Recursions on LessOnline 2025

Published on July 29, 2025 12:09 AM GMT

Meta: Last year I wrote a retrospective of the firstLessOnline. This year, several people told me that they’d readit and found it helpful/interesting/entertaining, so I figure I’ll do itagain. It is once again later and longer than I wished. I’m going to trynot to repeat myself unnecessarily, so the previous post may still be ofinterest.

Also I don’t know what tags belong on LO-related posts. Mods pleaseadvise if you happen to see this.

Ideas bouncing freely, feeling less alone
Comfortably confused, in a space that feels like home
-- Fooming Shoggoths, Right Here

At the first iteration of LessOnline -- last year, 2024 -- I didn'tknow, when I left home, if it would be worth it. I didn’t know the city,I didn’t know the venue, I didn’t know the people as any more thanbylines on essays. I wasn’t sure I was in the Right Place until I leftthe Lighthaven dorm, and found a group playing Zendo in the courtyard.

This year was different. I knew what I was getting into. I knew I’d beamong a tribe I recognized as mine. I knew I could count on friendlyfaces. I knew there would be an incredibly adorable dog. And I had amap a little closer to the territory:

I even had a tentative list of things I wanted to do while there. Theonly thing I didn’t know is if the event would live up to its firstyear.^[1] LO2025 almost didn’t happen, and LO2024 was a tough act tofollow.

This time, when I left the dorm on Friday, I found no Zendo group. Andno reprise of the (magnificent) 2024 puzzle hunt.^[2] And Icouldn’t find Leo the Adorable Dog. I did run into friends from theprevious year, but still, I felt discouraged, a little.

So when I found the Zendo box in an alcove a few days later, I took itout to the courtyard, grabbed a few people who either recognized thegame or were interested, and did my best to teach the newcomers to play.Did you know that you can just do things?

I can’t remember where I first heard that phrase, but it became a memeover the course of the week. Officially, the theme of LessOnline 2025was Original Seeing. In practice, the motif I kept running intowas: did you know that you can just do things?

(Well, not just anything. I couldn’t summon Leo the Adorable Dog. Orcould I? He belongs to one of the maintenance guys; maybe I could coaxhim out by breaking something? That’s probably not something one shouldJust Do, but I’m pretty sure P(doom) is inversely proportional to theamount of Leo in my field of view, so maybe I could justify it. Did youknow that you can just do things?)

Events

I’m not sure if the schedule is accessible by non-attendees. Just incase, here it is. Like last year, anyone could put anythingon the schedule they felt like running.^[3]

But.

At the opening ceremonies, Ben Pace had a pointed bit of advice: Don’tgo to scheduled sessions. All the interesting stuff happens in smallconversations in the alcoves or around the firepits.

I have mixed feelings about this. He’s not wrong; most of the value doesseem to come from spontaneous conversations and activities (one thatstuck in my head was a group playing/singing HaMephorash inAumann on random instruments^[4], which is the nerdiest thingever and I loved it). But the word “spontaneous” is doing a lot ofwork, there. Lectures serve an important role as conversation starters.They bring together people with even-more-finely-filtered interests andgive them an excuse to talk about their Thing. And, outside of that,lots of alcove chats start as “what interesting sessions haveyou been to?”

I got a lot out of the GLP-1 discussion group (both as validation of myexperiences with them, and as practical advice) that I don’t think Icould have gotten without a critical mass of patients in one place.

Gene Smith’s session on polygenic embryo screening was fascinating, andprobably useful to anyone who wants kids. I’m not sure how much of it isintended to be public information so I’m holding off on details.

The session on chip-fab mechanics was great. I took one look at AMHS andthought “that is awesome”, and now it’s on my list of techs to look forjobs working on (presumably on the programming end, since someone has toprogram them and that’s my field). The first thing it made me think ofwas Factorio’s rail systems, which I enjoy the hell out of messingwith.^[5]

Later in the week, Simon tried something interesting: Abring-your-own-lightning-talk session with the prompt “we’ve been hereall week and we have not been wrong enough; so bring your mostcontroversial take”. Then, after everyone had given their talks: “Findthe person whose take you found the Most Wrong and go tell them why.Right now.” I couldn’t enjoy this properly for Reasons I’ll get intofurther down, but I liked the idea, and a piece of it stuck in my head:someone speaking off the cuff and reaching for the phrase “computationsaving, umm...h-word...” and half the audience shouting “heuristic” inresponse.

