Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List More from Jason Fried
Whenever I talk about working in real-time, making decisions as you go, figuring things out now rather than before, I get a question like this... "If you don't have a backlog, or deep sets of prioritized, ranked items, how do you decide what to do next?" My answer: The same way you do when your made your list. You make decisions. We just make decisions about what to work on next as we go, looking forward, rather than making decisions as we went, looking backwards. Why work from what /seemed/ like a good idea before? Instead, work from appears to be a good idea now. You have more information now — why not use it? It's always baffled me how people who pluck work from long lists of past decisions think you can't make those same kinds of decisions now instead. It's all yay/nay decisions. Same process. Before wasn't magical. Before was just now, then. Why not look at now, now? Now is a far more accurate version of next. The backlog way is based on what you thought then. The non-backlog way is based on what you think now. I'll take now. One's stale, one's fresh. We'll take fresh. Then is further, now is closer. There's nothing special about having made decisions already. They aren't better, they aren't more accurate, they aren't more substantial just because they've been made. What they are, however, is older and often outdated. If you've got to believe in something, I'd suggest putting more faith in now. -Jason
One of the great lessons of nature: Randomness is the most beautiful thing. Every forest, every field, every place untouched by humans is full of randomness. Nothing lines up, a million different shapes, sprouting seeds burst where the winds — or birds — randomly drop them. Stones strewn by water, ice, gravity, and wind, all acting on their own in their own ways. Things that just stop and stay. Until they move somehow, another day. The way the light falls, the dapples that hit the dirt. The shades of shades of shades of green and gold that work no matter what's behind it. The way the wind carries whatever's light enough for liftoff. The negative space between the leaves. Colliding clouds. The random wave that catches light from the predictable sun. The water's surface like a shuffled blanket. Collect the undergrowth in your hand. Lift it up. Drop it on the ground. It's always beautiful. However it comes together, or however it stays apart, you never look at it and say that doesn't line up or those colors don't work or there's simply too much stuff or I don't know where to look. Nature's out of line. Just right. You too. -Jason
In the end, judgment comes first. And that means hiring is a gut decision. As much science as people want to try to pour into the hiring process, art always floats to the top. This is especially true when hiring at the executive level. The people who make the final calls — the ones who are judged on outcome, not effort — are ultimately hired based on experience and judgement. Two traits that are qualities, not quantities. They are tasked with setting direction, evaluating situations, and making decisions with limited information. All day long they are making judgment calls. That's what you hire them to do, and that's how you decide who to hire. Presented with a few finalists, you decide who you *think* will do a better job when they have to *think* about what to do in uncertain situations. This is where their experience and judgment come in. It's the only thing they have that separates them from someone else. Embrace the situation. You don't know, they don't know, everyone's guessing, some guess better than others. You can't measure how well someone's going to guess next time, you can only make assumptions based on other assumptions. Certainty is a mirage. In the art of people, everything is subjective. In the end, it's not about qualifications — it's about who you trust to make the right call when it matters most. Ultimately, the only thing that was objective was your decision. The reasons were not. -Jason
I'm republishing this for a friend who doesn't have a reliable place to publish this online. It's a letter she wrote and sent to a number of newspapers. Her family was a victim of the recent Franklin wildfire, and unlike other recent fires, the Franklin fire wasn't included in the Governor's emergency declaration for disaster relief. This has devastating downstream implications on those who lost everything, and their neighbors and neighborhoods. Here is her piece, in its entirety. Governor Newsom can change this with the stroke of a pen, and it's my understanding he's been presented with an opportunity to sign this into being, but has, as of now, refused. If you know anyone who can reach Governor Newsom and help make this happen for all the folks who suffered dearly in Franklin, please do. Thank you. —— Malibu's Forgotten Fire: Why the Franklin Fire Must Be Included in Disaster Relief On December 9th, my home burned in the Franklin Fire in Malibu. Just 19 days after it was contained, the Palisades Fire ignited and raged all the way to my neighborhood. The fire was only stopped because there was simply nothing left to burn. Despite this undeniable connection, Franklin Fire victims are not included in disaster relief efforts, leaving me and my neighbors in a dire situation with no support. During this time, I was unable to return to my property. Homes on my street still lack drinkable water and essential utilities. The communication poles burned down, making recovery even more challenging. The already difficult job of dealing with the Franklin Fire has been compounded by the Palisades Fire, yet we have been left out of relief efforts. The housing market is overrun, and price gouging has made anything available unaffordable. I don’t qualify for help because my