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In the 17th century, the mathematician Blaise Pascal devised the idea of Pascal’s Wager. I see some people worrying about being in the “permanent underclass.” AI will be better than humans at everything, and automate all the jobs, and then no one will be able to earn money through their work. You can hire me for life coaching! You can also hire me for more general writing, editing, and freelancing work— email me at ozybrennan@gmail.com. My fiction Substack is here. Recent releases: The most powerful force in the dating marketplace is the filter. [From an alternate universe’s shitty gender-essentialist blogs.] A few microfictions, very much inspired by Quiet Pine Trees. I hope to add more over time. No LLMs.
As someone in Somerville I notice that there are quite high prices
regarding childcare. The average family in Somerville pays $1,100 to
$3,500 for daycare per month, and I want to make the costs more
affordable. I have also noticed that housing is quite expensive in
Somerville, and I have come up with a solution to fix both of these,
and, as some people might know, to fix the ongoing problem of what
should happen with the Winter Hill and the Brown School.
As a sixth grader who graduated the Brown …
There are lots of different things in Frozen that are new-ish, but my
dad and I were wondering: what is the actual newest thing in Frozen?
This led me to watch Frozen a lot while taking notes. Some of the
things I found included:
Elastic hair-ties
A safety bicycle
Sunscreen
Bottle of aloe
Lacquer
Pompoms, the kind you get at a store and not the kind with yarn
Off the shoulder
Paper straws
Sunglasses
Plastic shovels
Matches
Cupholder on Kristoff's sled
Notes from looking into things:
Elastic is actually q… You’re relatively tech- and security-savvy. You might not always be at the cutting edge or use the most paranoid security measures, but you use a password manager, you know about two-factor authentication and use it on at least some of your accounts. You know not to reuse passwords. Lately, though, you’re seeing a lot of sites prompt you to create a “passkey” without a lot of explanation. Maybe you have a vague idea that someone thinks this is the future of logging in or something. Should you p… This is an annual post reviewing the last year and setting intentions for next year. I look over different life areas (work, health, parenting, effectiveness, etc) and analyze my life tracking data. Highlights include a minimal group house, the usefulness of Oura’s resilience metric, a small set of habits worth tracking, getting laser eye surgery, […]
Unlike many families my family celebrates Christmas with really really
a lot of our family. This past year there were about 29 people at my
Grandfather's house in the week around Christmas. I know what you're
thinking: how does that work?
It's actually pretty simple. First, we have a spreadsheet so we know
who's coming and who's not, and who's cooking dinner each night.
While most people come out for the entire break, a lot of people only
stay part of the time. And famili…
A couple weeks ago, I got my braces off. I kind of wish I had never
had them, though.
When I was younger, two of my teeth were sticking out, and they looked
kind of funny. I thought that my teeth were just fine, and I didn't
want to get braces. But still, my parents made me get braces. I
started out with an expander, and then after that I had braces. They
were really annoying: I couldn't eat a lot of my favorite foods. I
couldn't eat nuts, carrots, caramel, or popcorn. It was
annoyi… Quick meta note: I’m writing my important blog posts on Substack. I’ll continue using my personal website for my product recommendations and other more minor things.
Quite a few years ago—in 2019—I wrote that someone should start a bright home lighting company.
Several people took up the, uh, torch. (I’m don’t claim they did it only because of me—several others were writing about the same topic around then too. See the above-linked post for some references and inspirations.)
Just want the files? Get them on Printables ↗
I designed a set of 10 Christmas ornaments that can be 3D printed in vase mode for Printables’ Winter Holidays Decorations contest.
I knew when I started my design process that I wanted to design something that could be printed in vase mode. There were lots of ornaments posted to the contest already, but very few in vase mode. I’ve written about vase mode before, but to recap:
Typically in the type of 3D printing I do (called FFF/FDM¹) plastic… This post is a collection of parenting takes that sometimes go through my head, based on my experience raising our two boys (5 and 2 years old). All of this is based on my experience and might not apply to others (see the law of equal and opposite advice). My overall parenting philosophy is pretty […]
Yesterday, I made a Christmas wreath. Here's how to make one.
First, find an evergreen tree near your house. Clip off a few
branches from the tree. Try to have as many leaves or needles on the
branches as possible. Next, bring them home. What I usually use as
the base is a wire or pipe cleaner circle. After that I cut the
branches from the tree so that I have a bunch of branches that are
about, I don't know, six inches long. Once I've cut the branches I
make them into bundles of th…
I love playing Carcassonne. Almost every time I play, I win. My
method for winning us usually you get into all the big cities on the
board, and you create a lot of big cities. I just think making a big
city is just so satisfying. I love being blue. Usually I play with
my dad and my sister.
Today, me, my sisters, and my dad went to a park. While we were there,
it started snowing! It was one of the first times it had snowed this
winter, so I was pretty excited. I ran around with my mouth open,
trying to catch snowflakes on my tongue.
The snowflakes were huge. Some of them were so big that they
were almost the size of a large bumblebee.
