Tech — Work — Ramblings

by Mike Kalvas

I see you're not using JavaScript (which is awesome!) on one of my pages that uses it to provide a better experience. If you see something not working right, please let me know. My site should work exactly the same without it apart from any exceptions noted here.

I use prism.min.js to do syntax highlighting. It clocks in at 23kb total in size. Since the majority of the writing I do involves coding, I personally find this to be a worthwhile trade off. If you choose to keep this disabled, rest assured, the code examples are still there, they just may have some extra whitespace and obviously no syntax highlighting.

I do no tracking at all and am a zealot about keeping my pages as small as possible. If you're reading a page of mine that transfers more than about 250kb over the wire (including my most gratuitous indulgence — fonts) I've messed up.

So, if you'd like to have a slightly richer experience, consider enabling javascript for my site and I promise your trust won't be misplaced.

202402251224 Delays are ubiquitous

In accordance with 202402251213 Hofstadter's Law, delays are everywhere. In 202203210833 Systems thinking, all stocks are a form of delay because 202402171455 Feedback can only affect future behavior. When modeling a system it is important to remember that 202203210832 Models are necessarily incomplete including the element of time. We may see a neat system of supply and demand, but even rational actors will exhibit "irrational" behavior — i.e. behavior that they would not take without delayed information (202402251232 Reality has bounded rationality) — in the presence of feedback delays.¹

Meadows, D. H., & Wright, D. (2011). Thinking in systems: A primer (Nachdr.) (pp. 10. Chelsea Green Pub. ↩