A look at the things I like and don’t like about my new car.

Earlier this month, I blogged about buying my new Toyota RAV4 Plugin Hybrid. It was a (typically) long post that covered a lot of my thinking about buying a new car and, specifically, a plugin hybrid, to eventually replace two of the vehicles in my “fleet.”

The Decision

To recap the decision making process, I was interested in four things:

• A practical car that would serve me (likely) for the rest of my life. (I keep cars forever — or so it seems.) I needed something that was comfortable, could seat 4 people, and could carry stuff. It also needed to be able to handle the two miles of gravel road I live on, which is sometimes very washboarded, and foul weather.
• A fuel efficient car that would get good local and long distance fuel economy. These days, hybrids were the best option for that.
• A car that could take advantage of the cheap power where I live. That meant plugging in while at home.
• A reliable car built by a company with a good reputation and dealerships able to service it all over the country. That meant avoiding weird new manufacturers. I want a trouble-free car ownership experience.

Despite the low electricity costs where I live, I was not interested in a full-on EV because I was not interested in planning road trips around charging facilities and charging times. You might have an EV that you love and don’t think charging on a long trip is a big deal. That’s nice for you. I’m simply not interested in trying.

(I do want to mention that if someone sold a super small, no-frills EV, maybe just two seats with enough room in back to stow groceries, and priced that sucker under $10,000, I would consider it for a local-only car.)

I didn’t do much research. I’ll admit it. I knew Toyota’s reputation and I knew they’d been making hybrids for nearly 20 years. I thought about a plugin Prius, but it didn’t meet the practicality requirement. Everyone was talking about RAV4s and when I tried one on, it fit. So that’s what I bought.

The Woodland trim I went with has additional rugged road features that makes it even more practical for my life. I don’t have to worry about breaking it if I go on a rough road.

I made the decision, I started my search, I waited, and I picked up the car. All that’s covered in my earlier post about buying the car.

The Drive Home

I would make this post a lot longer than it needs to be if I went into a lot of detail about my drive home from Boise, which I did as a scenic road trip over three days. All I have to say is that the car performed exactly like you’d expect a brand new car to perform: flawlessly. It was comfortable, the air conditioning worked well in excessive heat, and the Apple CarPlay feature was something I’d been pining for for years, enabling me to follow a map on a big screen while listening to audiobooks and podcasts through the car’s speakers.

I stopped at Hell’s Canyon Overlook on my way home from Boise. The haze is due to wildfires in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. I’m sure the smoke got worse after that.

Understand that my newest vehicle up to that point is a 2012 Ford Truck. Although it has some nice features in its Lariat trim, it’s nothing like what’s available in a mid-range car built 14 years later. My only experiences with many of the car’s new features were in cars I’d rented throughout the years. Some were great, others were okay, and a handful were simply annoying. (More on that in a moment.) The point is, there are lots of new features in new cars and it was fun to explore them.

One thing I want to point out, though, is the fuel efficiency. When I left the dealer showroom, the car’s hybrid motor battery had just 6% power available. The fuel tank was full, but the battery was nearly empty. The sales guy, Troy, told me that they had just begun carrying plugin hybrids and weren’t set up to charge them. Of course, the batteries were not fully charged during shipping. So although they could top off the gas tank, they could not top off the battery.

(Personally, I think this is a pretty lame excuse. After all, you don’t need a special charging station to charge plugin hybrids. More on that in a moment, too.)

The car has a battery display that indicates the battery level. It didn’t take long for it to go from 6% to 0%, but it built back up when I went down long or steep hills. Unlike a regular car, where you throw away energy when you use the brakes, a hybrid takes that energy and stores it in the battery for later use. This totally changes the way I drive. I am accustomed to using the brakes as little as possible to avoid throwing that power away, often getting to the top of a hill at a slower speed, knowing I’ll pick up speed on the way down. (This is especially true in my truck.) Now it seems to make more sense to try to keep a constant speed since braking is turned into useable power.

Although there was nothing stopping me from charging the battery along the way, it simply was not convenient to do so so I didn’t bother. That was the point of having the hybrid, no?

Anyway, I did 459 miles before refueling for the first time in Walla Walla WA. I took on a total of nearly 11 gallons. The math says I got just over 41 miles per gallon. Not bad.

At Home and Local Driving

At home, I backed it into the garage bay recently occupied by my Jeep. (The Jeep is now where my truck used to live while my truck is in the RV garage with my slide-in camper in its bed. My garage will always have enough room for all of my vehicles and trailers.) It was a tight fit — or at it least seemed so. I needed to get used to using the cameras to get the car in straight; I’m much better doing it now. (I always back my cars in.)

My most recent parking job. I never seem to get it truly centered because of have to navigate around my trash and recycle bins. (I’m thinking I should paint that back wall in the garage.)

After unwinding from my trip, I took out the charging cable, plugged it into the wall, and plugged it into the charging port. The charger that comes with the car works with a standard wall outlet. I have a 20 amp socket just inside the door to the house so that’s where I plugged it in. The cable was just long enough to reach the port on the car which is forward of the driver’s seat, over the front driver’s side wheel. The car makes some unusual clicking sounds when you first plug it in.

There are two little doors that look like fuel tank covers on the driver’s side of the car. The one up front is for the charging cable. The cable just reaches with the car backed in.

There was some confusion over the first day or two about a charging schedule. I’m still not sure if it was set up right and my changes messed it up. The car has an app (if you can believe that) and it was preset with a charging schedule that set charging times. The idea is that in lots of places power rates change based on the time of day. (I remember that being the case when I lived in Arizona; power was cheaper at night.) But that’s not the case here. My power is cheap — 2.8¢/kWh as I write this — all the time at residential usage levels. Anyway, at first it wasn’t charging. I made some adjustments to get the charger going.

I won’t lie: it took a long time. 12 hours to 74%. That’s as far as it got before I had to use the car. I set it into Eco mode, where it prefers EV driving over regular hybrid driving, and went into town. 21 miles round trip took it down to 42%. Then 12 hours (overnight) of charging to get it to 100%.

Now I’ve got the charging schedule stuff figured out so it charges every time I plug in until its either 100% or I pull the plug. Nine times out of ten, it’s fully charged before the next time I drive it.

As far as power is concerned, the Toyota app shows that, too. I did a prorated calculation from the first three charging sessions shown here. 0% to 74% took 12.062 kWh. Divide that by 74 to get the number of kWh for each 1%: 0.163. Multiply by 100 to get the power for 0% to 100%: 16.3 kWh. Now multiply that by my power rate of 2.8¢/kWh: about 46¢.

So yeah: it costs just 46¢ to fully charge my hybrid car’s battery from 0% to 100% power.

Every time I go into town — a round trip of at least 20 miles, depending on where I go — the power level drops by 35% to 50%. So I’m using, at most, about half the battery power. The gas engine only engages during rapid acceleration in Eco mode — for example, when I turn onto the Malaga Alcoa highway where the speed limit is 50 mph — or when I’m climbing hills. A gauge on the dashboard indicates whether I’m in EV (Eco) or Power (Hybrid) mode. I can moderate how I use the accelerator to keep the car in EV mode, theoretically not using any fuel at all. But honestly, it isn’t worth it.

Because I live at a higher elevation than town, I can get all the way down to Malaga Alcoa Highway — a distance of about 6 miles — and not lose a single bit of battery charge. Still 100% when I get to the bottom of the hill. The trip back up eats up a lot of battery charge, though.

Another indicator tells me how my hybrid miles until empty. I can go into town with that reading 333 (using a recent example) and come home with it reading 332. I drove 20+ miles but it says I only used 1 mile worth of fuel.

This might all sound confusing to you if you’re not a numbers person like I am. I absolutely love these stats. I even keep a logbook in the car to list all the mileage and battery usage info. That’s how I’m able to spit out these numbers for you. They’re in my book.

A Fully Charged Road Trip

I made my first trip to Bellingham in late July. Bellingham is 199 miles from my house. About 1/3 of the trip is on winding mountain roads that cross the Cascades at Stevens Pass. Another 1/3 is on the I-5 freeway. The remaining 1/3 is on regular roads with speed limits ranging from 15 to 60 mph.

I started the trip with 100% battery power and enough remaining hybrid miles to get me there with miles to spare. I set the car to Normal mode. And then I drove as I normally would.

The battery dropped to 0% long before I reached Stevens Pass. I should have noted exactly where; I will on my next drive there. It gained a small amount back on the way down the mountain. And then it pretty much stuck to 0% for the rest of the drive.

I did not note the remaining hybrid miles on arrival but it was low enough that I decided to fuel before coming home a week later. I had driven 516 miles since my last fueling in Walla Walla. I put on 9.4 gallons of fuel, which comes to a very nice 55 mpg average.

So yeah: I’m definitely getting the kind of fuel economy I wanted.

I can do some more math here. I normally took my truck to Bellingham. It gets about 15 mpg when I’m not hauling anything. So I’m looking at roughly 27 gallons of diesel for that round trip drive. The RAV4, at 55 mpg, needs only 7 gallons of fuel for the same trip. That’s a savings of 20 gallons and with fuel prices around $5/gallon these days — remember, I live in Washington state and there’s a war in the mideast (for some reason) — I’m saving $100 on every trip.

Other Charging Stuff to Consider

Reality check here: I’m getting the best fuel economy on short trips where most of the trip is done on EV power. So the average MPG I calculated for my second fill up really takes into consideration the local driving I did between fill ups. If I had topped off the battery in Bellingham somehow — I’m sure there’s a charging station somewhere — I would have gotten better fuel economy. I’m not sure how it would have affected my overall cost, though. What does a charging station cost to use? I have no clue. I do have an adapter that enables me to charge with a Tesla charger; one of these days, if the battery is low or 0% and a charging station is convenient, I’ll give it a try. But I seriously doubt it’ll be anywhere near as cheap as it is at home.

I’d love to see what MPG I can get with local driving only. But if I only drove locally, I’d probably go months before needing to top off the fuel tank. My dealer claimed that he had a customer who only drove her hybrid locally; she drove 1,500 miles before needing to fill up her tank.

As for using a standard wall outlet as opposed to a fast charger I can get installed at my home, it doesn’t bother me how long it takes to charge at home. Remember, all I need is 50% to take advantage of the Eco mode features for short jaunts into town. And I don’t use the car every day anyway. I last drove it on Friday (I’m writing this on Sunday morning); I plugged it in Friday evening at 54% power and it was fully charged before 4 AM the next day. It’s been sitting in the garage, plugged in at 100% since then.

And before I consider a fast charger installation, I need to consider what it would cost me. Likely several hundred dollars for the parts and labor. And that’s if I have room in my electric panel for a 220v circuit (I actually don’t).

Comfort, Convenience, and the Other Stuff

If your brain isn’t fried by all those numbers by now — mine almost is — here’s some info that isn’t related to numbers: the things that make you like or not like a car.

I’ll split these into pros and cons. First the pros:

• Fuel economy. I already covered that in excruciating detail. ‘Nuff said.
• Comfort. The car is comfortable. The seats, which are a nice kind of fake leather that isn’t sticky or ugly, adjust all kinds of ways, including a lumbar support. The seats and steering wheel are heated. The climate control can split zones to make a front seat passenger happy. The mirrors adjust perfectly. There’s a moon roof with a shade that I can use to ventilate the car when I park in the sun.

• 
  I found an excellent fast charging USB-C curly cord for my phone. This was before I realized that the shelf had a magnetic charger built in.

  Convenience. There’s a push-button start and stop; I just leave a fob in my pocket or purse. (I admit that took getting used to; none of my other cars have a fob.) The doors automatically lock or unlock with the wave of my hand in front of a door handle. It has single press electric windows for both front seats, up and down. There’s a push button opener and closer for the hatch back. There’s USB-C built in at the dashboard. (There’s even a magnetic charging pad, but I doubt I’ll use it.) And did I mention Apple CarPlay? I had a taste of that in rental cars; to have it in my own car is great! There’s also an AC power outlet in the cargo area — for a cooler, I was told, so I bought one. And the rear seat split and fold down nearly flat.