fire “doesn’t count.” I don’t qualify for free toxin testing or free debris removal from the Army Corps of Engineers. I don’t qualify for streamlined tax relief or financial benefits. I am still waiting for any assistance to cover my family’s initial six-week stay in a hotel with our pets. What was initially expected to be a few months of hardship has now turned into an estimated two-year ordeal—because I am at the bottom of every priority list. The most devastating realization is that I am woefully underinsured for this disaster. If I were allowed to combine my insurance policy, I would have the funds needed to rebuild. But because the Franklin Fire is not included in the broader emergency declaration, I am prohibited from accessing this option. If the Franklin Fire were bundled with the officially recognized wildfires, I could qualify for the necessary coverage to repair my home. It is heartbreaking to see that just 19 days after the Franklin Fire, victims of the Palisades Fire have been granted sweeping benefits and streamlined permits. They will be able to rebuild their homes “like for like” plus an additional ten percent without the need for permits—not even for homes or septic systems. Meanwhile, I don’t qualify for this exemption. I don’t qualify for state-backed relief efforts. My neighborhood, which was undeniably part of this disaster, is being ignored. Instead, I am left with nothing but bureaucratic red tape and empty reassurances. Why is my neighborhood excluded from these crucial relief efforts? The answer is simple: Governor Gavin Newsom has not signed off on it. Other fires across Los Angeles—including those caused by arsonists—have been bundled into the broader wildfire relief programs. Fires that never even touched the Palisades are included. So why not the Franklin Fire? Malibu is not just a playground for the rich and famous. It is home to multi-generational families like mine. I was born and raised in Malibu. My grandparents’ home on Pacific Coast Highway, which they purchased in the 1940s, was lost in the Palisades Fire. My parents’ home—my childhood home—was lost in the Palisades Fire. My own home, where I lived with my husband and child, burned in the Franklin Fire just 19 days before. The Franklin Fire was still smoldering when the Palisades Fire ignited. We were still in a hotel, not yet having found a place to rent. We are part of this disaster, yet we have been erased from its response. It is time for the Franklin Fire to be included in the state of emergency declaration. We need access to relief, insurance flexibility, and the same streamlined rebuilding process granted to our neighbors. We are victims of this disaster, and we deserve to be recognized as such.
More in life
Over the course of 169 issues, Classics Illustrated gave me a taste for mind-expanding reading that lasted a lifetime
talking w Eliza McLamb about stealing from WiSpa, leaving LA, and reading what ppl say about you in the snark communities
"The most dangerous people in the world are intelligent people who are unsuccessful."
(1) Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi You probably heard that Colossal Biosciences recently reconstructed the DNA of dire wolves and created live dire wolves, bringing them back from extinction. But have you heard that also they did no such thing and you’re a bunch of chumps? Jeremy Austin, Director of the Australian Center for Ancient DNA: I think a lot of scientists are going to be scratching their heads, saying, “Look, you’ve got a white, gray wolf.” That’s not a dire wolf under any definition of a species ever… Nic Rawlence of Otago University: So what Colossal has produced is a grey wolf, but it has some dire wolf-like characteristics, like a larger skull and white fur. They extracted fragments of dire wolf DNA from fossilized remains, and then found 20 gene edits they could do to make gray wolves look more like dire wolves. (Five of those were apparently needed just to make their fur white.) That is cool. It’s a step towards bringing a species back from extinction. But it’s not bringing a species back from extinction. Save your applause for someone who actually does that. (2) Aspergillus niger (h/t Parsimony’s Panpharmacon ) Citric acid is what makes lemon juice taste like lemon juice. It’s used as a flavoring or preservative in lots of food. So when you drink your delicious lemon seltzer, it’s comforting to remember that what you’re tasting came from black mold. Aspergillus niger is a mold […] found throughout the environment within soil and water, on vegetation, in fecal matter, on decomposing matter, and suspended in the air. […] A. niger causes a disease known as “black mold” on certain fruits and vegetables such as grapes, apricots, onions, and peanuts, and is a common contaminant of food. […] A. niger is classified as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in food production, although the microbe is capable of producing toxins that affect human health. […] The production of citric acid (CA) is achieved by growing strains of A. niger in a nutrient rich medium that includes high concentrations of sugar and mineral salts and an acidic pH of 2.5-3.5. Many microorganisms produce CA, but Aspergillus niger produces more than 1 million metric tons of CA annually via a fungal fermentation process. (It’s fine.) (3) Landmark ruling on the WTO national security exception Tariffs are in the news. These raise many questions, but what I want to know is: Aren’t there treaties? What about the treaties? Well, The legal pretext for the American tariffs is that they are being done for “national security”. In some cases, this pretext seems quite thin. The US put equal tariffs on Mexico and Canada, supposedly in response to fentanyl coming over the border from those countries. But here are the amounts of fentanyl intercepted at