What we know, what we don't know, and where we might be going.
McFaul's World
24 March 2026 5:15PM GMT
It's that time of the year again. Spring is in the air, and runners are gearing up for Norway's biggest running event and, according to themselves, the biggest relay event in the world: Holmenkollstafetten. This road running relay race goes through the heart of Oslo and has taken place almost every year since 1923!
75.000 runners representing more than 4.500 teams line up to run the relay, and Oslo is absolutely packed to the brim with people sharing the joys of physical activity. Though some might say that the festivities that typically follow the race is the highlight of the day. I might be inclined to agree.
Teams comprise all sorts of groups of people: Friends, running clubs, businesses, charities and whatever else that bind people together. Many businesses use this as an excuse to get their employees to enjoy physical activity followed by social bonding afterwards. That is true for my employer. They pay the entry fees and book a great location in the heart of Oslo. It is the base before runners venture out to their starting points across the city. And after the race there is a banquet with great food, entertainment and all around good vibes.
Inspired by other businesses, our running group last year took the initiative to establish an "Elite Team" where the aim is to run the relay as quickly as possible.1 The selection process is simple. A tryout race consisting of a 1000 metre time trial to compete for ten long stage spots and a 400 metre time trial to compete for five short stage spots.
As I ran the tryouts last year as well as this year, I thought it would be fun to analyse and compare the stats from each years time trial.2 Given that I'm a slow twitch runner, and a marathoner by heart, even a 1000 metre race is a full on sprint for me. Safe to say that a short stage is off the table for me. My one and only shot of a spot on the team was running the 1000 metre race.
I run with a Stryd footpod/power meter (an old version referred to as "Stryd Wind"). The power and pace charts below are both from the web version of their running tracker log data analysis software thing called Powercenter. The heart rate chart comes from the magnificent Intervals.icu, which is my go-to platform for advanced workout data analysis. I've, of course, also linked to the individual entries in my personal workout log.
Last year's race took place on 25 March. It was a cold and crisp day, with the sun peeking out and next to no wind.
Last year I ran the 1000 metres in 3 minutes and 1 second. For the imperialists out there, that is roughly 4:51 per mile pace.
Power average for the race was 542 Watts, while peak power was 622 Watts.
Heart rate average was 181 beats per minute and I maxed out at 191! This is only four beats off my estimated max of 195 bpm.
This year's race was delayed due to the conditions and took place on 24 March. Almost to the day a year after last year's tryouts. The weather wasn't nearly as nice, with a grey and overcast sky and a little bit of wind.
This year I ran the 1000 metres in 3 minutes and 2 seconds. It is around 4:53 per mile pace.
Power average for the race was 543 Watts, while I peaked at 650 Watts.
Heart rate average was 177 beats per minute, and I maxed out at 188. Seven beats off my estimated max, and three beats lower than last year.
As I'd been ill for almost a week not two weeks back, I doubted my fitness. Because of this, I ran a much more conservative race. Whereas I reached peak power (622W) on the first bend last year, I ran more even this year before steadily increasing the power on the final straight hitting a significantly higher peak (650W) right on the finish line.
Today's time was a second slower. Looking at the data, I should've run faster. The heart rate charts hammer this point home. Last year I spent two full minutes in "the purple zone" (185+ bpm), while this year I only managed just shy of a minute in that same zone.
That tracks with how I felt throughout the race as well. Last year I felt like I was working at my max from the get go. That I couldn't increase the pace/power much the final 200 metres illustrates that I didn't have anything left in the tank. Conversely, today I felt like I was quite in control all the way up until I turned it on towards the end of the final bend, and was able to keep increasing the pace/power right up to the finish line. Even though I felt like I mechanically couldn't increase the pace further, I felt like I could've kept it up for a while yet.
My conclusion is that I'm significantly fitter today than I was last year, despite running slower. I should've run a little faster, and at least broken three minutes. I think I executed this year's race better, but I simply left it too late before turning it on. This is extra annoying because I almost caught a guy right before the finish line, but he held me off to beat me with two tenths of a second in the end!
At 69.5 kilograms today versus 68.2 kilograms on race day last year, I am 1.3 kilograms (1.9%) heavier this year. Knowing this going in, together with the recent illness and no race specific sessions to prepare this year, it played a part in making me think I wouldn't be able to defend last year's time. I should've trusted that my base fitness is significantly better this year.