My little sister, Nora, was so
interested in playing kickball that she didn't want to run around with
me and Lily and catch snowflakes.
I was disap… The teapot hold is the most dangerous common contra dancing figure, so I’ve been avoiding it. The teapot hold, sometimes called a "courtesy turn hold,” requires one dancer to connect with their hand behind their back. When I realized I could avoid putting my shoulder into this vulnerable position, my contra dancing felt safer.
In New England, where I dance most often, the teapot hold is used both for the courtesy turn, where the couple rotates to face the opposite direction, and also the pro…
I am one of the students who goes to the Somerville Public Schools. I
just graduated from the Brown School, and have been hearing about how
there are some plans about how the Brown School might be combined with
the Winter Hill School. I really don't like this because I think the
Brown School is a really great place and it would be really sad to
have it gone.
I am the oldest of three sisters, one of which is already at the Brown
and one of which will be starting next year. I really want them t…
She's very little and she likes to do stuff with me. She also likes
to bark around and run around and jump around. She also likes to go
to places with me and that's all I have.
I’ve been working on this for a couple weeks now: a summary of various theories of change across the animal movement.
I’m moving to Substack for future blogging. If you’re receiving this by email or RSS, go subscribe now for free to my Substack—I cannot subscribe you myself. At some point I’ll stop cross-posting, although I will continue for at least a few more posts. I wrote a post about organizational culture!
I am very likely to move to Substack for future blogging. If you’re receiving this by email or RSS, go subscribe now for free to my Substack—I cannot subscribe you myself. At some point I’ll stop cross-posting, although I will continue for at least a few posts. I’ve been doing life tracking for around 10 years, and this post is looking back at some things I learned from the data (since my previous retrospective in 2017). Highlights include what I get out of the Oura ring, correlations between sleep and deep work / distraction, seasonal patterns in health, and regret patterns for […]
On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig
ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was
the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew
from across the country just to hear Elixir play one last time.
Elixir has been playing for twenty years, and is a very well-known
band among contra dancers. But if you asked someone who wasn't a
contra dancer or who had been dancing only a few times, they might say
"what on earth is Elixir?&#… Anthropic recently released Claude 4 Sonnet and Claude 4 Opus, and I’ve been using them at work for the last two days. 4 Opus seems okay, but 4 Sonnet feels “off” – less sharp than 3.7 Sonnet. My assessment is almost entirely vibes-based, just from chatting with the models and using Claude Code a bit. Lauren Hoffman interviewed me about Workshop House and wrote this post about a community I’m working on building in DC. understand + work backwards from the root goal • don’t rely too much on permission or encouragement • make success inevitable • find your angle • think real hard • reflect on your thinking have accurate expectations of yourself • prioritize ruthlessly • unemploy your future self • a five-step “help, I’m overwhelmed” checklist • carve out focused time We’re seeing AI features pop up in every product we use. Slack, Google Drive, etc.
Does this seem silly or useless to you? Me too. This is the last, desperate gasp of the Product Era in software design as we move into the Intelligence Era over the next couple of years. They’re pretending that “AI magic” will help their product continue succeeding and retaining users as AI gets more and more usage and mindshare. focus • maintain a detailed plan for victory • run a fast OODA loop • overcommunicate • break off subprojects • have fun • bonus content: my project management starter kit
Over February break I made breakfast for me and Nora three days in a
row. Normally, my dad makes me, Nora, and Lily breakfast, but my dad
and Lily were on a
trip and my mom wasn't up yet so I was basically the only one in
the house who was awake and could make Nora breakfast. Every morning,
I would go downstairs at about 7am and I would wait for Nora for about
15 minutes until she came downstairs, if she wasn't already
downstairs. Then I would make us breakfast.
The first day I made guacamole… This is an annual post reviewing the last year and setting intentions for next year. I look over different life areas (work, health, parenting, effectiveness, travel, etc) and analyze my life tracking data. Overall this was a pretty good year. Highlights include adjusting to life with two kids, moving out of the group house, lots […] Remembering Max Chiswick, may his memory be a blessing. This post contains javascript content and must be viewed on site. I’m deeply fond of weighty phrases – little snippets with cultural gravitas and mystical overtones. Most of my favorites have biblical origin or are fragments of culturally foundational art, remixed memetically over the centuries until they become units of their own. A few of my favorites: Not by bread alone A thousand and one nights All men are created equal That the strong might not injure the weak Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind M… Where I'm donating in 2024, where I donated in 2022/2023, why, and how my approach changed from previous years.
I have some stuffies and I just have a bunny. Bunny is a rabbit.
Woof is a seal. My favorite stuffie is bun bun. I play with my
stuffies. Sometimes I jump up with them and I roll them. I can just
throw them in the air when I want to play bthululubp with them. I
like to quick get my stuffies and throw them in the air.
Selina watches me. When Selina has a different job Justina will watch
me. It's the same.
Warning: fully political post, which is not the typical genre here and not the vibe I’m mostly trying to cultivate. I pretty much stand by this, though my emotions have cooled in the weeks since the election.
