Jekyll2024-01-31T21:55:17+02:00https://www.lepekhin.com/feed.xmlThe Blog of Andrey LepekhinThoughts on life improvementAndrey LepekhinWeb comics category2099-01-01T00:00:00+02:002099-01-01T00:00:00+02:00https://www.lepekhin.com/2099/01/01/Web-comics-category<p>Beware, comics posted here tend to be profane and some are even NSFW.<br />
Have fun! and ignore the ‘continue reading’ link (there’s nothing inside).</p>Andrey LepekhinBeware, comics posted here tend to be profane and some are even NSFW. Have fun! and ignore the ‘continue reading’ link (there’s nothing inside).My favorite fiction books2022-07-09T00:00:00+03:002022-07-09T00:00:00+03:00https://www.lepekhin.com/2022/07/09/My-favorite-fiction-books<p>I wanted to write something without too much virtue signaling. When I look at earlier posts, I see something like a trophy board to show everyone how smart and likable I am.<!--excerpt_separator-->
Although everything I wrote about back then was and is really interesting to me, it still seems dishonest somehow. I guess my current mood is different from the one I used to have.</p>
<p>So I want to try something different. I’m going to write about the books I absolutely love. Not about philosophy or the role of technology in today’s world. Just 3 books that have made the last seven years much more pleasant for me.</p>
<p>This kind of writing is harder to do because it makes me more vulnerable, it’s not only about the books but about me and my history with them. It’s something dear to my heart: what if you don’t like it? What if you criticize me and my haphazard way of gushing about these books?</p>
<p>Well, for the joy of writing this, I’m still willing to take the risk :-)</p>
<hr />
<p>I’ve been reading fantasy and science fiction for more than 25 years. I started with Wells, Stanislaw Lem, the Strugatsky brothers, Ray Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick.
After reading through the classics, I discovered the Hugo and Nebula Awards for SF and went through all the finalists. After that, I gradually moved on to lesser and lesser known books and authors.
After scraping the bottom of the barrel for some time, I lucked into web series, books written one chapter at a time and posted on forums or blogs. And how glad I am that I found them, because all the books on this list below are representatives of this category.</p>
<h2 id="harry-potter-and-the-methods-of-rationality">Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality</h2>
<p>By Eliezer Yudkowsky [<a href="http://www.hpmor.com/">link to the (free) book</a>]</p>
<p><img src="https://www.lepekhin.com/images/2022-07-09-My-favorite-fiction-books-hpmor-book-cover.jpg" alt="Book cover showing a hand with fingers poised to snap" /></p>
<p>I’m sorry, this is the one book I won’t stop raving about. The following text is just my fanboy noises aimed to get you to read this book.</p>
<p>I was sure that fanfics are nothing more than erotic fantasies of teenagers turned into text. In <em>special</em> forums and with lots of grammatical errors. Or they are not very funny parody books that want to exploit the fame of the original to cash in.</p>
<p>The tacky title of this fanfic didn’t help it stand out from that crowd. It was the author’s name that helped.</p>
<p>Eliezer was known to me as the champion of the rationality movement and author of many articles on lesswrong.com.
Just the fact that such a person wrote a fanfic began to change my image of what a fanfic is.</p>
<p>It also helped that the author suggests in the preface to stop reading the book after the fifth chapter if you weren’t hooked. That’s a good heuristic to use with other books as well — it allows you to start a long book without fear of committing to finish it. And this is a book of considerable length.
Fortunately this is one of those cases where the length of a book seems intimidating at first, but then becomes a joy when you realize that many more pages of this fascinating entertainment await you.</p>
<p>To enjoy this book, <strong>you don’t have to like or even have read the original</strong> Harry Potter books.
It’s my top 1 recommendation even for people who don’t read much fiction at all (and they love it too).</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>I once tried to write my own novel. I researched how to structure it, how to edit it. I used my project management skills to break it down into small chunks and wrote them out. I edited them in iterations.</p>
<p>It sucked and the result was crap. I didn’t have the motivation to practice and get better.
But since then, when I re-read HPMOR, I notice all the things the author did that are just. so. good. How it hooks me in emotionally and intellectually. How it changes the cadence without ever being too slow.</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>I was sad at the end of the first read, knowing for a fact that such excitingly captivating books are very few and hard to find.
