Archives for June 2023

Goodhart’s law is stated as “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”. It was originally articulated in the context of British monetary policy but has become universal. For faculty at universities, metrics that measure the impact of research, then used for hiring and promotion decisions, are quickly gamed and […]

I’m a bit of an anomaly as someone who has written extensively about personal finance (as Mr. Cheap) and currently is focused on writing books, many of which are fiction. Many writers are self-confessed math-phobic, while others are clearly uncomfortable with business and money based decisions. I’m comfortable with all of this and am often […]

I’m often fascinated by the wide range of what a particular word means to different people, while amazed at the expectation people have that they all share the exact same understanding of that word. ‘Feminism’, ‘capitalism’, and ‘retirement’ have vastly different meanings to just about everyone, but somehow we all think there’s a standard, absolute […]

I just finished reading an incredible series of blog posts by Dean Wesley Smith. I didn’t know his name, but he’s been a working fiction writer for decades and has some incredible insights into the tradeoffs between traditional and indie publishing and the transition that’s currently happening in the writing industry. These could be bundled […]