Ben White

From Developmental Editing by Scott Norton:

Few pleasures are as great as the taste of a fresh idea. A new insight melts in the brain like chocolate on the tongue. Whether the insight is unprecedented in human history or news only to yourself doesn’t matter; the first time a thought occurs is always magic.

That magic is so fickle, perishable. I always find the strong desire to capture as much of it as possible, and the more I can horde upfront the better chance I have of making it to the finish line of anything.

// 01.14.26

Kevin Kelly, adding 101 new bits to his growing collection of pithy advice. A few of my favorites:

  • Forget trying to decide what your life’s destiny is. That’s too grand. Instead, just figure out what you should do in the next 2 years.
  • Try to define yourself by what you love and embrace, rather than what you hate and refuse.
  • Read a lot of history so you can understand how weird the past was; that way you will be comfortable with how weird the future will be.
  • There should be at least one thing in your life you enjoy despite being no good at it. This is your play time, which will keep you young. Never apologize for it.
  • The patience you need for big things, is developed by your patience with the little things.
  • There is a profound difference between thinking less of yourself (not useful), and thinking of yourself less (better).
    Avoid making any kind of important decision when you are either hungry, angry, lonely, or tired (HALT)
// 01.07.26

From a highly enjoyable “So you wanna de-bog yourself” (about getting “unstuck”) by Adam Mastroianni:

“Declining the dragon” – a medieval knight metaphor for getting unstuck: Sometimes I’ll know exactly what I need to do in order to leave the bog, but I’m too afraid to do it. I’m afraid to tell the truth, or make someone mad, or take a risk. And so I dither, hoping that the future will not require me to be brave.

Everybody thinks this is a bad strategy because it merely prolongs my suffering, but that’s not why it’s a dumb thing to do. Yes, every moment I dither is a moment I suffer. But when I finally do the brave thing, that’s not the climax of my suffering—that moment is the opposite of suffering. Being brave feels good. I mean, have you ever stood up to a bully, or conquered stage fright, or finally stopped being embarrassed about what you love? It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world. Whenever you chicken out, you don’t just feel the pain of cowardice; you miss out on the pleasure of courage.

Medieval knights used to wander around hoping for honorable adventures to pop up so that they could demonstrate their bravery. They were desperate for big, scary dragons to appear. When I put off doing the brave thing, I am declining the dragon: missing an opportunity to do something that might be scary in the moment but would ultimately make me feel great.

The whole post makes for great early January reading.

// 01.06.26

From The World I See, a memoir by the godmother of AI, Dr. Fei-Fei Li:

This, collectively, is the next North Star: reimagining AI from the ground up as a human-centered practice. I don’t see it as a change in the journey’s direction so much as a broadening of its scope. AI must become as committed to humanity as it’s always been to science. It should remain collaborative and deferential in the best academic tradition, but unafraid to confront the real world. Starlight, after all, is manifold. Its white glow, once unraveled, reveals every color that can be seen.

// 12.30.25

Treadmill Desks Are So Worth It

12.26.25 // Miscellany, Radiology

I finally got a standing desk, which means I was finally able to try a foldable treadmill under it. I love it.

In early 2024, I started using an under-desk elliptical, and it worked surprisingly well. One downside is that since it is only self-paced, it’s easy to stop.

This fall, I got the WALKINGPAD P1, which is a foldable treadmill I stow behind my door when not in use. It’s reasonably quiet and has served me well for a couple of months so far. If I were to buy one right now, I actually really meant to get the R2, which has a handle that allows for higher speeds and, more importantly to me, also means it’s easier to move and can be stably stored upright. If folding and stowage weren’t important to me, I’ve also heard good things about the Pacerocker, which has a 9-level incline feature to make things harder without increasing your walking speed (though I have no idea if having an incline would make it too hard to concentrate?). I may still upgrade to the R2 at some point.

Prior to purchasing, I had wondered if I’d be able to work while walking. I figured if I couldn’t, I could at least use it for meetings and maybe lighter/passive tasks like email.

The answer is I can definitely work while walking, at least at modest speeds, and I can easily clock 15-20k steps walking intermittently during a workday.

Admittedly, super fine motor control with the mouse is a bit harder, especially at higher walking speeds. It can, for example, be hard to measure lesions if you’re bouncing, so I find myself walking at a slower pace than my natural cadence. But while mouse control is a little harder, typing on the keyboard is surprisingly natural. It also definitely remains much easier to scroll effortlessly with my Contour Shuttle, which uses a finger, than power scrolling with the mouse.

Additionally, while the treadmills are definitely movable, it doesn’t mean they’re the kind of thing that you really want to have to wheel all the way to and from their corner multiple times per day. I find that when I would like to sit, I tend to just fold the treadmill back under the desk into the leg nook and use it as a bit of a footrest or put my feet along its sides. Having a standing desk means that you can adjust the height a bit as needed to keep things comfortable to accommodate those few extra inches. The main downside of sitting in front of the folded treadmill is that the wheels on your chair can easily bump up against it. It’s best to sit slightly back, so having a pull-out keyboard tray (which I do) really helps with positioning. This is the main reason I wish I’d bought the model with the handle, which would make it easier to move around and probably obviate the need to ever do this. If you try it and don’t like sitting at it folded, the answer is probably just to use it in one session per day and move it away when you’re done.