But there’s hope! <a href="https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11174940/1/Significant-Digits">Significant Digits</a> by Alexander Davis is “the best HPMOR continuation fic” (quote from Elizer). The other books in this post are also similar.</p>
<p>Elizer is mainly working on AI alignment. I don’t want our world to end as much as the next guy, but it’s a pity Eliezer isn’t writing SF books for a living.</p>
<h2 id="worm">Worm</h2>
<p>By John C. McCrae [<a href="https://parahumans.wordpress.com/">link to the (free) book</a>]</p>
<p><img src="https://www.lepekhin.com/images/2022-07-09-My-favorite-fiction-books-worm-book-cover.jpg" alt="Book cover showing a metropolitan city skyline with an overcast sky" /></p>
<p>A grimdark world where superheroes aren’t so good and villains aren’t so evil is a popular theme these days, just think of the recent popularity of The Boys TV series. But Worm was the first book of this genre for me, and boy, did it take me away for <em>a ride</em>.</p>
<p>Endless cliffhangers and conflict escalation led to many nights where I couldn’t stop reading until sleep finally took me at 4am. Usually when a book is this interesting I finish it quickly, but not this one. This book is 4 Wars and Peaces long. So it was <em>a lot</em> of sleepless nights.</p>
<p>After I finally finished it, I wanted more. And the fanfic world didn’t disappoint. I’ve been reading Worm fanfics for years. I’m not exaggerating, here’s <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanficRecs/Worm">an (incomplete) list of them</a>.</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>Over dozens of fanfics, the characters and setting have become familiar to me, all the key situations have been lived through from different angles with different consequences.</p>
<p>At first I liked Worm because it fit my depressed mood at the time, but after years of fanfics, this world has become the ultimate cozy feel-good read, where I return to old friends and places and relieve fond memories.</p>
<p>(This transition to warm and fuzzy was influenced by some of ack1308’s <a href="https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5180580/ack1308">wholesome Worm fanfics</a>, where each and every conflict is resolved in the best possible way.)</p>
<h2 id="worth-the-candle">Worth The Candle</h2>
<p>By Alexander Wales [<a href="https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/25137/worth-the-candle">link to the (free) book</a>]</p>
<p><img src="https://www.lepekhin.com/images/2022-07-09-My-favorite-fiction-books-worth-the-candle-book-cover.jpg" alt="Book cover showing a man fighting with a much bigger humanoid opponent" /></p>
<p>The LitRPG to rule them all. Interesting mechanics, but not too much of it. So meta and trope-riding, -bending, -exploiting that it’s at least three levels deep.
The author is the king of nuanced worldbuilding. My god! He’s made a variety of worlds with details down history and politics.</p>
<p><strong>Other fiction</strong>: a horde of ugly goblins invade with mindless fury, killing innocents and destroying millennia-old elven forests. They force the main character to wipe them out. He moves on to the next challenge.</p>
<p><strong>This book</strong>: a horde of ugly goblins invades. But their ugliness doesn’t dehumanize them, they’re still people. People who have a long history with elves, with war crimes on both sides. The new political regime of Goblinland forced this goblin contingent to flee their lands or be persecuted as a minority. There are also women and children behind the soldiers. The main character understands all this and when the negotiations fail, it’s not an easy moral decision to kill the goblins. Some of the horde warriors are defeated, but that still leaves the surrendering goblins and their families to deal with. You’ll need logistics to organize it all.</p>
<p>Humanitarian crisis, supply chains, politics, ethics — this book has it all, and that rare depth pleasantly tickles my brain.</p>
<p>The author seems so much smarter than I’m that he can conjure up all these worlds and unite them in a story with just the right… everything for me. It’s like reading <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/">Slate Star Codex</a>: someone intelligent has thought through a lot of details and made them accessible to me.</p>
<p>Also, and this is a recurring feature of all the books on this list, this book is lusciously long.</p>
<hr />
<p>Honorable mention</p>
<h3 id="mother-of-learning">Mother of Learning</h3>
<p>By Domagoj Kurmaic [<a href="https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning">link to the (free) book</a>]</p>
<p>A progression fantasy in which the protagonist grows not only in skills, but also in wisdom.</p>
<p>The first chapter felt a bit awkward in terms of dialogue, but then the story really picked up, the complex situation unravelling with lots of action, and that hooked me in till the satisfying end.</p>Andrey LepekhinI wanted to write something without too much virtue signaling. When I look at earlier posts, I see something like a trophy board to show everyone how smart and likable I am. So I want to try something different.Dark mode implementation for this blog2022-02-06T00:00:00+02:002022-02-06T00:00:00+02:00https://www.lepekhin.com/2022/02/06/Dark-mode-implementation-for-this-blog<p>I’ve implemented the dark theme for this blog. An endeavour for 2-3 hours that has visible results. A satisfying project, I invite everyone with a light-theme-only blog to try.
