TL;DR: Your discernment in a subject often improves as you dedicate time and attention to that subject. The space of possible subjects is huge, so on average your discernment is terrible, relative to

Note: This story has not been updated since 2021. If you can’t move the preferences window because it’s fake, you might be running an Electron app like 1Password 8. I’ve used AgileBits’s 1Password for

The Ocean Sciences Building at the University of Washington in Seattle is a brightly modern, four-story structure, with large glass windows reflecting the bay across the street. On the afternoon of Ju

It seems like we’re replacing the parts that make us human with AI, which feels antithetical to the idea of computers. It’s bothering me a lot. 📝 What Do We Want Computers to Do? lmnt.me/blog/what-do-we-want-c…

I know what makes people grow more reliably than anything else. It is: taking on a difficult project with some amount of public accountability. This can be large or small: a lecture series, a business

Windows 10 Desktop July 2015 –– An icon is defined, among other things, by its longevity. Icons don’t withstand change - they endure it, by evolving with the times. An icon adapts to each new era, mai

“Something’s a little bit off here.” That’s what I predict your first thought to be upon seeing my cubicle for the first time. There’s no screen or mouse in sight. Instead there’s a guy hammering away

Human language model limitations While the human language model is quite comprehensive in its processing abilities, there are still serious limitations to the human cognitive model that you should be

Day 1 MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, a

“Was the internet really this bad?” I wondered to myself as I read the September 1995 issue of The Atlantic. I was reading the issue in digital form, displayed on Netscape Navigator 3 on a mid-’90s Ma

Enlarge / Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind stars Jim Carrey in one of his most powerful dramatic roles. Focus Features Last week, the 2004 cult classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind marke

Friends and colleagues have been asking me to share my perspective on the Apple Vision Pro as a product. Inspired by my dear friend Matt Mullenweg’s 40th post, I decided to put pen to paper. This star

"Don’t even bother," the upholsterer told me. I was on the phone, asking for a theoretical quote to reupholster a five-year-old or so midrange sofa, which cost more than $1,000 when new. That task, th

From my first desk job working at my college newspaper. My first job was working at a small deli and grocery store in Lake Tahoe when I was 15. It was a job that came full circle some twenty years lat

Jobs’ outsized influence as Apple’s leader left a lasting impression on managers and employees alike. But one of his most unwavering beliefs might surprise leaders who aspire to success as great as th

Sociopaths are modern-day boogeymen, and the word “sociopath” is casually tossed around to describe the worst, most amoral among us. But they are not boogeymen; they are real people and, according to Patric Gagne, widely misunderstood. Gagne wrote “Sociopath,” her buzzy forthcoming memoir, to try to…

Ringer illustration I am truly sorry for the words I am about to make you read, but before we get to Dune, let’s talk about Magic Dick Theory. Actually, you know what? Maybe you should click away righ

I used to tell this story, about my theory of fucks. The theory goes like so: you are born with so many fucks to give. However many you’ve got is all there is; they are like eggs, that way. Some of us

Crossposted from substack. As we all know, sugar is sweet and so are the $30B in yearly revenue from the artificial sweetener industry. Four billion years of evolution endowed our brains with a simple

It’s Tuesday morning. The year is 2009. You’re just waking up after a long and boozy New Year’s Eve with friends. Your head rings, and your mouth is the type of dry that makes you question your adulth

I often hear agency talked about as if it’s an inherent trait: Either someone has it or they don’t -- in which case, too bad, they’re doomed to a life in the minor leagues. This hasn’t been my experie

I had the feeling I was a placeholder girlfriend. That once the winter was over she wouldn’t need me anymore. I had this feeling because it hadn’t started like my other relationships. I’d kept seeing

A mental model for service businesses. July 1, 2022 • 2 min read A few years back, my team decided to get a custom meeting room table. In our search for something great, we were referred to a small st

We're told repeatedly that it's just the price of one coffee a month. But the combined cost of every single tool, service, app and game demanding a cup of coffee a month becomes the equivalent of paying for enough caffeine to poison even the strongest constitution. theindex.media/p/the-subscript…

Anjali Goswami thinks cats are perfect—not in the same way as the average cat person, out of admiration for their beauty, athleticism and independence of spirit, but from a scientific standpoint. Gosw

Frustrated? Procrastinating? Stuck? You've scrolled through all the timelines, checked your email 10 times, and now what? You don't feel like working... This is a common state of mind nowadays. Fortun

The path, more of a faint depression in the field I had just crossed, disappeared into a wood: yes, I could see an opening in the vegetation. The day before, I had left the official walking route of t

Energy makes time 04 Aug 2023 by Mandy Brown BECAUSE I WORK WITH a lot of high performers, the kind of people who are frequently responsive to both the unending needs of their workplace and the unendi

It happened towards the end of secondary school. Sunlight was cutting through the classroom, and it must have been close to lunchtime because the air was caramel-thick with boredom. This was in the qu

One of the major milestones of our early childhoods comes when we learn, for the first time, how to successfully tie our own shoes. As most of us learned, there are three key steps to making that happen: Do all three steps correctly, and you’ll wind up with a successfully tied shoe. Or will you? As…

Dopamine is part of an ancient neural pathway that ensures human survival. It is also part of the reason it is so hard to stop playing a video game or pass up a cupcake. Meredith Miotke/for NPR Screen

While agonizing over what to write last week, I tried to reverse engineer my writing wins. In the process, I discovered that the decision which separated my good writing from my bad writing expanded t

There is a common misperception of what makes life meaningful. It is the idea that we have a special purpose in life – and that once we find it, all our confusion ends. We are saved from the happensta