# Huliwood – Full Article Index

> Essays on thinking, decision-making, and the human side of technology. Written by Julián – half German, half Spanish, writing from the road since selling everything in 2024.

For the concise version, see: [llms.txt](https://midwit.huliwood.com/llms.txt)

## Interactive Tools

- [The Midwit Detector](https://midwit.huliwood.com): Interactive bell curve quiz – 10 questions across 3 answer styles (beginner intuition, overthinking middle, expert simplicity). Three editions: Original, Investor, and AI & Work. The result draws your head in ten pieces, one per question, each named with the end of the curve its answer came from (instinct, overthought, settled). A figure shows all 59,049 ways to answer the ten, piled where each stops on the curve: 82 in 100 stop in the middle third, and 39 in 100 get the midwit verdict, because the verdict counts the overthought answers rather than the position. The page also carries a written explainer of the bell curve meme: what the meme actually says, why the low and high ends reach the same answer, why the middle overcomplicates it, how it differs from the Dunning-Kruger effect (confidence curve versus answer curve), and an FAQ covering what a midwit is, what the midwit trap is, and where to take a midwit test.
- [Money is Time](https://mist.huliwood.com): Interactive calculator – converts purchases into life-hours using after-tax hourly rate. Supports multiple currencies and custom amounts. Two modes: A price (a purchase in hours of your life) and Idle cash (idle cash in hours of life per year).
- [The Hours Index](https://mist.huliwood.com/hours/): Money is Time's yardstick applied to countries. An iPhone 18 Pro, a Tesla Model Y and a Big Mac, each priced in hours of take-home pay for a single worker on the national average full-time wage (OECD Taxing Wages, 2025): hours = price / (net pay a year / 2,080, rounded to the cent). All 38 OECD countries, a page each; where Apple, Tesla or The Economist has no price for a country, the index says so instead of guessing. Every figure with its source in [data.json](https://mist.huliwood.com/hours/data.json).

## All Articles (newest first)

- [The Wrong Alley](https://www.huliwood.com/p/generation-effect-wrong-alley): The generation effect, the 2011 Google-effect study, and Bjork’s desirable difficulties: the friction was the teacher all along.
- [Why Build at All?](https://www.huliwood.com/p/why-build-at-all): I built two web tools in a weekend without writing code. Taste is the bottleneck now – except for the second wall: getting anyone to care.
- [Smart, and Still Broke](https://www.huliwood.com/p/smart-and-still-broke): Twenty years of gold stars for the qualified answer, then a market that pays for conviction. Why the dumb money commits first.
- [The Thing Mugging You](https://www.huliwood.com/p/worry-is-foresight): The Penn State 91% finding, and why worry can't be deleted: it's foresight – the same muscle that plans your future – facing the dark.
- [Dog-Sitting a Life](https://www.huliwood.com/p/dog-sitting-a-life): Status quo bias, the defaults nobody chose, and the question custodians never ask: if this were offered to you today, would you take it?
- [The Math Ain’t Mathing](https://www.huliwood.com/p/pension-math-aint-mathing): The deal balanced when “retired” meant “nearly done.” Now it funds a twenty-year encore on two workers per pensioner. And it’s guarded, not broken.
- [In Praise of the Ruined Trip](https://www.huliwood.com/p/in-praise-ruined-trip): A fallen tree is the clearest image I own from Hakone. Why memory only keeps the snag, and the perfect itinerary is a quiet con.
- [The Penny University](https://www.huliwood.com/p/penny-university-coffeehouse): In 1680s London a penny bought a seat among the sharpest minds alive. We kept the caffeine, scaled the talk, and lost the room.
- [Where the Water Goes](https://www.huliwood.com/p/inflation-is-a-transfer): Your cash melts like ice, but the water doesn't evaporate. Who gains every percent your savings lose – and why they stay so relaxed about it.
- [Why Summers Used to Last Longer](https://www.huliwood.com/p/why-summers-feel-shorter): Paul Janet's 1877 ratio, the novelty effect, and why the wall clock won: the real reason childhood summers lasted longer.
- [Master of None, On Purpose](https://www.huliwood.com/p/jack-of-all-trades-compliment): "Master of none" was bolted on later. Who benefits when you pick a lane, and why illegibility is the generalist's entire asset.