There's a common narrative that Microsoft was moribund under Steve Ballmer and then later saved by the miraculous leadership of Satya Nadella. This is the dominant narrative in every online discussion about the topic I've seen and it's a commonly expressed belief "in real life" as well. While I don't have anything negative to say about Nadella's leadership in this post, this narrative underrates Ballmer's role in Microsoft's success. Not only did Microsoft… Like many people with my demographics, I’ve long had strongly materialist and utilitarian philosophical intuitions. I think empirical science is a good way to learn about the world; material explanations suffice for most phenomena we encounter in everyday life; more people having more well-being is better than fewer people have less well-being. But over the last two-ish years, these intuitions have unmistakably softened. I attribute this change to several causes, roughly ordered: My friend Doug…
About eight years ago, I was playing a game of Codenames where the game state was such that our team would almost certainly lose if we didn't correctly guess all of our remaining words on our turn. From the given clue, we were unable to do this. Although the game is meant to be a word guessing game based on word clues, a teammate suggested that, based on the physical layout of the words that had been selected, most of the possibilities we were considering would result in patterns that were … overall direction • people management • project management • technical leadership • example divisions of labor non-trust is reasonable • trust lets collaboration scale • symptoms of trust deficit • how to proactively build trust
There've been regular viral stories about ML/AI bias with LLMs and generative AI for the past couple years. One thing I find interesting about discussions of bias is how different the reaction is in the LLM and generative AI case when compared to "classical" bugs in cases where there's a clear bug. In particular, if you look at forums or other discussions with lay people, people frequently deny that a model which produces output that's sort of the opposite of what the user a… A clinical trial is a statistical problem multiplied by a logistical problem; some drugs are dramatically easier to study than others. Six things that make poker suboptimal for teaching about decision making under uncertainty, especially relative to Jane Street's card game Figgie.
From 2011-2012, the FTC investigated the possibility of pursuing antitrust action against Google. The FTC decided to close the investigation and not much was publicly known about what happened until Politico released 312 pages of internal FTC memos that from the investigation a decade later. As someone who works in tech, on reading the memos, the most striking thing is how one side, the side that argued to close the investigation, repeatedly displays a lack of basic understanding of tech indust… After 7 years at Deep End (and 4 more years in other group houses before that), Janos and I have moved out to live near a school we like and some lovely parks. The life change is bittersweet – we will miss living with our friends, but also look forward to a logistically simpler life […]
In 2017, we looked at how web bloat affects users with slow connections. Even in the U.S., many users didn't have broadband speeds, making much of the web difficult to use. It's still the case that many users don't have broadband speeds, both inside and outside of the U.S. and that much of the modern web isn't usable for people with slow internet, but the exponential increase in bandwidth (Nielsen suggests this is 50% per year for high-end connections) has outpaced web bloat for… I wrote ~2 years ago that it was hard to find concrete ways to help the most important century go well. That’s changing. This post contains javascript content and must be viewed on site. This post contains javascript content and must be viewed on site. “Why can’t a robot be built without the First Law? What’s so sacred about it?”
Dr. Gerrigel looked startled, then tittered, “Oh, Mr. Baley.”... Early signs of catastrophic risk? Yes and no. Governments could be crucial in the long run, but it's probably best to proceed with caution. Major AI companies can increase or reduce global catastrophic risks. People are far better at their jobs than at anything else. Here are the best ways to help the most important century go well.
AI risk is not a Pascal's wager
You will not be a member of the permanent underclass
Linkpost for April
Why you have the romantic type you do
April Fools: The feminization of history
Microfictions
Daycares and the Brown School
The Newest Technology in Frozen
Should you care about and use passkeys?
2025-26 New Year review
Family Christmas
Why I Don't Think My Braces Were Worth It
Somebody built a daylight lamp!
Designing Christmas Ornaments for Vase Mode
Opinionated takes on parenting
How to Make a Christmas Wreath
Carcassonne
Snow
Against the Teapot Hold in Contra Dancing
Making a New School
Little Puppy
How to end factory farming
The anti-fragile culture
Retrospective on life tracking and effectiveness systems
Elixir's Last Dance
Claude 4 Sonnet feels off
Workshop House case study
Impact, agency, and taste
Advice for time management as a manager
Product in the age of AI
How I've run major projects
Breakfast Over February Break
2024-25 New Year review
When each proud fighter brags
Dance Calling By The Numbers, 2024
Weighty phrases
Donations 2022-2024
Stuffies
Reflections on the 2024 US Presidential Election
Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
Update to my philosophy: less resolutely materialist and utilitarian
How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
Categories of leadership on technical teams
Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly
A discussion of discussions on AI bias
Drug development costs can range over two orders of magnitude
Poker is a bad game for teaching epistemics. Figgie is a better one.
What the FTC got wrong in the Google antitrust investigation
Moving on from community living
How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
Good job opportunities for helping with the most important century
My first brush with covid
11ty and Observable
Asimov on building robots without the First Law
What does Bing Chat tell us about AI risk?
How major governments can help with the most important century
What AI companies can do today to help with the most important century
Jobs that can help with the most important century