<!--excerpt_separator--></p>
<p><img src="https://www.lepekhin.com/images/2022-02-06-Dark-mode-implementation-for-this-blog--dark-mode-example-picture.jpg" alt="An article screenshot, one half of which is in light mode and the other half is in dark mode" /></p>
<p><em>CSS Tricks</em>, of course, has this topic thoroughly covered in their <a href="https://css-tricks.com/a-complete-guide-to-dark-mode-on-the-web/">Complete Guide to Dark Mode on the Web</a>. I’ll describe what I’ve done in this particular blog and why.</p>
<p>I’m using <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { ... }</code> CSS media query which lets me use OS-level user preferences. I chose not to support manual toggling between modes because of two reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>Implementation involves JavaScript swapping CSS classes and storing state in Local Storage–a harder effort than I wanted for this quick-win project</li>
<li>If a user has strong preferences about the dark mode, I imagine such a user already has a way of controlling the interface. Such as a browser plugin that changes the theme, e.g. <a href="https://darkreader.org/">Dark Reader</a>.</li>
</ol>
<p>As dark mode gains momentum, I think major browsers will display a toggle between modes (not only in Dev Tools) making the effort of creating this toggle myself moot.</p>
<h2 id="implementation">Implementation</h2>
<p>This blog uses a modified <a href="https://github.com/johno/pixyll">Pixyll theme</a> that has <strong>32</strong> SASS files that get compiled into one big CSS file.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.lepekhin.com/images/2022-02-06-Dark-mode-implementation-for-this-blog--sass-includes-listing.jpg" alt="Part of includes listing @importing separate SASS files for links, code, header, etc" width="350" /></p>
<p>This otherwise reasonable divide-and-conquer approach bites me in the ass here, as I needed to insert the media-query block 17 times. For each style, I wanted to look different when dark. Here’s <a href="https://github.com/andrey-lepekhin/andrey-lepekhin.github.io/commit/b54227499b737f5042d151f60c39416e88c9ba4b">the actual commit</a>.</p>
<p>I could instead place all dark mode styles in one such file, but then I’ll lose the handy separation these files provide. Also, in the future, if I change a light mode style, the proximity of the corresponding dark mode style will remind me to change it as well. Something I might otherwise forget to do and test for.
If there is a better way, please tell me about it.</p>
<p>So, that’s basically it: adding media-query styles and selecting particular colors that look good on dark background.</p>
<hr />
<p>Oh, while we’re on a technical topic, I want to boast a little. This site got a 100/100 performance score at Google’s <a href="https://pagespeed.web.dev">PageSpeed Insights</a> for desktop and 97 for mobile. I can mostly attribute it to Jekyll itself and a little bit to my tweaks using locally hosted fonts instead of Google Fonts’ CDN. I host this blog on <a href="https://pages.github.com/">GitHub Pages</a> for free, you can use the <a href="https://github.com/barryclark/jekyll-now">same GitHub Pages-friendly process</a> I’m using.</p>Andrey LepekhinI’ve implemented the dark theme for this blog. An endeavour for 2-3 hours that has visible results. A satisfying project, I invite everyone with a light-theme-only blog to try.3 links: future, present and uncomfortable2020-02-24T00:00:00+02:002020-02-24T00:00:00+02:00https://www.lepekhin.com/2020/02/24/3-links-future-present-and-uncomfortable<p>A short post with 10 thought-provoking predictions for this decade (e.g. decentralized internet and the world run by Millennials)
<a href="https://avc.com/2020/01/what-will-happen-in-the-2020s/">What Will Happen In The 2020s</a> by <em>Fred Wilson</em></p>
<hr />
<p>China leading the way with more ways to use QR codes than you can shake a stick at (e.g. meet and flirt online at bars): <a href="https://a16z.com/2019/10/30/the-power-of-qr-codes/">Remember QR Codes? They’re More Powerful Than You Think</a> by <em>Avery Segal</em>.</p>
<hr />
<p>I love awkward questions, they make one vulnerable and create a possibility for closeness and/or satisfaction of one’s needs. Here is a paper that helps stop avoiding sensitive questions.
