The more you learn about a subject the less capable you are of understanding what the average person knows about it. In journalism this can result in articles that are incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t have the proper background. It can also result in information not being published because it seems too obvious. For example: […]
Author: Justin Pot
Transcribing UFO letters to the government (and other stuff I wrote)
I had a lot of fun learning how to volunteer online for The National Archive. I spent a few hours transcribing letters by a man who wrote the government to talk about the UFO he saw, during which he emphasized many times that he was not drinking. Dive in next time you feel bored. Stuff you […]
We buy too much crap anyway
If you want to understand America, spend some time in thrift stores. These are monuments to our collective excess—a museum of the things we’ve collected and discarded. I love digging through the electronics shelves looking for potentially useful adapters or devices. I also get most of my clothes from the racks there, mostly for environmental […]
See What’s On Your Hard Drive and Other Stuff I Wrote This Week
Over at WIRED I wrote a quick guide to visualizing what’s taking up room on your hard drive. I hope this empowers people to track down the large files that are filling up their device instead of just buying a bigger hard hard drive. Computer parts are about to get a lot more expensive in the United States of America […]
Practice Is The Point
Writing isn’t just my job—it’s how I think. When I’m not sure what I feel about something I start typing. I put down ideas, contemplate whether I agree with what I just wrote, and in this process figure out how I feel. A lot of my blog posts start as me playing around with ideas. […]
Stay private while browsing and other stuff I wrote this week
Last week I explained how to tell if Jeffery Goldberg, Editor of the The Atlantic, is is your group chat, which is obviously among he most important privacy articles I’ve ever written. But it wasn’t the only privacy piece I wrote: I also I talked to a number of privacy and security experts to write a […]
Extrinsic motivation is ruining everything
It’s one of those patterns you can’t stop noticing once you think about it.
The lost art of cleaning out your feeds and other stuff I wrote this week
I regularly go through everyone I’m following on social media and remove accounts I’m not enjoying or learning from anymore. I’ve been doing this for a long time, as a way to take control over what I’m paying attention to. I talked about this lost art of cleaning out your feed for PopSci. Here’s a couple other things […]
How to Tell If Jeffery Goldberg, Editor of The Atlantic, Is In Your Signal Group Chat
Only you can protect your privacy from Jeffery Goldberg, Editor of The Atlantic
Playing modern games on an ancient TV and other stuff I wrote
I recently wrote about why new tech only feels good for a short time over at PopSci. It’s a little bit outside my wheelhouse—it’s about tech, yes, but also about human psychology means a new TV or computer will never make you happy in the long term. There may be a spike in happiness after a wedding, a […]