Brady Helps

Garlic aioli. I know it's a distinct food product. But, wouldn't it be more economical to use mayo?

I recently went to a restaurant that served a carrot hummus. Carrot hummus, made from carrots roasted to a perfect Maillard-forward reaction then mashed 200 times by hand, old-fashion artisan style. Garlic aioli, crème fraîche, and first press organic tahini are added to the carrot-pâté and whipped into a hummus-like spread. This will set you back $50.

That's how I heard the description. My partners didn't hear it that way. I think it was the "crème fraîche".

I'm sure the restaurant prepared the hummus the way they described it. It tasted good. But would it have tasted as good if they told me it was "carrot dip"? Probably!

Roast or boil some carrots. Mash them up. Add some mayo, add some tahini, and add some sour cream. Maybe salt, pepper, and some cumin. Boom! Carrot dip. Why make it so complicated?

I can't ask that question though. Social norms prohibit me from confronting the server and saying "who are you kidding here? First... hummus actually means 'chickpeas' in Arabic and what you're calling 'hummus' is usually known as 'hummus bi tahini' and second, why not just be honest that this entire explanation is to justify the $20 price tag on what's essentially roasted carrots mashed with tahini and some mayo and sour cream?"

So, I sit. Quietly . Calmly. I smile. But, inside I am boiling and roiling with discomfort seeing this obvious asymmetry and even more, observing the obvious absurdity —

Without the long and bougie description, would it have tasted just as good if it was called "carrot dip?"

That said, I pleased there was a course of artisan-milled, slow-fermented, twice-proofed wheat flour slabs, toasted to a Maillard-forward golden crust, accompanied by a whipped, cultured cream fat spread.

I tried my hand at using Notebook LM today. Of course, I had to make a video of my favorite artist to roast.

BTS

If you haven't played around with AI, I recommend it. Sure, it's easy to ask it to check your grammar or write emails. But you can get more gains by developing your prompting game.

The prompt I use to get that video involved asking Notebook LM to act like a Boston Consulting Group management consultant and develop a year strategy to de-throne BTS and replace it with a new artist. The audience of the video is an A & R executive. I gotta say, it did a "decent enough" job. I laughed.

Mad love to my ARMY friends. I feel you're misguided. But... I respect your choices and your artist religio- I mean, preferences.

Money: : a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes; coins and banknotes collectively.

I don't carry around many coins or banknotes. When I pay for things, I often use a card or my phone.

In my apartment, there are no mountains of coins or banknotes. And, I don't physically see the money I get paid from my day job. I sometimes see banknotes from gigs.

I know I need money to support a roof over my head, food, and clothes. And when I die, I won't have much use for it anymore.

I think I see money as a form of mass, and with that mass I can create energy. I need energy to do things. So the more mass I ahve, presumably, the more energy capacity I have to do things.

Like you, I stress about money sometimes. Eventually, I won't be able to work and I'll need enough mass stored that I can convert into energy without work generating more mass.

What's interesting to me — is that stressing about money causes me to use energy. I am using energy from my mass reserve thinking about my mass reserves. I'll need to keep generating more reserves to make up for what I lost through stress and what I'll need when I no longer work. I'm deploying a finite resource — energy — towards an abstract concept that I'm privileged to see as an abstraction.

So here I am thinking and writing, spending energy, about a thing that I sometimes stress about that I rarely physically see yet I need if I want to be able to maintain this blog and survive in the modern world.

For some, divorcing ones's self from the grip money has on one's life seems a wise move. Perhaps, the excess energy could be shared with those operating at a deficit. Not a political position, just my musing for the day.

In his letters, Seneca quoted Posidonius:

"In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes.' In the meantime cling tooth and nail to the following rule: (do) not give in to adversity, never trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock."

My version which brings me more comfort: In a single day, there lies open to you, opportunities to learn more than can ever be learned by the person who believes they know it all. And, while you're learning, remember that time will pass as it does and things will happen as they happen — best not to be surprised by what life shows you.

My version for maximum comfort:

• Learn as much as you can because you don't know as much as you think.
• Life's a shit show, so stop crying and work at making it a little better.

"We need to talk."