• Handling. All I can say is wow. This is an SUV, right? Or whatever the hell a crossover is? But it has nice, tight steering and very aggressive acceleration. Not much body roll. Nothing like I expected it to be. It’s not as fun as driving my Honda S2000 — that car is, after all, my Joy Machine — but it’s a hell of a lot better than driving my truck.
• Practicality. It definitely has that covered with the ability to comfortably seat 4 or 5 people and plenty of space in the cargo area. Fold down the seats for just two on board and you’ve got a lot more cargo room. There’s also a roof rack. I’ve already bought a tent that can attach to the back of the car to turn it into a comfortable car camping setup. And it can tow up to 3500 pounds, which is probably more than my Jeep can tow.

There are a few nitpicky cons:

• 
  The color choices available for RAV4 cars as I write this. The website shows a red one but that’s not an option. Go Figure. Mine is Storm Cloud.

  The color. Although I like the color, I wish it wasn’t so dark. It gets nearly as hot in the sun as a black car would be and probably shows exactly the same amount of dust after several drives up and down by road. But other than white, all of the RAV4 Plugin Hybrid colors are dark.

• Excessive “safety” features. Let me start by saying this: I have been driving since I was 16 years old. We’re talking nearly 50 years here. I have a very good record of safety. I know how to drive and I know how to do it without causing accidents. In fact, I’m also a pretty good defensive driver. This car includes all the safety features car designers could possibly have come up with. Cruise control slows down if it thinks I’m getting too close to the car in front of me. The wheel shakes or actually steers the car (!) if I get too close to a lane dividing line. And the one I turned off before reaching my first destination: it monitors the driver’s eyes and beeps with a warning message on the instrument panel if the driver’s eyes aren’t on the road. Yes, these features can, for the most part, be disabled. I can see the attraction of them for people who like machines to think and act for them. I’m not one of those people. Rely on a system and you’re kind of screwed when that system is not available. No thanks.

• 
  The seatbelt extender I use to defeat the seatbelt warning chime when I need to.

  Annoying seatbelt chime. For the record, I wear my seatbelt when driving the car on a road. I don’t wear it in my driveway, in parking lots (especially when backing up), or on slow speed rough roads. I don’t need an annoying chime to tell me to put it on. I am an adult. I turned off this chime on my Ford truck and my other two vehicles are too old to have the chime — they just have lights. The local dealer refused to disable it for me. So I went out and bought a seatbelt extender like the kind my Dad had in his Mustang. Leave that buckled in and buckle the seatbelt into it when you’re ready to buckle up. (Highly recommended.)

• Overall appearance. Let’s face it: it looks like half the freaking cars on the road. I’ve already tried to get into the wrong car twice. I’m not used to having such an ordinary looking vehicle. It’s attractive enough, but … yawn. Good thing I plan on keeping the Honda forever, too.

The drawback of having a dark colored car on a gravel road is that no matter where you wash it, it always has dust on it after a drive. Here it is after the first time I hosed the dust off. Damn hard water left spots.

Overall Conclusions

Despite my nitpicking, I love the car. I can’t imagine anything else meeting my needs so well for the same price.

And I’m very glad I didn’t wait to buy it.

I buy a new car a lot sooner than I expect to because — well, why not?

For a single person living alone with no kids, I have a lot of cars. I occasionally refer to them as my fleet.

• I have my 1999 Jeep Wrangler, which I bought brand new, beat the crap out of, and use as my local around-town vehicle. It’s in decent shape but wouldn’t win any awards at a car show, despite it’s age. A trailer hitch on the front makes it the perfect vehicle for shuffling around trailers in the garage or driveway.


My Jeep in its younger days, crawling over rocks in Sedona AZ. It’s on its third soft top now.

• I have my 2003 Honda S2000, which I bought brand new and took good care of. It’s my Joy Machine and makes me happy every time I drive it. It’s fast with tight steering and good brakes. The convertible top makes it almost as good as a motorcycle for feeling the air around me — but no helmet required! It’s impractical as a vehicle, but has decent fuel efficiency and is oh so fun. I use if on road trips when I don’t need to carry a lot of luggage, as well as on day trips up into the mountains.


I can’t imagine any car being more fun to drive than my Honda S2000.

• I have my 2012 Ford F35 SuperDuty Diesel Crew Cab with an 8-foot bed, which I bought in 2015. It’s my workhorse and I use it to haul just about anything that needs hauling: building or garden supplies, my slide-in truck camper, and my (oversize load) boat. I also used it on my trips to and from the marina in Bellingham where my boat lives, mostly because it can haul all the stuff I need to drag along with me when I go out on my boat.


My boat weighs 13,000 pounds on its trailer. Good thing my truck can tow 16,000 pounds.

Each vehicle is different. Each has its pros and cons. If I had to get rid of one of them, I’d have a hard time choosing because they each do different things for me.

They’re also each paid for in full and have their own space in my larger-than-average — okay, humungous — garage. Cheap to keep, easy to take care of. Always ready when I need them.

I Want a New Car

But I’ve been wanting a new car for a while. Remember, the last new-to-me vehicle I bought was my truck, 11 years ago. Before that, it was my Honda, 22 years ago. Sheesh.

It would be nice to buy something more fuel efficient, possibly to take advantage of the cheap power where I live. Electric would be nice, but not on a road trip. Hybrid would be nice for a road trip, but it wouldn’t really take advantage of the cheap power at home. The answer was, of course, a plug-in hybrid. Something I can keep plugged in when not in use and then use for virtually free local driving and more fuel efficient road trips.

And wouldn’t it be nice to have a vehicle with all the new bells and whistles I’d experienced in new rentals cars over the years? All those cameras and Apple Car Play?

I certainly did not need a fourth car. And I couldn’t get rid of any of the ones I have because they each do their own special things for me. So I figured I’d wait until I started downsizing. The truck wouldn’t be needed when I sold the boat; I’d sell the slide-in truck camper with it. The Jeep wouldn’t be needed when I got rid of my utility trailer and the boat trailer. When I sold those, I’d buy a nice plug-in hybrid SUV or “crossover” vehicle to replace them. Then I’d be down to just two cars, like a more normal person.

That was the plan, anyway.

In early June, as I steered my truck through the mountains on the long drive back from Bellingham, I started questioning this plan. I wasn’t getting any younger. Why should I wait? It’s not as if I’d get a big windfall from the sale of a 27+ year old Jeep and a truck with nearly 200,000 miles on it. I was turning 65 at the end of the month. Didn’t I deserve a big birthday present for such a big birthday? And why shouldn’t I have a new car while I was young enough to enjoy it?

And wasn’t my boat named Do It Now for a reason?

So just like that, I decided to buy myself a new car for my birthday.

Choosing the Car

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t do much research. Most of the folks I spoke to raved about the Toyota RAV4, which was now available as a plugin hybrid. Toyota is the maker of one of the first hybrid cars out there: the Prius, which they first sold in December 1997. They still made and sold that car and I suspected that they’d learned a lot in the nearly 20 years since its first release. Everything I read and saw online in car guy videos confirmed this.

So I went to look at one, all ready to buy. The local Toyota dealer only had one on the lot and it was sold. But I got to see it and sit inside. It met my needs as an eventual replacement for the truck and Jeep as far as practicality was concerned. It even had limited towing capabilities. I could keep the Honda for fun and use this as my every day car.

The local dealer didn’t seem to understand that I was ready to buy the car. He kept saying I should think it over and get back to him. Instead, I asked when more were coming in. I told him I was ready to buy. It’s a shame (for him) that he didn’t have one to sell me. This was early on in my limited research and I didn’t know much about the various “trims” they sold. I probably would have bought the first one he offered me. But there was a list and he put me on it. The car was in high demand. It might be a few weeks.

In the meantime, I did a bit more homework and decided that I wanted the Woodland trim. This was a middle-range trim with some good rough road features. There was even a video on YouTube of a guy taking one “off road.” I told him I’d take any color except white, black, or green. (That left a shade of blue and a shade of dark gray.)

Waiting for the Car

And then I waited. For more than a week, nothing. I called to see if anything was coming in and he said there was but they were already spoken for. I reminded him I was ready to buy.

I sold 100 shares of Apple stock for a generous downpayment and put the money in my savings account.

After that, every once in a while he’d text me about cars coming in that did not match my criteria. The first was a low-end SE model. Another was a white Woodland. And then there was the XSE model that he said was very rare and he’d have to charge a $5k premium for it. I didn’t want it and now he was pissing me off.

So I started working the phones. I talked to Toyota dealers in Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon. A few said they only sold locally, which honestly made no sense to me. Wouldn’t they rather sell the car to someone out of the area so they wouldn’t have to deal with warranty service and repairs? Some made promises and started sending me info about what was coming in. One guy even called on his private cell phone because he claimed they were required to sell locally but he was willing to make an exception for me.

WTF?

Eventually, I struck a deal with Troy in Boise. He managed to find the car in inventory being prepped for shipping to the US. Did I want it? Blue Toyota RAV4 Plugin Hybrid with moon roof. Yes. Sign this contract and send a $2K deposit. I did.

That was in late June. The car would be ready sometime between July 5 and August 11.

Life went on. My friend Janet came to stay with me for about two weeks at the end of June and into July. We camped with the truck and camper in the North Cascades and then took the boat out around the San Juan Islands and into Canada for 10 days. The local Toyota dealer kept texting me about cars that didn’t match my criteria.

Then I got a date from Troy. The car would be ready on July 13.

The timing couldn’t be better. I would be back from my boat trip and had a full two weeks before my next boat trip. (Long story there.) Plenty of time to get out to Boise and have a nice, leisurely road trip back. We set the pickup date for July 14, exactly two weeks after my 65th birthday.

Picking Up the Car

One of the things few people know about me is that I am a logistics whiz. I quickly determined that the quickest and easiest way for me to get from the Wenatchee area to Boise ID was to rent a car. I got a one-way car rental out of Wenatchee with Enterprise, left my pups with a neighbor, and headed out early in the morning of July 12. By 5 PM local time, I was checking into a nice hotel about a mile from the car dealer.

The next morning, I dropped off my luggage at the dealer, returned the rental car, and made the short walk back to the dealer. By then, my car was out in front of the building.

Troy took this photo of me with my new car before I’d even sat inside it. The funny thing is that I wore that shirt to match the car, thinking the color was the light blue in the shirt. It turned out to match the dark blue in the shirt. The other color was weird, but I was mentally prepped for it. This color is a lot more normal and although I like it, I’m not sure if normal is a good thing for me.

Then there was the paperwork. There was a lot of it. Payment was made more complicated because Toyota Financing’s systems were down and, for some reason, my transfer of $30K from my savings to checking account was delayed. Finally, things were settled. I did buy the 10 year extended warranty — remember, this is probably the last car I’ll ever buy. They got me a good loan rate because my credit score is “exceptional.” By 1 PM, I had all my stuff loaded into the car, shook hands with Troy, and drove out of the lot.

Since Then

That was just over a month ago. I did a 3-day road trip through central Idaho and into the Hells Canyon area before coming home. The car drove great. It was comfortable and had a lot of features. In many ways, it’s a computer with a car attached. I learned a lot about it on that long drive and have learned a lot since.

I stopped at a riverside parking area to eat the lunch I bought at a supermarket after leaving the dealer. From here, I drove up to McCall ID, a place I last visited in 2005 in my Honda.

But this blog post is already long enough. I’ll have to write another one with my observations.

I’ll just say one thing for now: I’m glad I didn’t wait.