I think standing desks on their own are somewhat overrated. I like standing at work sometimes for variety, but it’s also sorta meh? Unless you like to do a little dancing in place, the data suggest that standing isn’t really magically better than sitting, and there is some data that they’re not great for your lower extremity veins if you clock too many hours. Being sedentary has more to do with not moving than the actual position you’re staying still in.

The opportunity to try work-walking was my main motivation for wanting a standing desk at home in the first place. I’m not a teleradiologist, so I’m not cranking in my pajamas during the workweek as a full-time job, but as a component of my hybrid workweek, the treadmill desk has been awesome.

Choosing Status Games

12.11.25 // Miscellany, Reading

Via The Wealth Ladder by Nick Maggiulli:

As Robert Sapolsky wrote in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: When we sit around and worry about stressful things, we turn on the same physiological responses—but they are potentially a disaster when provoked chronically. A large body of evidence suggests that stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions. If you find yourself chronically worried in life, finding ways to destress will be paramount for keeping your mental wealth intact. Studies show that exercise, sleep, meditation, yoga, as well as various mindfulness techniques can help to reduce stress. Whatever you decide to do, finding what works for you is what’s important. Lastly, focusing on yourself and your self-esteem is another key component of mental wealth. And for many, self-esteem is built on how they perceive their social status. If you believe that you haven’t accomplished anything, then you will probably feel low status. But if you believe that what you do has purpose, then you will feel high status. More importantly, your perceived status does not need to be based on money or career accomplishments. You can find status and self-esteem in many areas of life. Once again from Robert Sapolsky: So, the lowly subordinate in the mailroom of the big corporation may, after hours, be deriving tremendous prestige and self-esteem from being the deacon of his church, or the captain of her weekend softball team, or may be the top of the class at adult-extension school. One person’s highly empowering dominance hierarchy may be a mere 9-to-5 irrelevancy to the person in the next cubicle.

You get to, as suggested by Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, “recreate constructively” and construct life’s meaning. Unlike most games, the status game allows you to choose how to keep score.

Status is relative to the context in which it is being evaluated.

In some contexts, the aspirations of status can even backfire. The trappings of wealth, in the wrong setting, can function more as a cloak of shame. Being deliberate in your context (career, schools, neighborhood, etc) has an incredible impact on perceived status. As in, which Joneses are you trying to keep up with?

Thankfully, you get to choose which status game you want to play and how you want to evaluate yourself. This is both a blessing and a curse, because you can be objectively great at something and feel like a failure or you can be just okay at something and feel like a massive success. It’s all based on how you feel. It’s based on the story you tell yourself about yourself.

I am reminded of David Brooks’ distinction between resume virtues and eulogy virtues.

On living in a tumultuous, uncertain world, from the Free Press’ Abigail Shrier:

Overinvest, never underinvest, in people around you and in those you love. Particularly in a world with poor visibility, they are the closest thing any of us has to security. Give the community you inhabit a real shot and make a go of ensuring it succeeds.

If crime skyrockets, if you must leave the city, if our great civilization goes bust, you won’t regret the time you spent taking your kids and their friends out for ice cream. You’ll all carry with you memories that will bolster you wherever you go. Do all these things right up until the very moment you decide to make a change.

Here is the tough love you requested: You won’t regret having wholeheartedly invested in your home and community for as long as they are yours. I can almost guarantee, at the end of your journey, you won’t lament, “Civilization collapsed. I needed to flee. And meanwhile, I’d just bought this damn sofa.”

 

// 12.07.25

The Democratization of Purposelessness

11.18.25 // Miscellany

America after World War II entered an era of economic growth and intermittent societal cohesion. It also created the American consumer, an economic system based in large part on earning money to buy things, at first to change your life (a washing machine!) and then to signal to others (another new car?).

That simple instinct—to not fall behind—combined with easy credit and rising expectations, helped fuel the debt culture that still defines American life. Market capitalism naturally creates winners and losers. When growth slows or inequality widens, that sense of relative deprivation becomes a psychological trap. As in, success isn’t objective; it’s relative.

The Great Disgruntlement of the modern era has less to do with the perception of falling wages, purchasing power, and actual standards of living, and almost everything to do with social comparison: the big gap between the top & bottom of the economic leaderboard and the ability to see others doing “better” than you via social media. It’s aspirational poison that people can feed on with debt, which is what you resort to when you “need” things you can’t afford. Yes, I’m oversimplifying. There is obviously a great deal of real deprivation and struggle in this country and the world, healthcare bankruptcies, crazy house prices, etc. Right now, I’m talking about the luxury purse economy.

It’s safe to say at this point that some tasks once reserved for humans will be done by some variety of machine. It’s happened before, has been happening continuously, and will happen more so in the future. It’s possible that human capital will simply shift to more human, social, squishy tasks. We certainly need more of it than we have now, and the economy could shift in that direction. More teachers, fewer bankers.

But, if we take the bullish AI view, there’s also a possibility that the haves vs have-nots will transition from the current comparison via purchasing power to comparison via the ability to construct a (visibly) meaningful life. The transition from a work-based identity to one where large portions of society may not need to work—at least not in the traditional sense—would be more psychologically jarring than the postwar consumer revolution.

We’ve learned how economic inequality leads to material arms races. The next inequality may be existential: between those who can find meaning without work and those who cannot.

If the postwar era was defined by the democratization of consumption, the AI era may be defined by the democratization of purposelessness—and the challenge of rediscovering meaning in a world where being economically useful is no longer the foundation of identity.