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Software engineers tend to be smart people. Writing software is hard, and it’s entirely a discipline of exercising your brain cells to write the correct commands to make the computer do what you want it to do. Add in the layers of complexity that come with dealing with humans who want software to do something without necessarily knowing or understanding precisely what they want, and what you end up with is a fairly complicated practice.

Tools are often cited as an example of what separates humans from most other animals. And while it’s true that other animals also use tools, humans are a bit unique in that we’ve also developed tools that make tools. My dogs (I have two, Doge and Walter) occasionally utilize tools, but due to their lack of opposable thumbs their tool usage is quite limited. My dogs’ use of tools tends to be limited to acts which involve food or play.

Lies are easy. It’s easy to pretend your problems are someone else’s fault. It’s easy to pretend when things don’t go your way, that it’s the other party’s fault. We tell ourselves many lies to get through the day. Being honest is very challenging, and it’s especially hard to be honest with ourselves.

In an era where companies eagerly collect your private data—sometimes transparently, sometimes not—protecting your digital privacy has become increasingly challenging. While governments often facilitate rather than prevent this data collection, there are still meaningful steps we can take to maintain some control over our personal information. Though achieving complete privacy without disconnecting entirely from modern society is nearly impossible, implementing strategic privacy practices can significantly reduce your digital footprint.

It’s easy to preach, but it’s hard to be congruent with whatever philosophies you espouse. Certainly there are people who do as they say they do, but I suspect the majority of those who (like myself) write blog posts on self-help themes don’t practice much of what they preach. Consider fitness gurus. People who tend to be physically fit are often that way not just because they work hard, but because they’ve won the genetic lottery in some way. Research suggests that fitness outcomes are influenced by genetics anywhere from 40-70%, with one twin study finding that genetic factors account for 47-80% of fitness trait variation. My unscientific observations align with this research.

You may occasionally hear about “yield inversion”, which is usually referring to the difference in yield between the 10 year and the 2 year US government treasury bonds. This number often gets mentioned in the news because when the value goes negative, it’s often interpreted as a sign that we’re either in a recession, or about to be in a recession.

Life is a series of random walks. Even if you walk the same path every day (in the literal sense), your individual steps on every walk you take are essentially random, and for the most part you aren’t even conscious of them because this is handled by muscle memory. When I say the steps are random, what I mean is that if you could precisely measure every step you take—where your foot lands, how much force you apply with your individual muscles—the data would reveal a pattern from a statistical perspective, but each individual step would follow a normal random distribution. In fact, research on human gait variability confirms this, with studies showing that step-to-step fluctuations follow statistical patterns characteristic of complex systems.

I realize this is a click-baity subject, but I couldn’t help myself. There’s so much confusion online about VR, the “metaverse,” Facebook’s pivot, and the cringeworthy marketing content (which you can skip unless you love buzzwords and egregious use of terms like “collaboration” and “AI”). The whole thing is oddly reminiscent of an episode of Star Trek.

I remember when my first serious girlfriend broke up with me decades ago. Her chief complaint revolved around some recent incident, the details of which have faded from memory, but our conversation remains vivid. I pleaded with her, explaining how she was clouded by recency bias—focusing on the recent negative experience while overlooking all our positive history together.

We’re told early on in life that memorization is the path to success. Education systems seem to be largely based on this idea. Most school lessons involve some degree of memorization, and creativity is generally discouraged in core curriculums. I’m pretty sure this is a bad idea, because there’s not really that much benefit to memorization. Instead, I think critical thinking and the ability to quickly find information is much more valuable.