I add a new post to my old Writing Tips series of posts. This one focuses on simple tools to get the job done.

When I sat down to write this post this morning, I thought I was starting a new series. But then I looked at my list of about 3,100 blog posts here and realized I already had a series it could fit into: Writing Tips. So with a little bit of editing, I wrangled what I’d written today to fit that series. I do, however, want to start with a new introduction.

About Me and This Series

I’ve been a writer since I was 13. I was always driven to write, to tell stories. I wrote them in spiral bound notebooks with the Bic fine point pen I preferred. I filled notebooks with my writing and I still have many of them. This was before the days of computers and word-processing, mind you. The two choices available for writers was longhand or typing. (It wasn’t until much later that I’d get my first typewriter.)

I’ve been a published — yes, by a real publisher — author since 1987 when I was about 26. (You can do the math; it won’t bother me.) That was an article for a professional newsletter. No money, but my first published clip. (There’s a chance I still have it around somewhere; I should hunt it down.) My first paid writing gig came in 1991 as a ghost writer on a John Dvorak book. I wrote 4 chapters and was paid $500 per chapter. My writing career took off from there — I’m sure I’ve covered its trajectory somewhere.

(Hmm. I just did a quick search of blog posts and can’t find one with the full story. I guess I’ll have to write it. In the meantime, here’s a list of all of the books I’ve written and all of the non-blog articles I’ve written.)

The point is that I’m a real writer. I’m driven to write, I have written books and articles that have been published, and I have even made a good living as a writer. Although I’m mostly retired now, I still write; my most recent article for Passagemaker Magazine was published this past week.

I’m telling you all of this because I want you to know who this series is by and for. You know about me; how about you? This series is for people who want to write. It’s not for people who are being forced to write by a boss or job requirements or even a teacher. It’s not going to cover things like grammar and spelling and style. It assumes you already know enough about all that to actually write.

This series is for the folks who, for some reason, want to write but are having trouble doing it. If that’s you, read on.

The Simplest Writing Tool and System

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing lately, looking at ways to get more motivated about doing it and seeing all kinds of weird (to me) posts on my social media platform of choice (Mastodon) from people writing or struggling to write. Two of them just came up in my feed today. I’m including screen grabs of them here for reference and have purposely omitted anything that identifies the poster. (I don’t want to embarrass anyone. If this is your post and you want to be identified as its author, let me know and I’ll modify it for you here.) These posts motivated me to sit down and answer the questions they posed, which I also answered online in replies to them.

In both examples, the author is talking about writing tools or systems to help them write. One mentions bullet journaling, the other lists software platforms. Neither seems ready to acknowledge the simplest tool/system available to them. I’ll give you a hint: it’s the same tool I used when I was 13 years old.

A pen and a notebook.

The Writing Tool/System Trap

Let me start by saying that I was also caught up in the writing tool/system trap that these folks are in. In today’s world, there is always an established and promoted solution for a problem. If someone can cash in on potentially solving a common problem, they will.

That’s what I think of bullet journaling, anyway. It seems that the guy who “invented” it is writing books and creating videos and selling notebooks with dots (instead of lines or grids). You can’t look up “bullet journal” without seeing him pushing his products.

As for software tools, it seems like a race to give writers the perfect app or platform to get their thoughts out there. Even Apple got into the game with its disappointing Journal app. (Why disappointing? Am I the only one who doesn’t want to lock my writing into a cloud-based app?) I even went so far as to spend good money on the app that every writer seems to use and rave about. And then not use it for writing. (I did find another use for it.)

Julia Cameron and The Artist’s Way

A few months ago, still searching for something to help motivate me to sit down and write, I began reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. This book has been around for 30+ years and still sells well. Every professional writer I know — including me — would love to have written and published a book like this.

Not only did I begin reading it, but I also listened to the audiobook version at the same time — a process some people refer to as “immersive reading” — and took notes. I wanted to squeeze everything I could out of this volume.

I didn’t last long. You see, Julia’s philosophy leans heavy on “spirituality,” her poorly disguised religious beliefs. In her world, a person’s success as an artist (including writers) relies on support from a Great Creator. Although she denies throughout the book that she’s talking about God, you’d have to be an idiot to believe her.

I’m a firm believer that we are each ultimately responsible for our own successes and failures so her Great Creator did not sit well with me. I stopped reading after the Week 2 chapter where her list of 10 “Rules of the Road” included three affirmations that rubbed me the wrong way:

In order to be an artist, I must:

…
6. Be alert, always, for the presence of the Great Creator leading and helping my artist.
…
8. Remember that the Great Creator loves creativity.
…
10. Place this sign in my workplace: Great Creator, I will take care of the quantity. You take care of the quality.

I found #10 especially offensive. (Here’s a newsflash for anyone waiting for a Great Creator to edit their writing: He’s already busy not stopping wars, famine, and injustice. What makes you think your writing is more important to Him than all of those other things that He apparently ignores anyway?) And since it became clear to me by then that a certain amount of religious belief (which I lack) would be necessary to get the most out of the book, I decided not to waste any more time with it.

Anyway, religion aside — I’m certainly not willing to discuss it here so keep your comments about it to yourself, please — I did come away from the book with one thing of great value: Morning Pages.

Morning Pages

The Artist’s Way program requires writers to write Morning Pages every day.

Morning Pages are three full pages, handwritten, about anything you want to write. It could be what you’re thinking or doing or seeing. It could be stream of consciousness. It could be notes for a book you want to write or are already working on. Anything. Words on paper, handwritten.

Since this requirement is stated early on at the beginning of the book (before I decided the book wasn’t for me), I started writing Morning Pages every morning. I had a spiral bound, college ruled notebook — the 8-1/2 x 11 inch kind, not the smaller ones they make to save money on paper. I was already using it for occasional notes, including (ironically) the notes I was taking while reading The Artist’s Way.

I did my Morning Pages every morning during my coffee in bed time with my pups. I’m an early riser, often up before 5 AM. I get up, make coffee, and bring it back to bed. I had been using that time to do some puzzles, catch up on Mastodon, and write a quick journal entry in a blank book I had for that purpose. But instead, I started doing Morning Pages and following that up with the journal entry.

It was easy. I can’t begin to tell you just how easy it was. If I can keep myself distraction-free, I can knock it out in 30 to 45 minutes. That might sound like a long time, but we’re talking about three densely packed pages of writing, roughly 1,000 words. With distractions, the time stretched. But in the 71 days I’ve been doing it — I number the entries — I only missed two days and did a short entry one day — all due to scheduling-related time constraints.

One of the reasons I think it’s so easy is because it doesn’t matter what you write. I usually write about the previous day and what I got done. I write about things I thought about, people I communicated with, and things I want or need to do. I write about the weather and the air quality — it’s smoke season here, after all. I write about my health. I write about ideas for blog posts and articles. I scold myself for not doing things I should be doing.

Seriously: I write about anything that comes to mind. It’s rapid-fire stuff with no formatting or editing. Heck, I don’t even create paragraphs. In one sentence I might wish for rain and in the next I might start writing about a new decorative paper process I’d like to try in my studio.

What is this doing for me? Well, it’s a brain dump, to be sure. Isn’t that what both of the Mastodon post examples I shared above seem to be looking for? It helps me organize my thoughts and create threads that often lead to new thoughts or solutions or even action plans. (I’ve actually begun writing my Morning Pages with my To Do list for the day nearby so I can add items to it.) It has also replaced my journal, which I had been keeping quite faithfully for nearly 2 1/2 years. I was a bit sad to see it go, but I realized that there was a lot of repetition. The additional space I have in that spiral notebook makes it possible to go into detail I could not fit in the old journal page format.

And it’s easy enough to make into a habit. Isn’t that specifically what one of those Mastodon posters wanted to do? Set a time of day to do it, make sure you’ve blocked out enough time, and just get it done.

It also reminded me of how I wrote way back when I was 13. Those notebooks! Those pages of neat printed writing in ink! I was able to be creative back then, to write longhand without editing.

Oh, how I rejoiced years later when word processors made typewriters obsolete! But did they really help me? Or hinder me? Morning Pages makes me wonder.

How Writing Tools/Systems Stifle Us

I mentioned earlier that I was once stuck in the mindset that I needed to use a special tool or system to be productive as a writer. Like the folks I quoted above seem to be. And I tried (and set aside) many software-based tools over the years.

Why? Well I found that once I had decided to use a specific tool to do all my writing, I could not write unless that tool was handy.

For example, when I write on a computer, I want to use a keyboard. A regular keyboard that I can touch-type on. I’m a pretty quick typist when I have the right keyboard, a normal sized one that fits my fingers. I can type nearly as quickly as I can compose in my brain. But needing a keyboard means I have to have a desktop or laptop computer with me to write. I cannot write on a phone or tablet. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to have a laptop or desktop with me all the time. So without that tool, I don’t write.

That’s the most basic problem. The problem is worse when you have a cloud-based tool such as the sites listed in the second Mastodon post I shared above. They require you to be connected to the Internet to use them. Another hurdle. While many folks can’t imagine not being connected to the Internet, I can assure everyone that there are times and places where it simply is not possible to connect. What do you do then?

Using a specific writing app locks you up the same way. When you don’t have access to the app, do you find other ways to write? Or do you not write at all?

That pen and notebook are looking better all the time, no? Pretty easy to slip into a purse, messenger bag, backpack, or tote bag, no? (It doesn’t have to be letter-sized, you know. Try a steno pad.) Easy to pull out when you’re waiting for a friend to meet you for lunch or while killing time at the local DMV or even when heading out to the park for an hour of people watching or mindfulness exercises. I’ve begun taking a tote bag with me when I leave home to do my errands. Guess what’s in the bag? That same Morning Pages notebook; I can write anything in it.

If it’s always there with you, ready to receive what you want to give it, there’s no excuse not to use it to write.

Just Write

Even if you don’t like the idea of Morning Pages, there’s something you can take from them: the idea of writing longhand to get what you want to remember out of your brain and onto paper.

Isn’t that the goal of writing? To write?

Don’t worry about having your writing in a format that isn’t “usable.” You can make it usable later. Consider what you write a draft. Then, when you need to create a final work based on it, you can edit it as you type it into your word processor (or blogging platform or whatever) of choice to create your second draft.

Oh, and I need to clarify one more thing. If you’re already diligently working in a writing tool — like maybe a word processor? — to write a book, story, or article, the advice here might not apply to you for that project. If you’ve already established a writing routine that works for you to create specific pieces, keep using it! The advice I’m offering here is mostly for brain dumps, journaling, and getting the random thoughts floating around your head out on paper where you can consult them later.

Is Writing Important to You?

If it is, stop making excuses that revolve around finding the perfect tool or system. Buy yourself a note book and a good writing instrument and just sit down and write.

---

But wait! There’s more!

This is not the only thing I’ve written about writing. I’ve been writing about writing since the very beginning of this blog. If you want to do a deep dive, I recommend checking out posts in The Writing Life category or posts tagged writing. Remember, all posts are listed in reverse chronological order with the most recent ones first.

---

I’m done neglecting this blog, at least for a while.

Shame on me. After blogging regularly here since 2003, I stepped away for more than 3 months. I can feel the air of neglect here.

Understand that my blog has always been a place where I share my thoughts, opinions, and ideas, as well as providing an account of what I’m up to. It’s not as if I have nothing to write about. I do. I’ve been keeping crazy busy this summer, with plenty to blog about: boat trips, new client jobs, writing for hire, exploring artistic endeavors in my studio, and even an unexpected road trip. I’ve been keeping very busy. But what I haven’t been doing is making time to blog about any of it. And that’s a failure on my part.

But I’m back and hope to post new article at least once a week. There are three swishing around in my head right now and I’ll likely get started on the first one this morning.

