2026-01-22 19:33:00
People communicate most honestly through jokes. Pay attention to them.
If you can't refuse something, it owns you.
Fear of being cringe will stop you living fully. Get over it.
Don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from.
Expect no applause for telling the truth. Sometimes doing the right thing costs you – friendships, comfort, peace. But always pay the price without question.
Whatever scenario you're in, just act like you belong.
The lazy person works twice as hard.
Curiosity is a superpower.
Honesty without kindness is brutality. Default to kindness. Though know when to be firm.
Life never meets your youthful expectations. As an adult, you need to learn to find joy nonetheless.
Death can come any day. Every day is a gift.
Adults make a lot more sense when you realise they're just children in big bodies.
Bears don't need motivation to hunt salmon for 12 hours straight. But put them in a circus and they need constant prodding to wave at an audience once. Motivation is a human problem – because we don't fit our 21st century environment. You must not be a circus bear.
Humans struggle to mentally combine their "now" self and their "future" self. So treat your future self as someone you love and want to see thrive. Today's laziness is tomorrow's burden. Do them a favour.
The obstacle is the way. Get used to it. Learn to love it.
Books are a cheat code – many of life's problems were solved and written down long before you were born. But reading is half the equation. Without action in the real world you get limited results. Action backed by theory is a potent mix.
The opinion of the person who rarely offers it is listened to more closely.
A free-thinker's beliefs are unlikely to align neatly with any political party. If your beliefs align 75% with your political party, you're not free-thinking – you're just trying to fit in with your tribe. Super-forecasters – the people who predict events better than anyone else – change their minds constantly. They update their views the moment new information appears. Do the same with every belief you hold.
Make your own religion. List your strongest principles. Become a devout worshipper. Update the doctrine when you learn better.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Be wary of ideologies that require buying into the absurd.
The hunt is the whole point. The kill is just bait. If you're chasing money, status, or objects, you'll be disappointed when you catch them. Chase family, growth, love – and the catch might actually be sweeter than the chase.
If you're a man, one of your hardest battles may be not giving in to sexual urges that cause harm to others. History is littered with otherwise entirely brilliant men who succeeded at everything but this. You must succeed. Edit: This one seems controversial. I will write a follow-up post explaining it. For now, I'll just say: I am NOT on the side of cheaters and rapists – quite the opposite. I think my original draft of this entry had the nuance required. You can read it here.
There are parts of ourselves that are changeable and parts that are unchangeable. So much unhappiness comes from not knowing which is which.
One day your parents' names will be spoken more often in memories than in conversations. Every word shared with them now is a gift. Don't wait. Create a recurring calendar entry for coffee with your Dad. Visit your Mum every Friday. Force it. Squeeze it in. It will become one of your biggest regrets if you don't.
Keep notes on everyone you love. Their likes, dislikes, how their brain works. When they mention something they want, write it down. You'll never struggle with a gift again.
Sex is overrated. Sex with someone you love is underrated.
You can get more done in 5 minutes and 1 year than you think. That dirty kitchen? That work task you've been avoiding? Set a timer for 5 minutes and try. You'll surprise yourself. And that massive project or body transformation you've been putting off? Just write out a plan and go for it. Again, you'll surprise yourself.
Some people are profoundly broken – usually from life's harsh trials. Give yourself permission to remove them from your orbit. Their healing requires years of professional help, more than well-meaning friends and family can achieve.
Your health is the most important thing. It's a mind-numbing cliché because it's undeniably true. One day – probably somewhere between 28 and 38 – you'll wake up and just feel 'off'. A bit sore. A bit tired. That feeling will never leave you. Be grateful for your youth while you have it.
Leading a healthy life is simple: sleep well, exercise three times a week, have an active social life, eat a variety of vegetables and whole foods, avoid sugar, processed foods, alcohol and drugs. That's 90%. Everything else is optimisation.
The world is always on the brink. At any given moment, you can point to dozens of reasons the world is 'messed up'. It always is. It always has been. Don't use that as an excuse for despair.
War is always potentially around the corner. Doesn't matter how "advanced" your society is. And remember if a war does break out, take the consensus on how long it will last and multiply it by 20.
