Disorder of Magnitude

Strong models, weakly held

Clue Bankruptcy

I’d been working in software for almost 5 years before I quit my Google job with essentially no plan. The biggest thing I’ve noticed since I left is that there’s no one I’m afraid will think I’m stupid. This is incredibly liberating. I don’t know if the average programmer is as paralyzed by fear of […]

Triviality & Excellence

If you want a product to be excellent, in the sense of polished, refined and perfected, you should be able to produce it trivially. The process of polishing, refining and perfecting is all the same basic kind of action as building the product. There’s probably a better way, if you’re doing something expensive and have […]

Why I Left Google

It’s not because Google is bad. I think very highly of Google from an ethics/privacy/general-public-good perspective. It’s an unambiguous, enormous force for good in the world. I may write about this more later; I don’t want to discuss it on this post. I left Google because I want to screw around. I should phrase that […]

Alternative Medicine & Communities of Practice

The Hot Take Part I think people I interact with, mostly tech-associated folks in the SF Bay Area, are too skeptical of alternative medicine. (Blogs are for hot takes, right? I can do hot takes.) The correct level of skepticism isn’t “half eaten bagel in a dumpster,” it’s “hole in the wall cash-only shop with […]

It Wasn’t Supposed to be a Resolution Blog

A month ago I was very excited. I was going to quit my job, move to Tokyo, start a blog, build a personal brand, do freelance work as a data pipeline engineer, spin that into a metrics design consultancy, start a company or three, maybe build a few games, work out more, learn to cook… […]