<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3437468">I Didn’t Want to Offend You: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions</a> by <em>Einav Hart</em>, <em>Eric VanEpps</em>, and <em>Maurice E. Schweitzer</em>
A quote from the abstract:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Across three pilot studies and four experimental studies, we demonstrate that individuals avoid asking sensitive questions, because they fear making others uncomfortable and because of impression management concerns. We demonstrate that this aversion to asking sensitive questions is both costly and misguided.</p>
</blockquote>Andrey LepekhinA short post with 10 thought-provoking predictions for this decade (e.g. decentralized internet and the world run by Millennials) What Will Happen In The 2020s by Fred WilsonPitfalls of our simplistic moral evaluation system2020-02-23T00:00:00+02:002020-02-23T00:00:00+02:00https://www.lepekhin.com/2020/02/23/Pitfalls-of-our-simplistic-moral-evaluation-system<p>In <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/M2LWXsJxKS626QNEA/the-trouble-with-good">The Trouble With “Good”</a> <em>Scott Alexander</em> describes some problems that stem from our evolutionary-induced simplistic good-bad evaluation system (emotivism), that meshes moral beliefs with facts and personal preferences.<br />
I’ll only paste one quote as the post itself has just the right composition to be clear enough while not being too long.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So this is one problem: the inputs to our mental karma system aren’t always closely related to the real merit of a person/thing/idea.</p>
<p>Another problem: our interpretation of whether to upvote or downvote something depends on how many upvotes or downvotes it already has. […]</p>
<p>Another problem: we are tempted to assign everything about a concept the same score. Eliezer Yudkowsky currently has 2486 karma. How good is Eliezer at philosophy? Apparently somewhere around the level it would take to get 2486 karma. How much does he know about economics? Somewhere around level 2486 would be my guess. How well does he write? Probably well enough to get 2486 karma. Translated into mental terms, this looks like the Halo Effect. Yes, we can pick apart our analyses in greater detail; having read Eliezer’s posts, I know he’s better at some things than others. But that 2486 number is going to cause anchoring-and-adjustment issues even so.</p>
<p>But the big problem, the world-breaking problem, is that sticking everything good and bad about something into one big bin and making decisions based on whether it’s a net positive or a net negative is an unsubtle, leaky heuristic completely unsuitable for complicated problems.</p>
</blockquote>Andrey LepekhinIn The Trouble With “Good” Scott Alexander describes some problems that stem from our evolutionary-induced simplistic good-bad evaluation system (emotivism), that meshes moral beliefs with facts and personal preferences. I’ll only paste one quote as the post itself has just the right composition to be clear enough while not being too long.Simple status games2020-02-23T00:00:00+02:002020-02-23T00:00:00+02:00https://www.lepekhin.com/2020/02/23/Simple-status-games<p><a href="https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/who-wants-to-play-the-status-game-agnes-callard/">Who Wants to Play the Status Game?</a> by <em>Agnes Callard</em></p>
<p>I like to think that I see a hidden meaning, a secret game being played behind the curtains of everyday interactions. Naturally, I like articles about signalling and social games.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A player of the Importance Game tries to ascend high enough to reach for something that will set her above her interlocutor, a player of the Leveling Game reaches down low enough to hit common ground. The former needs to signal enough power to establish a hierarchy; the latter enough powerlessness to establish equality.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In an academic context, I’ve noticed that complaining about how busy one is hits a sweet spot of oppression—I cannot manage my life!—and importance—because I am so in demand! When you’re playing with a master, it can be hard to tell which game you’re in.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ending of the article is too unclear for my taste, but then I’m no philosopher.</p>Andrey LepekhinWho Wants to Play the Status Game? by Agnes CallardSome programming idioms explained2020-02-23T00:00:00+02:002020-02-23T00:00:00+02:00https://www.lepekhin.com/2020/02/23/Some-programming-idioms-explained<p>As a perpetually novice programmer, it was nice to see the reasons behind some popular idioms explained. <!--excerpt_separator-->Like why “Maintainability counts” or “Avoid package level state”.