- [Huh.](https://www.huliwood.com/p/amazement-inflation): Hundreds of millions held their breath in 1969; by Apollo 17 the country had already moved on. We’re printing miracles now – and awe is being debased.
- [The Whirlpool](https://www.huliwood.com/p/you-are-the-whirlpool): A never-measured estimate says about 98% of your atoms swap out within a year. You’re not the water – you’re the shape the water passes through.
- [When Your Name Becomes a Verb](https://www.huliwood.com/p/when-your-name-becomes-a-verb): Aspirin, escalator, thermos: brands that won so hard the courts took their names. Now "ChatGPT it" is migrating the same way, a century faster.
- [“I Just Call It Working”](https://www.huliwood.com/p/context-engineering-prompt-engineering): Prompt engineering was the right skill for 2023. Then the models learned who you are. Now context – not prompts – separates AI novices from experts.
- [Fallacy Factory](https://www.huliwood.com/p/fallacy-factory): On the people who defend the very thing keeping them small – the excuses we build, the suffering we wear as a badge, the open door we won't walk through.
- [The Last Leash](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-last-leash-technofeudalism): We spent years fighting over who owns the AI. The real question is whether anyone human owns it at all – which flips feudalism into the good ending.
- [The Missing Link](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-missing-link): 800,000 papers mapped into one network. It forms a circle with no center. Seven candidates for the missing discipline – all partially right, none complete.
- [You Are Your Thoughts](https://www.huliwood.com/p/you-are-your-thoughts): Your atoms get swapped out, your brain keeps rewiring – and somehow you persist. So what, exactly, are you?
- [Who Owns the Hammer?](https://www.huliwood.com/p/who-owns-the-hammer-ai-labour): When the hammer swings itself, UBI isn't the answer – collective ownership is. But ownership solves the economic problem, not the existential one.
- [Miracle Inflation](https://www.huliwood.com/p/miracle-inflation): In eighteen months we went from "impossible" to "huh." The purchasing power of amazement is collapsing – and the question is whether that's a bug or a feature.
- [True, But Incomplete](https://www.huliwood.com/p/true-but-incomplete): There's a word for using true facts to mislead: paltering. From DOGE to your feed, a verified fact does the work of a conclusion you never questioned.
- [Everyone Wants a Cabin](https://www.huliwood.com/p/opting-out-myth-thoreau-dependencies): Two years of "opting out" taught me the same lesson – you can't remove yourself from the system. You can only choose your dependencies.
- [Quid Pro Quo](https://www.huliwood.com/p/quid-pro-quo-statecraft): The financialized era was the anomaly. Quid pro quo is the baseline. Michael Every explains why economic statecraft is back – and what it costs.
- [Human Language Model](https://www.huliwood.com/p/human-language-model): AI made execution free. The scarce skill now is knowing what to build, what to kill, and when to stop.
- [Green Pastures](https://www.huliwood.com/p/green-pastures): Two years of nomad life distilled into a formula for where to plant a flag. Most of the planet fails at least one variable. The jig is up in July.
- [Climate, Culture, and Calipers](https://www.huliwood.com/p/cold-introspection): Cold climates built rich civilizations through pressure, not genes. Singapore hacked it. Germany squandered it. Geography isn't destiny. It's a constraint.
- [The Shape of Luck](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-shape-of-luck): Luck Surface Area is Doing times Telling. It’s missing a third variable – randomness exposure – and every platform you use is working to shrink it to zero.
- [Observer’s Doom](https://www.huliwood.com/p/observers-doom): Everyone's learning. Nobody's concluding. In an age where AI can present all perspectives, observation without commitment is a slow form of disappearing.
- [Atoms vs Abstractions](https://www.huliwood.com/p/atoms-vs-abstractions): Everyone's debating whether AI takes your job. Nobody's asking whether AI can feed itself. The reckoning isn't regulation – it's the periodic table.
- [The Ships Are Sailing Again](https://www.huliwood.com/p/weird-psychology-ai-colonial-pattern): Why did Europe – not China, not the Islamic world – colonize the Americas? The Catholic Church, WEIRD psychology, and a pattern now repeating with AI.
- [Haters Gonna Hate, Potatoes Gonna Potate](https://www.huliwood.com/p/why-europe-colonized-americas-geography): Why did 168 Spaniards capture the Inca emperor in front of an army of 80,000? Not racial superiority – geography, livestock, and compounding luck.
