I have a rarely-updated list of articles I look at once a week, and randomly pick one to re-read. This week it was time for the first one on the list, which is Paul Graham’s Life is Short. I have obviously been ignoring it, likely because of its position, because I haven’t been following the sage advice:

The usual way to avoid being taken by surprise by something is to be consciously aware of it. Back when life was more precarious, people used to be aware of death to a degree that would now seem a bit morbid. I’m not sure why, but it doesn’t seem the right answer to be constantly reminding oneself of the grim reaper hovering at everyone’s shoulder. Perhaps a better solution is to look at the problem from the other end. Cultivate a habit of impatience about the things you most want to do. Don’t wait before climbing that mountain or writing that book or visiting your mother. You don’t need to be constantly reminding yourself why you shouldn’t wait. Just don’t wait.

In 2023 there was an exhibit of Leonardo DaVinci’s sketches in D.C., three blocks away from me. But I didn’t see it, because one thing or other kept getting in the way until the very last day, which was so packed with meetings that the work ended after the last admission time.

Lesson learned, right? Well, no, because just recently there was another big show close by (I won’t tell how close lest I allow your, reader, to triangulate my home address). This time we did go, only to balk at the overly long lines and go see something else at the National Art Gallery (incidentally, a work of Leonardo’s). Which was good! But then picking the time when we wouldn’t need to wait was impossible, and we never got to see that exhibit either.

So yes don’t wait, and also when you read and re-read an essay try to at least remember the highlights. This is a memo to self not advice, but could serve as one.

My first encounter with European bureaucracy was so traumatizing it had me venting on X. The EU is in deep trouble, and their efforts to fix the problem are proving me right. What was supposed to be a plan for reducing red tape became corporate double-speak sprinkled with magical numbers: three pillars built on “five solid foundations”, laid on the backs of four elephants standing on top of a turtle hurling towards irrelevancy.

As a practical example, understand this: there are still, in 2025, software systems in the EU that require you to have Internet Explorer running ActiveX. Microsoft deprecated both of those antiques 10 years ago yet the requirement remains. EU’s proposed solution? A paid Google Chrome extension. You cannot make this up.

Example two: their step-by-step guide on how to update two fields in a database is 19 pages long. True, much of it are screenshots, but do you truly need 40 of them (and yes, I’ve counted, it is forty) to show how to make two simple edits? If I took five Americans fresh out of college and told them to make an intentionally confusing and opaque user interface then describe it in the most technical, acronym-laden language possible, I don’t think they would have it in them to make something as soulless, dehumanizing, seemingly technical yet spectacularly dumb as these instructions.

I would have recommended firing whomever was in charge, but then I am quite sure no one was quite in charge of any of it, which is how you come to this sort of a mess.

🏀 Jordan Poole went from being my least favorite Wizards' player last season to their most valuable senior team member, and now that I learned he was a fellow cat lover I like him even more. Now if only their record wasn’t so bad… (ᔥr/washingtonwizards

🍿 Wicked (2024) was longer and clearly more expensive than the stage version yet somehow neither as dramatic or as magical. It was just too much CGI. Ariana Grande’s singing was noticeably not up to par with Kristin Chenoweth’s, though her comedic timing was surprisingly apt. Cynthia Erivo was stellar, but again, CGI drained quite a bit out of her performance so the grand not-quite-finale finale (Defying Gravity) felt flatter than the stage version.

Or maybe I just prefer the theater?

I have been using Path Finder off and on for more than a decade and with the most recent update I can say with some confidence that it has become the buggiest and laggiest it’s ever been. The default Finder is not great, but at least it won’t leak memory like an incontinent Labrador retriever.

It has been more than six years ago now that Nassim Taleb rightfully called IQ a pseudoscientific swindle. Yet this zombie idea keeps coming back, most recently as a meandering essay by one Crémieux who, through a series of scatter plots and other data visualizations, attempts to persuade that “National IQs” are a valid concept and that yes, they are much lower in South Asia and Subsaharan Africa than the rest of the world.

