It is often the case, that playing offense requires less thought than playing defense. In either case, you do have to think about what the other side is going to want to do, but it is still related to your plan, your offensive moves. On defense, you must simultaneously keep in mind two plans, yours and the opponent's. If you think only of the opponent's, you will never see (or take) your opportunity to turn the tables, and thus you can never win. But the attacker can assume, most of the time, that what the opponent is doing is trying to block their own plan. This requires the attacker to only think about one plan; their own (and how the opponent will try to stop it). Attacking is simpler, mentally, than defending. Until, of course, the moment when the defender is able to turn the tables, which is virtually always a much greater surprise to the attacker than to their opponent, because the defender was aware of both plans, whereas the attacker usually was only thinking of their own until that moment.

When a sinusoid is racing an exponential, it will lose eventually, no matter how big the head start. For example, the price of electricity generated by fossil fuels, and the price of electricity generated by solar panels.

In praise of tipping:

• one of the only "gift economy" aspects left in the U.S., where so much else has been made into a purely market-based process
• the beneficial (mental) impact on the tipper is just as important, or more so, than the (economic) impact on the one being tipped
• replacing tipping with an equal amount of pay raise is not as good
• classical economics really does not understand tipping, and would never predict its existence or viability from first principles

Pool noodles are an apt metaphor for the problems with the modern economy. It gives the appearance of added utility, but in fact you are not even slightly happier. On the other hand, if you don't have it and want it, you are unhappy when you wouldn't have been, had it not been invented. Craving is easier to create than utility.

The discomfort of progressives and libertarians with hierarchy (see Jonathan Haidt, et al) is reflected in their tendency to have fewer children. The importance of loyalty, authority, and sacredness is greater when there are parents who must be obeyed, children who you must sacrifice your own present for the future of, and spouses who you must not cheat on lest the basis of the family arrangement be endangered. This is why conservatives are reproducing more successfully than progressives, while libertarians are not (even though they are often on the political right on economic issues).

Don't use a rocket ship to go get your groceries, even if you are a rocket scientist.

Beware institutions, ideas, and people who are in a death spiral, even if you mean them no harm. They are desperate, irrational, and unpredictable, and likely casting about for someone to blame.

The early 21st century is Peak Cat.