Your fitness is determined by the work you've done over a longer time period, not just the last couple of weeks. And as my workout log shows, I put in much more work the first couple of months of 2026 than I did in 2025. And my total workload for 2025 was again much higher than what I managed in 2024. Even at 40 and at a higher weight, that translates to better fitness!
It's also interesting to note that now that my weight has gone up a little, the Stryd footpod appears to be more accurate. The estimated distance this year is spot on. Last year, it was 20 metres short. I ran both races in the same pair of shoes (only used once in-between) and on the same track. As the Stryd only utilises the user defined weight value to determine an air resistance coefficient and multiply the natively calculated Watts/kg to present an absolute power value, it makes sense that a weight change potentially estimates the calculations.
My weight setting for both races was 100 kg. It's impressive (and a little bit confounding, given the changes in estimated distance and pace) seeing that the average absolute watt levels are nearly identical (542W last year versus 543W this year) despite the weight change. It means that the pod's native watt/kg calculation picks up the weight change very well.
Last year I was a regular coffee drinker at the time of the race. I did my regular race day routine of supplementing my normal dosage (around 80 milligram) with an energy drink containing about 100 milligrams of caffeine 30-45 minutes before the race. If you'll recall, my adventures in quitting caffeine commenced shortly after.
An adventure it has been, and I should write about it some time. The long and the short of it though, is that going into today's race, I've been more or less caffeine free for the past four months. I was excited to discover how this would play out when trying to take advantage of caffeine as a performance enhancer. And make a difference it did!
Although it's clearly impossible to measure the performance effects, I can only say that I've never before in my adult life noticed anything like the effects that I got from ingesting caffeine today. I've used caffeine in similar dosages before every race I've run over the past decade. Today hit different. I was wired and alert and felt almost supercharged. In fact, five hours later, I still do. Which is why I'm just finishing up this post long past my bedtime. I'm convinced, perhaps even more so than the race execution, the caffeine high contributed to the fact that I never really felt tired throughout the race.
Caffeine is clearly a performance enhancing drug. There are studies that confirm this. But I'm now convinced that someone who doesn't consume it regularly will experience greatly increased effects compared to someone who's adapted to its effect through daily consumption. The obvious caveat being that there appears to be a genetically determined difference in how people respond to caffeine, so your mileage may vary.3
I'll continue to stay off caffeine in my daily life, and only turn to it when I'm in dire need of its effects. To ensure that I get max potency when needed, but also because regular consumption is not without downsides to me.
Last year, I did!
For this year, the final results aren't in yet. But I'll be sure to update this post when they are.
Update: The final results are in, and I made it Out of everyone that tried out for the men's team, my time had me in sixth place. A whopping three seconds clear of the cut off time!
The overall approach for most teams in the race is participation, and that's what makes it such a great occasion. It would be very boring in comparison if it was mainly a performance oriented race, and the city wasn't positively brimming with people. ↩
No, really, that is my idea of fun! ↩
This recently became very clear to me when I saw my wife quit caffeine cold turkey with absolutely no withdrawal symptoms. Whereas I'm completely debilitated for days when cutting similar dosages. ↩
Andreas in Can I hear a difference between MP3s and uncompressed audio?:
But modern MP3 encoders are much better than those from the past, and at a bitrate of 320kbit/s they deliver audio quality that in my opinion very few people will be able to tell apart from the uncompressed original.
Super interesting and well made post from Andreas, complete with samples where you can test for yourself. My hearing's so poor I couldn't even discern the artefact in the sample used to showcase what an artefact sounds like! I really need to enable to transcoding on my music server to save space and bandwidth.
I hear from a lot of people that are filled with bilious fury about the tech industry, but few companies have pissed off the world more than Adobe.
As the foremost monopolist in software, web and graphic design, Adobe has created one of the single-most abusive, usurious freakshows in capitalist
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Niki in It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons:
The main function of an icon is to help you find what you are looking for faster.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, adding an icon to everything is exactly the wrong thing to do. To stand out, things need to be different. But if everything has an icon, nothing stands out.
Come on Apple, get your shit together.
PS: The title of Niki's post is excellent. Works in every way. I normally try to tweak the titles of these link posts a bit, but had to quote this one verbatim because it's so great.
Via.