Start contributing as much as you can possibly afford to your pension – even if you're 16. At the very least contribute what your employer matches. More if you can – 10% is good. This is likely the best financial decision you'll make.
Getting a great deal on something you don't need costs more than overpaying for something you do.
Reading history teaches you that events are cyclical. Most problems, confusion, and fear come from people who haven't learnt this yet.
The days, weeks and even months go by slowly. But the years go by fast. Before you know it you'll be dead or 60.
Humans are almost as impulsive as dogs. Don't keep a cupboard full of snacks.
If you're a non-conformist in thought, be a conformist in dress. Offset one with the other.
Listen to your favourite music regularly. Your soul needs it.
Bathrooms are more dangerous than you think. They're slippery and full of hard surfaces – be careful.
The time is going to pass anyway, so why not live well and be happy?
There’s a reason most religions and cultures built fasting and renunciation into their traditions: the power isn’t in avoiding bad things, but in the exercise of restraint itself. Willpower is a muscle, and abstinence is the gym.
Seek not just knowledge, but the wisdom to question it. Challenge what you read; think, debate, and write to refine your beliefs. Learn to recognise biases and errors in thinking. Opt for reasoned understanding over mere information consumption.
Stock picking is gambling light. Do it in small amounts, for fun, knowing you'll eventually lose.
The wealthy utilise debt to make more money. The poor abuse debt to lose money. Taking on debt can be a useful tool, but outside of large essential purchases like homes and cars or for sensible business investing, it’s best avoided.
Don’t be tricked or sucked in by the fact that “candidates for political for office with obvious character flaws seen more real than bureaucrats with impeccable credentials” ("Skin in the Game"). People will vote for awful politicians with big mouths because they “tell it like it is” and “at least they’re honest”. Don’t be fooled — boring, considerate politicians are a good thing.
People are naturally peculiar and often their actions defy explanation. Unless they're harming themselves or others, learn to accept their inherent oddities. Trying to get to the bottom of quirks is a maddening exercise. Avoid it.
Eating meat is quite clearly immoral. Unless it will be detrimental to your health, eat as little as possible.
Any well-functioning society should have optimistic young people, and cynical old people. If it’s the other way around, something’s wrong.
2026-01-22 04:23:00
Today, I spent nearly 5hrs house-building in Sims 4. I don't actually enjoy the main game that much, but I absolutely love designing buildings, furnishing them, and landscaping. When I get an idea in my head, I have to build it and yes I will easily spend an entire day (sometimes two!) finishing it.
I started playing Sims back when it was first released. Oh the graphics look awful now, and the isometric viewing angles were really limiting, but it was just so much fun! The little sims with their funny little attitudes were charming, but what hooked me was build mode right from the very start.
I played Sims 2 for several years and had pretty much every expansion pack released. I submitted my creations to a fan site called The Sims Resource (it's still going!) and was one of their Select Artists for a while. I eventually left as I felt pressured to continually create new content which kind of ruined the experience for me.
Don't remember much about Sims 3 weirdly. Jumped to Sims 4 as soon as it came out and that's what I now use most of the time, though I only purchased a couple of expansions - I find them too expensive to justify as I don't play very often these days.
I also still have my Sims 2: Super Collection installed - for a while it didn't look like it would be updated to work with the M-series Macs, but thankfully it was. Though it's not visually as nice as Sims 4, I like all the expansions it comes with and it's the version I'm most skilled at using.
I briefly tried a couple of dedicated home design apps for my ideas, but they feel overwhelming. I don't want to deal with wall thicknesses or size every window down to the millimetre thanks. In fact Sims 4 sometimes verges on offering too much choice.
There's also the occasional frustration, such as not being able to place an object because gasp there's a door opposite. I couldn't put a combo shower/bath where I wanted to today because I dared have a sink next to it!
Still, these issues aren't enough to prevent me having a jolly good time building another dream house.
I'll leave you with a few screenshots from today. My little 1-bed barn conversion with cottage garden. When do I move in?
