my first wave meditation grandma: so great to hear you’ve gotten into that Bay Area dharma scene! how are those old hippies? me: oh, actually, it’s mostly autists now gma: oh? me: yea, and some like millionaires. a couple billionaires maybe gma recovering quickly: well

fascinating how the core message of ferrante’s neapolitan novels, the thing they repeat again and again, is that being a writer is the worst, most boring, most cowardly thing you could do with your life, and that instead you should be like lila and found a b2b Saas startup

when I ask myself, how would I like to sample high-end perfume?, immediately I think: in a blindingly fluorescent environment, white lights on white surfaces so bright I can’t see, the better to focus entirely on the olfactory experience. and also I should definitely not pay tax

Tokyo is fractally layered and often you’re wondering if you’re on the right floor/side to navigate where you want to go and I’m still blown away how helpful Claude has been in so many situations

my sensitivity to this is weirdly from nutrition research which collected massive amounts of bad data about what people ate and spun a bunch of frequentist stats and came out with conclusions detached from any theory, such as huel is good for you

model consciousness is interesting because human consciousness is interesting, but it’s hard to take even experimental results as more than data fishing in an infinite latent space without at least nodding to theory and accounting for all the ways transformer architecture is not

what is here when there is @nopranablem to solve?

RFK Jr. has proposed directing 20% of the NIH’s budget to replication. That would be orders of magnitude more than we’ve ever allocated to biomedical replication. How much should we actually spend? And how do we ensure the money is well spent? With @IFP, I investigated the ROI

the correct but incomplete answer to why AI researchers get into meditation is that they're interested in the inner working of minds the under-appreciated fraction is that they've seen the light at the end of the economic tunnel, and realized all their suffering is still there

in lots of ways Japan is the least foreign place in the world. I can't think of any country where getting around is as seamless and stress-free, people are kind and conscientious, etc. in other ways it is unbelievably foreign. for one, it's made me realize how much I

like, plenty of junk food exists here. the country invented portable ramen and 7-11s are still filled with tons of bagged processed stuff. but they also have smoothies you can blend on site, fresh omelettes, packaged vegetables. even that doesn't explain half of the food

I wrote my phd on obesity and am fairly pro-pigouvian taxation but the food culture in Japan — which has an obesity rate lower than countries known for malnutrition — has totally changed my thinking about what amount of control culture, not government, is capable of exerting

we're all just walking each other home

I declare it officially high time for the dharma<>contemplative science conference at lighthaven

what it looks like to edit an essay with good ideas but the wrong structure

Cc’ing @TylerAlterman @nopranablem @nickcammarata

a friend recently had a spontaneous mystical experience. talking through it made me wonder if there’s a “so you’ve just had a mystical experience” guide out there. so: 1. what was your own mystical experience like? what did you do after? what do you wish you’d done after? what

having lived and worked in a bunch of countries, I am normally of the opinion that the fastest way to get re-enchanted with America is to leave, but I admit I am struggling with this one

in fact, mostly ignorant of the DSM, I sent Awais a jumbled email and he came back with this beautiful piece, from which I learned a lot, and which changed my view of the DSM too

For the Books issue of @asteriskmgzn, @jkeatn recruited me to write about the DSM... its historical evolution, scientific disputes & cultural debates. I’ve tried to capture the texture of the rich discussions and the vast commentary that exist around the manual. Enjoy!

relatedly the unemployment rate here is 2.5%, and that’s up from two years ago