Essays
The Haterade Lost its Taste
History is a Necessary Exercise in Psychological Distress
history is fun to learn about. but its also a useful mechanism for cultivating the virtues of gratitude and pragmatism within yourself, which in turn serve as proxies for general wellbeing. it makes you grateful because it shows you how much things used to suck, and it makes you pragmatic because it shows you a myriad of failure modes that you can (at least try to) avoid.Art Imitates Life, But Maybe Not Enough?
if you want your art to be compelling it can help to embrace the dominant parts of life we're already familiar with. most modern humans are familiar with the omnipresence of the internet, advertising, and routines like work or school. but there is a bit of a dearth of narrative media that embraces these aspects in a recognizable way, an underserved aesthetic hole that could be filled by some enterprising creatives.Discourses on DND
a lot of people have an idea of what dnd is lodged in their brain, both those who have and havent played it. i think the dominant mode of playing dnd is largely missing out on what makes it cool and unique from a traditional board games. you should only feel obligated to engage with dnd's rules and setting and player culture to the exact degree you must to give yourself license to let loose and play some make-believe. also i have some tips for how to make your dnd campaign better.What's the Deal With Ahmed al-Sharaa?
i cant really figure out if ahmed al-sharaa is a dyed-in-the-wool jihadist, subtly progressive, or just willing to do or say anything for power. having followed his rise in realtime over the last decade, i feel a sort of weird attachment to him and his quiet intellectualism, even knowing the extremely reprehensible things committed under his command (torture, murder, suppression). i still think he will be a better ruler than assad. it's been funny to watch the united states go from grouping him in with bin laden and al-baghdadi to having friendly luncheons in doha.Mo Meta Mo Betta
fictional narratives are cool but there's something extra gripping about narrative nonfiction featuring real humans. if your art is sufficiently interactive and attractive, it has the chance to spawn a diffusely authored metanarrative that sits on top of the original narrative and generates even more compelling stories.The Tyranny of Taste
your taste in careers and media is an underrated form of privilege. when you have the right tastes, you open doors that are otherwise shut and get rewarded socially and economically. there may be a way to intentionally bestow upon yourself or your children some advantageous tastes.Advantageous Trades Vastly Outnumber Strict Upgrades
political messaging and narrative media encourage us to treat most problems as straightforward when in fact most problems are very challenging dilemmas with uncomfortably slim margins between costs and benefits. even when you accept that most choices incur a cost, there are some personal interventions you can deploy right now that are a relatively low cost with a rather outsized upsideTool Banditry and also a Modest Defense of Echo Chambers
try not to sweat where someones ideas come from. theyre just words we use to capture slippery concepts. the mere invocation of an idea, framework, or vocabulary from a source you dont like is (very often!) not an endorsement of that source or even an enthusiastic acceptance of the sub-claim that specific idea/framework/word captures. rather than being treated as loadbearing evidentiary claims, these concepts can just be useful to pump intuition and guide your audience somewhere else completely unrelated. speaking of completely unrelated: talking with people who already agree with you about most things can get you to the interesting parts faster so "echo chambers" arent ENTIRELY lame and pointless.Requiem for a Prius
surprise! i dont like being victimized by property crimes and being crashed into by people's cars, and every time its happened has made me feel weird. recently my prius got totaled and my moped got stolen and im feeling a sense of cosmic injustice, like the thieves are doing actual spiritual damage to me by messing with my stuff. pathetic, right?Vim and Vigor
you should learn vim.Tremble Before the Mighty S-Curve
all exponential curves are actually s-curves. this has... troubling implications (if we are actually currently near the top of the s-curve)A Glossary of Accidental Social Defections
dont be overconfident dont make isolated demands for rigor dont tease dont psychoanalyze take responsibility for understanding people before you respond to them dont say obviously true crowd pleasing statements dressed up as claims dont nitpick dont stick uncharitable context to statements and likewise dont demand that nobody shall stick the "wrong" context to your statements.Why Do Online Zoomers Enjoy Discussing Aesthetics?
zoomers who spend a lot of time online like talking about aesthetics and categorizing imagery/art/software as belonging to a certain aesthetic. why? probably because those same zoomers have been party to the extremely aesthetically disorienting development of meme culture, which has piqued their interest and sharpened their instincts for how to transformatively participate in a memetic (aka aesthetic) moment.Survivorship By Us
all information that ever reaches you is subject to some level of survivorship bias because information undergoes a darwinian selection process to get to your eyeballs. this means your world model is quite inaccurate, and reading more information won't really make it more accurate unless you are strategic about how acquire this information to purposefully defang the selection pressures. also your own personal experience can give you insights that are useful to your own life and nobody else.
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