Aceso Under Glass
How much do cows suffer in the production of milk? I can’t answer that; understanding animal experience is hard. But I can at least provide some facts about the conditions dairy cows live in, which might be useful to you in making your own assessment. My biggest conclusion is that cows made better...
Aceso Under Glass
Last summer I got nerdsniped by evangelical christianity, and in particular church planting, the domestic missionary system used by nondenominational churches to resolve the conflict between an abhorrence of hierarchy and a drive to spread the Word. The system was so different from what I expected...
Aceso Under Glass
When it comes to clothes, I live at the “low cost/low time/low quality” end of the pareto frontier. But the bay area had a sudden attack of weather this December, and the cheap sweaters on Amazon get that way by being made of single-ply toilet paper. It became clear I would need to spend actual...
Aceso Under Glass
It took me a long time to realize that Bell Labs was cool. You see, my dad worked at Bell Labs, and he has not done a single cool thing in his life except create me and bring a telescope to my third grade class. Nothing he was involved with could ever be cool, especially after the standard set by...
Aceso Under Glass
On some level, calories in calories out has to be true. But these variables are not independent. Bodies respond to exercise by getting hungry and to calorie deficit by getting tired. Even absent that, bodies know how much food they want, and if you don’t give it to them they will tell you at...
Aceso Under Glass
It’s amazing how much smarter everyone else gets when I take antidepressants. It makes sense that the drugs work on other people, because there’s nothing in me to fix. I am a perfect and wise arbiter of not only my own behavior but everyone else’s, which is a heavy burden because some of ya’ll...
Aceso Under Glass
From 2019 to 2022, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX stole 8-10 billion dollars from customers. In summer 2022, FTX’s charitable arm gave me two grants totaling $33,000. By the time the theft was revealed in November 2022, I’d spent all but 20% of it. The remaining money isn’t mine, and I don’t...
Aceso Under Glass
Ketamine is an anesthetic with growing popularity as an antidepressant. As an antidepressant, it’s quite impressive. When it works, it’s often within hours- a huge improvement over giving a suicidal person a pill that might work 6 weeks from now. And it has a decent success rate in people who have...