Blog
Writing about what's interesting to me, especially when I think there are details being missed in the public conversation. New writing goes out through The Missing Nuance.
The Missing Nuance
Pulled live from Substack.
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substackIt Starts With You
2025-09-13
What if "attack" wasn't our first instinct
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substackEverything Worked Out, So Clearly I’m Brilliant
2025-06-24
How much does a good result tell you about the quality of the decision-making behind it?
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substackThe Case for Donating More
2025-03-09
A short explanation of what persuaded me
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substackBreaking Down the Destination-Based Cash Flow Tax (DBCFT)
2024-11-16
Lightly edited from a Facebook post I shared in February 2017.
Earlier writing
Explore the original author site
Posts from 2019–2023, written before the newsletter shared on my old site.
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The Library of Congress Tells Me About Corporal Punishment
2023-04-10
I've been reading Empire of Liberty: A history of the Early Republic, 1780-1815 by Gordon S. Wood and while it's full of fascinating information one…
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A Noob's Guide to Github Actions
2022-02-10
I have a few Rmarkdown scripts that I’ve created to visualize data for forecasting. I host them on Github so they appear as html pages on my website…
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Afghanistan Uncertainty
2021-08-27
I've been increasingly frustrated with the public conversation around Afghanistan. The whole situation is a tragedy, and instead of sober reflection…
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Degeneracy and Jefferson and a Moose
2021-03-17
The Europeans who pass into America degenerate, as do the animals; a proof that the climate is unfavourable to the improvement of either man or…
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New Vaccine Page
2021-03-16
I forgot to post here about it, but a few weeks ago I turned my vaccine spreadsheet into a webpage on my site. You can check it out at the link…
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Why Robinhood Halted Gamestop (Reject the Simple Narrative)
2021-01-31
On January 28th Robinhood disabled all transactions except for position-closing (selling) for a small set of stocks including Gamestop (GME). This…
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Coronavirus Vaccine Information
2020-11-23
Trying to get information on the potential coronavirus vaccines has been frustrating. The information I want is never in one place, it's often vague…
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Predicting the Biden Presidency
2020-11-20
I thought it would be interesting to predict what will happen under the Biden presidency. I think making falsifiable predictions is important for…
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The Logic (or Lack of) Behind Third Party Voting
2020-08-13
I want to discuss the strategy and logic behind the decision to vote third party or sit out of an election. Below are some of the common reasons…
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Vice President Discourse Usually Neglects a Big Factor
2020-08-03
Biden will be announcing his pick for vice president soon, and I think one aspect of the VP selection has been overlooked in the discussions about…
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Robot Sumo
2020-07-12
When I wrote the drones in SEER this was kind of what I had in mind for how quickly they move and attack. Being controlled by computers means they…
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Why Citizens United Was a Reasonable Decision
2020-07-03
Citizens United v. FEC was decided ten years ago and remains one of the first things that comes to mind when people think about campaign finance…
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Why Nations Fail
2020-03-02
I just finished the book Why Nations Fail and really enjoyed it, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Its theory is that institutions are the most…
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Technology and Jobs
2020-02-13
People have been afraid of technology taking jobs for a long time. Apparently in the 1500s William Lee invented a knitting machine and went to Queen…
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Robots and Rubik's Cubes
2019-10-15
This is some really cool stuff. A group called Open AI has used machine learning to teach a robotic hand to solve a Rubik's cube. They trained the…
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Putting a Price on Carbon
2019-10-09
Hey Democrats, do you want to cut carbon emissions in half in just ten years? Do you want to increase benefits to the least fortunate among us? Do…
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Uploading the Brain
2019-10-03
I posted a poll on Facebook and Twitter yesterday asked how long everyone thought it would take for us to be able to copy the human mind to a…
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Not Human Cover Breakdown
2019-09-25
I've always been a sucker for those videos that go layer by layer and show all the CGI that went into movie scenes, so I thought it would be fun to…
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Welcome to my Website
2019-09-14
Welcome to my website! I've been working on this a while and I'm excited to finally share everything I've been working on. Head on over to the…