This hogwash prompted another series of exchanges on IQ ending, for now, with this X post that recapped some points from Taleb’s original essay for a lay audience. That alone is worth reposting, but what I thought was even more interesting was one of the replies:

But I still prefer my doctor or pilot or professor to have an iq of over 120 (at least). I am sure it matters. Not as the only characteristic, but still.

While missing the point so completely that it wasn’t worth replying to, the post is a good example of another IQ-neutral human trait, to hypothesize on properties in isolation without considering nth-order effects. Let’s say your surgeon’s IQ is 160. What are the implications for their specialty of choice, fees, where they work, and bedside manner? Are they more or less of a risk-taker because of this? Does their intellectual savvy transfer more to their own bottom line, picking high-reimbursement procedures over a more conservative approach? Even if you said “all else being equal I’d prefer someone with a higher IQ”, well, why would you if everything else was equal? In that case would it not even make more sense to pick someone who did not have the benefit of acing multiple choice questions based on pure reasoning rather than knowledge? And yes, Taleb wrote about that as well.

Another set of replies was on the theme of “well I don’t think we could even have a test that measures IQ”, showing that they don’t know what IQ is — it is the thing measured by an IQ test. There is some serious confusion in terms here and X is the worst place to have a discussion about it, everyone shouting over each other.

Finally, since I agree with Taleb that IQ as used now is a bullshit concept, people may surmise as they did for him that I took the test and that I am now, disappointed in the result, trying to discredit it. I do think it’s BS for personal reasons, but of a different kind: some 25 years ago as a high school freshman in Serbia I took the test and was accepted to mensa. Having attended a single, tedious meeting in Belgrade shortly afterward I saw that the whole thing was indeed laughable and haven’t thought about it again until reading that 2019 essay.

Having a high IQ means you are good at taking tests, and correlates with success in life as much as your life is geared towards test-taking. There is nothing else “there” there and good test-takers unhappy with their lives should focus on other of life’s many questions, like how to execute a proper deadlift and whether home-made fresh pasta is better than the dried variant.

The founders of statistics were a bunch of drunk gamblers so I’m used to seeing parallels between games of all kinds and science. In that vein, Andrew Gelman writing about cheating at board games made me think of cheating in clinical trials, only the right parallel there would be cooperative games in the style of Pandemic and the many Arkham/Eldritch Horror games made by Fantasy Flight.

These are tough games — Eldritch Horror in particular — where players and rule keepers are one and the same and all on the same team. And they are easy to beat if the players are willing to fudge a rule here or re-roll the dice there. And to be clear some of the rules are punishing including — from my absolute favorite, Arkham Horror: The Card Game — The Grim Rule:

If players are unable to find the answer to a rules or timing conflict in this Rules Reference, resolve the conflict in the manner that the players perceive as the worst possible at that moment with regards to winning the scenario, and continue with the game.

The Bonferroni correction for multiplicity could be a form of TGR, as could sensitivity analyses with particularly harsh assumptions. Note that TGR is a shortcut intended to enhance enjoyment of the game. Sure, your investigators may be devoured by Cthulhu or all go insane, but even that is more fun than 30 minutes spent looking up and cross-checking arcane footnotes in thick rule books, or worse yet trawling through Reddit for rule tips. Note also that clinical trials and science are not there (only) for fun and enjoyment and that applying TGR has consequences more serious than having to restart a game.

Which is to say, it pays off to be more thoughtful about your analyses and assumptions when designing a study and think — am I making this assumption and doing things this way because I don’t want to fool myself, or because the alternative would take too much time? The same goes for assumptions that are too lenient, but of course you already know that.

Visiting San Francisco and just had my first Waymo ride. It was the most obedient, defensive, proper driving I have ever seen, at once frustrating and uplifting. The world would be a better place if every car was fully self-driving and I can’t wait for them to come to DC.