I tend to focus on the origin of the computer within the military. Particularly in the early days of digital computing, the military was a key customer, and fundamental concepts of modern computing arose in universities and laboratories serving military contracts.
Soundtrack: The Dillinger Escape Plan — Black Bubblegum
To understand the AI bubble, you need to understand the context in which it sits, and that larger context is the end of the hyper-growth era in software that I call the Rot-Com Bubble.
Generative AI, at first, appeared to be
Oh my!
Most abrupt fall from grace for a TV show since Heroes? If not, it's certainly up there with Prison Break.
Thought the first season of The Last of Us was magnificent. Enjoyed the way the broke up the story and told it in pieces. Could tell that they tried to employ similar techniques in season two. It just fell flat. Says it all that, despite the cliffhanger, I have no inclination to continue watching once season three rolls around.
Jonas Hieatala in A work week one bag travel:
I’ve been spending five nights away 4–5 times a year on business travels. It’s not a crazy amount but also not negligible, so I figured it’s worth trying to optimize them a bit.
Like Jonas, I travel occasionally for work. (Coincidentally, a few of my travels are in Sweden, too!) Although I've travelled for two nights at most, switching to "one bag travel" took a bit of adjusting.
However, nowadays I wouldn't entertain the idea of checking in luggage or carrying anything else than my backpack kit when I go on these trips. It's a much more convenient way of travelling. This walkthrough from Jonas covers the aspects you have to think about when travelling this way.
My best tip is merino wool t-shirts, sweaters and socks. No problems reusing these items multiple days without washing, which saves quite a bit of space.
Sid in ai;dr:
For me, writing is the most direct window into how someone thinks, perceives, and groks the world. Once you outsource that to an LLM, I'm not sure what we're even doing here. Why should I bother to read something someone else couldn't be bothered to write?
What he said.
After resurrecting this blog back in 2023, the first book I wrote about was James Islington's The Will of the Many. I gave it a solid 3 out of 5 and concluded:
…there’s much to explore still, and I’m excited to see how Islington will build on this solid foundation in the books that follow.
The Strength of the Few is the second of four planned books in Islington's Hierarchy series. It came out late last year. As Islington, to my knowledge, does not maintain a website or blog with an RSS feed, I'm not able to keep up with his writing progress.1 Instead, I only discovered the new book when visiting a local book store with my kids. The Strength of the Few was given ample premium shelf space in the middle of the store. That was the first time I realised just how popular The Will of the Many must have been.
Later that same day I tried to purchase the e-book to add it to my library. I was sad to discover that there were no DRM free options. In fact, for someone located in Norway, Amazon was the only legal option for acquiring the e-book. As I try to avoid spending my hard earned money adding to Jeff Bezos' vast fortune, I gave up and instead bought a second hand copy of the paperback.2 It arrived in my within a couple of days, and I was off to the races.
Quite literally, as the book features an actual race scene quite early on. It sets the scene for much of what's to come in this particular branch of the story. And, yeah, that's where things get a little complicated. Without wanting to spoil too much for someone who's not read the book, it consists of three stories that evolve in synchronous fashion.
Although each storyline is designated with a particular icon, it took me more than half the book to remember which was which. Instead, I relied on the actual content of the chapters to orient myself. It wasn't too challenging, but at the offset I felt like I was floundering a bit while trying to keep up with what was going on where. A key reason is that it's been a couple of years since I read the predecessor. Strength picks up where Will left off, and it is a direct continuation. The references to the events of the previous book are numerous and mostly presented without any further explanation. As I had forgotten far more than I remembered about The Will of the Many, this doubtlessly made it harder for me to properly enjoy The Strength of the Few from the get go.3
About a quarter of the way through, however, I began feeling like I had enough context to follow the story properly. And the book became much more enjoyable.
The three different stories are distinct and compelling in their unique ways. Where one is dystopian and strange, another feels intimately humane and recognisable. And both spring from a central story set in what's probably closest to the world we live in today. Islington's approach felt like a fresh take on telling an overarching story that I hadn't encountered before.
Speaking of, the connective storyline is interesting and kept me guessing and speculating along the way. While there is still much to be revealed — Strength feels like a classic middle book in that it begins and ends in the middle of the story — fantasy fans will see further homage to Brandon Sanderson in "the big reveal" we're treated to towards the end of The Strength of the Few.
