External Perceptions

October 13th, 2010
ea, living
Julia's been talking to a magazine that might want to include something about us in an upcoming story. It's tricky because they seem to be mostly interested in 'lifestyle' issues [1], primarily of the urban homesteading type. They read some of julia's blog and appear to have come away from it with the impression that we sew our own clothes and grow/raise most of our own food. Now, given that julia enjoys writing about such things and mostly avoids writing about dullish things [2], it's understandable that they would get that impression. What worries me, though, is that readers might get the impression that the reason we are able to afford to give away roughly half our money is that we engage in extensive home production. Which is not the case. We live cheaply, cultivate simple tastes, and are economically very lucky. You don't need to turn your kitchen over to quail [3] in order to make a substantial difference in the world through charity.


[1] To be fair, they *are* a lifestyle magazine.

[2] Unlike me; no nine post streak on public transit prediction for her.

[3] In fact, it doesn't even help. We spent more on our quail than we got back in eggs and meat.

Comment via: facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Polyamory is sticky

Some people are only happy in monogamous relationships.

via Thing of Things October 30, 2026

“We should be more ambitious with the software we build”

Since early this year, Michael Malis (of pgrust) has been showing me interesting things he's done and saying [W]e should be more ambitious1 with the software we build There is, understandably, a lot of skepticism about projects like pgrust because there…

via Posts on October 24, 2026

Was the HuggingFace hacking incident scheming?

In July 2026, internal OpenAI agents hacked HuggingFace (HF) in order to figure out how their evaluation grader works. This involved a thousand agents coordinating on an improvised message board to carry out an elaborate sequence of exploits. A later grou…

via Victoria Krakovna October 18, 2026

more     (via openring)