true dat

One of the rarest feelings in the world is resonance. That immediate flicker of recognition when something is finely tuned to you. It deciphers your interiority, feeds your innermost desire to feel seen and known.

PEOPLE IN SYSTEMS DO NOT DO WHAT THE SYSTEM SAYS THEY ARE DOING.

University professors chase grants, not student enlightenment. VCs nurture personal brands alongside deals. Startup founders optimize funding metrics over customer needs.

The paper you just read could never be published in a scientific journal. The studies themselves are just as good as the ones Ethan and I have published in fancyjournals, but writing about science this way is verboten.

For instance, in a journal you’re not allowed to say things like “we don’t know why this happens.” You’re not allowed to admit that ... See more

During the Trump administration, I took on a part time job: keeping up with all the outrages. Every twenty minutes or so I would have to check my phone in case any new outrages had occurred, so that I could...collect them? Make them into a scrapbook? I'm not sure.

I now think of this as super surveillance , tracking every problem in the world as if... See more

About half of my friends kind of hate their jobs, so they're moderately unhappy most of the time, but never unhappy enough to leave. This is the mediocrity trap : situations that are bad-but-not-too-bad keep you forever in their orbit because they never inspire the frustration it takes to achieve escape velocity.

The mediocrity trap is a nasty way t... See more

Raising children has come to look more and more like a business endeavor and less and less like an endeavor of the heart. We are overly concerned with “the bottom line,” with how our children “do” rather than with who our children “are.” We pour time, attention, and money into insuring their performance, consistently making it to their soccer game ... See more