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I love porridge. In the pursuit of a perfect bowl of it, I’ve tried tons of different techniques, visited multiple porridge restaurants, participated in long WhatsApp exchanges about toppings and got a sugar high after overdoing it with dulce de leche on porridge at a friend’s house. Porridge is my breakfast on most days, as it’s easy to make and is nutritious. It took me a bit to get to the type…
It’s not worth getting rich if you don’t know already what you’ll do with your wealth. It’s not worth hiring a great employee if you don’t know what you want them to do. It’s not worth creating lots of free time for yourself if you don’t know what you’ll do with it.
I love jazz music and I am excited about what’s happening on the modern jazz scene today. These are my favourite jazz (and related) albums from 2019: Immigrance by Snarky Puppy - website, Spotify. I listened to the track Xavi approximately 18 trillion times. The live NPR Tiny Desk recording of this track is amazing. Blume by Nérija - Bandcamp, Spotify. Amazing sound from Nubya Garcia’s septet.…
I frequently hear people say technical to describe their ability to handle a programming language, a browser programming language, or a database query language. Sometimes it’s “I am technical”, but much more commonly it’s “I am not technical”. I am convinced that this term is inaccurate for this situation and introduces a limiting mindset. You can write Clojure code. Does…
An acquaintance asked me what do I notice myself thinking about when I’m not purposefully doing anything specific. In his mind, he said, are constant wonderings what he would do with more cash on hand than what he had at the moment. In my mind, the most common thinking categories are (as a percentage of total idle time, subjectively): a) rehearsing of future conversations (20%); b) worrying about…
It turns out that in France the Value Added Tax accounts for 56% of the state’s net receivables in 2019. It was as high as 63% in 2018 (see page 4 in both documents, thanks France for keeping the formatting the same year to year). That is to say, the personal income tax plus the tax on the income of companies plus all other non-VAT taxes all together contribute less than 50% to the state’s budget.
A common definition of a platform business model is that other people can build profitable businesses on top of the platform. With many of the platforms being public companies, or getting ready to go public, there is a lot of earnings pressure. How do you address that pressure as a platform company? You have 3 main choices: raise demand side prices raise supply side prices make the platform itself…
I lived in Barcelona from 2010 till 2018. Barcelona has more fancy restaurants than many other cities in Europe. There are some good cheap places too, but not many. Be prepared to spend some cash on some good food. Restaurant opening hours: most restaurants are open from 1:00pm till 4:00pm for lunch, then the kitchen closes, and later reopens for dinner from 8:00pm till 11:30pm. It’s hard to find…
Someone I know was recently mentioned in the press. The article about them uncovered a super interesting part of their personality that I was unaware of. I hesitated to reach out to that someone and ask them out for lunch. They had been published on a big site, they now have an inbox full of coffee chat requests, I thought. Why would they talk to me now, when they have the world’s attention?
When our loved one is about to embark on a risky journey, climb a difficult mountain, try a new psychedelic experience, or do something else potentially dangerous… Is asking them to not do it an act of love and kindness? Or an act of fear and mistrust?
When building a new habit, it’s quite easy to fail to keep it up on some days. As you probably know, breaking habits is alright and is inevitable. Many programs and apps focused on habit building track “streaks” of you sticking to a habit every day. Duolingo users, for example, report streaks of 2000 days in a row. And then, inevitably, comes the day when the streak is broken. If your…
There are no uninteresting days. There are only days when: You don’t observe enough. You don’t pay enough attention to what you see. You don’t observe with the necessary context. You don’t apply the right attitude.
I am “an enthusiastic, creative and sociable free spirit” ENFP after lunch. Give me some coffee, and I’m “an innovative inventor” INTP. Give me some really good espresso, and I’ll make it all the way to “an imaginative and strategic” INTJ in a few hours. In the morning I tend to be “a very dedicated and warm” ISFJ, but sometimes can be “a bold,…
While everyone is building direct to consumer brands, e-commerce websites, running Facebook ads… Selling a high-quality product at a supermarket can still be a viable, and sometimes highly profitable, business. Selling fruit at the farmers’ market can still be a viable, and sometimes reasonably profitable, business. Running a coffee shop can still be a viable, and sometimes even trendy, business.…
We are used to government bureaucracy taking a long time. Need a visa? Sure, that’ll be 4 weeks. Want to get a stamp on this paper? Sure, that’ll be 15 working days. You have spent 8½ years here but you can’t have your rights until it’s 8¾ years. And yet: you’re 2 weeks late with your taxes, we’re charging you late fees. Notify us of the receipt of this message within 5 working days.
Following what is interesting is powerful. There is no expectation of success. You’re just experimenting. There is no resistance. Everything is easy. Parts of identity come out that no-one (especially the author) knew of. Writing, it turns out, is the only way to do introspection. [^1] The process of setting up an experiment is exciting. For once the process is fun! Committing is scary, and…
Update from 28 Dec 2019: This was originally published in 2015 when I didn’t write very often. I made some edits to make the article more readable. Scroll to the bottom for an update on where I am with cooking (spoiler: not much has changed since 2015). Upon moving out of my parents’ house I didn’t know anything about cooking. I was enthusiastic to learn and made some progress in the first few…