2026-01-21 23:43:23
In general and all else equal, peaceful U.S. territorial expansion in the western hemisphere would be a good thing. Good for the United States on balance and good for the acquired territories on balance. Obvious security and/or economic benefits for all involved.
I see a lot of people denying #1, but if Greenland were up for sale, it would be a no-brainer to consider buying it. We are a wealthy nation and it is hard to imagine a scenario where paying market price for Greenland would not be worth it.
Greenland is not currently up for sale.
That alone does not mean we shouldn’t test the market. At some price, Greenland probably is for sale. It can’t hurt to offer a price and/or make it known that we are a motivated buyer. See #1 and #2 above.
We have essentially done this, and Denmark is still not currently interested in selling.
That should mostly be the end of the story. There’s nothing inherently wrong with leaning on them a little—we drive hard bargains and leverage hard/soft power all the time with even the closest of our allies (e.g. Canada, UK)—but shifting from market transactions to coercive diplomacy implicates a much wider cost/benefit analysis.
Denmark is a close democratic ally, a highly cooperative security partner and, to a somewhat lesser degree, a highly cooperative economic partner. There is no reason to believe any of those things are likely to change in the short or medium term.
Consequently, most of the benefits of acquiring Greenland—and nearly all of the security benefits—can pretty easily be obtained without actually purchasing it. This isn’t the Danes rejecting U.S. military planning or strategic leadership in Greenland. It’s closer to the opposite. If there are strategic reasons to increase US or NATO presence in Greenland, we can just do it.
Could that change? Sure. Is there any reason to believe it will? No.
The costs of acquiring Denmark coercively are anything but small. A trade war with Western Europe isn’t good for us in the short-term, and pushing our closest allies into tighter economic alliances with our major rivals is a huge medium/long term mistake. Just dumb.
And blowing up NATO over Greenland is so unthinkably dumb, it makes a trade war look appealing. NATO is the basis of the western security system, and that makes it the basis of the western economic alliance. Acquiring Greenland at the cost of NATO makes absolutely no sense; it would be a huge blow against our security and against our economic interests.
The Trump administration has never been fond of NATO, and there are problems with it. But many of those problems are creatures of its success. NATO is like a vaccine; it has worked so well at its core purpose that people now have trouble understanding why it is necessary to continue it. It’s insanely cheap at the price we pay; no one in 1935 would even believe it possible.
We could survive without NATO. But if we were to militarily take Greenland, it might not just be the end of NATO, it might also jeopardize our security/economic relationship with Canada. That is beyond unthinkable. The military alliance for the strategic defense of North America is so valuable that even a modest crack in it would be a huge blow to our entire global position.
I doubt the Trump administration has any intention of a military invasion of Greenland. It would be an existential threat to Trump’s presidency and an earthquake in the global markets, two things Trump is keenly protective about. But they have already taken the coercive diplomacy to a level that is destabilizing NATO and the corresponding economic alliances.
I also doubt that Trump has any intention of a serious trade war over this. It almost seems like the perfect time to go long on a TACO trade. What I think Trump never accounts for is the cost of bluffs. This isn’t poker, where you play hard at the table and when you get up everyone is friends. The whole thing is endogenous, and every action colors every future relationship.
But Trump also seems unhinged about this, and unhinged in general lately, even conditional on his usual behavior. Undoubtedly, that has some benefits in coercive diplomacy. And he plays the madman well. But the downside risk of this is enormous, and the upside gain so little.
It’s absurd how much this is obviously a vanity/spite project for Trump, and how anti-modern his understanding of international relations is. The whole Nobel Prize thing is like a deleted scene from Idiocracy and the imperial desires of Trump recall the world of the 19th century, before 20th century economics de-linked national wealth from territorial expansion and great leaders were still often judged by such conquests. That Trump can’t even stay on script about the Arctic security situation for 2 minutes without going back to his Nobel slight is darkly comical.
The endgame here seems obvious. Trump will cut a face-saver “deal” that we could have had wideout all this nonsense. The administration will crow about it. Partisans will view it through their partisan lenses. Our short-term situation will not be much affected. But our medium-term economic and security relationship with Europe/NATO will be further eroded.