the border from these countries in 2024: country fentanyl Mexico 9500 kg Canada 19 kg Still, it doesn’t seem crazy to argue that you need to maintain some industrial base for the sake of national security. Recent history unfortunately shows that brutal land wars between rich countries still happen and still require enormous quantities of matériel. According to some sources, Russia is using around 10k shells per day in Ukraine, while after several years of ramping up production, the EU hopes to produce 5.5k shells per day in 2025 and the US 2.5k. In 1995, the US could make 22k shells per day. Anyway, to make weapons, you need a long supporting supply chain. And in WWII, all sorts of peacetime manufacturing was converted to making weapons. And what about trucks? Or food? You need food for war, right? If you make exceptions for anything related to national security, that seems to make existing treaties meaningless. Well here’s a story most people haven’t heard: In 2014, Russia started blocking the transit of various goods from Ukraine through Russia. Ukraine protested to the WTO that this violated the commitments Russia had made to join the WTO. Russia responded that they were doing this for national security, and so the WTO didn’t even have the authority to review their actions. Many countries filed opinions. Opposing Russia’s position Australia Brazil Canada China The European Union Japan Moldova Singapore Turkey Supporting Russia’s position The United States The WTO finally held in 2019 that it could review the decision, meaning countries can’t totally “self-judge” what counts as national security. But they also said Russia’s actions were fine. Apparently, the the national security exception exists because the United States insisted on it during negotiations for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade back in 1947. As far as I can tell, the only countries that have filed WTO complaints against the US for the recent tariffs are Canada and China. (4) In 1982, John Mellencamp released Jack & Diane. A little ditty ‘bout Jack & Diane Two American kids growing up in the heart land Jack, he’s gonna be a football star Diane’s debutante, back seat of Jacky’s car Suckin’ on chili dog outside the Tastee Freez And in 2021 Tom McGovern presented a version with these lyrics. A little ditty ‘bout Jack & Diane Two American kids growing up in the heart land Jack, he’s gonna be a football star Diane’s debutante, back seat of Jacky’s car Suckin’ on chili dog Suckin’ on chili dog Suckin’ on chili dog Suckin’ on chili dog Suckin’ on chili dog Suckin’ on chili dog Suckin’ on chili dog Suckin’ on chili dog Some people noticed that as early as 2012, Clownvis Presley had been performing a version of this song with most of the lyrics chili-dogged. In the comments, Tom says: I’ve gotten a handful of comments blaming me for stealing this bit from a performer named Clownvis. I hadn’t even known who he was before I shared this video, it gained traction, and the accusatory comments started coming in. […] I would never, EVER intentionally steal another artist’s bit. Rather than leaving more angry comments, I ask you to consider that two creators can arrive at similar (dumb) ideas independently. Really? I won’t say it’s impossible, but that’s… quite a coincidence. I think this kind of borrowing could happen by accident. Maybe someone saw Clownvis in 2012. And they repeated it to Tom at a party in 2017 without attribution. And then Tom forgot hearing it, but the idea lurked somewhere in his brain to be “discovered” anew. I follow a lot of blogs, and I’m constantly paranoid that I might be unintentionally stealing things. (5) Capital, AGI, and human ambition and The Intelligence Curse The resource curse is the observation that countries with lots of natural resources often end up paradoxically poor. Say you live in a small poor country with lots of diamonds, and say you want money. Then you can do this: Get a bunch of guys with guns. Go to the capital and shoot anyone who doesn’t do what you say. Go to the diamond mines and shoot anyone who doesn’t do what you say. Take the diamonds from the mines, sell them. Use the money to buy more guys with guns, leave the rest of the country to rot. That’s checkmate. Everyone else is too immiserated to do anything. You have all the money and power, forever. On the other hand, take a country that’s rich because it has a modern diversified economy. If you send guys with guns to take over Apple and Goldman Sachs and kill everyone else, you will soon find that Apple and Goldman Sachs aren’t worth very much. So maybe that is why governments are relatively friendly to their populations. Not because of democracy, but because you can’t steal the money without strangling the money printer. The idea advanced in these posts is that maybe AI will be like oil or diamonds: Maybe it will create incredible amounts of wealth, but do so in a way that doesn’t require the cooperation of a large educated workforce. If so, then power and wealth may end up in the hands of a small number of people (entities?) who have little incentive to use them for the common good. But hey, Norway has lots of oil. (6) The Selfish Machine (h/t Steven Pinker) This post argues that AI by default has no reason to try to take over the world. Why would it? It has no reason to do anything other than what it’s programmed to do. Danger only arises if AI is allowed to “evolve”. If that happens then it would—almost by definition—make the AI aggressive and expansionary and “grabby”. I find this insightful and helpful. But I find myself more worried, not less. How is “evolution” different from “recursive self-improvement”? It seems like there will be strong incentives to allow recursive self-improvement. If even a little “evolution” accidentally creeps in, won’t it get amplified? (7) Which adhesive