In the aftermath of a disaster, there is usually a large shift in what people need, what is available, or both. For example, people normally don't use very much ice, but after a hurricane or other disaster that knocks out power, suddenly (a) lots of people want ice and (b) ice production is more difficult. Since people really don't want their food going bad, and they're willing to pay a lot to avoid that, In a world of pure economics, sellers would raise prices.

This can have serious benefits:

• Increased supply: at higher prices it's worth running production facilities at higher output. It's even worth planning, through investments in storage or production capacity, so you can sell a lot at high prices in the aftermath of future disasters.

• Reallocated supply: it's expensive to transport ice, but at higher prices it makes sense to bring it in from much farther away than would normally make sense.

• Reduced demand: at higher prices people who would normally buy ice for less important things (ex: drink chilling) will pass.

• Reallocated demand: if you have a chest freezer full of food, you get more benefit from a given quantity of ice than I would with a mostly empty fridge. All else equal, you are willing to pay more for ice than I am.

On the other hand, raising prices in response to a disaster is widely seen as unfair:

My neck is not great, and spending a lot of time looking down at my laptop screen really aggravates it. After damaging my screen a year ago I used a stacked laptop monitor that folded up, and it worked well. The main place I tended to use at full height was call booths, since otherwise I was usually at a desk with a real monitor or in a meeting with people where I wanted my monitor not to block my view.

My laptop eventually died, and the new one has a screen again. In many ways this is pretty great: my backpack is lighter without carrying around an extra monitor, walking to a conference room I don't have to worry I forgot my monitor, I'm not fiddling with cables. But I do really miss it on calls in the phone booths.

The booths at my work have a kind of soft material that works great with velcro, though, so I decided to try sticking my monitor up that way. It works great:

Until recently I thought Julia and I were digging a bit into savings to donate more. With the tighter funding climate for effective altruism we thought it was worth spending down a bit, especially considering that our expenses should decrease significantly in 1.5y when our youngest starts kindergarten.

I was surprised, then, when I ran the numbers and realized that despite donating 50% of a reduced income, we were $9k (0.5%) [1] richer than when I left Google two years earlier.

This is a good problem to have! After thinking it over for the last month, however, I've decided to start earning less: I've asked for a voluntary salary reduction of $15k/y (10%). [2] This is something I've been thinking about off and on since I started working at a non-profit: it's much more efficient to reduce your salary than it is to make a donation. Additionally, since I'm asking others to fund our work I like the idea of putting my money (or what would be my money if I weren't passing it up) where my mouth is.

There are lots of ways to categorize board games, but an axis I care a lot about is accessibility: how much of an investment is learning a game? Race For the Galaxy and Power Grid are great games, but I'd expect to spend 15+ min teaching before we could play. Set or Anomia, though, I could explain in a minute or two.

Games you can teach quickly are great in a casual context: people wander over, and you can get them playing right away. And one of my favorite casual games is Go.

Back in 2011 I got sick of breaking the hairs on violin bows and ordered an Incredibow. The hair is polymer filament, and it's very strong. I ordered a 29" Basic Omnibow, Featherweight, and it's been just what I wanted. I think I've broken something like three hairs ever, despite some rough chopping.

As someone who writes for fun, I don't need to get people onto my site:

• If I write a post and some people are able to get the core idea just from the title or a tweet-length summary, great!

• I can include the full contents of my posts in my RSS feed and on FB, because so what if people read the whole post there and never click though to my site?

It would be different if I funded my writing through ads (maximize time on site to maximize impressions) or subscriptions (get the chance to pitch, probably want to tease a paywall).

Sometimes I notice myself accidentally copying what makes sense for other writers. For example, because I can't put full-length posts on Bluesky or Mastodon I write short intros and link my full post. Yesterday I initially drafted:

It's common to flavor truffles with extracts, but I'd like less of a liquor flavor. This time last year I made some with freeze-dried raspberries, which I think came out well. I continue to like those a lot, and this year tried strawberry and orange zest. One worked a lot better than the other: [link]

This would have gotten more people to click through, but that shouldn't be my target. Instead I posted:

... and this year tried strawberry (eh) and orange zest (great!) [link]

No need to hold curiosity hostage.

It's common to criticize "clickbait", where a teaser entices and then doesn't deliver, but even reserving key information for the full article is a product of authors (needing to!) optimize for goals other than communicating to users. I like that this isn't a pressure that I'm under. Because our culture has so many who are under it, however, optimizing for communication can require noticing and intentionally avoiding common patterns.