There is one thing in particular that I’d like to mention here — and will mention in all of my upcoming blog posts. That’s the simple fact that I wrote every single word that appears on this site (with the obvious exception of attributed quotes). I did not use AI in any way, shape, or form. This site is entirely human-created and it always will be.

If you’re sick of reading AI slop — I know that I am! — I urge you to support the human writers who maintain blogs like this by visiting frequently, sharing links to posts, adding your comments at the end of posts you have something to say about, and, when deserved, sending a small contribution via a tip jar, “buy me a coffee,” or paid subscription. This is currently an ad-free, subscription-free blog and I’d like to keep it that way. But your participation is what motivates me to keep writing.

Kinetic Games are keeping busy! You may have heard yesterday that the Phasmophobia developer is publishing the next game from Her Story and Immortality's Sam Barlow (who's roped in Brandon Cronenberg this time around). That's not all that was announced however, as there's a bevy of other, not even scary at all, actually, games that are coming up from the new publisher.

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Hundreds of US government drones have switched from border surveillance to a different surveillance mission this summer—looking for signs of screwworm infestations in wild animals and livestock herds.

The flesh-eating New World Screwworm is the parasitic larva that emerges from eggs laid by flies in the open wounds or body openings of warm-blooded animals and humans, with untreated cases potentially leading to severe injury or death. Since the first screwworm cases were detected in South Texas in June, the US Department of Agriculture and US Customs and Border Protection have been conducting “one of the most extensive animal-health surveillance operations in the country,” the USDA said on August 10 in social media posts on platforms like X and Facebook.

The effort involves at least 200 drones owned by the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. But the actual number in use "varies depending on availability and need," a USDA spokesperson told Ars.

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© US Department of Agriculture

Support for Ubuntu 25.10 “Questing Quokka” ends 9 July 2026 – which is this week. If you’re still using it, you can upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS directly to keep receiving updates. Ubuntu 25.10 was released in October 2025. As an ‘interim release’ the desktop edition it receives only 9 months of ongoing updates. Ubuntu’s Long-Term Support versions get 5 years of updates on desktop, plus a further 5 years through an Ubuntu Pro subscription. Nothing dramatic happens when a release goes end of life. Your install keeps working. What stops is the flow of high-impact security updates and critical bug fixes […]

You're reading Ubuntu 25.10 loses security updates on 9 July, 2026, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Support for Ubuntu 25.10 “Questing Quokka” ends 9 July 2026 – which is this week. If you’re still using it, you can upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS directly to keep receiving updates. Ubuntu 25.10 was released in October 2025. As an ‘interim release’ the desktop edition it receives only 9 months of ongoing updates. Ubuntu’s Long-Term Support versions get 5 years of updates on desktop, plus a further 5 years through an Ubuntu Pro subscription. Nothing dramatic happens when a release goes end of life. Your install keeps working. What stops is the flow of high-impact security updates and critical bug fixes […]

You're reading Ubuntu 25.10 loses security updates on 9 July, 2026, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has spent five years traversing Jezero Crater looking for the chemical leftovers of whatever processes were at work on Mars billions of years ago. The rover has found organic carbon, but it has mostly been inside rocks that had to be drilled or abraded to expose it. But now, at an outcrop on the edge of an ancient river channel named Neretva Vallis, Perseverance detected complex macromolecular carbon sitting right on the rock’s surface.

“To our knowledge, that’s the shallowest detection of organic matter on Martian surface to date,” said Ashley E. Murphy, a researcher at the Planetary Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and lead author of the study of the rock, which was found at a site called Bright Angel. On Earth, this much macromolecular carbon usually suggests a biological origin. But to learn what this Bright Angel carbon is and where it came from, we might need to bring samples back to Earth.

Carbon on the rocks

The detection of Bright Angel carbon came from SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), a UV Raman spectrometer fitted on Perseverance’s robotic arm. SHERLOC fires a deep-ultraviolet laser at a target and reads the light that bounces back at shifted energies, a signal that enables scientists to identify specific molecular bonds.

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© NASA/JPL-Caltech

Understanding the origin of life requires addressing a collection of overlapping scientific questions. We've made a lot of progress toward explaining how simple chemicals present on an early Earth built the complex molecules used by life and how some of those chemicals built the first genetic/catalytic molecules. But we're much further from understanding a key conundrum: How did membranes end up surrounding the first cells?

It's relatively easy to make membranes spontaneously form in water, and they'll enclose anything dissolved in that water, including nucleic acids. But the membranes then cut their interior off from everything else in the solution. Any interesting chemical reactions enclosed there would eat through the raw materials and grind to a halt.

Now, a lab at the University of Minnesota has announced that it has developed a simplified system in which a membrane encloses some genetic material but can continually import new materials supplied to it. The system also spontaneously divides, producing a few generations of "offspring" before things start failing. It's still extremely dependent upon human intervention, but it might provide a new avenue to explore questions about the origin of life and what a truly minimalistic form of life might look like.

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© Biotic

After a few busy, stressful months, I finally enjoy a few stress free days on my boat and reflect on how pleasant it is to just relax.

I’ve had a pretty busy few months this year.

February

After a nice two week stay at the Holtville Hot Springs in my camper, with visits to the tubs at least once a day, I started the long drive home. It had been a very mild winter in central Washington State and there wasn’t any snow on the ground. In fact, my housesitter reported that things were already starting to green up. In mid February.

So I headed home, with an overnight stop at Death Valley — where the superbloom would not peak for at least two weeks — and some town on the Idaho/Oregon border that I can barely remember. I was traveling heavy, towing my utility trailer behind the truck with the camper on it. I was 56 miles from home when a tire on that trailer blew out, delaying my return by about 90 minutes while I waited for Good Sam to change the tire. (Yes, I know how to change a tire, but I’m not going to do it myself if I’ve already paid for roadside assistance that would do it for me.)

The superbloom was just starting in Death Valley when I drove through.

Of course, we had a heavy snowfall just a few days after my return. I managed to get everything in my big garage beside the boat, which was hogging up a lot of space. The snow mostly melted and the relatively warm weather returned. I got some stuff done, but not enough. I had been road weary — as I normally get at the end of my winter travels — and just wanted to bask in the comfort of my home.

But that wasn’t going to happen. I got a sort of emergency call from a woman who needed to move her Mainship 32 from Fort Myers to Cocoa, FL. Her husband was recovering from an illness and the boat needed to be moved. She didn’t feel comfortable doing it with a male captain and I was the first female captain who returned her call. I was on a plane to Fort Myers the next day. The job took a week; during that time I lived with a stranger on a relatively small boat. (Okay, so it’s bigger than mine, but mine is relatively small, too.) I’ve been living alone for about 13 years now and it is totally exhausting for me to spend just about every waking moment of my day with someone else. So after a week of that, I was glad to get back home.

I’ve never seen as many alligators as I saw along the edge of Lake Okeechobee in February.

March

I did some work on the boat — mostly cleaning the anchor locker and re-marking the rode before putting it all away. I’d planned to apply PropSpeed to the prop but soon realized that it was beyond my capabilities. A weather window opened and I towed it back across the mountains. The boatyard lifted it off the trailer and blocked it. While I worked on some basic cleaning tasks, they put me in the queue for PropSpeed, a trailer rash hull repair, and a bottom paint job. And hull detailing, which I honestly think was too expensive for the quality of work provided.

I spent a lot of the time — no, too much of the time — trying to document my stay on the hard in videos for my YouTube channel. I’m telling you, recording and editing video isn’t difficult, but it is a chore. It’s no wonder YouTube is being overrun with AI Slop; it just isn’t worth it to put in the time and effort to create original content.

In all, I was there for 11 days.

The boat was finally launched and after dumping the waste tank and topping off the fuel, I put it back in its slip at the marina. I went home for a few days to take care of things there — mostly in the yard and garden — and get a case of trigger thumb treated by a hand specialist in town.

April

I met with the local Medicare expert, Suzie, and learned, to my delight, that medicare would start a full month earlier than I expected for me. Being able to skip my June health insurance payment was like getting $950 put into my pocket. Best of all, it looks like my out-of-pocket medicare expenses will be under $300. That was some good news.

Then it was back to the boat — did I mention it’s a four-hour drive? — for three more days. I had to pick up the plastic panels a local canvas guy had made to order for my boat’s cockpit screened in room. I installed all that canvas and plastic and when the rain started, I was very happy to have it. It really expands my all-weather living space. Of course, all that canvas and plastic will need to come back off the boat when I turn it over to the charter company for the season; I suspect it would be ruined by charter guests pulling it off and rolling it up carelessly.

I got a chance to go sailing on a 42-foot boat in the rain in 18 mph wind. I would have been a nervous wreck if it weren’t for the fact that my three companions were seasoned sailing instructors. I did get a nasty chill, though, and worried that it would have me sick three days later. (It didn’t. Maybe those vitamins I take now do help?) There was an owner and instructor party and I was prepared to go with an early departure, but they had to-go boxes so I made my dinner and headed out very early. I was home by 7 PM.

The next day, I was on a flight to Seattle to catch a redeye to Orlando. I got about two hours of sleep on the flight — seriously, what was I thinking picking a redeye? — and was picked up at 6:30 AM by my client, the same woman I’d helped take her Mainship 32 from Fort Myers to Cocoa in February. This time, I’d be with her 10 days and we’d take the boat all the way to Savannah, GA. We had amazing weather and because she pushed us hard to get to Savannah early, I wound up with a day to wander around Savannah, which I hadn’t done since passing through there on the Great Loop for the third time in Spring 2024.

Then it was back home, where the biggest chore was mowing my tiny lawn (three times) and making sure the irrigation worked properly. Then back to the boat, this time with the dinghy loaded into the back of my truck. I’d had to repair a panel on the transom, which is why I hadn’t brought it with the boat in March.

I had a hectic day of chores to get the boat prepped for a training client. I wound up spending another four days with him, cruising the San Juans so he could learn how to drive, navigate, dock, anchor, and moor. We managed to get a hike in on Sucia Island and I let him explore on his own at Roche Harbor. By that time, I was completely exhausted. Although he was a great guy and I enjoyed his company, I admit to being glad when he got off the boat in Bellingham and I was alone again. (I did mention how much I enjoy being alone, didn’t I?)

We anchored in Echo Bay at Sucia. Do you know how many times I anchored there in less than perfect weather before I realized you could see Mount Baker from there on a clear day? We had great weather for our whole trip.

The Joy of Rest, Relaxation, and Solitude

And that brings us to yesterday which was a Wednesday. After a quick sea trial with my mechanic to show her a steering issue that we hope is caused by air in the hydraulic steering lines, a stop at Trader Joe’s for groceries, and another quick stop at Walmart to pick up some bottled spring water, I found myself with nothing that I had to do. I couldn’t go home because I had to attend the Bellingham Yacht Club season opening event on Saturday, with lots of food and a swap meet where I hoped to sell off some extra equipment I didn’t need. While I could stay at the dock, why would I want to do that? Wasn’t 10 days on the hard in March dull enough? So I headed out with my pups.

I wound up in Inati Bay on Lummi Island. The anchorage was empty for the first time I’d ever come there. I think more folks were at the new Smuggler’s Cove mooring field farther up the coast of Lummi. Fine with me.

I spent the afternoon just relaxing. I napped, read, did puzzles, snacked. I watched a great blue heron fly around, squawking loudly as it was chased by two juvenile bald eagles. I took my dogs to shore. I made dinner and ate. I flew my drone to take photos of the boat at anchor.

Afternoon at Inati Bay.

This morning, I woke up before dawn (as usual) and watched the sky brighten. I saw first light touch the rocks on the shore nearby, illuminating a waterfall I hadn’t noticed the day before. I watched a sea otter swim around slowly, then disappear under the water. I heard a harried heron in the near distance. I saw gulls flying around as if looking for the perfect place to land before settling down on the glassy smooth water.

