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You're in a space of twisty little mazes, all alike
I have a hidden reason for posing this problem, but that's the subject of a future blog post. But for now, let me clarify by saying that I'm not just interested in counting the number of such mazes, I actually want to enumerate them — that is, I need to know what each maze looks like.
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How I’m Handling My Depression Using an App
A brief summary: I’ve built a web application to help me stay on top of my depression. Every day I track a number of indicators — when I…
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My Keyboard
I use a Datahand keyboard . It’s the best thing that’s happened to my fingers and wrists since... It’s the best thing that has ever happened to my fingers and wrists. I see a lot of parallels between the Datahand and pure functional programming (lol). They both take lots of commitment. They change the entire way you…
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A Note to My Readers
One of the things I’ve always tried to do at the Dish is to be up-front with readers. This sometimes means grotesque over-sharing; sometimes it means I write imprudent arguments I have to withdraw;…
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Seneca on the proper use of time
Yesterday I wrote about the impending death of the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks. I was particularly struck by this line from Sachs’ public goodbye
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Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget
My wife and I were inspired by Sid Meier’s Civilization to look at our finances differently.
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A Tale of Two Zippers
Recently, Akiba took me to visit his friend’s zipper factory. I love visiting factories: no matter how simple the product, I learn something new.
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Outschooling in the Bay Area
Homeschooling is interesting because, if some new approach is going to disrupt the current education system and change it radically for the better, it seems likely it would come from outside the...
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My 5.5 Months on Soylent: The Joys of Not Cooking
Expired Registration Recovery Policy
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Argentina on Two Steaks a Day(2006)
The classic beginner's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts…
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What I Learned From Blowing An Interview
Some time ago, I was a development manager with 23 reports spread over four teams.
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Princess Pricklepants, Startup Founder Extraordinaire
Previously: Princess Pricklepants, Entrepreneur Dear reader, for our preamble we’d like to say a number of fascinating, witty, clever, and delightful things, but we can’t think of any. …
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We can't see our culture very well, because we see with it
By Hand & Brain
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Why “Whiplash” Won an Oscar for Best Editing
whiplash (n): 1. the lash of a whip. 2. an abrupt snapping motion or change of direction resembling the lash of a whip. 3. a neck injury caused by a sudden ...
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I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language
Take a walk with Stephen Wolfram through the topics in his new book that introduces non-programmers to the Wolfram Language and computational thinking.
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Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
Your life is the best story! Just start your blog today!
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A simple explanation of Chinese characters
This was originally posted as an answer to a Quora question about how long it takes Chinese kids to learn their “alphabet”. I’m editing it…
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How to Write with Style (1985)
Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and…
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First 26 pages of Neal Stephenson's new novel Seveneves
The personal website of author Neal Stephenson, unless it's been hacked.
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What Can You Put in a Refrigerator?
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.