Nov 10, 2026 from The Autodidacts Strategically compounding correlated variables A reader read a draft of my essay on measuring early stage progress, and said, that’s cute, but a more interesting question is what we should be compounding in the first place. Everyone seems to ag...
Nov 10, 2026 from The Autodidacts Holistic prioritization requires sometimes working on lower priority tasks At the risk of stating the obvious: always working on your #1 priority doesn’t work. I have learned this the hard way. (Most recently, when I tried David Gauer’s cool sticky note todo list system.)...
Nov 06, 2026 from The Autodidacts The Psychology of Letting Go Some time ago I drafted an essay on cutting words from essays, intended for a cheesy writing contest, and never submitted it. I was thinking about this essay, languishing on my hard drive, as I was...
Nov 06, 2026 from The Autodidacts Feeling The Caffeine Wake Up Your Body I drink caffeine. Like, a lot of caffeine. I have for a long time. Every once in a while I go on a ten-day caffeine fast to prune back my adenosine receptors, and when I start drinking coffee and y...
Nov 02, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing How to find out who owns a property in Texas An appraisal account supplies the starting name. Matching its legal description to a county deed connects that name to the land.
Nov 01, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing What your MUD tax is paying for A zero bond balance can sit beside $23.2 million in developer costs waiting for reimbursement. The tax rate leaves that financing pipeline out.
Nov 01, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing Where Austin’s property-tax dollar goes Most districts charged recapture still receive net operating formula aid. In Austin, a school-tax saving can disappear into the other four property-tax bills.
Nov 01, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing Who earns Texas’s electricity delivery charge? A Houston electricity bill can pay a bond-index fund. An Austin Energy customer can finance an investor-owned transmission line outside Austin.
Nov 01, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing Who owns Austin’s apartments? Camden’s Austin holdings grew 73.6% in its consolidated accounts but only 9.6% in physical footprint. Buying a pension partner’s stake explains much of the difference.
Nov 01, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing Who owns Austin’s hospitals? Seton’s reported community benefit rose 12.3%, while costs minus all reported offsets fell 11.2%. The IRS’s zero-floor rule explains why those two accounting measures moved in opposite directions.
Nov 01, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing Who owns ERCOT’s power, and who owes Texas? Three companies hold 59.3% of the measured thermal fleet. Texas’s $4.1 billion loan portfolio backs a wider group, with different routes to repayment.
Nov 01, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing Who owns Texas’s private water? At one CSWR system, a 5,000-gallon charge rose from $28.45 to $89.72. At another, it fell from $92 to $89.72. Both joined the same rate pool.
Oct 30, 2026 from The Autodidacts A Yes Person’s Guide to Saying No Defenses upI've always been an enthusiastic person. I like to jump from one project to the next (literally running, when possible) with my knobs turned to 11. I tend to do well on relatively short ...
Oct 27, 2026 from The Autodidacts The Command Line as Franken-REPL Learning to thrive in the Mos Eisley cantina
Oct 27, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing Which company stock can you actually buy? Anthropic, xAI, Databricks, Discord, Neuralink, LEGO, and H-E-B in one dated status table, with the documents behind each buying route.
Oct 27, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing Texas toll roads: the road can work while the investment fails SH 288’s termination shows how entry price, contracts and payment priority shape the equity result.
Oct 27, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing A double-binomial recurrence and its continued fraction A formal-tail proof of the recurrence behind OEIS A302285, with exact computational checks.
Oct 27, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing One page identity for metadata and dates Generate the title, canonical, author and structured data from the document, preserving the precision of its dates.
Oct 27, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing Duplicate title tags: fix the title generator Two different articles can inherit the same template title. I would compare their content before changing a canonical: a title collision can be repaired without consolidating either document.
Oct 27, 2026 from Sulayman Bowles — Writing A missing canonical tag starts with a URL decision A missing tag is an observation about a response. I would first choose the preferred accessible document, then express that choice in its head, links and sitemap.