should I use? As a fan of redneck engineering and “stuff with high ROI”, I feel like this chart is an underrated triumph of civilization: (That’s just a small part.) I used to have a mental model where “glue is easy but weak”. Glue is strong. But you must use the right kind, and you must follow the instructions, because atoms are weird and the universe has a lot of detail. For example, wood glue is insanely strong and can fix approximately all broken wooden things, but you must use a clamp, and you must glue long grain to long grain. (8) Do taurine and glycine provide answers to the mammalian gallbladder and kidney mysteries? This is my kind of blog-post. Ultra obscure question, tangled and triple-caveated discussion, no clear resolution. If writing reflected real life, this is what 90% of science blogging would look like. (9) Dynomight dangerous typing app Sometimes, when I have an idea for a post, I want to write a rapid prototype to sort of see what it looks like, expose weaknesses in my argument, etc. But I have perfectionist tendencies. (That sentence was re-written 19 times.) These make it hard to write quickly. So—this is embarrassing to admit—I sometimes resort to using a webpage where if you ever stop typing for more than a few seconds, everything is permanently deleted. This is very effective. Make an outline, set the app for 15 minutes, and viola: Prototype done. But I recently wondered what happens to the text I type. The page has no privacy policy and the code is unintelligible. So I thought: Why don’t I ask an AI to create my own better version? (Prompt) create a single-page HTML+javascript application at the top, I should be able to enter a number of minutes N, and a number of seconds M. then there is a “start” button below that there is a large textbox that goes on indefinitely after i press start, there should be a timer in the upper right that counts down N minutes. this should hover over the screen if at any point i stop typing for M seconds all the text should be permanently deleted as I get close to M seconds without typing, the interface should warn me by gradually turning the background closer to red. as soon as I start typing, it should become white again after the N minutes are over, the counter stop counting down and you can wait forever do it all as a single file of HTML+CSS+Javascript. do not use any external libraries / services / fonts / etc. The result is here. It has a pleasing brutalist design, and definitely doesn’t steal your precious gibberish typing. This took like 5 minutes. Obviously, I’ve seen many people show off similar things before. But I didn’t really appreciate it before trying it myself. So if you haven’t done so, I encourage you to try something similar. You need no programming skills, just ask for a “single file of HTML+CSS+Javascript” doing whatever you want, paste the code in a file named i♡dynomight.html and then open it in a web browser. Anyway. LLMs are text models. So how do you use them to create text? Do you have them write for you? No! Boring. What you do is you train them to follow instructions and write code and then ask for a program to manipulate your ape-brain so you’ll keep physically hitting keys on your keyboard. There’s some kind of lesson here. (Picture courtesy of The BS Detector) (10) I was actually so impressed by that AI-generated app that I went and bought a Google Play card with cash so I could subscribe to Gemini without linking my identity/banking details/etc. But when I added it, Google said “we need more information” and demanded pictures of the physical card and purchase receipt. And when I sent those, Google waited several days, and then said, “Thanks for doing everything we asked, according to our systems, something is wrong, go fuck yourself.” I guess they’re keeping my $25. (11) Kevin Hall is retiring from the NIH Kevin Hall has worked at the NIH for 21 years. He was first author on what I consider possibly the best ever nutrition study, published in 2019. This found that ultra-processed food causes weight gain even when energy density and macronutrients are matched. Since then, he’s continued to work on the subject and I’ve eagerly awaited the results. Hall is a real scientist who does real science, which means sometimes getting results that don’t fit with your preconceptions. In recent work, Hall tested if ultra-processed milkshakes might cause addiction through a dopamine response. Surprisingly, they did not. Because this didn’t support the new Secretary of Health and Human Services’ theories about addiction and unprocessed food, he was apparently barred from speaking with reporters and worried that officials might soon interfere with his experiments. If he resigned later, he would lose health insurance for his family, so he decided to accept early retirement now. Not encouraging. (12) Lise Meitner Lise Meitner was born in 1878 in Vienna. She was the second woman to earn a doctorate in physics at the University of Vienna. After this, she moved to Germany and began a long collaboration with Otto Hahn. She later became the first female professor of physics at the University of Berlin. Following the Nazis rise to power, she fled to Sweden, but continued to collaborate with Hahn and in 1939 was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission. Hahn won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1944, without Meitner. This is now widely considered one of the Nobel committee’s biggest mistakes. Many people offer tidy narratives: Sexism, antisemitism, etc. After the records were made public 50 years later, it appears to have been a mixture of many things, summarized as, “disciplinary bias, political obtuseness, ignorance, and haste”. Meitner famously refused to have anything to do with the making of the atomic bomb. What I find cool is: 1939 - 1878 = 61. She was 61.
