Career advice in 2025

If you’re currently in the job market I highly recommend this post by Will Larson:

If you pull all those things together, you’re essentially in a market where profit and pace are fixed, and you have to figure out how you personally want to optimize between people, prestige and learning. Whereas a few years ago, I think these variables were much more decoupled, that is not what I hear from folks today, even if their jobs were quite cozy a few years ago.

It’s a sobering—and imo necessary—read, even for folks who are not currently look for a new job.

Garbage

This is a lovely post by Craig Mod about the Japanese approach to garbage, and what that means for other things in our lives…

This obsession with the immediate “unburdening” of a thing you created is common in non-Japanese contexts, but I posit: The Japanese way is the correct way. Be an adult. Own your garbage. […]

Personally, I don’t love carrying my garbage around with me, but I recognize that it wouldn’t exist without my intervention. Nobody ran up and asked me to hold an empty cup. I thoughtlessly bought something. Thoughtlessly consumed it, and now I have to hold onto the detritus for a little while? Great. It’s easy. Easy to embrace that modicum of responsibility for your own waste. This is my protest song, the world’s lamest: I will attend to my garbage without complaint.

Huh? The valuable role of interjections

I love this deep-dive on the little interjections we use in everyday speech. One example:

Other interjections serve as what some linguists call ‘continuers,’ such as ‘mm-hmm’—signals from the listener that they’re paying attention and the speaker should keep going. The form of the word is well suited to its function: Because ‘mm-hmm’ is made with a closed mouth, it’s clear that the signaler does not intend to speak.