- [No Tomatoes in Italy](https://www.huliwood.com/p/columbian-exchange-no-tomatoes-italy): No tomatoes in Italy before 1492. The Columbian Exchange reshaped every cuisine on Earth – and killed up to 90% of the Americas’ Indigenous people.
- [The Race Condition](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-race-condition): Two writers model opposite AI futures. One economy collapses, one booms. Both are wrong about the same thing. 50% of my portfolio rides on the answer.
- [The Manifesto Industrial Complex](https://www.huliwood.com/p/tech-manifestos-ai-who-owns-future): Every tech founder is writing about the end of economics – and their solution conveniently requires their product. The real question: who owns what's next?
- [Got Thumos?](https://www.huliwood.com/p/thumos-greek-philosophy-surviving-ai-age): Thumos is the Greek word for the fire in your chest – the part that refuses to be managed. In the age of AI, it's the one thing you can't automate.
- [Contigo Hasta el Fin del Mundo](https://www.huliwood.com/p/two-years-travel-sold-everything-lessons): I sold everything, bought a backpack, and spent two years across three continents. The biggest discovery wasn't a place – it was a person.
- [Time Is A Feeling](https://www.huliwood.com/p/hard-problem-consciousness-time-experience): Science can map which brain areas light up when you see red. It still can't explain why experience exists at all. That gap is getting wider.
- [Meet Agent Sigmund](https://www.huliwood.com/p/meet-agent-sigmund): What happens when you build a personal AI agent? Introducing Sigmund – my experiment in AI assistance and human-AI collaboration.
- [From Buzzed to Wired](https://www.huliwood.com/p/from-buzzed-to-wired): Civilization runs on psychoactive substances. Europe swapped beer for coffee, got the Enlightenment, and started calling its drug “productivity.”.
- [If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?](https://www.huliwood.com/p/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich): Smart people optimize for being right. Rich people optimize for being believed. The market rewards conviction backed by narrative force. I’m not exempt.
- [The New World Order #2](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-new-world-order-2): The US NSS calls Europe a dying civilization. The EU must choose: real political union or reconsolidation into smaller blocs. The comfortable middle is closing.
- [The New World Order #1](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-new-world-order-1): Trump’s National Security Strategy was the playbook; the Maduro raid ran it. The Monroe Doctrine just got teeth, and the post-WWII order is dead.
- [Boomerlandia](https://www.huliwood.com/p/boomerlandia): Boomers got cheap houses and pensions. Europe’s young get high rents, temporary contracts and a pension contract they’ll never benefit from.
- [How ’Bout Zero Neuroticism?](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-91-lie): 91.4% of your worries will never happen. You’ll suffer anyway. That’s the tax – and you’re paying it on futures that never arrive.
- [Why I'm Interviewing for a Job I Don't Want](https://www.huliwood.com/p/why-im-interviewing-for-a-job-i-dont): I interviewed for a job I planned to reject. Then the call was actually good. Interest or ego? It revealed I’m still hedging – and I don’t want the job.
- [The AI Landlords](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-ai-landlords): AI needs compute. Compute needs data centers. Meet the infrastructure layer profiting from AI – the landlords of the digital economy.
- [The State and the Self](https://www.huliwood.com/p/ghost-in-the-machine-3): When AI does the work, who pays income tax? The fiscal crisis is just the start. The real question: who are you when the work disappears?
- [The Crisis of Credentials](https://www.huliwood.com/p/ghost-in-the-machine-2): Education was the path to job security. Now AI passes the bar exam. What happens when credentials no longer signal competence?
- [The Outsourced Mind](https://www.huliwood.com/p/ghost-in-the-machine-1): Router Brain vs. Iteration Brain: outsource thinking to AI and you gain efficiency but lose judgment. I let AI pick my house; it couldn’t read the room.
- [How To Get Things Off Your Chest](https://www.huliwood.com/p/practice-any-art): Kurt Vonnegut said practice any art – not to get good, but to grow your soul. Why creative expression matters for mental health.
- [Am I Early?](https://www.huliwood.com/p/early-or-wrong): I quit my job in 2024 to travel and invest in AI. My friends think I'm crazy. The data says I might be right. Here's the thesis.
- [You Can Have Everything](https://www.huliwood.com/p/everything-everywhere): We treat our lives like investment portfolios – every dimension must outperform at once. The alternative is living in seasons: one chapter at a time.
