I really liked this piece on how our brain is in a constant state of betting on the future in real time. The hed and dek sort of says it all: “Your brain doesn’t see reality — it tries to predict it” and “Our brains are gambling addicts placing bets on what reality holds. And sometimes, they bet wrong.”

He kicks off the excerpt (from a longer book) with a story that explains the concept, which boils down to that we don’t calmly observe all the facts before we start moving. We take in enough information and then make a bunch of assumptions. And sometimes our predictions are correct, sometimes they’re not, and sometimes we don’t know what we set into motion by our prediction that wouldn’t have happened if our brains worked differently.

He explains: “You start with a prediction, a top-down expectation of what your brain thinks it’s about to see. Then bottom-up incoming sensory data either confirms this prediction or updates it if things don’t fit. This is known as the predictive processing theory.”

If all of this is true, slowing down, waiting to take in information, and giving yourself time to assess the “bottom-up incoming sensory data” before acting would all point towards better outcomes. The slow and steady tortoise wins not because it keeps plodding on, but because it moves more slowly. It enables its brain to use the data before taking a wrong step.

Keep reading to the end. It gave me a lot of food for thought.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

*******

I’ve found another game. Rung gives you five chances to guess the daily answer to a series of clues, but there is a catch. If you guess wrong, you drop two rungs. If you skip giving an answer, you only drop one. If you drop two, you see the clues you would have gotten along the way. If you’re not certain about the answer, it pays to skip instead of guess. The whole thing takes under 30 seconds to play, so it’s a welcome addition to my evening games.

Enjoy.

*******

Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

I kept seeing people link to this site, but I didn’t really get it until I clicked over and started reading it. The explanation: “Edward Bellamy once imagined that music on demand would be ‘the limit of human felicity.’ A modern apartment is full of things that once drew the same kind of awe.”

Look around you right now. The everyday objects would be mind-blowing to someone living in another time, and the site walks you through quotes from an invention’s early days or wonder over getting food grown on far-away soil.

But what was eye-opening, to me, was that so many of the quotes were from the 1800s. You forget that the world went through such drastic change in the 19th century. And then think about the change that happened the century after that. The inventions that went from being in select spaces to in our homes to in our pockets. It puts the current day into perspective.

Anyway, I found it super interesting.

Remember back in 2024 when I said, “This is the 1000th (okay, 900th) time that I’ve written the Friday Blog Roundup, a weekly series that started back in 2006,” and I noted that it was really the 900th time because they got misnumbered at some point? Well, the next Roundup really is the 1000th Roundup. It’s kind of bonkers to think that I’ve written this type of post 1000 times. But I guess when you write it weekly for 20 years, that’s what happens.

Happy 1000 Roundups (one week from now).

*******

Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

*******

But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Aufatmen” (Elaine ohne Kind)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Congratulations to No Kidding in NZ for being chosen as this year’s People’s Champion for World Childless Week. The “World Childless Week Champions are people who are making a positive difference for the childless community,” and the People’s Champion is a special designation because it is chosen by the community. Well deserved!

Lastly, Scientist on the Roof writes about back to school, a topic that is on my mind this week. Her oldest child is entering his senior year. She writes, “My cousin, who has 3 kids, all in college or grad school, says parenting has entered another stage: it’s more supportive listening and less giving advice.” Change is hard, especially when everything feels like it’s moving so quickly.

The roundup to the Roundup: Happy (almost) 1000 Roundups. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 28 – September 4) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.

While we were at the beach, my flip-flops snapped. I love these flip-flops; they’re one of the last things I have from BlogHer. I’ve already hot-glued them back together once, and I knew I could do that once we got home, but in the meantime, I didn’t have shoes. But I was in a beach town. Surely I would be able to get beach shoes.

The first store did not have flip-flops in my size, but they started at $20 and only went up from there. The second store had flip-flops in my size, but they were $55. For a pair of super ugly flip-flops! I was going to give up and see if the hardware store had duct tape I could use to repair them when I decided to duck into a third store while Josh ordered dinner. This store had the most hideous beach slides for $11 (win!), but as I was about to bring them to the register, I looked down and saw a bin of flip-flops for $1.99. I took them up to the cashier, and she told me they were indeed only $1.99 because they had a weird stain that looked like spilled soda. Yes, I would like these stained flip-flops for under $2. I walked out feeling like a queen.

*******

I enter Goodreads giveaways all the time, but I rarely win. Until I do. I won a giveaway for the new Maureen Johnson book, The Velvet Knife. I haven’t won a giveaway since 2024. Thank you, Goodreads!

*******

What would be the third thing? If the flip-flops were on the weekend and the Goodreads book was mid-week, would I end the week with one final win?

Yes. Yes, I would.

There are Great Western Railroad posters up in train stations offering “delay pay” if your train is over a half hour late. We have had plenty of delayed trains over the years, but this time, Josh decided to submit a claim and see what happened.

GWR accepted the claim (the train was more than a half hour delayed getting to our destination), and sent us paper train vouchers, which would have been awesome if they had no expiration date, but they did. And they were going to expire a few months before our next trip. There wasn’t enough time to mail them to the Wolvog, who was still overseas, and we couldn’t transfer them outside the family.

Josh asked them if they would refund us in cash, and we went back and forth for weeks, proving we destroyed the vouchers, filling out more paperwork, etc. Finally, more than two months after our trip, we received our delay pay! My third win in a single week.

Epic.