I found this article on the Guardian to be a helpful framing of the current, well, Everything.
End of life planning
To go along with “I’m dead – now what?” I wanted to share this link from the Order of the Good Death.
End of Life Planning
You should have an Advanced Directive so that your family and friends know what your wishes are with regards to your care in case you become incapacitated.
A difference: basic social interaction
Today I saw this Instagram video and the comment section just made my head explode.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJTXEX7OsMq/
Person A: Oh, I love your tattoos!
Person B: Uhhhh, okay?
Person A: …Actually, they’re UGLY!
So, obviously, I would never go straight to that third line there. But I believe very strongly that Person B’s response is rude, and not in line with appropriate social behavior in public.
We are all humans together in this world. As the meme goes, we live in a society. And like the concept of small talk, small interactions like this are the grease in the gears that helps make everything better and more smooth.
Carolyn Hax recently called the opposite behavior (like saying “uhh, okay” to a compliment) “a lye bath in the gears” (because it strips out the grease, and I think that’s an apt description.
Of course you don’t “owe” anyone anything. Technically, no one owes anyone anything ever unless explicitly agreed to. But I, for one, do not want to live in that shitty Ayn Rand-esque universe of Emotional Libertarianism. I want there to be a baseline level of connection and communication with my fellow humans, out there in society.
So. For your “how to human” script, here is how a good interaction goes:
Person A: Hey, I really like your tattoos/hair/T-shirt! (Nothing about their body shape or body parts. Hair does not count as a body part.)
Person B: Thank you!
That’s it. That’s the script. After this interaction, they both go on about their day. It is not appropriate, as strangers, to try to force a more intimate interaction; but this much is fine and appropriate.
Chivalry
Today I had a small epiphany: throughout the course of my life, I have had men and boys tell me that they wished chivalry was still around, so that they would know how to talk to women and girls/structure their interactions appropriately.
…Those guys were probably just on the autism spectrum.
Gonna chew on that for a little bit.
Anyway, a bonus How To People that I observed in a conversation today: if you are talking with someone (perhaps while walking towards the parking lot together) and the conversation dies down, it is okay to say “Well, good chatting with you, talk to you later!” and just wander off/speed up your pace/slow down. This is an accepted script for How To End A Conversation.
Dating and false negatives
The other day, a friend said something in a discussion group that really made me think about relationships and dating and how all of this even works.
I’m not an expert on dating. But I do have a lot of friends, and I read a lot of advice columns, and so I have started noticing a pattern.
Some people think that if they go on one date and it’s mediocre (not Bad, just Mediocre), if they’re not Feeling It ™️, then it’s not worth going on a second date with that person.
So.
While it’s fine for someone to adopt this strategy, it’s important to realize that it’s not going to give a high probability of getting together with someone for the long term. (Which is relevant if anything other than one-night stands is your goal! No shame at all to the ONS people, but you’re not my target audience here.)
Everyone has “off” days.
The dating profile is a paper-thin slice of who someone is. This is fairly well established, even though some people still insist on judging a book by its dating profile.
But even beyond that, the first date is a bologna-thin slice of who someone is. It’s still not very much data at all.
If you want to really see if someone is compatible with you, you will have to date them (not exclusively, you don’t need to be exclusive during this period, as long as you’re honest and clear) for a while. Otherwise you’re just gonna get a shit-ton of false negatives.
And sometimes, for some people, that’s what they want: some people are very risk averse, or have trauma, or similar things going on. It’s okay for them to say “I will take the false negatives in order to not put myself in danger.”
But it’s important to be aware that that is what you’re doing: piling up a bunch of false negatives in addition to the true negatives. This is an extreme strategy for extreme situations. It’s not a strategy with a good chance of success.
How to Lie With Statistics
Many years ago, my uncle gave me a book called “How to Lie With Statistics.” It outlined a number of different ways that statistical data, while Technically Correct, can be used to misrepresent reality.
Explaining why “The numbers don’t lie” is an overly simplistic way to look at the world is even more important today, I think.
This morning, I saw this Instagram post about the red wine study, and how it missed (or deliberately ignored) the fact that many “non-drinkers” choose abstinence because of their health conditions, so they’re going to be a slightly unhealthier population to begin with. I’m sharing it here.
Unethical inheritance
“Launder that money through love” is a beautiful take on this advice letter.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2025/04/16/carolyn-hax-tobacco-fortune-solo-heir/
If you inherit money, I definitely support using some of it to better the world around you. Donate some of it to charity.
But as far as your own obligations go? As long as “unethical” doesn’t mean that it was stolen (the example case was money earned from the tobacco industry), you have no obligation to do any particular thing with it. Use it to secure your family’s future and make life easier for the next generation of humans.
Inflection points in human history
Today, my friend sent me this video that referenced the book “Ishmael,” by Daniel Quinn. This book changed my life when I read it in high school, and I highly recommend it.
The thesis of the video is that Millennials feel weird and out of place because our lives straddle the third major human inflection point: not Agriculture, not the Industrial Revolution, but the Information Revolution.
Go give it a listen.
Why I like index funds
This quote from Monica Hesse really says it all:
Whatever the American Dream once was, for whole generations of us, it has been distilled down to a 3 percent match. You get to be in charge of your own destiny, was the enthusiastic promise of the 401(k). You get to decide what investments are right for you. Never mind that I have no business deciding what investments are right for anybody. Sir, I majored in English.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/14/stock-market-crash-retirement-savings-myth/
Don’t try to time the market. Don’t try to pick stocks unless you’re doing it for funsies. Just park your retirement money in a lifecycle fund and wait it out. Don’t buy into the hyper-individualistic idea that you can control everything about your life. (That also leads us down the Just World Fallacy path!)
Reddit on the markets today
I just wanted to highlight this comment that I saw on Reddit this morning.
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/s/F8ntmtttGp
There are two things that could ultimately happen with the S&P 500.
1. It could stabilize and continue to increase over time as it’s done for the last 68 years.
2. It could crash, along with the US economy, and never recover.
It’s important to note that if #2 happens, you and I will have far more things to worry about than the value of our retirement as it indicates the total collapse of the US economy (S&P 500 represents 80% of US market cap). In that case, it wouldn’t matter if your money were in the market or in a box in the backyard, it would be similarly worthless.
So, given that there is nothing you can do to protect the value of your money in the event of #2, you might as well continue to invest believing that #1 is much more likely (cause it is).
Don’t panic. Don’t sell your stock. Hunker down and wait it out.
Emilybook 