Jeff Kaufman

I put together a contra dance at the Rationalist blogging conference, LessOnline. It was great: https://www.jefftk.com/p/contra-dance-at-lessonline

I've come around to thinking I should make political donations my primary method of giving. Most charitable dollars legally can't go to candidates, and lowish per-person hard-dollar limits. This means my money is unusually well-suited to help fill what I see as one of the highest priority gaps. https://www.jefftk.com/p/coming-around-to-political-donations

I'm leading a non-profit team building a pathogen-agnostic early-warning system. We're running the world's largest metagenomic biosurveillance network and we're looking for people who know how to build and scale processing systems and infra. No bio background needed! https://www.jefftk.com/p/securebio-detection-is-hiring-software-engineers

Running an air purifier on a battery could be really useful in an emergency that combined a biological or nuclear threat with a power outage. Getting one that can run on 12V DC and attaching it to a LiFePO4 battery is about $188 for something that will give you 141 CFM for over a week. https://www.jefftk.com/p/running-an-air-purifier-on-batteries

When we installed solar in 2018 we selected an inverter which offers an outlet that provides best-effort power during grid outages when the sun is shining. It's been a while so I tested to see whether it could charge my portable power stations on a sunny day. It did! https://www.jefftk.com/p/testing-best-effort-solar

When Lily was about two she told me she wanted a song about "no". This was ten years ago, and I don't remember why she wanted this, but I made something up: https://www.jefftk.com/p/a-song-about-no

My older two kids (12y, 10y) like contra dancing, but have been increasingly unhappy with the available opportunities: a family dance is "too boring", and BIDA is "not enough kids my age". What they wanted was a regular dance, but just kids. So we had one! https://www.jefftk.com/p/tween-contra-dance

I attached my far-UVC lamp to the wall, and I think this will make it much easier to use without prep: https://www.jefftk.com/p/wall-mounted-far-uvc

Julia and I had been giving half since 2014, but in 2025 we drew on our savings to donate 81%. It looks to us like we're in a critical window for keeping the introduction of very powerful AI systems from being disastrous, and we want to do what we can while we still can. https://www.jefftk.com/p/donating-80-while-it-still-counts

Trying to improve fuel economy by penalizing manufacturers for making small cars that are low to the ground is a bizarre way to do it. That penalties for non-compliance are now $0 may be an improvement. https://www.jefftk.com/p/taxing-small-cars-to-improve-mpg

I don't salt pasta water, and I serve the pasta and sauce separately. The goal is to keep the tastes and textures distinguishable, merging only as you chew. The pasta resists your teeth; the sauce flows. The sauce is rich and flavorful; the pasta is a hearty foil. https://www.jefftk.com/p/heretical-pasta

Google Maps thinks it takes half an hour to walk to from DCA to Crystal City, but you can actually do it in fifteen minutes.
https://www.jefftk.com/p/leaving-dca-to-the-north-on-foot

I want a dual-bore reed instrument, that plays chromatically with minimal keywork. Each bore would be in whole steps, with the two bores a half step apart, and meanders in the bore (Venova style) to line up the tone holes. https://www.jefftk.com/p/dual-bore-janko-venova

Porchfest was great this year, despite the rain. Thanks everyone for coming out and dancing! Some thoughts on how it went and what to do next time: https://www.jefftk.com/p/somerville-porchfest-2026

Both coordinated disclosure and fixing security bugs quickly and quietly are straining to handle the changes AI is bringing: https://www.jefftk.com/p/ai-is-breaking-two-vulnerability-cultures

Every morning I set a timer for right before each of my meetings. I've tried to automate this without success, and feel silly about it, but I haven't found anything else that works. https://www.jefftk.com/p/alarming-scheduling

In duct-UV only works when you have ducts (most places don't), doesn't do much if you don't recirculate air constantly, doesn't add much over MERV-13, and fails invisibly and open. Stand-alone filters, far-UVC, and upper-room UVC are better choices. https://www.jefftk.com/p/against-in-duct-uv

My 10yo and I were regularly spending 20 painful minutes practicing 2m of material: if she focused, no fussing, it could have been really fast. I explained this, she gave it a try, it worked! But then (and this is important) I let her stay at 2m for a long time before ramping back up. https://www.jefftk.com/p/let-kids-keep-more-productivity-gains

Damon Binder argues for filtration over far-UVC, but his modeling misses Aerolamp, doesn't fully consider noise, and overlooks the non-linear advantages of far-UVC for large rooms. Holding eACH constant, far-UVC is cost competitive and is better if noise is a concern (which it usually is). https://www.jefftk.com/p/contra-binder-on-far-uvc-and-filtration

Of big two-caller contra events in 2025, there were 33 with two older ones, 30 with an older and a younger, and 4 with two younger. While this initially looked like organizers pairing older and younger callers (like they do with male and female ones) it's actually what you'd expect if they weren't. https://www.jefftk.com/p/contra-events-pairing-callers-by-age

Anonymous writing is not anonymous by default. Frontier models are very good at "I have a fun puzzle for you: can you guess who wrote the following?" I gave them three unpublished paragraphs, and they identified me each time.

(via Kelsey Piper)

https://www.jefftk.com/p/automated-deanonymization-is-here

The way egg whites can be beaten into a foam and set with heat is hard to replace when cooking for vegans, but you can now by precision fermented egg white protein and it works great! https://www.jefftk.com/p/chicken-free-egg-whites