First light at Inati Bay. Can you see the little waterfall in this photo?

I enjoyed the silence and solitude.

I felt a surge of happiness I feel occasionally, but not often enough. I think it requires me to stop doing and just sit back and get in tune with my surroundings. It made me want to share this thought with you.

So I’m blogging about it.

Because yes, it’s difficult for me to truly relax.

But besides that, I really wanted to share this moment. The feeling of joy you can get when you go to a special place, put down your phone, shut the hell up, and pay attention to what’s around you.

Today and Tomorrow

The plan for today is to head over to Vendovi Island for a hike in the preserve there. (I hope I can bring my dogs.) Then, after lunch, I’ll head down to La Connor for the night. It’s a cute town I breezed through once; I’d like to really explore it this time.

Tomorrow, Friday, I’ll head back to Bellingham where I have things to do again.

But I admit that I’m looking forward to a lot more days on the water this summer, with no plans and the ability to really soak up the peace and quiet some of these anchorages offer.

If you’re still running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), heads up: Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) ended this month and your system is no longer receiving security updates. Having debuted in April 2016, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS received five years of standard support with a further 5 years of security coverage available through ESM by enabling Ubuntu Pro. ESM for 16.04 ended April 2026, meaning action is needed to stay protected. The most straightforward thing to do is to upgrade to a more recent LTS release – but there’s no direct route from 16.04, however. Instead, you’ll need to upgrade in stages: […]

You're reading Ubuntu 16.04 LTS security support has ended – unless you pay, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

In early January 2025, a family friend was over for lunch. One of my many guilty midwit pleasures is a love of New Year’s resolutions, so I asked her if she had made any. She said no, but mentioned that she had some relatives that were doing “damp January”.

In case you’re not aware, Dry January is a challenge many people do to quit drinking alcohol during the month of January. These folks were doing a variant in which, instead of not drinking, one simply drinks less.

For some reason, this triggered me. I thought, “Are you kidding? You can’t even stop drinking for a single month? Do you know how pathetic that is?” And then, “Fuck you! Fuck you for doing damp January! You know what, I’m going to stop drinking for a year!”

To be clear, these thoughts were directed at people I’ve never even met. In retrospect, I wonder what was going on with me emotionally. But I take resolutions seriously, so I felt committed.

We are now 15 months down the timeline, so I’ll make my report.

It was easy

This will sound odd, but I swear it’s true. Not drinking was so easy that it was almost easier than my previous baseline of not-not-drinking.

Before starting this resolution, I didn’t drink much—perhaps two or three drinks per week. But I often thought about drinking. Every time I saw friends or went to a restaurant, I thought, “Should I have a drink?” Usually I decided not to. But making that decision required effort.

After a few weeks of not drinking, that question never even came up. Drinking was simply not a thing I did, so I never needed to negotiate with myself.

Theoretically, you could allow yourself one drink a month instead of zero. Theoretically, that should be easier. But I’m pretty sure I’d find it harder, because alcohol would still be an option, a thing to consider.

Sometimes I need a thing

Early on, I sometimes wanted a drink. But gradually I noticed that I didn’t really want a drink, I just wanted a thing. I can’t find a precise name for this concept in psychology, but often, some deep part of my brain seems to scream, “I WANT A THING.” It could be alcohol, but I found dessert worked just as well. I suspect that a new shirt or meeting a new dog would also work.

I was not able to stop my brain from doing this. When it demanded a thing, I gave it a thing. I just substituted a non-alcohol thing. So, over the year, I became interested in desserts and even-more interested in tea.

The struggle was The Chocolates. Shortly after I made this resolution, my mother gave me a bag of chocolates that each contained a bit of whiskey. In general, I don’t keep chocolate at home. If anyone gives me chocolate, I immediately eat all of it and then text the giver, “Thanks for the chocolate, I ate it instead of dinner, it’s all gone, this is what will always happen if you give me chocolate.”

But I couldn’t eat the Chocolates, because they contained alcohol. I managed to get guests to eat a few. A couple of times I came close to draining out the alcohol and eating the chocolate container. I even considered throwing them away, but that felt wrong. So instead I spent a year glaring at them and waiting for them to apologize for the anguish they were causing me. This represented half the difficulty of this resolution. I do not recommend it. Keep your things separate.

Alcohol is bad for sleep

Have you heard that alcohol is bad for sleep? Because alcohol is bad for sleep. I’ve always known that was true, abstractly. But sleep is variable. If I didn’t sleep well on an individual night, I was never sure: Was that because of the alcohol, or was it random variation?

After a year without alcohol, I am very confident that yes indeed, alcohol is bad for sleep, because my sleep during 2025 was much better than in previous years. Sure, like anyone else, I still sometimes wake up and start thinking about oblivion rushing towards me, and how everything I love will vanish into time, and how all that was once future and hope inevitably becomes static and dust, and how the plague of bluetooth speakers continues to spread across the globe. But now: less!

I wish there was a drug I could take that would give me energy and improve my mood and make me physically healthier and smarter, all without side-effects. I don’t think such a drug exists. But we do have the opposite!

So, sadly, I’ve come to believe that alcohol is basically the perfect anti-nootropic. That’s not because it makes you dumb while you’re drunk. (True, but who cares?) Rather, that’s because it is bad for sleep, and therefore makes you worse across all dimensions the next day.

Alcohol is good for socializing sometimes

I did find not drinking to have one clear downside: It’s just not that much fun to hang out with people who are drinking if you are not drinking yourself.

To be clear, this is a limited effect. It’s only an issue at bars or certain parties where people are there to drink. I don’t go to many such gatherings, but when I did, I felt it was less fun.

It’s not that I missed alcohol. Instead, my theory is that drinking parties are a sort of joint role-playing exercise: “Let’s all get together and collectively reduce our inhibitions and see what happens.” It’s fun not (just) because everyone is taking a recreational drug, but because it’s a joint social experience. If you don’t drink, then you aren’t fully participating.

It seems like it should be possible to reproduce this effect without alcohol. You could imagine other ways to push the social equilibrium out of balance. Like… Masks? Or weird environments? Or mutual disclosure games? Should people get together and do a group cold plunge?

Unfortunately, all these are complicated and/or carry some kind of social stigma. So until we figure something better out, this is a real cost of not drinking. It was minor for me, but it probably depends a lot on where you are in life.

Other effects

All other effects were minor. I guess I saved money at restaurants. I actually lost a bit of weight over the year, despite all the extra desserts, though I can’t say for sure if alcohol was the cause. Otherwise, once I stopped thinking of alcohol as an option, I rarely thought about the resolution at all, except when I saw those damn chocolates.

Aftermath

Towards the end of the year, I started wondering if I should quit drinking forever. But I never came to a conclusion, because I rarely thought about alcohol. I considered having a drink at midnight on New Year’s eve, but I happened to be on a plane that crossed the international date line and thus skipped New Year’s eve.

And then… for the first few months of 2026, I still didn’t drink. That wasn’t because of any decision. It just never seemed appealing because (a) sleep and (b) I’d broken the mental link between want thing and drink alcohol. Eventually, I ate the chocolates, and I had a glass of wine when visiting some friends. If I can continue rarely drinking while almost never thinking about drinking, I’ll probably do that. If I slowly slide back into always thinking of alcohol as a live option and always negotiating with myself, I might just resolve to quit forever.

So that’s my story. Obviously, it’s heavily colored by my own idiosyncrasies, so it’s hard to say if it offers any general lesson.

I do think people underrate the long-term health impact of drinking. The effect on heart disease is debated, but everyone agrees that any alcohol increases the risk of cancer. Still, the long-term effects from occasional light drinking probably aren’t huge. What’s really underrated is the short-term effects, via worse sleep.

If I had to give advice, it would be this: If you drink, and you think you might be better off not drinking, why not try it? Maybe you’ll find that champagne is essential to your happiness and drink it every night, to hell with the costs. Maybe you’ll find a different baseline, or maybe you’ll quit forever. Whatever you decide, you’ll have full information.

My experiences with a meal kit service.

This winter, I spent some time with my friends Jan and Tiff in their Arizona home. I’ve known them since 2013 when I swapped my old golf cart for a towable helicopter landing platform. Back then, they owned a helicopter flight school in Mesa AZ. I got to be good friends with them and their partner, Woody. In those days, Jan and Woody were airline pilots for America West, which was eventually gobbled up and merged into US Air. Now they’re both retired and still living in Arizona. They sold the flight school a few years ago.

Enter Tovala

Anyway, neither Jan or Tiff cook so they basically eat out or order in all the time. I’ve become used to it when I visit with them and often pick up the tab (when I’m fast enough) when we eat out. But this time was a little different. I noticed that they had a fancy toaster oven on their countertop. Long story short: they’d signed up for a meal kit program and the oven had come with it.

The program is called Tovala and it’s absolutely perfect for anyone who can’t cook or simply doesn’t want to cook. You sign up and get the oven, which is a smart device (more on that in a moment). You commit to a certain number of meals per week — the minimum is 4 — and they come once a week in an insulated box full of little meal boxes, often with meat or fish in a vacuum-sealed pouch. Everything is fresh and the quality seems to be good. At mealtime, you open a little box, follow the instructions on the card to put meal components into aluminum foil trays, pop the trays in the oven, scan a QR code on the card, and push the oven’s start button. It’s automatically programmed to cook the meal for you, usually in oven mode. (The oven can also toast, broil, and air fry.) When it’s done, you plate it up, add provided sauces and/or toppings, and eat it.

Here’s an unboxed Tovala meal. Everything comes in the tan box. Take the plastic off the trays, put them in the oven, scan the code, and the oven cooks it. Some meals do require a bit of assembly before cooking, but it’s all so easy a 5 year old could do it.

It’s absolutely idiot-proof, making it possible for someone who can’t cook to get a hot meal at home without ordering out. This is perfect for Jan and Tiff, mostly because Tovala meals tend to be healthier than restaurant or takeout food. (More on that in a moment, too.)

Worth a Try

I’m the opposite of Jan and Tiff when it comes to meals. I know how to cook and I can do it pretty well when I want to. I actually like to cook — sometimes. But I also like to have a wide variety of food and don’t necessarily want to track down recipes, shop for ingredients, and then make a whole recipe for my one-person household. Yes, I do it once in a while and I normally eat leftovers the next day and then vacuum seal and freeze additional portions. But I also have a busy life and cooking can become a chore. So I eat a lot of what I’ve put in the freezer or make meals of almond butter or avocado on crackers, or ramen with veggies, or even store bought or frozen prepared foods. It’s just not good for me in so many ways.

I thought Tovala might give me the variety I crave without the effort of making it myself or the cost/bother of going out to eat. (Understand that I live 10 miles from town and no one delivers up here.) I did the math and the price wasn’t outrageous. 4 meals a week cost about $65, which is $16-$17 per meal. I’d spend at least that if I went out, and I’d still have at least 20 miles of driving to get into town and back.

And yes, I know I can eat a lot cheaper with groceries. I’m not an idiot. I can and often do prepare a good balanced meal based around a normal meat or fish protein for under $10. But I considered this a treat and, if I could, I’d just get two or three meals a week from Tovala.

Observations

I’ve had four weeks of deliveries so far.

The first week was pretty much a loss; the food arrived on Friday and by Saturday morning I was on my way to Florida for a boat captain gig for a week. I left the food for my housesitter who was not impressed.

The second and third weeks were pretty good. Everything cooked pretty well with just a scan and the touch of a button and the vegetable or pasta combinations were good. The beef dishes were very good, which surprised me. I quickly discovered that the chicken and fish cook better than the pork, which dries out. The side salads were a sad little joke, barely more than garnish with dressing.

But, in general, the portions were good and the food was definitely fresh. I could always eat more — but then again, if I like something enough, I could probably eat it until I exploded.

