# Recursions on LessOnline 2025

**Meta:** *Last year I [wrote a retrospective of the first
LessOnline][lo2024]. This year, several people told me that they’d read
it and found it helpful/interesting/entertaining, so I figure I’ll do it
again. It is once again later and longer than I wished. I’m going to try
not to repeat myself unnecessarily, so the previous post may still be of
interest.*

*Also I don’t know what tags belong on LO-related posts. Mods please
advise 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][rh]

At the first iteration of LessOnline -- last year, 2024 -- I didn't
know, 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 than
bylines on essays. I wasn’t sure I was in the Right Place until I left
the 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 be
among a tribe I recognized as mine. I knew I could count on friendly
faces. I knew there would be an *incredibly adorable* dog. And I had a
map a little closer to the territory:

![And yet not.](https://i.imgur.com/cMhyX5t.jpeg)

I even had a tentative list of things I wanted to do while there. The
only thing I didn’t know is if the event would live up to its first
year.[^job] LO2025 almost didn’t happen, and LO2024 was a tough act to
follow.

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

So when I found the Zendo box in an alcove a few days later, I took it
out to the courtyard, grabbed a few people who either recognized the
game 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 meme
over the course of the week. Officially, the theme of LessOnline 2025
was [Original Seeing][os]. In practice, the motif I kept running into
was: *did you know that you can just do things?*[^meme]

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

## Events

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

*But*.

At the opening ceremonies, Ben Pace had a pointed bit of advice: *Don’t
go to scheduled sessions*. All the interesting stuff happens in small
conversations in the alcoves or around the firepits.

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

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

Gene Smith’s session on polygenic embryo screening was fascinating, and
probably useful to anyone who wants kids. I’m not sure how much of it is
intended 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 and
thought “that is awesome”, and now it’s on my list of techs to look for
jobs working on (presumably on the programming end, since someone has to
program them and that’s my field). The first thing it made me think of
was Factorio’s rail systems, which I enjoy the hell out of messing
with.[^osfac]

Later in the week, Simon tried something interesting: A
bring-your-own-lightning-talk session with the prompt “we’ve been here
all week and *we have not been wrong enough*; so bring your most
controversial take”. Then, after everyone had given their talks: “Find
the 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 into
further 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 “computation
saving, umm...h-word...” and half the audience shouting “*heuristic*” in
response.

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

Chesed’s “How to be Hotter (for men who like ladies)” session was
predictably full, and even more horrifying than last year’s Hot Seat. In
trying to describe it, the phrase I came up with is “legible-ized
translations of visceral reactions”, which is a mouthful, but I can’t
think of anything more concise. It sounded afterward like they weren’t
sure it was worth doing again. For the record, *it is*. Knowably-frank
analysis of intuitive reactions is both priceless and almost impossible
to get out of people; that degree of reflectivity is rare, and a
willingness to share it in the moment even rarer.[^hotter] Not to mention,
volunteering under such circumstances ("note that we are not telling you
what you are volunteering *for*") is sufficiently terrifying that anyone
who does so can legitimately tell themselves later: “I have in fact done
things scarier than this.”

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

Keltan’s Australian Improv Games session was fun even though I couldn’t
participate properly. At least one person stayed in character while
leaving, which stuck in my head for some reason. And I’m told that when
a duplicate ended up on the schedule by accident, the people that showed
up made it work anyway.

Scott’s “Forecasting Transformative AI Using the Book of Revelation” was
*exactly* what you would expect, and I really hope he makes it into a
post.

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

## Quiethaven

The most interesting “new” thing this year was Quiethaven -- an hour of
Sunday’s schedule blocked for venue-wide silence, to get some writing
done, or just some thinking. Enforced by an army of staff armed with
spraybottles.[^spray]

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

Not everyone agreed; I noticed at least one person in the chat
disapproving. Presumably where there is one discontent attendee there
are more. But *I* liked it.

## Writehaven

On the digital end, last year there was a “Names, Faces, and
Conversations” shared google doc -- essentially a list of attendee
profiles, intended to help people with shared interests find each
other -- and a separate, homerolled schedule site, that anyone could
post sessions on. This year the schedule site expanded to incorporate
the profiles, added messaging and chat, and was renamed Writehaven. I
get the impression that it was hacked together at the last minute, and
the team rolled out updates to it throughout the week.

This was:

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

The developers should probably ignore #2, because I Am A Crank About
This.[^js] I am net thumbs-up on Writehaven anyway, simply because it
wasn’t Discord et al, about which I have an entirely different set of
unreasonable ideological complaints.