Also this way of seeing developer work as preparation for inevitable change:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Change is the name of the game we’re in. What we do as programmers is manage change. When we do that well we call it design, or architecture. When we do it badly we call it technical debt, or legacy code.</p>
<p>If you are writing a program that works perfectly, one time, for one fixed set of inputs then nobody cares if the code is good or bad because ultimately the output of the program is all the business cares about.</p>
<p>But this is never true. Software has bugs, requirements change, inputs change, and very few programs are written solely to be executed once, thus your program will change over time. Maybe it’s you who’ll be tasked with this, more likely it will be someone else, but someone has to change that code. Someone has to maintain that code.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://dave.cheney.net/2020/02/23/the-zen-of-go">The Zen of Go</a> by <em>Dave Cheney</em></p>Andrey LepekhinAs a perpetually novice programmer, it was nice to see the reasons behind some popular idioms explained.Rent downtown to reduce your commute time — conquering a frugal mindset2019-11-26T00:00:00+02:002019-11-26T00:00:00+02:00https://www.lepekhin.com/2019/11/26/Rent-downtown-to-reduce-your-commute-time-conquering-a-frugal-mindset<p>Daily living and commuting conditions have an immense impact on your wellbeing. This post is for people who live in a metropolitan area, have enough income to rent a place for themselves (with flatmates if needed), don’t have commitments that prohibit them from moving and, most importantly, are <strong>not satisfied with their commute time</strong>.</p>
<p>I want to describe why I came to a decision to rent a pricey apartment downtown. This is part of a <a href="https://www.lepekhin.com/tag/renting/">series</a> where I share my tools and thinking processes towards renting: from changing your mindset to apartment research to communication with your landlord.</p>
<h2 id="rationale">Rationale</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Every extra minute of commute time reduces job satisfaction, reduces leisure time satisfaction, increases strain and reduces mental health.<br />
[…]<br />
An additional 10 minutes (each way) of commuting time is associated with the equivalent effect on job satisfaction as a 19% reduction in gross personal income.</p>
<p><a href="https://travelbehaviour.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/caw-summaryreport-onlineedition.pdf">Study</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I used to think of my 1h 10m (each way) commute as a needed tribute to adult values, something most of my college friends did (sometimes with much longer travel times), something inescapable. But studies similar to the one cited above and my own happiness being affected due to the mediocre use of these precious hours brought me to a realization: I want to live closer to the office.</p>
<h2 id="being-thrifty-can-be-an-issue">Being thrifty can be an issue</h2>
<p>There was one problem though — it was prohibitively expensive. Technically, I could afford it, but habituated with cheap living while spending less than half of my income, I just could not justify such an expense. The thought of the yearly cost of rent in the city filled my frugal self with outrage. <em>That’s an unfair price!</em> — I thought.</p>
<p>Could I be wrong? What if those hours spent commuting really are <em>more</em> valuable than even such a sizeable chunk of money?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In a <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/05/reclaim-your-commute">2017 article published in <em>Harvard Business Review</em></a>, researchers discussed the results of a study they conducted where they asked subjects to choose between two jobs:<br />
● Job #1 had a 50-minute round-trip commute and paid $67,000 a year.<br />
● Job #2 had a 20-minute round-trip commute and paid $64,000 a year.<br />
84% of the participants in the study selected job #1, as researchers wrote, “expressing a willingness to forfeit one hour each workday to their commute—250 hours per year—in exchange for just $3,000. That’s $12 an hour of commuting time—less than half their hourly rate at work!”<br />
They concluded that people were unable to “fully appreciate the psychological, emotional, and physical costs of longer travel times.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90381845/how-to-make-your-long-commute-less-stressful">How to make your long commute less stressful</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, how to overcome this bias and</p>
<h2 id="measure-an-adequate-cost-of-time-spent-commuting">Measure an adequate cost of time spent commuting</h2>
<p>My first approach was to answer a hypothetical like: “<em>After 9 hours at work, Mr. Burns wants me to do some menial work for another hour. How much does he have to pay for me to be satisfied with this hour?</em>”<br />
That provided an amount of 12 000 ₽<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> as a result. I had to revise the question immediately as the real situation was not so one-sided:<br />
I enjoy reading on the tube, and I don’t mind a brisk walk of up to 20 minutes. So, the question had to change.</p>
<p>Turns out I was already asking myself a useful question before every Uber drive: “Am I willing to pay this amount for speed and comfort instead of using public transport?” <br />
