Loneliness and Sleep
The finding is narrower than the headlines suggest, and the narrow version is more useful. What changes is the quality of the sleep and the state of the next day, which explains why the count of hours keeps looking normal.
The Lona Blog
All articles — page 11
'Why "How Was Your Day" Kills Conversations'
One question, taken apart. Why the standard evening opener reliably produces a single word, and what a smaller question does differently at the same doorway.
AI Roleplay: What the Term Covers
Roleplay is a scene with assigned parts, not a relationship with a consistent other. What the term actually covers, why an hour-long scene tends to collapse, and how to set one up that survives its own length.
Rotational Work: Two Weeks On, Two Weeks Off
Rigs, ships, remote sites, fly-in-fly-out. The part nobody writes about is not the fourteen days away but the fourteen days back, and the fact that a rotation puts you at half of everything that repeats.
Loneliness and Physical Health: Established vs Overstated
The mortality association is real, replicated and large. The cigarette equivalence was a way of describing an effect size, and the causal claim built on top of it was never in the studies. Both things are true.
'How to Answer "How Are You" Honestly'
The ritual question, taken from the answering side. Why fine is a protocol rather than a lie, what the middle register sounds like, and the small number of people worth breaking the ritual for.
AI Characters and the Catalog Model
A character in a catalog is a page of writing attached to a shared model. What that design does well, and why the fiftieth message is the part nobody optimized.
Drinking Alone
The drink does not make an empty evening less empty. It makes the evening pass, and it switches off the discomfort that would otherwise have prompted you to do something about it. That second effect is the expensive one.
How to Keep a Conversation Going Past Two Exchanges
The opener worked and then the exchange stalled. A three-part loop that runs on material the other person already gave you, with the failure modes that stop it at exchange two.
Remote Work Isolation
A week of back-to-back calls can end without a single conversation nobody planned. What remote work deletes is the unscheduled talk around the work, and that is the exact material adult friendships used to be made from.
Overworking to Avoid Empty Evenings
Work is the one way of being unavailable that raises your standing while you do it. That is why the pattern lasts, and why the bill only arrives on the first evening nothing is due.
Asking Better Questions
The two properties that decide whether a question gets a real answer or a shrug, why the clever question loses to the one that proves you kept a detail, and the four ways a question quietly destroys its own answer before anyone speaks.