Otherwise
Julia Wise on parenting, effective altruism, and more.
- Posts
- 136 from 22 Feb 2014 to 27 Sep 2026
- Posting
- monthly (20 in the last year)
- Kind
- personal blog
- Feed
- https://juliawise.net/feed/
2026 13
- Thank you to the AI safety people
- Rule-following helps you not act like a psychopath
- Lyrics are arbitrary, joy isn’t
- Review of middle age: 3.5 / 4 stars
- Use explicit teaching for kids
- Spider shopping
- Seeing too much peak and not enough normalcy
- Book review: Girl Scout Handbook 1956
- Security theater for child independence
- Underrated areas of child safety
- One-sentence versions of posts I haven’t published
- One approach to kids’ screentime
- Get physical activity while watching kids
2025 33
- In a discouraging world, we can afford to change things
- You don’t have to wait for a high income to have kids
- How is math going in my city’s public schools?
- The past was not that cute
- Things my kids don’t know about sex
- Air travel with only an under-seat bag
- Some hardworking dads in EA
- Parenting dilemmas I haven’t figured out: “Help” with household tasks
- Dividing responsibilities at home
- You’re not alone when life events affect work
- You can access long-lived communities
- Review of our cats: 3/5 stars
- Dreaded problems that are unlikely to kill your child
- Don’t make kids miserable about the news
- Misc parenting ideas for summer
- Runaway wives in 1700s Pennsylvania
- Conveying wealth and poverty to kids
- What is marriage for?
- Two small parenting tactics
- Why we’re still doing normal school
- Two guides on egg freezing
- Two styles of rules
- Admit you’re dependent on caffeine
- DIY preschool
- Clothing prints could be more beautiful
- Writing about non-AI topics feels weird
- Going barefoot is an option
- Ways to be part of a village
- Toward simpler funerals
- The best children’s books are easily found used online
- Mutually exclusive parenting advice
- The ugly sides of two approaches to charity
- Handling emotions better over time
2024 14
- You don’t have to treat pets as family members
- Developing the middle ground on polarized topics
- Inner dialogue, walking down the sidewalk
- Advice for getting along with your kids
- Two 19th-century missionary memoirs in China
- Relaxing my standards on housekeeping
- Children’s appearance is over-controlled
- Tool: “Is this causing a problem?”
- Coaching kids as they learn to climb
- Still donating half
- Conversations I often have about parenting
- How bad is alcohol?
- Your wedding doesn’t have to be that great
- Raising children on the eve of AI
2023 18
- The sugar budget
- “Sugar rush” in children seems to be confirmation bias
- Ethics of adopting a meat-eating pet
- What are the results of more parental supervision and less outdoor play?
- It’s useful when either parent can handle things
- Investing in boundaries with young kids
- Some careers are overhyped to children
- When to not trust my feelings
- The best kind of music to learn is social music
- How much to coerce children?
- Who is nature good for?
- Marrying young went well for me, part 2
- Marrying young went well for me, part 1
- Rereading Roald Dahl
- How much time and money does an additional child take?
- Nose / throat treatments for respiratory infections
- How did we decide to have a kid?
- Crying in museums
2022 31
- Breastfeeding: might be nice, might be surprisingly terrible
- Childbirth location and safety
- Consent often isn’t straightforward
- Moral aesthetics
- History of group sleeping
- Two ways of looking at death
- Interview with Kat Woods: decision-making about having kids
- Parenting expectations and experiences
- Most children of smart parents will be pretty ordinary
- How to extend pockets
- Economics: not as bad as I thought
- Messy personal stuff that affected my cause prioritization
- Travel with a baby
- Over- and under-diagnosis of sexism
- Divorce statistics
- Marriage advice
- School: your mileage may vary
- Lots of things are connected with eugenics
- How much will pregnancy affect your health and work?
- Childcare guide
- How we end up with different intuitions about problems
- Advice for moving to Boston
- A week in the life: where time goes with three kids
- Donations and budgeting, 15 years in
- How to talk with kids about race?
- How to appreciate music more?
- Babies are different from most of our reality
- Welcome!
- What startup founders should think about before having kids
- Looking back on “Strangers Drowning”
- Kid donations, 2020 and 2021
2021 12
- Kids, gifts, and materialism
- Mealtime rules at our house
- It’s ok to leave EA
- How many kids lose an eye? (not many)
- Book review: The Origins of You
- Experiences raising children in shared housing
- Watch team backup
- Books and websites on babies
- Book review: Don’t Shoot the Dog
- Baby stuff I’d get again, the third time around
- Gift ideas for preschool / early elementary children
- Who benefits from the au pair program?