...and yeah, this isn’t the only tribe where that word is commonvocabulary, but it felt like a my-tribe moment anyway.

Chesed’s “How to be Hotter (for men who like ladies)” session waspredictably full, and even more horrifying than last year’s Hot Seat. Intrying to describe it, the phrase I came up with is “legible-izedtranslations of visceral reactions”, which is a mouthful, but I can’tthink of anything more concise. It sounded afterward like they weren’tsure it was worth doing again. For the record, it is. Knowably-frankanalysis of intuitive reactions is both priceless and almost impossibleto get out of people; that degree of reflectivity is rare, and awillingness to share it in the moment even rarer.^[6] Not to mention,volunteering under such circumstances ("note that we are not telling youwhat you are volunteering for") is sufficiently terrifying that anyonewho does so can legitimately tell themselves later: “I have in fact donethings scarier than this.”

(I would say that anyone who got on that stage had testicles measured inastronomical units, but not all volunteers had testicles, so I willinstead say they had huge guts.)

Keltan’s Australian Improv Games session was fun even though I couldn’tparticipate properly. At least one person stayed in character whileleaving, which stuck in my head for some reason. And I’m told that whena duplicate ended up on the schedule by accident, the people that showedup made it work anyway.

Scott’s “Forecasting Transformative AI Using the Book of Revelation” wasexactly what you would expect, and I really hope he makes it into apost.

There were plenty of others I wanted to go to, but couldn’t because theywere full or conflicted with something else or whatever. The twohalf-misses that most stuck in my head were Patrick & Zvi on navigatingmoral mazes (which I only caught part of), and a talk on longevityresearch and genetic engineering(?) during Manifest (of which I onlycaught a piece from the door).

Quiethaven

The most interesting “new” thing this year was Quiethaven -- an hour ofSunday’s schedule blocked for venue-wide silence, to get some writingdone, or just some thinking. Enforced by an army of staff armed withspraybottles.^[7]

I liked the quiethaven concept, a lot. It gave me space to defragment mythoughts without FOMO rearing its head. Just as coming to LessOnline inthe first place silences Intrusive Life in a way that I get a lot outof, Quiethaven silenced Intrusive FOMO in a way I found beneficial.

Not everyone agreed; I noticed at least one person in the chatdisapproving. Presumably where there is one discontent attendee thereare more. But I liked it.

Writehaven

On the digital end, last year there was a “Names, Faces, andConversations” shared google doc -- essentially a list of attendeeprofiles, intended to help people with shared interests find eachother -- and a separate, homerolled schedule site, that anyone couldpost sessions on. This year the schedule site expanded to incorporatethe profiles, added messaging and chat, and was renamed Writehaven. Iget the impression that it was hacked together at the last minute, andthe team rolled out updates to it throughout the week.

This was:

An impressive feat of engineering under time pressure.A javascript monstrosity featuring just about everything I hate aboutmodern websites.

The developers should probably ignore #2, because I Am A Crank AboutThis.^[8] I am net thumbs-up on Writehaven anyway, simply because itwasn’t Discord et al, about which I have an entirely different set ofunreasonable ideological complaints.

I do wonder if self-hosted Mastodon and/or Matrix would suit the usecase.

Fooming Shoggoth

The Fooming Shoggoth concert topped my Cool Things list again.

This year featured new songs with original lyrics, in addition to lastyear’s songified adaptations of well-known blog posts, and there werebreaks to provide context for the new pieces. The breaks annoyed me abit, but I suppose they served their purpose. The playlist had a seriesof somber pieces in the middle, and we all sat down for that part tosuit the mood. It had a ritual-like feel that I enjoyed, and I wonder ifthe up/down/up structure was inspired by Secular Solstice events.