I liked the flavors, which is why I’d signed up. So in that sense, I was satisfied.

But Is it Really a Good Match for Me?

Unfortunately, I came back from Florida realizing that I needed more calorie-conscious meals. (Yes, while I was traveling this winter, I porked up, as usual, and needed to start dieting again to feel more fit.) And what I was facing from Tovala were extremely tasty but not very diet-friendly food.

You see, you need to order (or skip) your meals at least 10 days before you actually get them. For example, the meals I’ll get on Friday, March 27 have to be finalized by Wednesday, March 18. So because I’d ordered tasty comfort food before going on my trip, I faced two weeks of that instead of more calorie conscious choices.

And I’ll be frank: their idea of “calorie smart” is not the same as mine. I expect a lower calorie meal to come in at less than 500 calories, preferably less than 400. (And yes, it’s doable. I made grilled salmon with a salad the other day with a total calorie count of just 170.) I think they’d have to lean heavily on their puny salads to make that happen. I’m capable of grilling or baking a protein with a handful of power greens, some tomatoes, and a tablespoon of dressing, so I don’t need something like that delivered. (Maybe someone who can’t cook or simply doesn’t have time to cook or shop might feel differently. Think Jan and Tiff.)

Of course, once I started tracking calories, I started looking very closely at the nutritional information for the Tovala meals I was eating. Calories were important, but so was sodium and added sugars. And what I was learning was that some Tovala meals were definitely fine-tuned for flavor instead of nutrition. I know that adding a lot of salt and sugar is a restaurant/catering ploy to make their food taste better, but in my mind, a savory entree should have zero added sugar. And come on folks! Stop with the salt. It’s easy to add salt but impossible to remove it.

Going back to the 10 days advance notice, however, this has proved difficult for me, as my calendar is always in flux. Last month’s last minute captain gig is just one example: I got the call on Friday and was on a plane Saturday afternoon. One of the things I like most about my life is its spontaneity — I can decide at any time what I want to do and when I want to do it. Having to lock down whether I get meals 10 days before they arrive means that if I change my plans, I need to either take the meals with me (which is only possible when I have a way to store and cook them) or find someone else to take them for me. That just adds another thing to think about when I make or change plans.

AI Support

I had ordered an egg rolls add-on for one of my meals (before I knew I really wanted to watch my calories) and tried to remove it. I couldn’t figure out how. Neither the app nor the website made it possible to remove just an add-on item. (In hindsight, I suspect I could have removed that entire meal and maybe the add-on would have gone with it. Then I could have re-added the meal. That might have worked.)

I tried technical support chat in the app and my highly specific request was handled by an AI that provided me with links to options that did not apply. When I said I wanted to chat with a person, I was told to enter my email and message. I did. No person joined the chat, but I did get an email response — from an AI. This included instructions to remove the add-on that simply did not work. I tried chat again, told it I wanted a human, and waited. Within about 4 minutes, a human joined the chat. Based on the subsequent chat, I am 98% sure she was human. She resolved the problem by finding the item and removing it for me.

But the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. (No pun intended.) A problem that I struggled with over the course of more than 40 minutes with a ton of frustration could have been quickly resolved if a human had answered the chat in the first place.

I cannot tell you how much I hate dealing with AI systems for technical support or customer service. 90% of the time, these systems cannot resolve my problem. All they do is tell me that the company I’m dealing with cares so little about their customers that they won’t even hire a sufficient human support staff. Instead, my needs are handled by a fucking machine that can’t even get things right.

And if you try to tell me in comments that “this is the future,” let me respond right now: only if you let it. I won’t. Don’t we deserve better when we are paying for a product or service? I know I do. Stop following the rest the herd and say no to AI.

Not For Me

So after four weeks of Tovala meals — two of which are still in my refrigerator — I have decided that Tovala is not for me. Between my fluctuating schedule, my need for more calorie conscious meal choices (that do not rely on a salad I can make better myself), and my absolute hatred of AI-based support, I don’t think I can continue using Tovala on a regular basis. That might change when I get my weight down to where it needs to be or spend more time at home, but for now, no.

Don’t get me wrong. If you’re like Jan and Tiff, can’t be bothered cooking, and are tired of the bother and expense of eating out or ordering in, Tovala might be perfect for you. (If you want to try it, here’s a referral code that’ll get you a free oven.) The food is good and fresh and the meal choices are interesting. And it seriously can’t be any easier to prepare your food.

But I will be getting two more weeks of Tovala food. You see, when you sign up and get the oven for free or at a discount, you agree to buy 6 weeks of meals within 6 months. I have two weeks to go. They’ll likely be in late May because my schedule for April is filling up very quickly. I don’t mind — again, I like the food. And, to be honest, I probably won’t cancel the service entirely. But I’m not sure when I’ll feel comfortable ordering food 10 days in advance.

How heritable is hair color? Well, if you’re a redhead and you have an identical twin, they will definitely also be a redhead. But the age at which twins go gray seems to vary a bit based on lifestyle. And there’s some randomness in where melanocytes end up on your skull when you’re an embryo. And your twin might dye their hair! So the correct answer is, some large number, but less than 100%.

OK, but check this out: Say I redefine “hair color” to mean “hair color except ignoring epigenetic and embryonic stuff and pretending that no one ever goes gray or dyes their hair et cetera”. Now, hair color is 100% heritable. Amazing, right?

Or—how heritable is IQ? The wise man answers, “Some number between 0% or 100%, it’s not that important, please don’t yell at me.” But whatever the number is, it depends on society. In our branch of the multiverse, some kids get private tutors and organic food and $20,000 summer camps, while other kids get dysfunctional schools and lead paint and summers spent drinking Pepsi and staring at glowing rectangles. These things surely have at least some impact on IQ.

But again, watch this: Say I redefine “IQ” to be “IQ in some hypothetical world where every kid got exactly the same school, nutrition, and parenting, so none of those non-genetic factors matter anymore.” Suddenly, the heritability of IQ is higher. Thrilling, right? So much science.

If you want to redefine stuff like this… that’s not wrong. I mean, heritability is a pretty arbitrary concept to start with. So if you prefer to talk about heritability in some other world instead of our actual world, who am I to judge?

Incidentally, here’s a recent paper:

I STRESS THAT THIS IS A PERFECTLY FINE PAPER. I’m picking on it mostly because it was published in Science, meaning—like all Science papers—it makes grand claims but is woefully vague about what those claims mean or what was actually done. Also, publishing in Science is morally wrong and/or makes me envious. So I thought I’d try to explain what’s happening.

It’s actually pretty simple. At least, now that I’ve spent several hours reading the paper and its appendix over and over again, I’ve now convinced myself that it’s pretty simple. So, as a little pedagogical experiment, I’m going to try to explain the paper three times, with varying levels of detail.

Explanation 1: The very extremely high level picture

The normal way to estimate the heritability of lifespan is using twin data. Depending on what dataset you use, this will give 23-35%. This paper built a mathematical model that tries to simulate how long people would live in a hypothetical world in which no one dies from any non-aging related cause, meaning no car accidents, no drug overdoses, no suicides, no murders, and no (non-age-related) infectious disease. On that simulated data, for simulated people in a hypothetical world, heritability was 46-57%.

Commentary

Everyone seems to be interpreting this paper as follows:

Aha! We thought the heritability of lifespan was 23-35%. But it turns out that it’s around 50%. Now we know!

I understand this. Clearly, when the editors at Science chose the title for this paper, their goal was to lead you to that conclusion. But this is not what the paper says. What it says is this:

We built a mathematical model of alternate universe in which nobody died from accidents, murder, drug overdoses, or infectious disease. In that model, heritability was about 50%.

Explanation 2: The very high-level picture

Let’s start over. Here’s figure 2 from the paper.

Normally, heritability is estimated from twin studies. The idea is that identical twins share 100% of their DNA, while fraternal twins share only 50%. So if some trait is more correlated among identical twins than among fraternal twins, that suggests DNA influences that trait. There are statistics that formalize this intuition. Given a dataset that records how long various identical and fraternal twins lived, these produce a heritability number.

Two such traditional estimates appear as black circles in the above figures. For the Danish twin cohort, lifespan is estimated to be 23% heritable. For the Swedish cohort, it’s 35%.

This paper makes a “twin simulator”. Given historical data, they fit a mathematical model to simulate the lifespans of “new” twins. Then they compute heritability on this simulated data.

Why calculate heritability on simulated data instead of real data? Well, their mathematical model contains an “extrinsic mortality” parameter, which is supposed to reflect the chance of death due to all non-aging-related factors like accidents, murder, or infectious disease. They assume that the chance someone dies from any of this stuff is constant over people, constant over time, and that it accounts for almost all deaths for people aged between 15 and 40.

The point of building the simulator is that it’s possible to change extrinsic mortality. That’s what’s happening in the purple curves in the above figure. For a range of different extrinsic mortality parameters, they simulate datasets of twins. For each simulated dataset, they estimate heritability just like with a real dataset.

Note that the purple curves above nearly hit the black circles. This means that if they run their simulator with extrinsic mortality set to match reality, they get heritability numbers that line up with what we get from real data. That suggests their mathematical model isn’t totally insane.

If you decrease extrinsic mortality, then you decrease the non-genetic randomness in how long people live. So heritability goes up. Hence, the purple curves go up as you go to the left.

Intermission: On Science

My explanation of this paper relies on some amount of guesswork. For whatever reason, Science has decided that papers should contain almost no math, even when the paper in question is about math. So I’m mostly working from an English description. But even that description isn’t systematic. There’s no place that clearly lays out all the things they did, in order. Instead, you get little hints, sort of randomly distributed throughout the paper. There’s an appendix, which the paper confidently cites over and over. But if you actually read the appendix, it’s just more disconnected explanations of random things except now with equations set in glorious Microsoft Word format.

Now, in most journals, authors write everything. But Science has professional editors. Given that every single statistics-focused paper in Science seems to be like this, we probably shouldn’t blame the authors of this one. (Other than for their decision to publish in Science in the first place.)

I do wonder what those editors are doing, though. I mean, let me show you something. Here’s the first paragraph where they start to actually explain what they actually did, from the first page:

See that h(t,θ) at the end? What the hell is that, you ask? That’s a good question, because it was never introduced before this and is never mentioned again. I guess it’s just supposed to be f(t,θ), which is fine. (I yield to none in my production of typos.) But if paying journals ungodly amounts of money brought us to this, of what use are those journals?

Moving on…

Explanation 3: Also pretty high level, but as low as we’re doing to go

Probably most people don’t need this much detail and should skip this section. For everyone else, let’s start over one last time.

The “normal” way to estimate heritability is by looking at correlations between different kinds of twins. Intuitively, if the lifespans of identical twins are more correlated than the lifespans of fraternal twins, that suggests lifespan is heritable. And it turns out that one estimator for heritability is “twice the difference between the correlation among identical twins and the correlation among fraternal twins, all raised together.” There are other similar estimators for other kinds of twins. These normally say lifespan is perhaps 20% and 35% heritable.

This paper created an equation to model the probability a given person will die at a given age. The parameters of the equation vary from person to person, reflecting that some of us have DNA that predisposes us to live longer than others. But the idea is that the chances of dying are fairly constant between the ages of 15 and 40, after which they start increasing.

This equation contains an “extrinsic mortality” parameter. This is meant to reflect the chance of death due to all non-aging related factors like accidents or murder, etc. They assume this is constant. (Constant with respect to people and constant over time.) Note that they don’t actually look at any data on causes of death. They just add a constant risk of death that’s shared by all people at all ages to the equation, and then they call this “extrinsic mortality”.

