Betterment

Back in 1961, at the height of the Cold War and three years after the creation of NASA, President Kennedy gave his famous “Moonshot” speech. "We choose to

When someone acts in a surprising way, we can begin to understand by wondering what they might be afraid of.

One weird trick for hacking the space-time continuum.

The candidate running for re-election offers truth. This is what I did, I would like to do it again. The candidate coming out of nowhere offers hope. We can’t know but we can imagine. Kicksta…

A core component of making great decisions is understanding the rationale behind previous decisions. If we don’t understand how we got “here,” we run the risk of making things much worse.

Following my mind-is-a-computer essay, I cover seven other popular-among-experts-but-widely-disbelieved opinions I agree with!

If the ferry is leaving in fifteen minutes, do you drive faster than normal to get to the dock on time? If someone is driving close behind you and pressuring you to turn when you don’t feel s…

“We are meaning-seeking creatures. Dogs, as far as we know, do not agonize about the canine condition, worry about the plight of dogs in other parts of

This keeps coming up in different contexts, so I thought I might write a short (ha, as if I can write short things!) blog post that I can point to on various occasions. I spend a lot of time here o…

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, slow living often seems like a distant dream. Yet, embracing a slower pace, especially at the start of the day, can

In the constant search for well-being and personal growth, the concept of everyday carry (EDC) has gained great prominence. And...

As a young man, Jack London joined the crew of a schooner bound for seal hunting in the Pacific.  When his ship pulled into port in the Bonin Islands, Jack gazed with wonder upon the jungle-covered volcanic peaks and breathed in the exotic scent of the tropics. “It was my first foreign land,” he remembered. […]

A well-placed hook to the head can knock a man out, and one delivered to the kidneys or liver will bring the strongest of brawlers to their knees.

Posted on Friday 4 Aug 2023. 1,290 words, 8 links. By Matt Webb.

At the dawn of the plastic age, it was a cheap substitute. The word “plasticky” is not a compliment. Over time, the plastics industry developed new finishes, colors and most of all, cul…

Some fields of endeavor continue to narrow down the unknown, in search of the recipe, the efficient method of industry. And others live on Feynman’s expanding frontier of ignorance, where eac…

Then neither is “yes.” Enrollment requires choice. PS one of my all-time favorite encore episodes of Akimbo is out this week: How to get into a famous college.

How was your last weekend? Pretty ho-hum, again? Tired of the same go-round of restaurants, landscapes, and entertainment options in your town? Why not take a road trip this weekend? Drive somewhere, say, eight hours away? Does that strike you as nutty? Do you find yourself thinking, “Oh no, that’s too far. I couldn’t possibly!”? […]

There’s a difference between intellectual and smart. A plumber is smart, they know how to do a skilled and effective job on the task at hand. Intellectualism isn’t about practical resul…

Let’s say you have a certain way you set up your project folders, and you want a “project blueprint” so you don’t have to manually create that particular folder structure again and again. Workflow Built-in Ask for Input action: It prompts you for the project name. Built-in Text action containing your vault name. Built-in Set Variable action for storing your vault name in the variable “Vault name” Create Folder action creates first project folder. Create Folder action creates another nest...

On doing glue work, a critical role that is too often considered expendable.

An analysis into a prevalent cognitive illusion about the nature of success in many fields.

Let’s say you have a chance to become a vampire, where you’d get the immortality and the supernatural powers, but you wouldn’t have to hurt anyone. Would you do it? It would be a hard decision to make. Not only will the transformation involve a radical change in your habits — moving from sleeping at […]

In response to a tweet of mine, someone pointed me to the thought-provoking 2001 paper Bad is Stronger Than Good: Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. … There appear to be more words for negative than positive emotions. … bad [news] events are more newsworthy and attract more reader attention.

There’s often a choice between following the cultural dictates of a given group or seeking out demonstrable facts and the scientific method. Which do you expect most people would choose? Whic…