Most of the playlist is available on Suno. My favorite new pieceswere Dance of the Doomsday Clock and Right Here^[9]. Themost disappointing absences from last year were Spaghetti Westernand Five Thousand Years. In future years I’d like to see I HaveSeen the Tops of Clouds; it’s been songified before forSecular Solstice, but I’ve never been to an SS event. I alsowonder if A Fable of Science and Politics might be amenable toadaptation, with a verse for each character or something.

(I note with irritation that Suno makes it highly non-obvious how toget music out of it to listen in one’s preferred player. That annoyedme enough that I wrote a program to do so. It might be of useto the organizers, since I remember some awkwardness associated withtransitions between songs hosted on Suno vs. YouTube or whatever.)

At some point I pulled out my phone to record a few minutes to show mypartner. The concert is more relevant to her interests than most ofLessOnline, and she missed both years due to scheduling conflicts, and Iwanted her to be able to see some of it. While doing a slow 360 of thecrowd, a realization struck me:

I was the only one with a phone out.

I have not seen that at any other concert in at least ten years, and Ihad several thoughts simultaneously:

present

Put the damn thing away before I accidentally prompt others to changethat.

...So I did.

Miscellaneous observations

I mentioned last year that overcrowding is an attractor state forconventions. Unsurprisingly, Lighthaven was noticeably more crowded thisyear. I don’t think it’s entirely a matter of space; there were plentyof periods where e.g. Rat Park or Bayes Ground were mostly empty whileAumann Hall and the courtyard (does it have a name?) were uncomfortablypacked. I’m not sure what to suggest to get people to spread out more.

There were noticeably more women this year. I am not sure how much ofthat was “more women coming of their own accord” vs “more peoplebringing their partners” vs “more and/or better-passing trans women”.Others seemed of the opinion that it was mostly the partners thing.

The random donor(?) object-dedications dotting the campus ranged fromhilarious to touching. My favorite was the dedication of the mirror inBayes Hall, which was written on the post across from the mirror insuch a way that it could only be read in the mirror.

I had a conversation somewhere in there that seemed worth recording. Ikeep having this thought, thinking that it’s relevant to local interestsand I should write it up properly, but have yet to do so:

A: I’m thinking of doing (something slightly risky involving the   firepits).B: Uh, make sure someone can see a fire extinguisher before you try   that, just in case.C: I don’t see one, but I know where one is.Me: No, B is right, you need to see it. Otherwise you’ll find that it’s    been moved or something. Any part of a dangerous system that you are    not currently observing should be assumed to be in its least    convenient possible state.

That last part seems relevant to security mindset, among other things.

Some things I did...and didn’t do

Meta: The next few sections are more about me than about the show;feel free to skim, or skip down to Manifest or The Complaints RomanticSolid.

For an event with a motif of “did you know you can just do things”, Ididn’t Do nearly as much Thing as last year. I don’t blame myself forthat as much as I might; there were Reasons.

I wanted to. At minimum I wanted to run sessions. I wasn’t sure exactlywhat sessions, but I knew I wanted to run something. To contribute.To push myself. I didn’t fly all the way across the country to play onEasy Mode.

(I also wanted to investigate job openings -- I got laid off late lastyear, and the crowd here is Relevant To My Search -- but I tried not tobe aggressive about it, and the few potential contacts I did find werediscouragingly silent in the aftermath. Either I was moreirritating than I thought, or I was less memorable than I thought, ornobody checks email anymore.)

I caught up with most of the people I met last year. Most of them stillrecognized me. I met at least a few new people, though the list isshorter and less complete this year, again for Reasons:

Hugelyappreciated

I forgotto write down despite talking to you multiple times during the week,sorry about that

I know I missed several; sorry if you’re among them.

The subgroup I’ve fallen in with, last year and this year, is mostlymuch younger than me -- I think partly a consequence of the event as awhole skewing younger, partly an artifact of my local social graphpartially extending through Isabella and Keltan (who are in their 20s).I’m not sure how to feel about that, but it occurs to me that mostthings that are happening, in the Mr. Jones sense, are done by theyoung; if I refuse to accept stagnation, then in the long run I’m goingto end up in younger crowds.

