Good tokens 2025-03-07
Things I learned
D.A.R.E. anti-drug interventions in schools may have increased drug use among suburban students. Drug Library via Atoms vs. Bits.
The beauty industry faces many of the same materials food, textiles, and industrial applications do. Xanthan Gum is a clean beauty ingredient and also commonly used in fracking.
Hobbies promote self efficacy (the believe that you can do hard things) when:
they are very serious but dissimilar to your work (e.g., a scientist that is a committed rock climber)
they are not particularly serious, but similar to your work (e.g., coding on a side project for a software engineer)
Hobbies begin to reduce self efficacy when they are too serious and too related to work (e.g., intensive blogging for a technical writer)
When written out this is pretty intuitive, but nice to see on paper. Making a personal commitment to find at least one hobby that is truly dissimilar from my work by the end of the year next year. From the Journal of Vocational Behavior via Range Widely.
The Pennsylvania Amish originally hail from Switzerland.
Humans are not the only animal to domesticate other animals. Black garden ants keep aphids in a manner similar to how humans keep livestock. Via Kevin Kelly.
Worth your time
We’ve cracked the code on Roman concrete. Damascus steel next?
Simon Wilson on how to code with LLMs. His point around manual testing certainly matches my experience!
Musings
You don’t own the story, but you do own the execution.
A common thread I noticed between Paul Graham’s The Origins of Woke and Tanner Greer’s The Euro American Split: the importance of generational change in culture change. We are always either rebelling against or seeking the approval of our elders.
Having a new child is like meeting your spouse, having your first date, falling in love, and marrying them in the span of a moment.
Being boring is a choice.
A little bit of fun
A half baked business idea: The Anti-Recruiting Firm: You identify the lowest performers at your company; we land them plum roles at your rivals, simultaneously improving your productivity while tanking the competition.
2025-03-07