TryContra Events

While the effective altruism movement started out with a strong focus on donations, over time it has shifted more towards careers. If you're trying to understand how levels of commitment have changed over time, or you're just trying to get a ballpark estimate of the financial opportunity cost of choosing a lower paying career, this can be quite...

Sometimes it makes sense for sites want to treat things differently based on whether the user has seen them. For example, I like sites that highlight new comments (ex: EA Forum and LessWrong) and I'd like them even better if comments didn't lose their "highlighted" status in cases where I hadn't scrolled them into view. In writing my Mastodon...

As in past years the Boston EA/LW community is putting together a secular solstice celebration. It's a bit of a strange thing, somewhat like an atheist church service, with lots of group singing on silly and serious topics. For some of the flavor, see my 2022, 2019, and 2018 retrospectives. This year it's a bit late: 2023-12-30. More...

Portable chargers are great and underrated. For $20 you can get a little box that can charge a phone ~5x or laptop ~1x. [1] You can pay a bit more for one with built-in wall-charging and cables. It's great throwing one in my backpack and knowing I don't have to ration or worry, especially when traveling. And if the kids tablets are running...

I spent the weekend doing demolition: I'm redoing the first floor bathroom. I previously did the ones on the second and third floors, so I now feel like I have a bit of practice. Before I did my first one I read a bit about how to do it and what tools people tend to use, and while I don't remember any of it being wrong exactly, I know how much...