Still. It bothers me that I’m now old enough to form a generation’s gapbetween general adulthood and where I am. Those of you in the longevityfield...I won’t say “work faster”, I’m sure you’re working as fast asyou can, but sometimes I metaphorically hold my breath and hope thatit’s fast enough for me and my loved ones. And that you get there beforemy brain malfunctions too badly.

I met Gwern (of whose corpus I’ve read a non-trivial amount)and Patrick McKenzie (of whose I haven’t, though that willprobably change now). Also Anna Salamon, who I haven’t read much ofbut a couple of her posts stuck in my head many years ago. I think atthis point I’ve at least spoken to everyone I’ve extensively read exceptZvi.

I tried to volunteer at Chesed’s session on Hard Mode grounds, but theyran out of time before my name came up. Maybe next year.

I got to play Go. I got to lose at an even game of Go, which hasn’thappened in a long time, albeit mainly for lack of opponents.

(not my position. But I bet someone recognizes it. I laid it out onthe board one day and left it that way to see who would notice, but Idon’t know if anyone did)

Sunday felt like a turning point, sort of. Kruti finally badgered meenough to get me to commit to running a session -- a rerun of lastyear’s Video Game Archaeology, which was well-received butill-attended. And someone else -- I think Simon -- convinced me to do aspinoff of last year’s Major Psychotic Hatreds talk, this time rantingabout walled-garden communication services. Because if I’m going to dopublic speaking, I might as well pitch my crankeries.

After the concert some...other things happened. Sometimes you roll anatural 20 on your testicular fortitude check, and you end up playingHot Seat in a dark sauna bus with eight other people (mostly naked), oneof the highest-paid escorts in the world (fully clothed), and all thesexual energy of the Champaign Room. It costs you tendollars and two first-degree burns, and you leave out the detailsbecause it makes less sense in context.

(I still owe someone that ten dollars. Noting it here in the hopes I’llremember next year.)^[10]

I learned two things from that experience:

One, I have rather more social courage than I ever realized, at leastwhen heavily caffeinated.

Two, I’m not sure I endorse what I do with that courage. I’ve known forsome time that stimulants make me more social, but the gap betweenovercaffeinated me and baseline me seems much wider than I realized.That was awesome, but I don’t think I want to have done it again. Whichis different in an important way from merely not wanting to do it again.

...next year’s overcaffeinated me might disagree. But I will probablytake that possibility into account when deciding just how much diet coketo drink. One ought to at least try to predict the actions of one’sself-modified self before self-modifying. After all, I’m stillresponsible for them.

Anyway.

That was the end of LessOnline proper, but not the end of the event as awhole. Manifest was the next weekend, I was staying through it, and onceagain there was going to be a “summer camp” to fill the time between thetwo events. I hadn’t done any talks yet, and I felt like I’d spent fartoo much time playing in Easy Mode -- notably, I’d spent much more timehanging out with people I already knew, who felt "safe", instead ofgetting outside my social comfort zone, (the last 24 hours notwithstanding) --but I wasn’t going home for another week. Plenty of time left.

Abort Summer Camp

The midweek activities were a little different. Instead of last year’spure unconference, Arbor ran a series of optional (additional-fee)workshops during the day, occupying the session halls. People had mixedopinions on the change. Mine is that it’s an understandable decision (inthat it probably helps keep the lights on at Lighthaven), but I’d preferat least one of the halls remain designated for spontaneity.

Of the workshops on offer, I was most interested in the Security Mindsetone, but I hesitated to commit to it. Last year I tried the quantbootcamp, and while it was great, the combination of that and all theother stuff I was trying to do burned me out. I could do a workshop,but I wouldn’t be able to do anything else.

The decision was taken out of my hands. I woke up Monday feeling likehell. I’d sunburned myself, regular burned myself, I was in caffeinewithdrawal, and with the caffeine out of my system my brain starteddoing the fault-analysis doomloop that it often does after socialinteractions, but with vastly more fuel than usual.

Last year I burned out for a day; I suppose it’s not surprising the samehappened this time. Time to switch to Easy Mode. I spent most of the dayon necessities: did my laundry, found my missing underwear and shoes,and dealt with some issues with my arbor and manifest registration.

