Blog
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Social Media Regulation: A Proposal
Fine - you drove me to it. Last time I posted about this I hit the number 1 spot on Hacker News and was (rightly) skewered for not providing a solution - just listing a bunch of problems. This time…I have answers.
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I went on Holiday with my Colleagues
I just spent a week living in an Airbnb with four other people. We went to the supermarket together, cooked breakfast together, visited museums, went out to the pub…all the things you (well, I) do on a holiday. But it wasn’t my four closest friends. These were my colleagues - thrown together by fate, or, more precisely, my employer.
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Some people were mean about me on the internet
It finally happened - some people were mean about me on the internet. It was a somewhat chastening, but ultimately kind of meh experience and I’ll tell you about it.
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I have a four-year old
Happy Birthday! Not today, but at some point over the last few days I went from having an impossible and impossibly cute three-year old to having a…well, an impossible and impossibly cute four-year old. If you’re wondering what kind of life-goals a newly minted four-year old has, then check this out:
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Banning Things for Other People is Easy
Australia has moved to require social media companies to prevent under 16s from holding an account, and there’s always talk of us following suit in the UK. I want to talk a little today about why I think that’s a bad idea.
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People as Harmonic Oscillators
I’m going to share a graph with you that I’ve been hawking around, in the vain (but thus far ultimately fruitless) attempt to get somebody to care. I’ve got a cool data set and have found what can only really be described as a neat little result.
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How to Build a Habit
I’m doing my DPhil on digital habits and have therefore spent a whole bunch of time reading as much habit research as I can get my hands on. I’m also a legit real boy who lives in the real world. With those two things in mind, let me tell you what I know about building habits.
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A slow winter Sunday
Yesterday morning I chased two horses. Today, it’s been exactly the sort of slow Sunday that a life is made of. Some days are full of activity and action and milestones but others are just normal.
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Rationality, Reward, and Sleep Training
Let us assume that babies are rational economic creatures who act in their own interests. It therefore follows that…
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Another Cute Story
A very brief story for today, but it’s another cute one. My wife got an ‘injury’ form today at the nursery pick-up - our three year old girl had had a bump on the head. No biggie - it’s the sort of thing that happens fairly regularly. When she told us about it (eventually, after watching Peppa Pig) she said that one of the older girls had hit her in the head with a cone. And that she’d cried. And then her older brother had cried. We pushed her on this, and it turns out that she’d gotten hu...
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Parenting: The Mundane and the Magical
I have three small children - currently a 6 year old, a 3 year old and a 6 month old. They’re all the things small children are supposed to be. I wanted to share a brief snapshot in time of why I think parenting is amazing.
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LLMs are Performance-Enhancing Drugs for the Mind
LLMs have transformed the world of work…yadda yadda yadda. Yawn. What do you care about that? You’ve got a job to do. A mortgage to pay. Sometimes you wake up in the night and really need a wee but find it impossible to drag yourself out of your cosy little cocoon. However, I am going to have to briefly touch on LLMs and transformation and all that gumph because a couple of interesting bits of research have been published that could end up suggesting a profound new future.
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Dashboards are bad (and you should feel bad)
For years and years I’ve been referencing a particularly excellent blog post - The laws of shitty dashboards - and I’ve finally decided to write something myself about why dashboards are bad, and why you should feel bad about either asking for them, or, God forbid, actually making them.
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Hello, World!
Hello! Every year I feel a calling to do something in much the same way everybody does. But what exactly is something?!