Other people are just as multifaceted as you

February 5th, 2018

Most people seem to think of themselves as "at the edge" of several communities rather than defined by a single identity. It’s easy to think of yourself as special and that other people are more singularly defined, but that’s a bias stemming from the f...

Podcast & Audiobook Starter Kit

February 5th, 2018

In my previous post, I compiled a list of reasons why on-demand audio is great. Evangelism works best when you make it easy to hit the ground running, so here are a few tips and recommendations. Hopefully this will lower the activation energy for getti...

Teach a girl to fish

February 5th, 2018

My favorite aphorism might be "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". It's a useful idea incorporate into your life philosophy, both for yourself and others. It's nice to offer to help when s...

Why is pop culture obsessed with battles between good and evil?

February 5th, 2018

This essay from Aeon makes the observation that folktales weren't always about fighting for a noble value. Rather they were just about getting what you want, without framing actions in a strong moral light: Stories from an oral tradition never have any...

Why is flaking so widespread in San Francisco?

February 5th, 2018

In an email exchange with Brian Lui, he asked me an interesting question about the rate of flaking in San Francisco: I had a brief question too. I've read that the rate of "flaking" in San Francisco is really high, because everyone is so busy and there...

Empathy for the Devil

October 8th, 2017

History is too often reduced to stories of good versus evil. We get the impression that we are somehow different from the people who were bad, and we take for granted that we would never make similar choices. We should learn to empathize with those who...

Subsidizing Suburbia series

July 30th, 2017

Subsidizing Suburbia: A forgotten history of how the government created suburbiaFinancing Suburbia: How government mortgage policy determined where you liveExempting Suburbia: How suburban sprawl gets special treatment in our tax codePaving Suburbia: H...

Unambiguous Webpack config with Typescript

June 19th, 2017

You can write your Webpack config in Typescript, and it’ll save you a huge amount of pain. Webpack’s docs would lead you to believe that using Typescript requires a hacky customized set up, but in fact it’s as simple as installing a single module and c...

Consistency is key: A letter to the Stanford GSC

April 20th, 2014

Richard Dawkins is very clear on his opinion of creationism and its supporters. In an article published by The Guardian, he stated, "Any science teacher who denies that the world is billions ... of years old is teaching children a preposterous, mind-sh...