Petter Joelson

The public secret of anxiety

Only a small minority of people (13%) report living with high levels of good mental health.
 — Surviving or Thriving? The state of the UK’s mental health

Today’s public secret is that everyone is anxious.
 — We Are All Very Anxious, Plan C

Work less, produce more

According to tradition, a programmer’s productivity was measured by “lines of code” in the old days. That is, the amount of code you wrote.

Anyone remotely interested in programming understands how crazy that is, because the less code you need to write to make…

Why referendums don’t work

In the Colombian referendum last year, people got the options of “yes” or “no” to a thick pile of paper outlining the exact conditions for peace with the Farc guerilla. The result was even, but the no side won.