Heaven, With the Door Open

The Matrix gets one thing exactly right: if you are going to imprison humanity forever, at least have the decency to give us good restaurants.

Built for Happiness

Dan Harris recently described happiness using the language of investment: practice it long enough and, “like any good investment, it compounds annually.” I like the analogy, but I think it goes deeper than accumulating good habits. We do not simply live with the consequences of our choices. We build systems that keep producing consequences.

Death Star Dashboard

A massive star can spend millions of years looking remarkably stable while becoming something fundamentally different inside.

Gravity, Guardrails, and the Boot

The White House just banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from its grounds. Reporters were turned away. Credentials were confiscated. Trump called their reporting “FAKE NEWS,” said other outlets could follow, and described the offending press as a threat to “national security.”

Being Taught to Count

A boy asked me how long I’d been teaching. When I said fifteen years, he asked whether I was burnt out.

I told him no. That probably eighty percent of my interactions with students are positive. I enjoy being around them. They leave me with a weird hope about the future.

GrAss: a teacher-designed grading assistant

I've been working on a project for a while now and wanted to share a brief glimpse of it and also kind of document what has been occupying my time: GrAss: teacher-designed AI & grading system. 

The Education of an Oracle

“Gambling with our lives,” warned departing Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon. Now Dario Amodei writes, “We must slow the pace.” The people building powerful minds are warning that their ability to control them may not keep up.

I remain an apocaloptimist.