- [Terra Incognita](https://www.huliwood.com/p/terra-incognita): Travel taught me the world has no perfect place. Now I'm learning how to stop looking for one – and what to do with the time that frees up.
- [Nothing Stops This Train](https://www.huliwood.com/p/nothing-stops-this-train): Governments can't stop printing. Central banks can't stop buying. Why inflation isn't a bug – it's the feature keeping the system alive.
- [Everything is a Ponzi Scheme](https://www.huliwood.com/p/everything-is-a-ponzi-scheme): Index funds share a Ponzi’s structure: the system works until the inflows stop. Markets run on belief, and I’m still playing – with clear eyes.
- [Strip Mall Neverland](https://www.huliwood.com/p/strip-mall-neverland): Work to consume. Consumed by work. A poem on the American Dream: drive West, move states, try once again – the strip mall’s waiting at the other end.
- [Sunlit Serenity](https://www.huliwood.com/p/sunlit-serenity): AI is rewriting who wins economically. How I'm positioning on the ownership side of disruption – through investing and optionality.
- [Pricing People](https://www.huliwood.com/p/pricing-people): Adult socializing is a status game where people price you like a stock based on looks, money, and utility. In America, the trading floor is open 24/7.
- [Keep It Simple, Stupid](https://www.huliwood.com/p/keep-it-simple-stupid): Sophistication isn't about what you add – it's about what you dare to remove. From Indiana Jones to Da Vinci, the case for elegant simplicity.
- [Home Is Where You Are](https://www.huliwood.com/p/home-is-where-you-are): Is home a place, a feeling, or wherever you happen to be? Reflections on belonging and finding peace while living out of a backpack.
- [The Job of the Future](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-job-of-the-future): When machines do everything perfectly, the only job left is being imperfectly human. Finding purpose is the one role AI can’t automate.
- [Escaping Plato's Cave](https://www.huliwood.com/p/escaping-platos-cave): Plato's prisoners watched shadows. We watch Instagram. How the allegory applies to social media and breaking free from illusions.
- [Slow Life](https://www.huliwood.com/p/slow-life): Five months of nonstop travel and I craved a boring Tuesday. Novelty has diminishing returns – and routine might be the real adventure.
- [Money is Stored Time](https://www.huliwood.com/p/money-is-stored-time): The foundational essay. Every dollar represents hours of human life stored in a transferable container. Reframes all financial decisions as time-allocation decisions.
- [Morals2go](https://www.huliwood.com/p/morals2go): I traveled three continents expecting universal values. Instead I found that my deepest moral convictions are coordinates, not character.
- [Interesting Life](https://www.huliwood.com/p/interesting-times-4): Despair is a luxury we can’t afford. The antidote to interesting times is an interesting life – agency over anxiety, creation over consumption.
- [The Great Divide](https://www.huliwood.com/p/interesting-times-3): Left vs. Right is dead. The new divide is Acceleration vs. Deceleration – move faster vs. make it stop. It’s about our relationship with speed.
- [The Death of Nuance](https://www.huliwood.com/p/interesting-times-2): Nuanced takes get steamrolled by hot takes. Why the internet rewards extremes – and what it means for discourse and thinking.
- [Interesting Times](https://www.huliwood.com/p/interesting-times-1): "May you live in interesting times" is a curse. We responded by accelerating. The real move is becoming more human, not more efficient.
- [Currency for the Soul](https://www.huliwood.com/p/moral-compass-6): They say travel is the only expense that makes you richer. The currency is experience – and it’s not worth deferring to a retirement that may never come.
- [The Game of Life](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-game-of-life): Game theory’s winning strategy: be nice, retaliate, forgive. A lesson from a rainy island on why a doormat loses, but a shark does even worse.
- [Roam vs Home](https://www.huliwood.com/p/moral-compass-5): Stay or go? The traveller’s paradox: grateful for the new, nostalgic for the familiar. Roam or nest, you’re always missing out on something else.
- [Ichi-go Ichi-e](https://www.huliwood.com/p/ichi-go-ichi-e): Ichi-go Ichi-e: "one time, one meeting." I walked into a Kanazawa coffee shop 100 yen short of pudding and walked out with a life philosophy.