2026-01-21 23:19:00
I have a (notorious) obsession for picking at my brain. I analyze, contextualize, trace patterns backwards until I can say oh, this is where it came from (Does naming something gives me control over it?). That was probably the biggest reason I started Bear 1.5 years ago. I wanted to understand myself and gain clarity.
Recently, I’ve noticed that I’ve been avoiding responsibility of my whole life: relationships, career search, hobbies, self-care. I felt strangely indifferent and chose to numb myself out with ceaseless scrolling instead. When I’m going through a hard time, I feign that my life is happening to someone else. I am a mere spectator, and it’s none of my business.
When I step back, my life currently feels like the aftermath of a storm, like a house reduced to scattered debris, shards of glass, and overturned furniture. I overwhelmingly stare at this dumpster fire and ponder – from where do I even start when everything needs rebuilding?
I think the first step is understanding why I’m ignoring my life. I know it’s because I’m going through a difficult time, but I’ve also learned that avoidance often triggers dopamine release. Avoidance means we are trying to end something we find painful or dreadful, and the relief that follows (dopamine signaling this helped!) is what the brain rewards. No wonder it feels so wickedly good to avoid being alive.
Understanding this softens my shame and reframes my avoidance as something learned, not broken. My nervous system isn’t sabotaging me (I hope so) but is keeping me afloat when effort feels tantamount to pain. Still, awareness introduces responsibility, and once I see avoidance for what is, I have to decide how long I should stay there.
How do you fix an aftermath of a storm, you ask? One tiny progress at a time.
2026-01-21 12:59:00
and then sometimes you go see your mom because while you haven't finished writing your resolutions something you decided even before 2006 was that you had to see your mom once a month
no excuses
no too busy
no too many things to do
and so today you head out to the burbs to see her and for some reason today is different because she asks for your advice about something and you don’t think your mother has ever asked for your advice about anything which isn't to say she thinks you're dumb because she knows you're not but she generally doesn't come to you for advice about grown-up stuff like real estate or the stock market but today she cuts you in on the action in a weirdly casual way and then you find yourself interacting with this woman you've known since the second you achieved consciousness on a level that you have never done so previously and it's not like you're peers but for the first time in your life you feel like you're being seen as something closer to a peer and it feels interesting but completely foreign and is this an important milestone of some sort or did you just catch her in a specific moment in time that you will think about forever and which she did not register as special in any way
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch gloat about
🌳 grass the raptors' win
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
==If you enjoyed this post, click the little up arrow chevron thinger below the tags to help it rank in Bear's Discovery feed and maybe consider sharing it with a friend or on your socials.==
2026-01-21 05:51:00
I recently migrated my blog from a Jekyll blog hosted on GitHub Pages to Bear Blog. Why?
Good products make complicated things simple.
My girlfriend has almost no experience with HTML, CSS or JavaScript – and she's made an amazing site: jessveeb.bearblog.dev. That's because all you need to do to have a great-looking blog is:
If you want to delve deeper into the weeds of building your own website, you can. The HTML, CSS and JavaScript are there for those who want to play with them, but comfortably out of the way for those who don't. This is the best way to offer power user features, and Bear Blog does it really well.
A lot of my hobbies (photography, creative coding, collages) involve making images.
I never found a workflow for hosting and sharing images on my Jekyll blog that I was happy with. On Bear Blog, it's been simple to add images to my site, set up a feed for my images, and get a photo gallery up and running.
I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I do. I was worried that some of the issues I have with social media would also apply to the Discovery Feed:
However, the feed doesn't feel like it's bringing out the same negative emotions that social media did. I'd guess that's down to the feed being curated. I've still turned off all analytics on my site, and this is the first post I've done with make_discoverable: true that introduces the upvote button. We'll see how I cope with that.
I found this really easy. It helped that both use Markdown – and that I only had five posts. The migration guide covered everything I needed to make sure my URLs didn't break.
The main thing I miss from my Jekyll and GitHub Pages setup is version control. Using Git meant that if I made any mistakes, my changes were easy to revert. Bear Blog doesn't have an undo button. For now, I've made a Gist on GitHub to track my CSS – I just have to keep remembering to copy and paste the code across.