Learn to Make Dollars/Money online

Wednesday, 7 January 2026

Even though yeast is far more reliable than it used to be, many bakers still proof it before investing the time and materials to bake a loaf of bread. The extra few minutes waiting for it to bloom is cheap insurance to avoid a failed loaf a day later.

If you need to be sure there are no pits in your chopped dates, it makes sense to avoid mechanically de-pitted fruit. Every single date has exactly one pit, and if you find it yourself, you’ll know you found it.

We can’t do every task ourselves, and we can’t test every raw material, particularly if it’s a destructive test like whether or not this glass is tempered.

The math is simple, but easy to avoid: What are the chances that the component in question might fail, multiplied by the cost to the project if it does. Compare this to the cost of the test and you’ll know what to do.

In my experience, we focus on the easy tests, without thinking hard about the real costs. Three shortcuts to avoid: Tradition, proximity to failure and the vividness of the rare cataclysm.

Traditional tests might distract us from the checks we ought to be doing.

Proximity to failure puts our focus on things at the end of the process as opposed to thinking hard about the underlying components and system failure.

And vivid failures are failures that get our attention, but loud and urgent aren’t the same as important and useful.

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Tuesday, 6 January 2026

Seth's Blog : Who eats lunch first

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Who eats lunch first

Consider the role of status in just about all human interactions.

It begins at a primal level–every species cares about access to food and resources. We share a prehistoric history of status based on strength. But civilization is about awarding status on something other than violence.

So there is the status that comes from being the breadwinner, the hunter, the matriarch.

Or the status that comes with age and experience.

We award status to spiritual leaders, peacemakers and selfless warriors.

And to beauty.

Status might be passed down through families. It could be formalized with Dukes and Empresses and other peerages (an ironic term, of course).

Lately, only in the last few hundred years, have we awarded status based on commerce. That people with access to money get a better seat, and the benefit of the doubt. And celebrity, a status that’s not possible without some sort of media to create that celebrity.

Like most things associated with media or with money, these two accelerated very quickly. Being famous for having a lot of money is a double sort of status, a benefit of the doubt based on sometimes unexamined foundations.

Not only are people trained to seek status, we’re driven to repeat the yearning we feel even after it’s acquired. The reason that more than enough isn’t enough for many is that status and the search for status can be infinite.

The adjudication of status roles is a critical role for anyone who works in culture or even in commerce. We award status without thinking about it, when awarding it is actually a critical part of our work and our future.

Awarding status isn’t new. It’s that we’ve forgotten we’re doing it, and why. Every interaction is a small negotiation about who matters more in this moment. Understanding that doesn’t make the system fair, but it does give us a choice about whether to reinforce it or to build something else.