With that, I realized a better question to ask before commuting is: “<strong>How much am I willing to pay right now to be home/at work in 20 minutes?</strong>” I answered this question every day for two weeks and got a variety of results:</p>
<p><img src="https://www.lepekhin.com/images/2019-11-26-table-how-much-to-fly-to-work.png" alt="The table with varying answers for each morning and evening of 10 weekdays, with median calculated as 1350 rub." />
Some days I dreaded the tube, and some days it was more… acceptable.</p>
<p>The median price I was willing to pay per 50 commute-free minutes was nine times lower than the sum that my initial question provided. That’s 1350*60/50 = 1620 ₽ per hour of commute time saved. That applies to work days only, so to compare apples with apples, I’ll smear that number throughout an average month = 1620*22/30 = 1188 ₽. Let’s see what it will get me:</p>
<p><img src="https://www.lepekhin.com/images/2019-11-26-Moscow_rent_cost_map.png" alt="Heat map of rent prices of Moscow. Higher prices in city center" />
The price of renting is higher the closer you are to downtown, which is filled with offices and historic places.</p>
<p>I’ve made a table to calculate the daily cost of time saved on commuting and the daily cost of rent in the corresponding neighborhoods<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.lepekhin.com/images/2019-11-26-table-daily-rent-vs-cost-of-saved-time.png" alt="The table which shows said calculations. Daily cost of saved free time minus cost of rent in the area of 20 minutes commute is positive" /></p>
<p>The positive numbers in the last column mean that the price I’m willing to pay for a lesser commute is higher than the rent cost in the area that will provide said commute. What do you know, my frugal self <em>can</em> afford to live closer to the office! :tada:<br />
…And that’s not even counting the opportunity costs of a long commute!</p>
<p>With that, making a decision is easy, I’m going to rent downtown!<sup id="fnref:3" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote" rel="footnote">3</a></sup> The next post is about how to approach selecting a neighborhood within an acceptable distance from your office.</p>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>That’s around $200. Hereafter, prices will be in Rubles since I’m in Moscow, but it shouldn’t matter. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>There are two important assumptions made for simplification here: 1) These two weeks are not outliers 2) Each minute of commute costs exactly the same. That’s somehow irrelevant as the equilibrium between daily rent and the cost of saved time was achieved exactly at the 20-minute mark - the time I asked about in the previous question. Happy coincidence. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Something that has also helped my paradigm shift and start this whole process was an honest acceptance of the fact that yes, rent is expensive, it may not seem fair, but it’s a seller’s market and my outrage will not change this one bit. <a href="#fnref:3" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Andrey LepekhinDaily living and commuting conditions have an immense impact on your wellbeing. This post is for people who live in a metropolitan area, have enough income to rent a place for themselves (with flatmates if needed), don’t have commitments that prohibit them from moving and, most importantly, are not satisfied with their commute time.Intricacies of day-night and season cycles2019-11-10T00:00:00+02:002019-11-10T00:00:00+02:00https://www.lepekhin.com/2019/11/10/Intricacies-of-day-night-and-season-cycles<p>Much more than you wanted to know about day-night and season cycles.<br />
Check out this beautifully implemented interactive page <a href="https://ciechanow.ski/earth-and-sun/">Earth and Sun</a> by <em>Bartosz Ciechanowski</em>.</p>Andrey LepekhinMuch more than you wanted to know about day-night and season cycles. Check out this beautifully implemented interactive page Earth and Sun by Bartosz Ciechanowski.Sometimes it’s really hard to measure the effects of online ads2019-11-09T00:00:00+02:002019-11-09T00:00:00+02:00https://www.lepekhin.com/2019/11/09/Sometimes-its-really-hard-to-measure-the-effects-of-online-ads<p>Or as <em>Jesse Frederik</em> and <em>Maurits Martijn</em> named it <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13228924500-22d5fd24">The new dot com bubble is here: it’s called online advertising </a>.</p>
<p>It goes in length describing the case where eBay stopped paying $20mln annually for buying brand-name search ads from Google and did not see any visitors decrease. Then finishes with 13 studies of Facebook ad campaigns, in 10 of which the vast majority of sales increases were attributed to selection effect (e.g. customers were already looking for Nike shoes but went to nike.com through a Google ad).</p>
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<p>Advertising rationally, the way it’s described in economic textbooks, is unattainable. Then how do advertisers know what they ought to pay for ads?<br />
“Yeah, basically they don’t know,” Lewis said in one of those throw-away clauses that kept running through my head for days after.</p>
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<p>The article stops there, but I’ll have to argue that most of the examples apply to big brand companies. While a startup with a proven niche and known unit economics can and should still benefit from ads. Just not the brand-name ones, but the ones that help a user to discover their service (e.g. ‘cooked meals delivery’).</p>Andrey LepekhinOr as Jesse Frederik and Maurits Martijn named it The new dot com bubble is here: it’s called online advertising .