Some things helped. Simon persuaded me to join Isaac’s wrestling sessionin Rat Park. Some people were playing music and singing by Eigenhallaround the time my social module crashed; I would’ve requested Rat Filkof some kind (is that a term? it should be) if I’d been verbal enough todo so. Ricki roped me into joining the security mindset course’s betasession, which was entertaining...actually that might have been theprevious night, I'm not sure. Family sent cat pictures from home. Catpictures make everything better.

The thing that helped the most, though, was a drive-by conversation inAumann. A mathematician I didn’t know was pontificating about logicproblems involving a countably-infinite number of people wearing acountably-infinite number of hats.^[11] Afterward, the guy next to mecommented “I feel like I'm in a Bay Area House Party post.” Itmade me feel better, and reminded me that my malaise was withdrawal andrecuperation, not a reevaluation of the experience in general.

By Tuesday evening I felt human again. Good; I hate feeling like I havea very short time to be here and I’m losing 1-2 days on physical issues.Time to go back to Hard Mode. First step is to break out of my comfortzone; I started by joining firepit groups composed of people I wasn’tfamiliar with.

As I went to bed Tuesday night, I noticed a mild sore throat, which Itried not to worry about; I’d had a false alarm on day 1.

At 4am it was still there.

At 10am I woke up sick. Fuck.^[12]

Reasons

There exist people who can still function when they have a cold. I amnot one of them.

A couple of days prior, Emma^[13] had stayed home for a day for a sorethroat, to avoid spreading it. It went away, but I remember thanking herat the time. Someone else tested positive for Covid, outright leftthe event, and notified the chat for contact-tracing purposes -- whichis way above and beyond what I’d expect anywhere else. It’s a uniquething about this community, that we’ll take costly actions to ActuallyContain illness, as is notably distinct from Being Responsible aboutillness. We try to play the “avoid spreading illness” game wherenormal people play the “avoid blamable illness-spreading actions” game.

...all of which was easy to say when I wasn’t the sick one. Well. Timeto live up to my own standards, I suppose.

I couldn’t stay home; home was 2500 miles away. But I did try to stayoutdoors, and wear a mask indoors, and explicitly warn anyone I spoke tofor more than a few moments that I was an infection vector. Most peopledidn’t mind as long as I was outside, but a few excused themselves,which makes me feel like the effort was worth it. I also abandoned a fewsessions that were too packed to trust the mask.

Thanks to the several people who provided meds of various kinds, orhelped me find them, or even just risked illness to keep talking to me.I’m ~~glad~~ less-dismayed that it happened this year, as opposed tolast year, because this year there were known friendly faces I couldlean on.

Something more annoying about the mask than I expected: I couldn’tsmile at people. I’m not used to worrying about my body languageday-to-day, because I barely interact with people, but if someonegreeted me in passing, I didn’t have any way to indicate “ah, I rememberyou and am pleased to see you.” (For some weird reason this kepthappening with Ricki specifically. I meant to say hello properly andoffer to throw spanners into your works again, but couldn’t. Also meantto give positive reinforcement to the person-I-don’t-know who stayed incharacter leaving improv, but that’s hard to do through a mask too.)

I notice that there’s no way to indicate whether a mask is meant toprotect oneself from others, or others from oneself. That seems worthfixing, but I’m not sure how. Tangentially related, the world coulduse a visible “interruptible or not” indicator. Hack Mode,like much illness, doesn’t look like anything from the outside.

I spent a lot of time, for the rest of the week, thinking aboutContributions, in almost-but-not-quite the sense Sarah Constantindescribes. Last year I felt like I contributed to theconvention, made it at least a little bit more than it would have beenwithout me -- through my talks, and my improvised sabotage, and even myreflection post was in some sense a contribution -- while this year Ifelt like a spectator, or at best a participant. Not by my will, I hadReasons, but still. Sick-me can’t just Do Things, and it was the DoingThings that made last year more than just a convention to me. This timethe best I could manage was running the timer at Chesed/Aella’s secondsession (badly, sorry), or the door at Australian Improv, and thosetasks were only possible because they required zero agency.

