 an anti-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.
2025-12-19 08:00:00
2025-12-18 08:00:00
Attention is your scarcest resource; considerate creators respect your attention. Good titles help internet curators efficiently route information to relevant aggregators. Good titles permit readers to quickly estimate the relative value of articles, essays, videos, etc. Everybody wins when titles are accurate.
This is how I title my essays.
These concepts also apply to book covers, video thumbnails, etc.
Notice the title. It's not "How I Choose Titles for My Essays". No, no, you wouldn't have clicked on that title.
Here's the dilemma: I want you to read this, but I mustn't produce (or promote) misleading clickbait.
Don't ask me why I want you to read this. My blog earns negative dollars and dubious street credit. I am clearly an insane person.
A proper title (1) spreads information to those who would benefit (2) without wasting anybody's time.
"Clickbait" is a relation between title, article, and reader.
Titling is a binary classifier. We can model this relationship in a confusion matrix:
| [total pop] | likes title | dislikes title |
|---|---|---|
| likes content | true positive | false negative |
| dislikes content | false positive | true negative |
We can also model clickbait as an epidemic. Let's call it "influenca". Here's one way to estimate a title's basic reproduction number ("R-value"):
R₀ = β / γ
(shares + comments) / (viewers × exposed users)
1 / D, where D is days until interest fadesIf R₀ > 1, the title spreads virally; if R₀ < 1, it fizzles out.
I wish I had more time to develop how these mathematical models interact, but alas. The rats.
In this framework, a good title (1) transmits its content to as many people as possible (2) without incurring false classifications.
Some folks try to maximize reproduction regardless of false classifications. These people are scoundrels. They poison our communication channels with spam. Ethical titles accurately represent content that reduces suffering.
Titles spread three ways:
Good titles are pointers to a latent space. The latent space is vast, but titles act as coordinates in the collective consciousness. Say "shape rotator" to someone who knows, and you invoke the whole essay.
Titular pointers follow different lifecycles than their referents:
These pointers themselves become data; headlines often propagate without regard for the quality of their referents. This machinery creates perverse incentives.
The Buzzfeed-esque clickbait/thumbnail metagame continues to tempt creators/publishers toward short-sighted sensationalist headlines. It's tiresome -- titles can be so fun, so wonderful, so powerful.
If you convert humanity's precious attention into pennies, I will forever resent you for polluting this wonderful world.
But yes, you can totally prey on human bias. Enjoy that race-to-the-bottom, you fool.
We eventually grow immune to yesteryear's influenca. Some of these headlines might evoke a visceral autoimmune response:
If you publish media in this world, I invite you to reject parasitism. Choose symbiosis. It is not a choice you make just once -- it is something you choose again and again, whenever you share information.
If you browse my archive of essays, you'll discover that I am indeed a repeat clickbait offender. It's flagrant hypocrisy. Self-awareness does not excuse my past or future behavior. In this essay, I'm processing my shame here and trying to transmute it into real human flourishing. This is my best; it's all I can offer.
Some patterns that work:
Additional tips:
To find an essay's true name is to find its core narrative thread. I often know an essay's headline before its first sentence has been conceived; it's natural when I'm trying to explain a singular claim or coinable phrase. But sometimes I "finish" an essay, start choosing a title, and then realize I actually need to cut 60% of the damn thing.
This is how this essay's title evolved:
Here I tried to select an ethical headline that would (1) pique your interest (2) without wasting your time. I hope I delivered the titular goods. Thank you for reading.