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

## Fooming Shoggoth

The Fooming Shoggoth concert topped my Cool Things list again.

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

Most of the playlist is [available on Suno][fs]. My favorite new pieces
were [Dance of the Doomsday Clock][fsdc] and [Right Here][fsrh][^ff]. The
most disappointing absences from last year were [Spaghetti Western][sw]
and [Five Thousand Years][fty]. In future years I’d like to see [I Have
Seen the Tops of Clouds][clouds]; it’s been songified before [for
Secular Solstice][cloudss], but I’ve never been to an SS event. I also
wonder if [A Fable of Science and Politics][fable] might be amenable to
adaptation, with a verse for each character or something.

(I note with irritation that Suno makes it *highly non-obvious* how to
get music *out* of it to listen in one’s preferred player.[^sunowtf]
That annoyed me enough that I [wrote a program to do so][sunodl]. It
might be of use to the organizers, since I remember some awkwardness
associated with transitions between songs hosted on Suno vs. YouTube or
whatever.)

At some point I pulled out my phone to record a few minutes to show my
partner. The concert is more relevant to her interests than most of
LessOnline, and she missed both years due to scheduling conflicts, and I
wanted her to be able to see some of it. While doing a slow 360 of the
crowd, 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 I
had several thoughts simultaneously:

* Oh shit, am I the asshole? (Yes.)
* Wow, this is awesome, we’re all *present*.
* *Put the damn thing away before I accidentally prompt others to change
  that.*

...So I did.

## Miscellaneous observations

I mentioned last year that overcrowding is an attractor state for
conventions. Unsurprisingly, Lighthaven was noticeably more crowded this
year. I don’t think it’s entirely a matter of space; there were plenty
of periods where e.g. Rat Park or Bayes Ground were mostly empty while
Aumann Hall and the courtyard (does it have a name?) were uncomfortably
packed. 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 of
that was “more women coming of their own accord” vs “more people
bringing 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 from
hilarious to touching. My favorite was the dedication of the mirror in
Bayes Hall, which was written on the post across from the mirror in
such a way that it could only be read *in* the mirror.

I had a conversation somewhere in there that seemed worth recording. I
keep having this thought, thinking that it’s relevant to local interests
and 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 Romantic
Solid.*

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

I wanted to. At minimum I wanted to run sessions. I wasn’t sure exactly
*what* 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 on
Easy Mode.

(I also wanted to investigate job openings -- I got laid off late last
year, and the crowd here is Relevant To My Search -- but I tried not to
be aggressive about it, and the few potential contacts I did find were
discouragingly silent in the aftermath. Either I was more
irritating than I thought, or I was less memorable than I thought, or
nobody checks email anymore.)

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

* Kruti: Multiple interesting conversations, and repeatedly encouraged
  me to run sessions, like Rana and Isabella did last year. *Hugely
  appreciated* despite Things Happening.
* Ari: +1 for re-evaluating first impressions based on new information.
  Also I like your cloak.
* Someone on the volunteer team whose name begins with H that *I forgot
  to 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 mostly
much younger than me -- I think partly a consequence of the event as a
whole skewing younger, partly an artifact of my local social graph
partially 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 most
things that are *happening*, in the Mr. Jones sense, are done by the
young; if I refuse to accept stagnation, then in the long run I’m going
to end up in younger crowds.

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

I met Gwern ([of whose corpus][gwern] I’ve read a non-trivial amount)
and Patrick McKenzie ([of whose][pmk] I haven’t, though that will
probably change now). Also Anna Salamon, who I haven’t read *much* of
but a couple of her posts stuck in my head many years ago. I think at
this point I’ve at least spoken to everyone I’ve extensively read except
Zvi.

I tried to volunteer at Chesed’s session on Hard Mode grounds, but they
ran 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’t
happened in a long time, albeit mainly for lack of opponents.

![Move 78](https://i.imgur.com/AOffpxT.jpeg)

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

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

After the concert some...other things happened. Sometimes you roll a
natural 20 on your testicular fortitude check, and you end up playing
Hot Seat in a dark sauna bus with eight other people (mostly naked), one
of the highest-paid escorts in the world (fully clothed), and all the
sexual energy of the [Champaign Room][champaign]. It costs you ten
dollars and two first-degree burns, and you leave out the details
because *it makes less sense in context*.