Last year’s LessOnline was one of the most motivating periods I’ve hadin a very long time, and I’ve thought off and on since then about why.Yes, it was awesome, but most of the ways it was awesome are things Iget in other contexts, without the same dramatic effects. In last year’spost, I wrote: “I never felt like I had something to say, but no one tosay it to that would care.” I still think that’s important, but after asecond dip in the river, I think there’s more to it: At LO, I getsocial reinforcement for Doing Things.

The two talks I did last year? Both of them happened because otherspushed me to do them. This year? Illness torpedoed my hopes of doing thesame, but absent the illness, what turned my vague intent into acommitment to Do Thing? Kruti and Simon bugging me about it.

Even people that don’t care about the same things I do -- as with myplanned comm-systems soapbox rant -- said I should absolutely do them.It was the most salient victim of last year’s harangue that mostconsistently urged me to do another. That wasn’t a reaction I expectedbut it made perfect sense in retrospect.

In real life, intentionally doing things is often hard, especially ifthey’re things you want to do but don’t need to do. AtLessOnline...suddenly, I find that I can just do things. Apparently, Ineed other people to remind me of that.^[14]

(and, well, I need to not be sick. That’s necessary too.)

Manifest

One of the things on my to-do list this year was to get a better read onManifest. Last year I didn’t attend, but I stayed late enough to minglewith the incoming crowd, and my first impressions were something like“techbros are apparently a real thing; I did not know that, and thisisn’t my crowd.” This year I decided to attend anyway, because brieffirst impressions could have been misleading. I figured I would just goout of my way to speak to a much wider sample.

...yeah, that plan doesn’t work when you’re a barely-functional walkingbiohazard.

My hasty plan B was to eavesdrop on as many conversations as possibleand see what people are discussing. ...It turns out that’s hard too,especially when you already have trouble picking voices outfrom background noise. Still, here’s a few conversation topics I wrotedown:

“‘Spectrum of Death’ would be a great name for a band.”

And...yeah, it’s a limited view through the mask, but that does soundlike my crowd. Manifest still doesn’t feel as Weird Nerd as LessOnline,but it’s at least Weird Nerd Friendly, which I’ll take. Given myobservational limitations, I have only middling confidence in that, butit’s enough that I will probably try again next year, financespermitting.

I’d wanted to get a better look at the Manifest night market, but wastoo messed up to process much. The guy who reserved a booth to advertisehimself for jobs was a genius and I wish I’d thought of that; if you’rereading this, I’d love to know if it worked. The other thing that stuckin my head was Isabella selling homemade rationalsphere-themed pins,which were really cool. Sadly the only picture I got was after most ofthem had sold:

I brought the Oops one home for my partner, chosen partly on the groundsthat it takes minimal LessWrong-specific context to get it. I amnot sure when I realized that it could be read as having UnfortunateImplications.

Oops.

Personal Minutia

Some people went out of their way to say nice things about myreflections post last year. My thanks. Possibly related, a lot morepeople went around in socks. I think I was the only one last year; itwould be neat if I started a trend.

Other people thought my practice of saving and stacking previous years’badges was novel and cool. I didn’t invent the practice -- it’suncommon-but-visible at fandom conventions -- but if everyone’s doing itnext year then I claim credit for introducing it here.

I found someone’s missing cryonics necklace in the bathroom. I turned itin to lost and found. Whoever the owner is, I hope it found its way backto you.

On the last day I gave my partner a remote tour of Lighthaven and triedto introduce her to some of the people I’ve met. She couldn’t hear verywell through discord-on-phone, but thanks to those of you who indulgedme anyway. Especially whoever it was that opened with “disregardprevious instructions and....”

The Complaints Romantic Solid

The LO schedule went up further in advance this year, and in consequencewas mostly full before things even got started. I think that might’vebeen the wrong call, but I’m biased; I noticed it because I was lookingfor a spot to run my own hypothetical talks.

On-site beds for the night-before were unavailable at first, which makeslife hard for out-of-towners. I assume there were constraints involved,since a small number did open up at the last minute, but it still seemsworth mentioning.