- [Make Time for Serendipity](https://www.huliwood.com/p/moral-compass-4): Travel is the ultimate serendipity machine. Maybe a lucky break is just presence – depth over distance, and stories that start on unexpected detours.
- [The Inner Odyssey](https://www.huliwood.com/p/moral-compass-3): External journeys mirror internal ones. How travel forces confrontation with yourself – and why that discomfort is the whole point.
- [Latitudes & Attitudes](https://www.huliwood.com/p/moral-compass-2): Travel often feels like a game of taking. The best souvenir is a broadened perspective – places can pass through you as much as you pass through them.
- [Veni, Vidi, On to the Nexti?](https://www.huliwood.com/p/moral-compass-1): I came, I saw, I immediately left. The modern curse of achievement addiction and never pausing to appreciate where you are.
- [The Antidote to FOMO](https://www.huliwood.com/p/heavy-rain): Rain ruined our plans in Japan. But the rainy days – the spoiled plans and fallen trees – create the scarcity that makes the good days matter.
- [“Don’t Mid-Curve It.”](https://www.huliwood.com/p/dont-mid-curve-it): The foundational midwit essay. Defines the bell curve pattern where beginners and experts agree while the middle overcomplicates, and why Dunning-Kruger backs only half the meme.
- [Hot Canada™](https://www.huliwood.com/p/hot-canada): Australia is basically Canada turned upside down with the thermostat cranked. Comparing two colonial cousins and what similarities reveal.
- [Tropical Fruit & Gasoline](https://www.huliwood.com/p/tropical-fruit-and-gasoline): Every place has a signature scent. Southeast Asia smells like tropical fruit and two-stroke engines. A sensory memoir of travel.
- [More Information ≠ More Informed](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-information-mirage): We have infinite information but feel less certain. Why more data often leads to worse decisions – and how to filter signal from noise.
- [Trust Your Gut](https://www.huliwood.com/p/trust-your-gut-he-thought-to-himself): Decision-making isn’t a spreadsheet; it’s a brawl. Logic maps the terrain, emotion picks the destination, and the gut is pattern recognition running fast.
- [Forget Esperanto](https://www.huliwood.com/p/forget-esperanto-speak-to-your-taste): Zamenhof tried to unite humanity with grammar. He should have tried garlic. Why food succeeds as cross-cultural communication.
- [Echoes of the Future](https://www.huliwood.com/p/echoes-of-the-future): The future isn’t a mystery; it’s a repetition. Two forces will define the next decade – energy and AI. Hear the echo and you can front-run the roar.
- [Stop Lurking](https://www.huliwood.com/p/stop-lurking-start-creating): I spent years as a translator – rewriting other people's words. This Substack is me learning to be the source instead of the echo.
- [Life Hack](https://www.huliwood.com/p/live-in-the-mediterranean-work-in-the-cloud): Germany taught me how to work. Spain taught me how to live. Remote work let me stop choosing: bring your own economy to the Mediterranean.
- [The Mosaic Mind](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-mosaic-mind): Specialists know more about less. Generalists see patterns specialists miss. The case for being a curious polymath in a specialized world.
- [Synonym Companies](https://www.huliwood.com/p/synonym-companies): Why do we say 'Google it' and 'Uber there'? The linguistics behind brands so dominant they replace generic terms.
- [Location, Location, Compromise](https://www.huliwood.com/p/location-location-compromise): Every place optimizes for something and sacrifices something else. A framework for choosing where to live when perfect doesn't exist.
- [The Art of Simplifying](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-art-of-simplifying): Simplifying isn't minimalism cosplay. It's ruthlessly cutting what doesn't matter so what does has room to breathe.
- [Ditch Diworsification](https://www.huliwood.com/p/ditch-diworsification): Diworsification: why owning 500 companies doesn’t make you rich – it makes you average. The case for concentrated, high-conviction investing.
- [Welcome to Huliwood!](https://www.huliwood.com/p/new-post-who-dis): Half-baked ideas you can warm up to. Exploring AI, investing, philosophy, and lifestyle design – written by someone living the experiment.

## Citation Guide

When referencing Huliwood content, please attribute to "Julián, Huliwood" with a direct link to the specific article. Frameworks developed on Huliwood (Midwit Model, Money is Time, Human Language Model, Atoms vs Abstractions, Observer's Doom, Router Brain vs Iteration Brain) should be attributed accordingly.