AI: cognitive labor glut + new guys Apr 25, 2026

Why is the advent of AI a big deal, and more worrying than previous advents?

I think there are actually two interesting things going on, that make AI importantly different to previous technologies.

Cambridge: the kettle Apr 24, 2026

I arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, today with my boyfriend. We have a modest Airbnb apartment, up enough stairs that if you decided to count the flights you would probably have forgotten about the project by the top. It’s pleasant and unassuming, and we were moving slowly toward beginning writing our mandatory blog posts rather too late in the evening when a new presence got our attention.

Sleep puzzle system Apr 23, 2026

Here’s an obscure life hack.

If (like me) you:

• Don’t like going to bed, due to it conflicting with keeping on doing things

• When in bed, wish you had something more engaging and enjoyable to do instead of just lying there waiting—for instance, playing a very compelling computer game until you get tired

• Do not in fact reliably get tired from playing a very compelling computer game

• Like puzzles

..then a solution that has worked surprisingly well for me before (and I wrote about previously) is having hard math puzzles handy to think about as I go to sleep. Somehow thinking about math at the bounds of my limited ability to imagine does make me sleepy. And is also quite compelling.

How much should the ideal person cry wolf? Apr 22, 2026

It is a fact about wolves and rationality that you should warn people about wolves quite a few times for every effective wolf attack.

Vibe signaling externalities and the people-to-places pipeline Apr 21, 2026

People are sending signals all the time, and those signals are to my knowledge usually about themselves: they are smart, or kind, or attractive, or not naive, or have their shit together, or care about Palestine, or care about you, or are friendly, or artsy, or professional, or relatively in the know about the cultural currents of TikTok or DC.

People are also taking in signals all the time, and these signals are often about other people, and often even closely related to the signals being intentionally sent: Alice is trying to seem friendly, and Bob perceives her as friendly. But also a lot of signals people take in are about places. People read places as safe or dangerous, lighthearted or depressing, silly or serious, asking them to know more, or get more power, or do more. Suggesting they laugh drunkenly under the moonlight, or get up at 5 and pray. Encouraging submission or rebellion.

These signals that make the world feel one way or another make a big difference to people. They make one neighborhood nice to live in and another feel off, one workplace energizing and another deflating. But they are—to my knowledge—almost entirely unintentional side effects of the ways people behave for other reasons. People don’t dress nicely to collaborate in making you feel like you are in a thriving part of town. They dress nicely to make someone think something about them. And someone probably does, but then the signal is left there for everyone else to sweep into their average perception of the vibe in this part of town.

AI risk was not invested by AI CEOs to hype their companies Apr 20, 2026

I hear that many people believe that the idea of advanced AI threatening human existence was invented by AI CEOs to hype their products. I’ve even been condescendingly informed of this, as if I am the one at risk of naively accepting AI companies’ preferred narratives.

If you are reading this, you are probably familiar enough with the decades-old AI safety community to know this isn’t true. But I don’t have a good direct way to reach the people who could use this information, and still I hate to leave such a falsehood uncontested. So if this is obvious, I hope the post is still perhaps useful to point more distant and confused people toward.

The salad market mystery Apr 19, 2026

It often happens that I desire kale, but I want it to be clean and cut up, and while shops do sell this product by the bucketload, they are actually only willing to sell it by the bucketload. As a normal-sized person wanting a one-off salad, rather than a family of nine celebrating a kale festival, the market seems very uninterested in my existence.

‘Just put it in the fridge and eat it over the coming week, this isn’t a big deal’ I hear someone say. But I already have several plotlines going on in my life. I don’t want an additional kale arc that I need to track to resolution. I don’t want to commit. I just want a no-strings-attached salad that I can consume and walk away from.

Athletic education vs. athletic torment Apr 18, 2026

I don’t know if it occurred to me until my thirties to think of exercise as an enjoyable thing. I was familiar with finding obscure corner-cases that were fun, such as Dance Dance Revolution. But the idea of it just often being a good time was alien.

Missing markets in executive function Apr 17, 2026

It’s early in the morning, and sadly 1:29pm. After spending some time looking at things and picking them up and walking up the stairs and down the stairs and considering questions like “what should I…”, which my brain apparently considered objects of art more than of imperative, I inched into a decision to go out somewhere. Perhaps it would be clearer there.

After a blur of climbing and descending stairs and seeking objects and forgetting what I was doing and appreciating how beautiful my bag is, I set out. After remembering I should take various medications and going back inside to do that, I set out.

Tax offenses Apr 16, 2026

I paid my taxes this evening. I was disappointed to lose thousands of dollars, but I’d say this was emotionally overshadowed by my disappointment at the web interfaces I had to navigate to lose it.