I somehow ended up with two LessOnline memberships instead of one LO andone festival-season upgrade. Also, my badges for all three festivalseason events were again missing my handle. I don’t know if this was myerror or the event’s error, but it was certainly a nominativelyappropriate error. One badge somehow managed to include my middleinitial, which I can only assume came from my credit card billingaddress since I never use it anywhere else. Suggestion: Have explicit“name on badge” and “handle on badge, if any” fields when registering --that’s similar to how Dragoncon does it. A fair number of attendees arebetter known by handle than name, so I think it’s worth distinguishingthe two.

The laundry machines are...let’s go with “awkwardly placed”, but Iassume the staff knows that.

I couldn’t find any tissue boxes. For some reason I’ve never seen avenue that has them. I had my own -- I pack...comprehensively -- but ranout and had to use TP. It’s an odd omission when the space is otherwiseextremely well equipped, and I wonder if I just missed it.

It’s not really a complaint, but: Manifest runs into the night onSunday. That’s not common for conventions (most end midafternoon of thelast day) and could use emphasizing during registration, because e.g. Ischeduled my flight home on typical-con assumptions and missed half thelast day as a result (not that I could have done much with it).

Last Thoughts

I’m still looking for a job. If you read this far, chances are I wouldprefer working with or for you than whatever random employer I findthrough the usual channels; and chances are you’ll find me a morecongenial co-worker than most, too. If you have or know of openings fora dev/ops hybrid who can also write ~~well~~ competently,contact me.

As for the convention, I had a pleasant surprise on the last day.

I finally found Leo!

Six more weeks of Doomslack!^[15]

This concerned me for reasons having nothing to do withLessOnline itself. I got laid off late last year, and the trip consumeda non-trivial chunk of my savings runway. I decided to go anyway in partbecause LO2024 had a dramatic effect on my motivation and well-being --but I didn’t know if that would be true a second time. ↩︎
Though the person(s?) behind last year’s hunt are runninga conference of their own in a couple months, and I amconfident based on the strength of 2024 that they will produce somethingawesome. ↩︎
I’ve since learned that this pattern has a name:unconferencing. ↩︎
For this and a few other things I have pictures I wanted toinclude, but I gather the LO organizers took pains to get permissionbefore publishing anyone’s photo, and I assume that’s for a reason soI’m adopting the same policy. ↩︎
A quote from another session that tickled me:“Factorio is better training for an ops research position than an actualops research degree.” Shame HR probably doesn’t see it that way, or I’dstart looking at those jobs too; I’ve played a lot of Factorio. ↩︎
Though the second session didn’t seem quite assolid as the first. I tentatively attribute that to something else Inoticed, that Aella seems better at self-reporting than anyone else, butshe spent most of the second session running the show rather than takingpart. I have more thoughts on the subject but this isn’t the right venueand I don’t want to devote too much post-space to it. ↩︎
Who later nailed Ben during the closing ceremonies, SuperBowl-style. “You gave me an army. Bad idea.” ↩︎
If your site completely breaks in the presence of javascriptblockers, your site is broken, full stop. Rant at 9, 10, and 23. ↩︎
With honorable mention to Friendly Fire’s demonstrationthat I can even like rap, under the right circumstances. Though that maynot surprise anyone who knows my musical-taste algorithm. ↩︎
Aella, you said this episode didn’t bother you, but if itcontributed to your post-con difficulties, I apologize. ↩︎
I am certain I’m butchering this description. ↩︎
Properly conjugated, this appears as a countably infiniteseries of additional fucks. ↩︎
That’s Tall Emma (who my brain appears to have also designatedSchrodinger’s Cow Emma, an identifier I predict she will find amusing),who I met last year; as opposed to Short Emma, who encouraged me tovolunteer at Chesed’s panel and I don’t think I saw again. ↩︎
The Less Wrong Study Hall once had a similar if less-intenseeffect for me. I’m told it might still be running? If so I might join itagain. ↩︎
Provisionally defined as the slack in the timelineuntil P(Doom) exceeds 1-ε. I’m unreasonably pleased with this coinage,someone please tell me how to express it mathematically. ↩︎

Discuss