How to shuffle cards well when you never shuffle cards

I play board and card games rarely—maybe four days a year in a very heavy year. This is about the most I've ever played board games. I played a little more in college, but not by a huge margin, and before that I played even less. I

It is sometimes good to say obvious things

It is sometimes good to say obvious things. Saying obvious things gives other people the chance to agree and create common knowledge or a shared experience. It can even be good to say obvious trivial things. I'm reminded of a dialog someone shared: "Say, Pooh, why aren&

If you always follow some advice, you'll never experience why (or whether) it's good advice

An odd thought: If you always follow some piece of advice, you'll never know why it's good. You'll never know for sure that it is, either. That is: If you want to know why, you have to experience the bullshit that comes from not

The accommodater vs. the accommodated

I notice feeling a dualism of roles: The one who accommodates and the one who is accommodated. This is a little like the 'helper'-'helped' relationship described in E-mailing the Lamas from Afar and a little like "the strongest person in our culture is

Failure modes of concrete vs. abstract goals

I've been thinking about the failure modes of my Intend goals lately. Concrete goals tend to fail in one way. Abstract ones fail in another. For concrete goals, like "Give X talk at 20ZZ conference Y," the failure mode is that I lose connection with why