FYI if you are ever biking here in NL, the thing to remember is that if the "haaientanden" point at you, watch out!, as that means you do not have the right of way.

Edit: The side roads are for cars as well, which means you have a strange turning lane in the middle of the intersection where traffic might back up. A simple roundabout seems like a much better solution here unless the goal is to keep cars moving quickly and the turn lane is rarely used.

The rows and columns thing is just a less perfect, but still useful, way for Andrew to front run Barbara's choices more often than the reverse happens.

[1] https://mattasher.substack.com/p/btf-6-gods-dice

Technically true, but effectively more narrative than journalism, especially since among that censored "some" was a lot of true information and experiences.

EDIT: Typo

"no evidence of a difference" is fine so long as it's proceeded with "This study found", which when studies are translated to press reports often gets dropped, especially in headlines.

So now you have at least two big investment baskets that you really should watch carefully, on top of your job, and all those other life things that, as mentioned by another commenter, do get easier once you've done them a few times (like picking a health plan or knowing the basics about car maintenance), but each one has a learning curve and change with technology or policy. And it's a very long list.

> Meaning that if you go from 4 priorities to 3, you can get, say, 10 percent more done; but if you go from 4 to 1, you get 400 percent more done.

But unless you can afford a butler or work at a company that gives you a very high level of institutional support, mono-focus seems impossible in our current world. I'd love to completely deprioritize the following roles, but they don't seem to want to detach themselves from me: tech support geek for wifi and computer issues, bookkeeper and tax preparer working hand-in-hand with my accountant, occasionally car expert for buying and maintaining vehicles, real estate expert for evaluating house purchases based on market conditions and my families needs, health care plan decider, and on and on and on. Each one of these areas if filled with multi-armed bandit problems (How much research should you put into evaluating a new home purchase where you live, or looking for a better city to live in?). It's a lot.

I am currently paying a ~$150 per month "tax" to AT&T to keep my US number while living abroad just so I can get login codes for websites that still have that number, and out of fear that if I dump it I'll lose access to some occasionally vital service that I've forgotten to update, or I can't because you need to have a US number.

“The facts show clearly that this is being driven largely by an increase in deaths of despair, with fentanyl overdoses being the leading cause of death for Americans 18 to 45”

Note this is in no way a defense of the US system, which is messed up six ways from Sunday.

Yes. Long term, if you control peoples attention and their flow of information, you will almost certainly figure out a way to control their pocketbooks.

Which BTW I don't think is a completely absurd comparison, see https://mattasher.substack.com/p/ais-killer-app

https://statisticsblog.com/2011/11/23/monte-hall-revisited/