I thought this book was a step up from its predecessor. The story feels more compelling, the way it is told more unique, all the while building on that which made The Will of the Many such a success. Anyone who picks up The Strength of the Few will, however, be well served by watching or listening to a recap of the first book before beginning. Or, better yet, treat themselves to a reread.
Either way, I'm really excited to see where James Islington takes the story with the next book in the series.
Contrary to some of my other favourite fantasy writers, like Brandon Sanderson and Joe Abercrombie. ↩
I generally prefer reading e-books. Though some nicer books can feel great to hold and smell, I find the advantages of e-books to outweigh that aspect. Doubly so when it comes to big, unwieldy paperbacks. ↩
This is a significant drawback of reading books in a unfinished series in my opinion. I much prefer reading through a full series where every book has been released. ↩
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Derek Sivers in Offline 23 hours a day:
Not so long ago, this was the norm. You’d go online to get what you need, then disconnect.
Honestly think this might be the way to go. The being disconnected for most of the day part. The moving into the woods part is optional, I think, but good for you if you can swing it.
What I knew about Sinners before watching it:
Things in Sinners I didn't like:
What a movie. Score is absolutely spectacular.
It's not often I buy new stuff. Just compare my tech stack from December 2025 to what it looked like in December 2024.
Today, though, I made the leap and acquired a new piece of gear!
I bought the Airpods Pro shortly after they were released, in 2020. I've been rocking them since. They've been solid, and well worth the outlay. Except for the microphones, which have been useless for years. That means they're pretty useless in a office setting.
I do have an old pair of Bose QC25, but the cable went years ago and the cheap Bluetooth adapter I bought a few years ago doesn't have enough juice to last through a medium duration meeting. The end result is that I've been using no headphones at all for a few years. That's not really a big issue when I'm at the home office and there's nobody else in the house. When I'm in an open office landscape, though, it's impractical and impacts my ability to concentrate.
As a result, I've been thinking about acquiring a new pair of headphones for years. Throughout this period I've at various times thought about getting a new pair of Airpods Pro, a pair of regular Airpods, the Airpods Max, considered at least a couple of options from Bose, something from Jabra and, most recently, the Nothing Headphone (1).
When I finally decided to pull the trigger, I ended up with the Sony WH-1000XM5:
Being a previous generation product, the price was alright; well under half of what a pair of the MX6 would've cost me. Looking forward to giving these a proper spin the next few weeks, at home and in the office.
We have a global intelligence crisis, in that a lot of people are being really fucking stupid.
As I discussed in this week’s free piece, alleged financial analyst Citrini Research put out a truly awful screed called the “2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” — a slop-filled scare-fiction
The older I get, the more obvious the devastating effects of alcohol become. Even a fairly modest amount, two to four units, leaves me feeling pretty wrecked, pretty quickly. Not just the evening of and the day after. The mental side effects of feeling despondent and generally down linger for days.
I don't indulge too often, but even five to six times per year is starting to feel like too often. Might be time to ditch it altogether.
In the United States, we are losing our fondness for cash. As in many other countries, cards and other types of electronic payments now dominate everyday commerce. To some, this is a loss. Cash represented a certain freedom from intermediation, a comforting simplicity, that you just don't get from Visa.
Editor's note: a previous version of this newsletter went out with Matt Hughes' name on it, that's my editor who went over it for spelling errors and loaded it into the CMS.
H.W. Sanden in Anti-intellectual tech:
Don’t throw out books willingly, as we did with films, music, instruments, software and self-made websites. Be independent, self-contented, revolutionary, intellectual, brave, strong and scholarly. Normalise stating that you are proficient in several skills. And normalise not knowing, and doing something about it.
Don't stop with not throwing out books. Take back everything we gave away, while we still can. Show the children the future they can still have.
George R.R. Martin in The Mad King Is Coming:
You’ve been hearing about the great tourney at Harrenhal since A GAME OF THRONES came out in 1996. Now, at long last, we’re going to show it to you… live, on stage, at Stratford-upon-Avon, brought to you by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Never not surprised at the stuff George Martin will do to avoid doing the thing. As quality knows quality (or, so I've heard), procrastination knows procrastination, though, so I'm kinda not really surprised, actually. You know.
I've come to terms with the fact that A Song of Ice and Fire ended with the fifth novel, just as The Kingkiller Chronicle ended with the fifth and Gentlemen Bastard with the third. It's fine. We should just be happy that we got to read these stories at all!