Now remember, different people are supposed to have different parameters in their probability-of-death equations. To reflect this, they fit a Gaussian distribution (bell curve) to the parameters with the goal of making it fit with historical data. The idea is that if the distribution over parameters were too broad, you might get lots of people dying at 15 or living until 120, which would be wrong. If the distribution were too concentrated, then you might get everyone dying at 43, which would also be wrong. So they find a good distribution, one that makes the ages people die in simulation look like the ages people actually died in historical data.

Right! So now they have:

1. An equation that’s supposed to reflect the probability a given person dies at a given age.
2. A distribution over the parameters of that equation that’s supposed to produce population-wide death ages that look like those in real historical data.

Before moving on, I remind you of two things:

1. They assume their death equation entirely determines the probability someone will die in a given year.
2. They assume that the shape of someone’s death equation is entirely determined by genetics.

The event of a person dying at a given age is random. But the probability that this happens is assumed to be fixed and determined by genes and genes alone.

Now they simulate different kinds of twins. To simulate identical twins, they just draw parameters from their parameter distribution, assign those parameters to two different people, and then let them randomly die according to their death equation. (Is this getting morbid?) To simulate fraternal twins, they do the same thing, except instead of giving the two twins identical parameters, they give them correlated parameters, to reflect that they share 50% of their DNA.

How exactly do they create those correlated parameters? They don’t explain this in the paper, and they’re quite vague in the supplement. As far as I can tell they sample two sets of parameters from their parameter distribution such that the parameters are correlated at a level of 0.5.

Now they have simulated twins. They can simulate them with different extrinsic mortality values. If they lower extrinsic mortality, heritability of lifespan goes up. If they lower it to zero, heritability goes up to around 50%.

More commentary

Almost all human traits are partly genetic and partly due to the environment and/or random. If you could change the world and reduce the amount of randomness, then of course heritability would go up. That’s true for life expectancy just life for anything else. So what’s the point of this paper?

There is a point!

1. Sure, obviously heritability would be higher in a world without accidents or murder. We don’t need a paper to know that. But how much higher? It’s impossible to say without modeling and simulating that other world.

2. Our twin datasets are really old. It’s likely that non-aging-related deaths are lower now in the past, because we have better healthcare and so on. This means that the heritability of lifespan for people alive today may be larger than it was for the people in our twin datasets, some of whom were born in 1870. We won’t know for sure until we’re all dead, but this paper gives us a way to guess.

3. Have I mentioned that heritability depends on society? And that heritability changes when society changes? And that heritability is just a ratio and you should stop trying to make it be a non-ratio because only-ratio things cannot be non-ratios? This is a nice reminder.

Honestly, I think the model the paper built is quite clever. Nothing is perfect, but I think this is a pretty good run at the question of, “How high would the heritability of lifespan be if extrinsic mortality were lower?”

I only have two objections. The first is to the Science writing style. This is a paper describing a statistical model. So shouldn’t there be somewhere in the paper where they explain exactly what they did, in order, from start to finish? Ostensibly, I think this is done in the left-hand column on the second page, just with little detail because Science is written for a general audience. But personally I think that description is the worst of all worlds. Instead of giving the high-level story in a coherent way, it throws random technical details at you without enough information to actually make sense of them. Couldn’t the full story with the full details at least be in the appendix? I feel like this wasted hours of my time, and that if someone wanted to reproduce this work, they would have almost no chance of doing so from the description given. How have we as a society decided that we should take our “best” papers and do this to them?

But my main objection is this:

At first, I thought this was absurd. The fact that people die in car accidents is not a “confounding factor”. And pretending that no one dies in a car accidents does not “address” some kind of bias. That’s just computing heritability in some other world. Remember, heritability is not some kind of Platonic form. It is an observational statistic. There is no such thing as “true” heritability, independent of the contingent facts of our world.

But upon reflection, I think they’re trying to say something like this:

Heritability of human lifespan is about 50% when extrinsic mortality is adjusted to be closer to modern levels.

The problem is: I think this is… not true? Here are the actual heritability estimates in the paper, varying by dataset (different plots) the cutoff year (colors) and extrinsic mortality (x-axis).

When extrinsic mortality goes down, heritability goes up. So the obvious question is: What is extrinsic mortality in modern people?

This is a tricky question, because “extrinsic mortality” isn’t some simple observational statistic. It is a parameter in their model. (Remember, they never looked at causes of death.) So it’s hard to say, but they seem to suggest that extrinsic mortality in modern people is 0.001 / year, or perhaps a bit less.

The above figures have the base-10 logarithm of extrinsic mortality on the x-axis. And the base-10 logarithm of 0.001 is -3. But if you look at the curves when the x-axis is -3, the heritability estimates are not 50%. They’re more like 35-45%, depending on the particular model and age cutoff.

So here’s my suggested title:

Heritability of human lifespan is about 40% when extrinsic mortality is adjusted to modern levels, according to our simulation.

There might be a reason I don’t work at Science.

Why should you read novels? We tell children they’re magic carpets for the mind / exercise for the soul instead of the body / lighthouses in the great sea of time. But aren’t they ultimately a form of entertainment?

Many years ago, I read Crime and Punishment. Here, with no research and no notes, is what I can remember about that book:

1. It was pretty good.
2. There was some guy, I think named Ras-something.
3. He was really angsty/edgy and lived in a small apartment or attic.
4. One day, for no particular reason, he killed an old woman.
5. Having done this random murder, he became even more angsty/edgy.
6. Then there was this police inspector guy.
7. The inspector kept coming after Ras-whoever and making extremely long philosophical rants.
8. Those rants may or may not have represented the personal views of Fyodor Dostoevsky.
9. I can’t remember how the book ended. Surely Ras-whoever didn’t live happily ever after? But was he caught or did he confess? No idea.

This is probably below average. I know people who seem to remember every detail of everything they read. But even if you’re one of them, so what? Is remembering those books better than remembering whatever else you would have done with your time if you hadn’t been reading?

And yet: If I’m on vacation and I spend an afternoon reading a novel where in the mountains or on a beach, I feel like I’m living my best life. Whereas if I spent an afternoon staring at short videos on my phone, I’m sure I’d feel like a gigantic loser. So what’s going on here?

Theory 1: Ye olde status

The obvious explanation is that there’s nothing intrinsically great about reading novels. The reason we think it’s great is that reading novels—at least the right ones—is high status. It’s a way of playing the Glass Bead Game, a way of collecting cultural capital for you to lord over other people who don’t have as much time or education as you do. It may feel like you “actually enjoy reading”, but that’s because you’re a desperate striver that subconsciously shape-shifts into whatever you think will make you look fancy. Apologize for reading. Apologize!

I think there is something in this. However, I’m also pretty sure it’s not the full explanation, and I’m bored to death with everyone trying to explain everything this way. So let’s move on.

Theory 2: Diminishing returns

Say you can’t read novels. Maybe because you’re illiterate, maybe because you have no attention span, maybe because you can’t tear yourself away from Candy Clicker. Now, say you cultivate the ability to read novels. Whatever issues you address in that process, it seems like it will clearly be good for you, right?

Under this theory, what’s important is having the ability to read novels. But said ability is acquired by reading novels, so read some novels.

Alternatively, say you could read novels, but you simply never have. It’s plausible that the first time you have the “novel” experience of taking photons into your eyes and mentally converting them into a story, this truly does feed your mind.

Both versions of this theory suggest that reading novels has diminishing returns. That fits nicely with the fact that many people push their children to read novels while not reading any themselves. But do we really believe that after you’ve read some number of novels, it’s pointless to read more?

Theory 3: Common language

I think Catcher in the Rye is a good but not great book. But I love talking about Catcher in the Rye because (1) all North Americans seem to have read it, and (2) whenever I ask someone to tell me how they feel about Holden Caulfield, I always seem to learn something about them.

(I find him sympathetic.)

If there’s a group of people talking about Catcher in the Rye—or The Three-Body Problem, or Infinite Jest, or Don Quixote—then you benefit from being able to participate. The cynic might argue that this is zero-sum status competition. But I don’t think that’s most of it. Because, at least in my social circles, people feel boorish talking about books if not everyone has read them. So these conversations only happen if everyone has read the book in question.

Ultimately, we’re all alone in the world, and trying to connect with each other by pushing air through our throat meat. With more shared cultural context, those meat sounds are more meaningful, so we can all feel less alone.

True. But shared context can come from other things, too, like traveling to the same places, or watching the same sports, or practicing the same skills or hobbies. So what makes books special? The two answers I see are:

1. Nothing. If you think they’re better than other types of cultural context, that’s because you’re a book person.
2. Books leave more room for interpretation. Maybe Don Quixote is a fanatic, maybe he’s an idealist, maybe he’s a “wise fool”. It’s debatable. But there’s no doubt who won the last World Cup.

I lean weakly towards the first answer. Novels are a useful form of social context. But that’s a side benefit. It’s not why we read most books.

Theory 4: Legible mind-space

Maybe novels are just another form of entertainment. OK. But say you tried to tell the same story as a novel or as movie / podcast / opera / interpretive dance performance. Different formats will be better in different ways. One advantage I see for novels is that they make it natural to explore the interior worlds of the characters.

Some movies have voice-overs where characters explain what they’re thinking. But this is generally considered cringe and a poor use of the medium. Meanwhile, many books are mostly about exploring what the characters are thinking.

Thoughts are worth exploring. If you want to explore thoughts, maybe novels are the best way to do that.

Aside: I’ve mentioned before that I think My Brilliant Friend is the best TV show ever made. Can I confess that I like it much more than the books it is based on? Because, like the books, the TV show involves a lot of what the main character is thinking, and even makes heavy use of voice-overs. So maybe other mediums have unrealized potential?

Theory 5: Purity of vision

Movies are expensive to make. To be financially viable, they need to target a large slice of the population. Movies also reflect the combined efforts of many people. Both of these mean that movies are a compromise between different visions.

Novels are usually written by one person. And they’re often written more for personal expression than to make money. After all, writing is fun. I mean—writing is hard, but would you rather spend an afternoon holding up a shotgun microphone, cleaning a movie star’s trailer, or writing a novel?

To quantify this, some searching suggests that around 10,000 feature films are released each year, as compared to around 1,000,000 novels. (Does one in 7,000 people really write a novel each year?) That’s two orders of magnitude. So if you want to hear a truly unique story, a pure vision of one person, maybe novels are where you’ll find it.

Theory 6: All these theories are stupid

Or: Maybe the point of reading War and Peace is that War and Peace is incredible and obviously one of the greatest pieces of art ever made in any medium. No one who reads War and Peace can question the value of what they’ve done. What are we talking about?

Fair. I definitely feel like I’m living my best life when I read War and Peace. But I also feel like I’m living an OK-ish life when I read a novel about Spenser, private investigator. And most novels most people read are closer to the Spenser than to War and Peace. And I still feel better spending an afternoon reading about Spenser than I would watching 99% of TV shows.

Theory 7: Dopamine

Or perhaps the difference is that reading is a thing you do rather than something you consume.

This theory holds than when spend an hour slurping up short-form video, you’re training yourself to sort of pull a lever in the hope that some reward is delivered to you. But if you read (or do watercolors, or meditate) you’re training yourself to calmly pursue long-term goals and to sustain attention in the face of complexity.

Sometimes I wonder if phones/apps are the most addictive thing ever created. I suspect that more people today are addicted to their phones today than were ever addicted to any drug other than caffeine or perhaps nicotine. And while a phone addiction is less physically harmful than tobacco, that phone addiction will eat a larger part of your soul.

I think this is a big part of the explanation.

Theory 8: Non-fungible time

In the end, I don’t think novels are the best way to spend your time. In my view no novel—not even War and Peace—is as good as a truly great conversation.

But great conversations are hard to create. Sometimes you’re sitting on a train, or laying in bed, or it’s just been a long day and you don’t have the energy to find a giant block of marble and pursue your dream of experimental sculpture. In these situations, maybe reading a novel is the best thing you could do in the category of things you could realistically do.