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

I learned two things from that experience:

One, I have *rather more social courage* than I ever realized, at least
when heavily caffeinated.

Two, I’m not sure I endorse what I do with that courage. I’ve known for
some time that stimulants make me more social, but the gap between
overcaffeinated 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. Which
is different in an important way from merely not wanting to do it again.

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

*Anyway*.

That was the end of LessOnline proper, but not the end of the event as a
whole. Manifest was the next weekend, I was staying through it, and once
again there was going to be a “summer camp” to fill the time between the
two events. I hadn’t done any talks yet, and I felt like I’d spent far
too much time playing in Easy Mode -- notably, I’d spent much more time
hanging out with people I already knew, who felt "safe", instead of
getting 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’s
pure unconference, Arbor ran a series of optional (additional-fee)
workshops during the day, occupying the session halls. People had mixed
opinions on the change. Mine is that it’s an understandable decision (in
that it probably helps keep the lights on at Lighthaven), but I’d prefer
at least one of the halls remain designated for spontaneity.

Of the workshops on offer, I was most interested in the Security Mindset
one, but I hesitated to commit to it. Last year I tried the quant
bootcamp, and while it was great, the combination of that and all the
other 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 like
hell. I’d sunburned myself, regular burned myself, I was in caffeine
withdrawal, and with the caffeine out of my system my brain started
doing the fault-analysis doomloop that it often does after social
interactions, but with *vastly more fuel than usual*.

Last year I burned out for a day; I suppose it’s not surprising the same
happened this time. Time to switch to Easy Mode. I spent most of the day
on 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 session
in Rat Park. Some people were playing music and singing by Eigenhall
around the time my social module crashed; I would’ve requested Rat Filk
of some kind (is that a term? it should be) if I’d been verbal enough to
do so. Ricki roped me into joining the security mindset course’s beta
session, which was entertaining...actually that might have been the
previous night, I'm not sure. Family sent cat pictures from home. Cat
pictures make everything better.

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

By Tuesday evening I felt human again. Good; I hate feeling like I have
a 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 comfort
zone; I started by joining firepit groups composed of people I wasn’t
familiar with.

As I went to bed Tuesday night, I noticed a mild sore throat, which I
tried 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*.[^fuck]

## Reasons

There exist people who can still function when they have a cold. I am
not one of them.

A couple of days prior, Emma[^emma] had stayed home for a day for a sore
throat, to avoid spreading it. It went away, but I remember thanking her
at the time. Someone else tested positive for Covid, outright left
the event, and notified the chat for contact-tracing purposes -- which
is way above and beyond what I’d expect anywhere else. It’s a unique
thing about this community, that we’ll take costly actions to Actually
Contain illness, as is notably distinct from Being Responsible about
illness. We try to play the “avoid spreading illness” game where
normal people play the “avoid blamable illness-spreading actions” game.

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

I couldn’t stay home; home was 2500 miles away. But I did try to stay
outdoors, and wear a mask indoors, and explicitly warn anyone I spoke to
for more than a few moments that I was an infection vector. Most people
didn’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 few
sessions that were too packed to trust the mask.

Thanks to the several people who provided meds of various kinds, or
helped 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 to
last year, because this year there were known friendly faces I could
lean on.

Something more annoying about the mask than I expected: I *couldn’t
smile at people*. I’m not used to worrying about my body language
day-to-day, because I barely interact with people, but if someone
greeted me in passing, I didn’t have any way to indicate “ah, I remember
you and am pleased to see you.” (For some weird reason this kept
happening with Ricki specifically. I *meant* to say hello properly and
offer to throw spanners into your works again, but couldn’t. Also meant
to give positive reinforcement to the person-I-don’t-know who stayed in
character 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 to
protect oneself from others, or others from oneself. That seems worth
fixing, but I’m not sure how. Tangentially related, the world could
use a visible “interruptible or not” indicator. [Hack Mode][hackmode],
like much illness, doesn’t *look* like anything from the outside.

I spent a lot of time, for the rest of the week, thinking about
Contributions, in almost-but-not-quite the sense [Sarah Constantin
describes][contribution]. Last year I felt like I contributed to the
convention, made it at least a little bit more than it would have been
without me -- through my talks, and my improvised sabotage, and even my
reflection post was in some sense a contribution -- while this year I
felt like a spectator, or at best a participant. Not by my will, I had
Reasons, but still. Sick-me *can’t* just Do Things, and it was the Doing
Things that made last year more than just a convention to me. This time
the best I could manage was running the timer at Chesed/Aella’s second
session (badly, sorry), or the door at Australian Improv, and those
tasks were only possible because they required zero agency.