And, in the case of Martin, I'm glad he continues pouring his energy into giving us more great stuff to enjoy. Been watching A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and I think it's absolutely brilliant.
In May 2021, Dario Amodei and a crew of other former OpenAI researchers formed Anthropic and dedicated themselves to building the single-most-annoying Large Language Model company of all time.
Pardon me, sorry, I mean safest, because that’s the reason that Amodei and his crew claimed was why
Been keeping a list of albums I want to add to my music collection. Spent a small fortune (to me) today and splurged on all ten albums that were on the list! Downloading from Qobuz isn't the quickest, so I'm currently waiting for them all to finish downloading like it's 2002.
What a time to be alive!
Think I'll do a small note for each of these albums in the coming weeks. As good a thing to write about as anything else.
Ploum in Do not apologize for replying late to my email:
As soon as my email was sent, I probably forgot about it. I may have thought a lot before writing it. I may have drafted it multiple times. Or not. But as soon as it was in my outbox, it was also out of my mind.
I am wholeheartedly behind Ploum on this. Never apologise for replying late to my email.
As I came by Pete's pet peeve that media don't know how to use quotes, I realised that I also don't know.
The first pain point is that I simply don't know how to write the correct symbols on my keyboard. In search of a quick answer, I turned to our Large Language Model overlords. Unfortunately, both ChatGPT and Claude proved entirely unable to provide assistance. They were completely confident in their entirely wrong answers, however. I guess that's something.
For the two languages in which I write, Norwegian and English, there are six relevant symbols. I use a Macbook with a Norwegian bokmål (ISO 639-1 code nb) keyboard layout. The six symbols can be written as follows with this keyboard setup:
«= ⌥ (option) + shift + V
»= ⌥ (option) + shift + B
‘= ⌥ (option) + n
’= ⌥ (option) + m
“= ⌥ (option) + shift + n
”= ⌥ (option) + shift + m
Not exactly easily accessible, hence my writing them down here for future reference. The intricate key combinations also explain why many simply default to the straight quotes ". On my keyboard, I write them by pressing shift + 2.
Next up is knowing when to use which symbols. That varies from language to language. And, as we'll see, from region to region within the same language.
In Norwegian, we use « and » for first level quotes, while second level quotes (a quote in a quote) is indicated by ‘ and ’.1
In American English, they use “ and ” for first level quotes, and ‘ and ’ for second level quotes.2
In British English, they use ‘ and ’ for first level quotes, while “ and ” denote a second level quote.3
No wonder I'm confused and find myself turning to " and ' for simplicity. But, as Pete pointed out, that is just plain wrong. As I aim to be as correct as I can with details like these when writing, I need to get my act together.
These days, I don't publish much in the way of Norwegian text on this blog. Or elsewhere, for that matter. But if I do, I will make a point to use the correct symbols for quotes. I do more than a bit of writing in my day job, and — although some text editors will replace " with « and » when your language is set to Norwegian — knowing this will make me a better and more consistent writer at work. That's a good thing.
As far as this blog goes, I generally try to adhere to British English spelling and grammar. Which means I will aim to be consistent in using single quotes (‘ and ’) for first level quotes from here on and out. Send me an email and let me know when I inevitably mess that up.
In practice, there appears to be many variations in various style guides around the country. But typographer and librarian Torbjørn Eng recommends this practice. Based on his arguments, I am inclined to agree that this is the sensible approach. ↩
Or, at the very least, that is the correct way to do it according to the Chicago Manual of Style. ↩
As recommended by the Oxford Style Guide. ↩
Scott Shambaugh in An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me:
Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library. This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats.
It's not that it's surprising. Many people saw it coming from a mile away. I guess I just thought it would be less… trite.
If you get your kicks, any of your kicks, online, this is a watershed moment. We've ruined it. It was nice while it lasted, but the analogue world is once more where we belong. There's nothing left for us here, in the digital sphere.
Get outside. Feel the sun on your skin. Leave the phone at home. Joke around with a friend. Touch grass.
It's what we were meant to do.
Since the beginning of 2023, big tech has spent over $814 billion in capital expenditures, with a large portion of that going towards meeting the demands of AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Big tech has spent big on GPUs, power infrastructure, and data center construction, using a