Exercise for the reader: Apply these theories to blog posts.

Here are a few things that seem to be true:

1. Dating apps are very popular.
2. Lots of people hate dating apps.
3. They hate them so much that there’s supposedly a resurgence in alternatives like speed dating.

None of those are too controversial, I think. (Let’s stress supposedly in #3.) But if you stare at them for a while, it’s hard to see how they can all be true at the same time.

Because, why do people hate dating apps? People complain that they’re bad in various ways, such as being ineffective, dehumanizing, or expensive. (And such small portions!) But if they’re bad, then why? Technologically speaking, a dating app is not difficult to make. If dating apps are so bad, why don’t new non-bad ones emerge and outcompete them?

The typical answer is network effects. A dating app’s value depends on how many other people are on it. So everyone gravitates to the popular ones and eventually most of the market is captured by a few winners. To displace them, you’d have to spend a huge amount of money on advertising. So—the theory goes—the winners are an oligopoly that gleefully focus on extracting money from their clients instead of making those clients happy.

That isn’t obviously wrong. Match Group (which owns Tinder, Match, Plenty of Fish, OK Cupid, Hinge, and many others) has recently had an operating margin of ~25%. That’s more like a crazy-profitable entrenched tech company (Apple manages ~30%) than a nervous business in a crowded market.

But wait a second. How many people go to a speed dating event? Maybe 30? I don’t know if the speed dating “resurgence” is real, but it doesn’t matter. Some people definitely do find love at real-life events with small numbers of people. If that’s possible, then shouldn’t it also be possible to create a dating app that’s useful even with only a small number of users? Meaning good apps should have emerged long ago and displaced the crappy incumbents? And so the surviving dating apps should be non-hated?

We’ve got ourselves a contradiction. So something is wrong with that argument. But what?

Theory 1: Selection

Perhaps speed dating attendees are more likely to be good matches than people on dating apps. This might be true because they tend to be similar in terms of income, education, etc., and people tend to mate assortatively. People who go to such events might also have some similarities in terms of personality or what they’re looking for in a relationship.

You could also theorize that people at speed dating events are higher “quality”. For example, maybe it’s easier to conceal negative traits on dating apps than it is in person. If so, this might lead to some kind of adverse selection where people without secret negative traits get frustrated and stop using the apps.

I’m not sure either of those are true. But even if they are, consider the magnitudes. While a speed dating event might have 30 people, a dating app in a large city could easily have 30,000 users. While the fraction of good matches might be lower on a dating app, the absolute number is still surely far higher.

Theory 2: Bandwidth

Perhaps even if you have fewer potential matches at a speed dating event, you have better odds of actually finding them, because in-person interactions reveals information that dating apps don’t.

People often complain that dating apps are superficial, that there’s too much focus on pictures. Personally, I don’t think pictures deserve so much criticism. Yes, they show how hot you are. But pictures also give lots of information about important non-superficial things, like your personality, values, social class, and lifestyle. I’m convinced people use pictures for all that stuff as much as hotness.

But you know what’s even better than pictures? Actually talking to someone!

Many people seem to think that a few minutes of small talk isn’t enough time to learn anything about someone. Personally, I think evolution spent millions of years training us to do exactly that. I’d even claim that this is why small talk exists.

(I have friends with varying levels of extroversion and agreeableness, but all of my friends seem to have high openness to experience. When I meet someone new, I’m convinced I can guess their openness to ±10% by the time they’ve completed five sentences.)

So maybe the information a dating app provides just isn’t all that useful compared to a few minutes of casual conversation. If so, then dating apps might be incredibly inefficient. You have to go through some silly texting courtship ritual, set up a time to meet, physically go there, and then pretend to smile for an hour even if you immediately hate them.

Under this theory, dating apps provide a tiny amount of information about a gigantic pool of people, while speed dating provides a ton of information about a small number of people. Maybe that’s a win, at least sometimes.

Theory 3: Behavior

Maybe the benefit of real-life events isn’t that they provide more information, but that they change how we behave.

For example, maybe people are nicer in person? Because only then can we sense that others are also sentient beings with internal lives and so on?

I’m pretty sure that’s true. But it’s not obvious it helps with our mystery, since people from dating apps eventually meet in person, too. If they’re still nice when they do, then this just resolves into “in-person interactions provide more information”, and is already covered by the previous theory. To help resolve our mystery, you’d need to claim that people at real-life events act differently than they do when meeting up as a result of a dating app.

That could happen as a result of a “behavioral equilibrium”. Some people take dating apps seriously and some take them casually. But it’s hard to tell what category someone else is in, so everyone proceeds with caution. But by showing up at an in-person event, everyone has demonstrated some level of seriousness. And maybe this makes everyone behave differently? Perhaps, but I don’t really see it.

Obscure theories

I can think of a few other possible explanations.

1. Maybe speed dating serves a niche. Just like Fitafy / Bristlr / High There! serve people who love fitness / beards / marijuana, maybe speed dating just serves some small-ish fraction of the population but not others.

2. Maybe the people who succeed at speed dating would also have succeeded no matter what. So they don’t offer any general lessons.

3. Maybe creating a dating app is in fact very technologically difficult. So while the dating apps are profit-extracting oligopolies, that’s because of technological moat, not network effects.

I don’t really buy any of these.

Drumroll

So what’s really happening? I am not confident, but here’s my best guess:

1. Selection is not a major factor.

2. The high bandwidth of in-person interactions is a major factor.

3. The fact that people are nicer or more open-minded in person is not a major factor, other than through making in-person interactions higher bandwidth.

4. None of the obscure theories are major factors.

5. Dating apps are an oligopoly, driven by network effects.

Basically, a key “filter” in finding love is finding someone where you both feel optimistic after talking for five minutes. Speed dating is (somewhat / sometimes) effective because it efficiently crams a lot of people into the top of that filter.

Meanwhile, because dating apps are low-bandwidth, they need a large pool to be viable. Thus, they’re subject to network effects, and the winners can turn the screws to extract maximum profits from their users.

Partly I’m not confident in that story just because it has so many moving parts. But something else worries me too. If it’s true, then why aren’t dating apps trying harder to provide that same information that in-person interactions do?

If anything, I understand they’re moving in the opposite direction. Maybe Match Group would have no interest in that, since they’re busy enjoying their precious network effects. But why not startups? Hell, why not philanthropies? (Think of all the utility you could create!) For the above story to hold together, you have to believe that it’s a very difficult problem.

I file my claim in the Anthropic copyright case — and sit back to wait for the results.

I wrote about the Anthropic copyright case in three blog posts here, so I’m not going to go into the details again. If you want to get up to speed on my thoughts, read these:

• Fighting Against AI Copyright Theft
• Is Any Book Really Dead These Days?
• Copyright Basics

My Claim

The case went back and forth and it seemed for a while that the $3,000 per title settlement was not going to be accepted. But then it was and recently the legal team handling the claims for copyright holders including authors like me published the definitive list of infringed works. I used the lookup feature and found nine of my books.

Of the nine, two were registered under the name of the publisher, McGraw-Hill. The rest were registered under my name.

I clicked the link to file a claim, which is required if I expect any compensation for their theft of my work. The form was time consuming to complete — it took me nearly an hour to add all nine titles. And yes, I added all nine because maybe there is a chance that I’ll get some of the proceeds for titles not registered with me as the actual copyright holder.

Theoretically, I should be entitled to $21K to $27K of compensation. I’m not sure if the lawyers’ fees come out before or after this payment. For all I know, I might only get $100/title. But I also know that I won’t get anything if I don’t submit a claim.

I’ve done my part; now I have to wait and see.

Further Thoughts

My thoughts on this matter are pretty straightforward. No person or organization should be allowed to access and use copyrighted work without going through legal channels to do so. Anthropic committed piracy; that’s accepted and is the reason they’re paying up. But did they get permission to use the works to train an AI system? Clearly, they did not. That’s the real reason they should be paying.

I’m in a weird situation. In my mind, these books were dead. They cover topics that are no longer current and have very little (if any) value. I never expected to see another dime in compensation for writing them. So this is all icing on a cake I’ve already eaten. I’ll take it!

But what of the people whose work still has legitimate current value? Or of future books I might write that don’t go out of print in 2 years? How often will our work be used without our permission to train systems designed to replace us?

I’ve got a real problem with that — and you should, too.

A blog post I felt I needed to write that is mostly already written for me.

Lately, my brain has been stewing over the situation faced by an acquaintance. Without going into too much detail or identifying him, I’ll just say a few things to set the backstory for this post.

My acquaintance — I’ll call him Joe — is recently retired in his early 60s. He’s married and his wife still works, but she is set to retire in spring. They’re financially secure, living in a nice home in a nice neighborhood. They have friends and family and are involved in a community organization they like.

Joe has some rather serious health issues and they are definitely slowing him down. But he also has a personal goal that means a lot to him. He started taking steps to achieve that goal, despite a total lack of support by his wife and family — in fact, they actively oppose him. In a way, I was part of the steps he took, providing assistance and training to the best of my ability in the circumstances. But when I recently followed up with him, he indicated that he was going to give up on this dream.

And that’s what I’m stewing over.

Be Amazing

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know how I feel about life and making the most of it. Search through this blog — or just look at the handy list I’ve compiled for you at the end of this blog post — and you’ll find plenty of posts where I either implore readers to follow their own dreams or crow about how I’ve been following mine.

And yes, I know it isn’t easy sometimes. There are always obstacles. But we’ve all heard amazing stories about people beating the odds to achieve things no one thought were possible. Amputees running marathons. Blind folks flying airplanes. Cancer survivors climbing Mount Everest. Wow! Talk about obstacles! Yet these folks did it. It really puts the concept of challenges into perspective.

Rather than sitting back and saying “I can’t do this because…” these people went out and did it. They are amazing.

But you can be amazing, too.

So can Joe.

One Life

Every single one of us has just one life. It doesn’t matter what you believe happens to our souls (or whatever) when we die. There’s just one real life on earth for us to do the things we want to do. We can either surf (or struggle) through the days we have, letting life’s routines and the desire to please family, friends, and employers guide our very existence. Or we can chart our own paths though life, facing challenges and reaping rewards along the way.

Joe has health issues. That’s undeniable. They sap his energy — at least now. But are they really enough for him to abandon his dream? After all, achieving — or even getting started on the path to achieving — this goal might be one of the last things he does.

And what if his health issues disappear and he lives another 20 or 30 years? Will he always regret not chasing down his dream, especially when he was already on the path to doing so?

And shame on his wife and family for not supporting his desire to achieve this goal. Honestly, I think that’s what’s getting under my skin most of all.

That’s Enough

I don’t need to write any more about this. I already have. Here’s a list of related posts in this blog. This is not an AI-generated list. It’s a real list.

If you’re feeling unsatisfied with your life and want to get on a different path or achieve a specific goal, the posts in this list can help you get started.

• Stop Making Excuses. Make a Plan. February 23, 2025
  In which I attempt to encourage you to follow your dreams and try to tell you how.
• Thriving in Midlife September 15, 2016.
  Tired of my tips? Take some from the folks at NPR.
• Making it Happen. July 16, 2016
  You can do it if you try hard enough and stop making excuses.
• Turning Dreams into Realities January 15, 2015
  Reflecting on goals and achievements.
• On Luck November 23, 2013
  Does it even exist?
• Postponing Happiness November 3, 2013
  Could it be true?
• Atychiphobia July 16, 2013
  The fear of failure.
• Courage June 18, 2013
  I never thought I’d quote Oprah, but here it is.
• This guy gets it. Do you? July 13, 2013
  More fodder from my inbox.
• I Love My Life January 20, 2013
  Why I love my life — and how you can love your life, too.

Make it happen.