If you ever heard or seen that message, you might have estimated that there are bad consequences to follow that talk. Perhaps you're getting fired, breaking up, a loved one is diagnosed with a terminal disease and has days to live, someone died, you have been diagnosed with a terminal disease and have hours to live, you're partner is pregnant, you aren't getting a bonus, you're losing the house, BTS finally retired, a war broke out, someone bombed someone else, the list goes on.

See how quickly yours and my thoughts can go from 0 to 1,000,000,000?

And, see how quickly you and I can decide that things really are 1,000,000,000?

Suppose you have the talk and you learn that something bad has happened — let's call it "level 50 bad". That you means you twenty million times overestimated the badness! Why and to what end? Probability need to calibrate our estimations of bad down a bit.

I know I'm picking on you. You're not alone though. I do this too. We all overestimate bad.

I am not saying that things can't be bad, or that things might not be really bad. I am saying, you and I are likely overestimating and deciding that it's worse than it is. I see that as arrogant.

Why should we be so confident to believe our overestimations? What do we know that the people living the slog don't know? And since we believe our estimations of bad, why are the people living it underrating their experience? Think about it. It's horribly arrogant on our part. I'm routinely told by my team that I overestimate how bad BTS is on our culture, and they're right, I should probably join them to see how bad it really is for them (Hat tip to Lizzo, a faithful reader).

And I believe you and I need to check ourselves. We need to remember that we overestimate and we need to calibrate down. I am advocating for being closer to what's actually happening than further away from it. It's easier to move through life when you see it as it is than how we intend it to be.

Easier said than done.

Apparently, pre-historic humans in Eastern Europe enjoyed fish, vegetables, and berries. And, if you read the article, you'll see that they weren't much different than we are now — some people like their fish with grasses, some liked them with tubers, some liked them in different ways. At the end of the day, they all enjoyed balanced diets.

Sometimes, history reveals that present isn't much different from the past. And, we're probably overcomplicating things.

Read more here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/recreating-the-complex-cuisine-of-prehistoric-europeans/

If you are over 30 years old, an overwhelming majority of your body's cellular mass has been replaced at least once, and in most tissues, many times over. Said another way, a majority of what you are now is not the same as what you were and won't be the same as what you will become.

When your body replaces cells and tissues, it's not like your body hits the reset button and gives you fresh new untarnished material back. It carries forward accumulated damage, adaptation, and errors. It remembers the damage and doesn't let you forget it.

Allow enough time to pass and the vast majority of what you were is not what you are now, and the vast majority of what a person was when they hurt you is not what they are now. And, that doesn't mean the body is any less scarred; which doesn't mean we can forgive and love any less.

I stayed with my dad the night before he died. In October, I blogged about the sounds I heard. I forgot to write about a companion that sat with me and my dad.

A fly landed, almost out of nowhere, on the lip of my father's mouth. It walked around, almost like it was inspecting my dad's body. I thought, "please, the guy's almost dead, let him have some dignity." The fly moved to my dad's chest and then to my leg and walked around.

I sat looking at the fly for I don't know how long. I watched it clean itself. I watched it move around. I thought what if my dad became the fly and now he's walking around looking at himself and at me.

A week or so later, my sister and brother drove my dad's cremated remains to Minnesota to bury. We kept a cup of his remains to let go in a creek at Beaver National Park, a park we visited as children with him. As we arrived at Beaver, a fly landed on the driver's side window. It stayed on the window as we drove into the park and to the parking spot, for a few minutes. Minutes later, the rest of dad was part of nature.

Twenty plus years ago, a psychiatrist told me I had bipolar disorder. They said I would never survive without medication. It's been just less than twenty years and I'm alive, no medication, and well managed.

One important method I use to manage my energy is to "conclude less" and "notice without judgment more."

Concluding is like deciding why, how, and what things are with little-to-no data to back up the conclusion.

Noticing without judgment is simply the act of observing and not concluding why a thing is the way it is. Noticing invites curiosity and acceptance.

The upside of this practice, I'm a lot more pleasant to engage with and I maintain a healthy and successful life.

The downside, I notice everything.

I went to pay for the food and noticed two signs.

"We don't accept cash, please use card."

I then noticed a jar with cash that read:

"Tips power us."

I see two different signals — "please don't give us cash" and "please give us cash".

I asked the person behind the cash register why don't accept cash for payment. The person said they prefer card because it's safer than handling cash.

— then why risk the tip jar?