Staring Into The Distance

A graph of "Staring into the distance" versus "How deep you are in a math problem". As you go deeper, you end up staring into the distance far more.

“You’re not listening to me. Are you thinking about your math problem again?”

“…No, I’m just looking at something.”

“What? There’s nothing in front of you.”

“Sure there is. I’m staring at…uh, that point at infinity!”

28 Sep 2024

Timeline Accuracy

A graph of "Accuracy in predicting timelines" versus "Stress". As the accuracy increases, stress decreases.

“I’m super accurate in predicting how long it will take me to finish things!”

“Oh, really?”

“Sure, after the fourth or fifth revision, I’m superb.”

21 Sep 2024

Remarkable Opportunity

A high jump setup with three bars. The highest one (dashed line) is what we imagine the bar for remarkable is. The much lower middle bar is in reality, and below that is where most work lands.

That little extra effort matters.

14 Sep 2024

Mathematical Gems

A shiny mathematical gem lies deep below the Earth. Between the surface and the gem is a thick layer of technical jargon, including research papers, presentations, and small veins of exposition. A person has a shovel while their friend says, "Have fun digging!"

As Ben Orlin says, some people never get to see the beauty of those gems.

07 Sep 2024

Recommendation Trap

Left panel (Caption: Good Friend): A person extends a book to his friend and says, "You should read this story, it's great." She replies, "Thanks!" Right panel (Caption: Devious Friend, Later): She stomps into the frame with her arms in the air and says, "You didn't tell me the last book in the series hasn't come out in 10 years!" He has his hands together and says, "Join the club."

“I thought we could commiserate together.”

24 Aug 2024

Footnotes

A Venn diagram of "Footnotes" and "Academics". The intersection is: "Where wit goes in papers."

And any extra pedantry.

17 Aug 2024

Hats

A person stares skyward at his friend who is wearing eleven hats. His friend shrugs and says, "My therapist said I could expand my identity by wearing many hats."

“Can you add this fishing hat on top?”

10 Aug 2024

Density

A bar graph of page density. Novels are low, textbooks are higher, and then journal articles are the absolute worse.

I’m looking at you Nature and Science articles!

03 Aug 2024

Offload

A Venn diagram of "Decisions I offload to my future self" and "Decisions I'm later happy with". There's no overlap.

“Next time will be different!”

27 Jul 2024

Update

A programmer admires his finished project using a cutting-edge code library. He says, "Finally done!" In the background, a missile approaches his project. On the missile are the words, "Library Overhaul Update".

“I can now never touch the code again!” he says, clapping his hands together.

20 Jul 2024

To the past To the present