Last year’s LessOnline was one of the most motivating periods I’ve had
in 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 I
get in other contexts, without the same dramatic effects. In last year’s
post, I wrote: *“I never felt like I had something to say, but no one to
say it to that would care.”* I still think that’s important, but after a
second dip in the river, I think there’s more to it: At LO, I get
*social reinforcement for Doing Things*.

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

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

In real life, intentionally doing things is often hard, especially if
they’re things you want to do but don’t need to do. At
LessOnline...suddenly, I find that *I can just do things.* Apparently, I
need other people to remind me of that.[^lwsh]

(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 on
Manifest. Last year I didn’t attend, but I stayed late enough to mingle
with the incoming crowd, and my first impressions were something like
“techbros are apparently a real thing; I did not know that, and this
isn’t my crowd.” This year I decided to attend anyway, because brief
first impressions could have been misleading. I figured I would just go
out of my way to speak to a much wider sample.

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

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

* Updates on the current state of whole-brain emulation (I hadn’t heard
  anything since the worm thing).
* The psychology of eunuchs in Ancient Rome.
* Video games as art form.
* The best section of U.S. Law being “interference with homing pigeons
  owned by the U.S.”
* The nature of identity, continuity of experience, and thought
  experiments involving memory editing.
  * “‘Spectrum of Death’ would be a great name for a band.”

And...yeah, it’s a limited view through the mask, but that does sound
like 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 my
observational limitations, I have only middling confidence in that, but
it’s enough that I will probably try again next year, finances
permitting.

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

![Oops!](https://i.imgur.com/3h4avPt.jpeg)

I brought the Oops one home for my partner, chosen partly on the grounds
that it takes [minimal LessWrong-specific context to get it][oops]. I am
not sure when I realized that it could be read as having Unfortunate
Implications.

Oops.

## Personal Minutia

Some people went out of their way to say nice things about my
reflections post last year. My thanks. Possibly related, a lot more
people went around in socks. I think I was the only one last year; it
would 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’s
uncommon-but-visible at fandom conventions -- but if everyone’s doing it
next year then I claim credit for introducing it here.

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

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

## The Complaints Romantic Solid

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

On-site beds for the night-before were unavailable at first, which makes
life 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 seems
worth mentioning.

I somehow ended up with two LessOnline memberships instead of one LO and
one festival-season upgrade. Also, my badges for all three festival
season events were again missing my handle. I don’t know if this was my
error or the event’s error, but it was certainly a *nominatively
appropriate* error. One badge somehow managed to include my middle
initial, which I can only assume came from my credit card billing
address 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 are
better known by handle than name, so I think it’s worth distinguishing
the two.

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

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

It’s not really a complaint, but: Manifest runs into the night on
Sunday. That’s not common for conventions (most end midafternoon of the
last day) and could use emphasizing during registration, because e.g. I
scheduled my flight home on typical-con assumptions and missed half the
last 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 would
prefer working with or for you than whatever random employer I find
through the usual channels; and chances are you’ll find me a more
congenial co-worker than most, too. If you have or know of openings for
a dev/ops hybrid who can also write ~~well~~ competently,
[contact][email] [me][ajv].

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

I finally found Leo!

![Adorable Dog!](https://i.imgur.com/XJJQz2u.jpeg)

Six more weeks of Doomslack![^ds]

