Scuttlebutt is objectively an excellent word. It’s fun to say, has a playful connotation that lands better than “gossip,” and is a great example of a multisyllabic word that is even more amusing when you switch up the consonants that begin each half. Buttlescutt. I wanted to understand where this word came from. ...
Sports offer excellent metaphors that are used for general success in life precisely because they exist to be entertaining microcosms of life itself. Individuals or teams vie in a competitive landscape typically officiated by imperfect referees. Preparation is allowed, but on-field performance is all anyone remembers. Sports reflect real life in numerous ways, and each sport brings its own flair to the conversation. Golf of any variety is a wonderful mix of planning, tactics, and execution. It’s about discrete decisions, managing each shot based on given strengths and the likelihood of success. I became overwhelmed each time I tried untangling these metaphors. It was too much. Let me instead focus on one mindset adjustment I first jokingly heard in a disc golf YouTube video, but which I found impactful: The woods are mostly air. Aim for the gaps. ...
Wake up to a slight chill in the air, a quiet morning with leaves strewn across the sidewalks, brown and red and orange and yellow, preparing to crinkle later that afternoon once the morning dew glistening upon them evaporates. Throat is a bit scratchy. Pull up the covers for an extra moment of soft warmth before stretching out, rolling to the side, bare feet on wood floor. Wipe eyes, grab some water, and go shut the window accidentally left open overnight leading to this moderate discomfort and grogginess. On second thought, it’s going to warm up today. Not too much. Just enough to keep the window cracked and let some warmer air make its way through. ...
My wife, Erin Gilbertson, officially has her PhD in Biological and Medical Informatics from the University of California, San Francisco. You can read her entire thesis, entitled Machine Learning Insights into the 3D Genome: Diversity and Gene Regulation in Human Populations, online here. I’m incredibly proud of all of her work. It’s been amazing watching her grow, learn, persevere, and succeed in so many aspects. I’m thrilled I’ve been some part of that journey.
Merlin Mann’s Wisdom Project is an excellent collection of pithy and useful observations about the world. They range from the purely practical, to the advisory, to the somewhat absurd. It’s worth a read. I follow a Mastodon Bot that posts something from the document every six hours, and save any that catch my eye. This one resonated with me: Try to save some parts of your life to be just for you. Including some special things that you’re happy about or are even a little proud of. If your only private things are shameful things, you will become very sad and will eventually despise your own company. ...
In college, I started seeing low-effort headlines claiming yet another corporate industry death at the hands of millennial. A typical example is the casual sit-down restaurant, and you can see a compilation of such claims (along with subsequent refutations) in this CB Insights post. I’d rather focus on the broader phenomenon and the various fallacies of thinking that lead to these poor and useless critiques of an entire generation. ...
Doodling is more than scrawling sketches and shapes in the margins of your notes. It encompasses any idle, unguided, and spontaneous bursts of creativity.1 In a light-bulb moment a few months ago I rediscovered my love of doodling with words, and it’s now something I try to do when I have spare time. Doodling is a phenomenal way to passively develop a skill while enjoying the process. ...
I enjoy playing with technology, trying new apps, and adjusting my processes. I listen to podcasts that nominally focus on productivity and the tools to get work done. You can look at my track record of changing writing setups to understand what I mean. It’s easy to conflate optimizing how you work and the work you’re trying to do. It’s rarely the case that these are one and the same, so it’s good to remember that the only way to accomplish a task is by doing it.1 ...
I recently came across William MacAskill and his books Doing Good Better and What We Owe the Future.1 The former details a template for a model of approaching the world called effective altruism, while the other looks at an adjacent set of ideas called longtermism. While I’m still working through the second book, I’ve become quite interested in the concepts laid out in each and thought it was worth sharing. ...