Luhmann's Model Of Complexity, Selection Force, And Influence
Note: This is the first of a couple of articles I’m planning to write about this rough cluster of topics and themes, strongly influenced by Luhmann. For those well-versed in...
The Original Goodhart's Law is More Interesting
Goodhart’s Law, named after economist Charles Goodhart, is commonly known as: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. And this is a useful, pithy,...
Authoritarian High Modernism Of The Self
Author James C. Scott, in his very well-known book, Seeing Like A State1, introduces the concept of “authoritarian high modernism” to explain common threads between various ideas and schemes that...
Alignable vs Non-Alignable Differences
Marianne Belotti makes an excellent point she credits to economics in Kill It With Fire1 that, if you want to convince someone of the merits of a change, there are...
A Year In Reading
This year was the first year I made a concerted effort to read consistently, after all, it was the first year I was able to actually do that.1 It has...
Diagnosis Problems and Decision Problems
A relatively large amount of trouble in figuring out how to solve a problem can be avoided by not treating diagnosis problems as decision problems, and not treating decision problems...
Auditing Culture, and How Metrics Proliferate
Note: This post is in many ways an expansion or interpretation of the excellent fourth chapter in Limits Of The Numerical, written by Heather Steffen. Previously, we’ve talked about high-stakes...
Low-Stakes and High-Stakes Metrics
Metrics, OKRs, KPIs are marketed on a basis of, “don’t you want to know what’s going on?”, “how will you know where your problem is without being able to measure...
Chronic and Acute Stuckness: A Handbook
The feeling of being “stuck” is relatively common to the average knowledge worker, when your work is as much defining the work as it is doing it, and arguably it’s...
On Internal Writing
Writing, in general, is the process of taking something vague, a thought construct, an idea, a model of how something might work, and turning it into linear words. This process...
My Reading/Writing/Synthesis Process
In a conversation with David, the aspect of precisely how I read books came up, in that it seems that I am relatively uncommonly thorough in how I read the...
Dimensionality And The Unbearable Size Of Systems
Dan Luu’s excellent post about how things “look easy” to build has posed something of a vexing mystery to me: Why do people, whose entire (well-paid) job it is to...
Tool Unification & Mental Overhead
Recently, after many frustrations with kitchen timer devices, I caved and bought a cheap, single-purpose tool: A digital display timer. It has six buttons, manages two timers, and does nothing...
Causality Is Not A Way To Make Sense Of The World
Or rather, it’s the pattern for many different ways to make sense of the world, rather than one specific way to make sense of it, as often claimed. As humans...
Taking Advantage Of Being Medicated: Revising Pre-Medication Processes.
Recently, I’ve been forced to consider precisely how I do things, how I work and how I do what I want to, and what is expected of me. A lot...
My Lizardbrain And Its Relationship To Numbers
Something that has come up recently, when I was reviewing some notes1 is just how thoroughly my lizardbrain is activated and pleased with what can be aptly called “number go...
Leaning into Environment Integration
A relatively common piece of advice, or rather an attitude, to encounter with older developers and sysadmins that have Seen Some Stuff is the insistence on using no or very...
Spending Queue: A Review
A while back, I wrote about my idea for a simple spending queue that I then went and implemented. You can find the current implementation that I use every day...
The concept of "Working Hard"
The idea and concept of “working hard” are fascinating to me. I simultaneously feel like I have worked hard for everything, and like I’ve never worked hard in my life....
Software As Brain Prosthesis
I learned programming after I figured out that a chief obstacle to me doing something I wanted to do was how janky it was to do. First I used spreadsheets,...
Put The Gun Down
Warning for the reader: The stuff in this post is not exactly light morning reading and talks of PTSD, abuse, and its consequences. Consider watching a fox interact with a...
Capitalist Survivor's Guilt
Recently, I got a new job, with an impossible to ignore raise attached to it. My net compensation about doubled, and I was not exactly uncomfortable before. And after the...
Scarcity And Its Effects
So far, my life has been chiefly dominated by scarcity, and its effects. Not enough food, not enough money, not enough love, not enough focus and attention. I grew up...
Westrum's Cultures Of Requisite Imagination
In order to keep with my recent resolution to write more about the things I learn in order to make them stick, so I’m going to summarise Ron Westrum’s 1993...
The Orbital Model Of Trauma Recovery
Trauma, and its recovery, can feel endless in its consequences, in its constant presence in your life, thoughts and actions long after the original event and its direct consequences have...
Nushell And Its Place In Your Toolbelt
Nushell is something I found recently, and have come to appreciate. Here’s, briefly, why I think it deserves a place in your toolbelt, even if it may not become your...
Working Remotely In The Pandemic And The Realisations That Come With It.
I started a new job at the end of November, when I came to Berlin. It’s been nice, the people have been lovely, the work has been interesting and relatively...
A Review Of What Has Happened To Me Recently.
In about a week or so, I’m moving to Berlin, from a rather small town in Illinois. This is after I moved to said small town in Illinois from Munich,...
Peer Pressure As Means Of Development
A while ago, I experienced a behaviour shift: I started caring more about books, about social workings and my own mental health. At the time I didn’t notice this, but...
Mental Exhaustion Resources And Writing
Writing these posts is a weird thing to me, as it turns out. Writing itself has always been reasonably cathartic for me, if constrained to not having an audience. Posting...