[os]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SA79JMXKWke32A3hG/original-seeing
[rh]: https://suno.com/s/rbCj0lOsx1anXMkY
[fs]: https://suno.com/playlist/949a6d21-53c2-490d-9b9b-48e88cfde045
[fsdc]: https://suno.com/song/c59d412b-157a-4b13-bfc7-f83f4289f0d5
[fsrh]: https://suno.com/song/4f894fe7-813b-458f-8ffb-1143df7f0054
[strat]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PBRWb2Em5SNeWYwwB/humans-are-not-automatically-strategic
[clouds]: https://medium.com/message/i-have-seen-the-tops-of-clouds-e21c5941de32
[cloudss]: https://secularsolstice.github.io/songs/I_Have_Seen_the_Tops_of_Clouds/gen/
[gwern]: https://gwern.net/
[pmk]: https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/
[lo2024]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NdfXRzWdNoEJgwxsN/reflections-on-less-online
[schedule]: https://www.writehaven.space/e/lessonline-2025/schedule
[champaign]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExL_1WrOjFY
[spoons]: https://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/
[sunodl]: https://pypi.org/project/sunodl/
[contribution]: https://sarahconstantin.substack.com/p/contribution
[hamephorash]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXOH1a1h_IA
[unsong]: https://unsongbook.com
[sw]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kncA3gZSx_U&t=1865s
[fty]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kncA3gZSx_U&t=3061s
[hardmode]: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/play-in-hard-mode/
[email]: mailto:error@feymarch.net
[ajv]: https://www.andrewvant.com/
[slack]: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/
[fable]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6hfGNLf4Hg5DXqJCF/a-fable-of-science-and-politics
[aella]: https://aella.substack.com/p/the-filler-episode
[metagame]: https://www.metagame.games/
[hackmode]: http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/hack-mode.html
[oops]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wCqfCLs8z5Qw4GbKS/the-importance-of-saying-oops
[ff]: https://suno.com/song/622852e1-0579-4ac6-b45b-b23037310ee1
[bahp]: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/press-any-key-for-bay-area-house
[sunowtf]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GpwH2hvKdn9LBuz9A/recursions-on-lessonline-2025?commentId=JL5tg2BhikBq3zXqo
[meme]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GpwH2hvKdn9LBuz9A/recursions-on-lessonline-2025?commentId=DsXAKGKefvmxmDArL

[img_leo]: https://i.imgur.com/XJJQz2u.jpeg
[img_go]: https://i.imgur.com/AOffpxT.jpeg
[img_ntt]: https://i.imgur.com/cMhyX5t.jpeg
[img_pins]: https://i.imgur.com/3h4avPt.jpeg

[^job]: This concerned me for reasons having nothing to do with
LessOnline itself. I got laid off late last year, and the trip consumed
a non-trivial chunk of my savings runway. I decided to go anyway in part
because LO2024 had a dramatic effect on my motivation and well-being --
but I didn’t know if that would be true a second time.
[^metagame]: Though the person(s?) behind last year’s hunt are running
[a conference of their own][metagame] in a couple months, and I am
confident based on the strength of 2024 that they will produce something
awesome.
[^meme]: Apparently the meme [originates from TPOT/Vibecamp][meme].
[^unconference]: I’ve since learned that this pattern has a name:
unconferencing.
[^pictures]: For this and a few other things I have pictures I wanted to
include, but I gather the LO organizers took pains to get permission
before publishing anyone’s photo, and I assume that’s for a reason so
I’m adopting the same policy.
[^osfac]: A quote from another session that tickled me:
“Factorio is better training for an ops research position than an actual
ops research degree.” Shame HR probably doesn’t see it that way, or I’d
start looking at those jobs too; I’ve played a *lot* of Factorio.
[^hotter]: Though the second session didn’t seem quite as
solid as the first. I *tentatively* attribute that to something else I
noticed, that Aella seems better at self-reporting than anyone else, but
she spent most of the second session running the show rather than taking
part. I have more thoughts on the subject but this isn’t the right venue
and I don’t want to devote too much post-space to it.
[^spray]: Who later nailed Ben during the closing ceremonies, Super
Bowl-style. “You gave me an army. Bad idea.”
[^js]: If your site completely breaks in the presence of javascript
blockers, *your site is broken*, full stop. Rant at 9, 10, and 23.
[^ff]: With honorable mention to [Friendly Fire][ff]’s demonstration
that I can even like rap, under the right circumstances. Though that may
not surprise anyone who knows my musical-taste algorithm.
[^sunowtf]: Issue possibly not universal, see [comment subthread][sunowtf].
[^aella]: Aella, you said this episode didn’t bother you, but if it
contributed to your [post-con difficulties][aella], I apologize.
[^hats]: I am *certain* I’m butchering this description.
[^fuck]: Properly conjugated, this appears as a countably infinite
series of additional fucks.
[^emma]: That’s Tall Emma (who my brain appears to have also designated
Schrodinger’s Cow Emma, an identifier I predict she will find amusing),
who I met last year; as opposed to Short Emma, who encouraged me to
volunteer at Chesed’s panel and I don’t think I saw again.
[^lwsh]: The Less Wrong Study Hall once had a similar if less-intense
effect for me. I’m told it might still be running? If so I might join it
again.
[^ds]: Provisionally defined as the [slack][] in the timeline
until P(Doom) exceeds 1-ε. I’m unreasonably pleased with this coinage,
someone please tell me how to express it mathematically.