To my great surprise, young people now somewhat frequently contact me in order to solicit career advice. They are usually in college or highschool, and want to know what the best next steps are for a
A long time ago, I had this friend. She moved. One day, I went to see her. She drove me around. There was a problem. It would eventually end our friendship. When she drove, she didn't hold the steerin
I've been thinking about all the things that used to be normal. It used to be normal to own someone. It used to be normal to work them to death. It used to be normal for a man to beat his wife and for
Social Health "You Do You," The War on Compassion Jessica Wildfire Aug 21, 2023 Shotprime August 21 2023 9:46 PM 5 min read Share Email Humans don't like feeling empathy. It hurts. Psychologists at Pr
I’ve needed to write this for a long time, for multiple reasons. Lots of people have been asking what the hell I’m doing. Like do I work somewhere? What do I actually do all day? Tons of my friends ar
"So what's the solution?" You get that a lot these days, especially when it comes to public health and the climate crisis. It comes right after they tell you the latest inferno "wasn't caused entirely
Social Health Jessica Wildfire Aug 14, 2023 ShotPrime Studio August 14 2023 10:21 AM 4 min read Share Email Back in the 1950s, this guy named John B. Calhoun built a rat paradise. Actually, he built s
Social Health Jessica Wildfire Aug 14, 2023 Shotprime August 14 2023 1:59 AM 4 min read Share Email There's this play by Eugene Ionesco called, "Rhinoceros." You should read it sometime. It's about an
Eleon Update: Over the next day, I’ll probably be migrating my entire Substack over to the new site. Ghost has a tool that will bring over everyone’s emails and (paid) subscriptions. I talk more about
Perhaps a strong and positive purpose in life can immunize against both Daniel Miessler July 31, 2023 I heard a great thing on a podcast recently. It was a guy saying alcohol addiction is confused bec
The saying “You’re the average of the five people spend the most time with” is still true, but has been redefined by the digital world. The Impact of Digital Influencers The introduction of podcasts,
Lion Design There’s a lot going on, so let’s jump right in. We’re definitely heading into a Covid wave . Wastewater surveillance has shown infections almost doubling over the last month. This wave fol
Grandfailure The California Supreme Court has ruled : If you catch Covid from work and then a family member dies from it, you can’t sue your employer. The ruling was unanimous. Their reasoning might m
Sponsored By I recently said something that ended up making the rounds on Twitter: "If you're a developer, you need to spend money on a great computer, an awesome monitor, a fantastic chair and a good
Grandfailure It started with a cough. Now our 4-year-old daughter is lying on the couch with a 100F fever. I started blaming our school. Then my spouse confessed. He took her to a party without a mask
Unsupervised Learning Unsupervised Learning is a security, AI, and meaning-focused newsletter/podcast that looks at how best to thrive as humans in a post-AI world. It combines original ideas and anal
July 15, 2023 · 3 mins · 564 words I started writing on my blog some years ago, and since then I’ve had a lot of reasons to stop writing. Here’s a list of why nobody cares about your blog Your blog is
Grandfailure An immunocompromised woman recently got fired for wearing an N95 mask to work. She can’t prove it. That’s the whole point. They didn’t have to make it official. They simply made her job i
Jessica Wildfire 26 June 2023 · Following Enjoy this Post? Support Jessica Wildfire on Ko-fi Don't miss a post! × If You Suffer from Urgent Normal Syndrome, Ask for Help 1072603 Choose a Membership Le
The whole universe is humming. Actually, the whole universe is Mongolian throat singing. Every star, every planet, every continent, every building, every person is vibrating along to the slow cosmic b
In the throes of a depressive episode, my therapist lobbed a question that detonated in my mind. “What are you avoiding?” A question that seemed innocuous at first, but it was like a grenade, explodin
I joined Google just before the pandemic when the company I had co-founded, AppSheet, was acquired by Google Cloud. The acquiring team and executives welcomed us and treated us well. We joined with gr
February 2009 I finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions. As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. W
Paul Woodruff is a philosopher, translator and poet who has taught at the University of Texas at Austin since 1973. How often do you think about death? “Every third thought,” said Shakespeare’s avatar
Moloch is a strong candidate for the most dangerous idea. If we’re alone in this universe, it’s likely because of Moloch. It’s pronounced MOL-uck . What is it? Practically speaking, it’s something lik
Haroon Meer, founder of Thinkst Applied Research, recently joined Dennis Fisher on the Decipher podcast to talk about recent changes in the security industry, the economic downturn, and how to get val
So much for “ The Jetsons .” Flying cars, floating cities and robot servants never happened. A decadeslong slowdown in “disruptive” discoveries, detailed in a new report looking at scientific studies
On most days, I detest punditry. That said, the emergence of large language models (LLMs) is perhaps the most interesting development in my entire career in tech — so it’s simply too consequential to
Published 25 December 2022 Share page About sharing Image source, Daniella Hutchinson Image caption, "I didn't do it..." Henry is not supposed to go inside a hospital - but he does By Helen Burchell B
The sex of human and other mammal babies is decided by a male-determining gene on the Y chromosome. But the human Y chromosome is degenerating and may disappear in a few million years, leading to our
We are digital hoarders. Some of us make plans for the custody of our accounts after death, but our online legacy is mostly trash. It’s decades’ worth of political rants and throwaway jokes on social
I’m a bit Elon and Twittered out, but I want to capture a basic prediction about all the shenanigans. As for my take on things, I will just say that Elon miscalculated a number of things in his handli
My favorite aunt, Auntie Len, when she was in her eighties, told me that she had not had too much difficulty adjusting to all the things that were new in her lifetime—jet planes, space travel, plastic
Update, Oct. 3, 2022: Jack Thomas, journalist who poignantly wrote of his terminal diagnosis, dies at 83 AS A TEENAGER, I often wondered how my life would change if I knew that I would die soon. Morbi
The Dance of Death, created in 1493 by Michael Wolgemut, inspired by the Black Death. (Credits: Wikipedia) The origins of the deadly Black Death have been discovered more than 600 years after it enter
Two-thirds of the way through his claustrophobic 2021 comedy special Inside , Bo Burnham briefly strips away all the humor and launches into “ That Funny Feeling .” It’s an intimate, quiet song that d
This story most recently aired in the May 5, 2020 episode of Crosscurrents. The Hum is a mysterious low pitch noise that bothers up to 2% of people worldwide. It’s been annoying residents in San Franc
Canada is experiencing something like the US’s January 6th event in what’s being called a “Vaccine Protest” and a “Freedom Convoy 2022”, alluding to it being made up largely of truckers. To my uninfor
I’ve always been fascinated by this aphorism. The original form pretends women don’t exist. Hard Times Create Strong People. ↓ Strong People Create Good Times. ↓ Good Times Create Weak People. ↓ Weak
I want the Dunning-Kruger effect to be real. First described in a seminal 1999 paper by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, this effect has been the darling of journalists who want to explain why dumb pe
Keith Hoodlet