Rob Schlaff's Website

A Short History of Thinking on Paper

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date August 3, 2025

I love notebooks.

I love the ritual of pulling out my Leuchtturm Bullet Journal and pretending—for a few minutes each day—that I’m a nineteenth-century poet in a French cage, writing up my deep and progound thoughts. Most of the time, it’s my work list and reminders for my kids’ homework. But still.

I like that I can carry a physical artifact of my thoughts. That I can plan my day in a truly analog fashion. That I can step away from screens and write things down, slowly, by hand.

In a world where it’s normal to carry around a supercomputer in your pocket, a notebook starts to feel like an extravagance. A tiny luxury. Which is strange when you think about it. The iPhone is a thousand dollars. But it’s the twelve-dollar notebook that feels indulgent.

That’s why I was so excited to stumble across The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen.

Human Behavior Science and Math

The Cafeteria Conspiricy

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date August 2, 2025

Voronoi diagram of people enjoying a park from Kottke.org

The strangest thing happens to me when I visit the cafeteria at work. People will come in from out of town and we’ll go to lunch with about 10 people. But there’s nowhere that we can find for 10 people to sit together. There will be a number of seats in a row and then one or two people there to break it up.

It’s like everyone is intentionally spreading out across the room as far as they can. It feels like there’s a conspiracy to keep us from finding a table.

Judaism Life Lessons

What $1 Can Buy

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date July 27, 2025

This is a story about an experiment in giving.

I’m used to walking down the street and seeing someone sitting on the sidewalk with a sign:

“Homeless. Please Help.”

And I feel it—that tension. That deep, emotional tug to help.

But then the mental calculus starts. There are so many great causes I could be supporting with that dollar. I could give to a food pantry. Or support addiction recovery. Or donate to a shelter with wraparound services. Or contribute to an organization that tackles root causes like housing policy or mental health care.

Life Lessons

Ivy League Trading Cards: The Heroes of Early Women’s Education

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date July 20, 2025

When I wrote the blog post last year, Yale Needs Women, I found myself cringing at how President Kingman Brewster handled coeducation. He didn’t so much throw open the gates as grudgingly unhook the latch—mostly because Princeton had just started to admit women, and Yale’s admit rates were taking a hit. Brewster famously insisted on still admitting 1,000 men each year to ensure Yale’s mission of “producing male leaders” wasn’t disrupted. The women? They could come—so long as they didn’t get in the way.

Yale, in short, was pretty awful. But many Ivies were pretty bad. Dartmouth women arrived in 1972 to frat chants, hate mail, and banners reading “Better Dead Than Coed.”

But there were some heroes in the fight for coeducation. I thought I’d use ChatGPT to create some trading cards of the Heroes of Ivy League Coeducation. Here’s my first attempt. At the bottom, I’ll show you how you can help me out!

Books / Audiobooks

Joe Biden’s Original Sin

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date July 13, 2025

I just finished Original Sin, the book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that traces how President Biden’s decision to run for a second term—despite mounting evidence to the contrary—slowly unraveled into a crisis. It’s not a thriller, exactly. More of a slow-motion reckoning.

Judaism

The Entebe Rescue and My Cousin Patricia (July 4, 1976)

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date July 6, 2025

On July 4th, we usually remember the events of 1776, when America cast off the yoke of British rule. But something else happened on that date—exactly 200 years later. On July 4th, 1976, Israel carried out one of the most daring military operations in its history.

Writing

My Blog is Growing Up

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date June 29, 2025

If you’re a subscriber, you might notice something new today.

I’ve been writing this blog for a few years now. It started as an experiment—a place to think out loud, share what I’m learning, and occasionally rant into the void. Over time, it’s become something I’m proud of: a testing ground for ideas, and a way to share things that matter.

But like any slightly awkward teenager, the blog’s been growing—just not always gracefully.

A friend recently pointed this out.¹ He said, “You’re making it way too hard for people to read your blog.” And he wasn’t wrong. I’ve got two problems:

It’s hard to sign up.
No one knows when a new post is coming—or if they’ve missed one.

These aren’t big problems. They’re just things I hadn’t thought about. So now I’m fixing them.

Starting now, I’m moving sign-ups and notifications over to Jetpack.

That’s why your email looks different. You’ll also notice a few changes:

It’s much easier to subscribe—just scroll to the bottom of any post.
You’ll get the full post in your inbox, not just a teaser with a link.

I’m also adding something new: a more regular posting schedule.

I’m not promising weekly, but I’ll aim for twice a month, usually on Sunday mornings around 10 AM Eastern.² I thought that would be an appropriate time to think about my thoughts—on a lazy Sunday, sipping some coffee.

If you’re already subscribed, you don’t need to do a thing. But if you’ve been meaning to sign up—or gently nudging a friend to—now’s it’s even easier.

Thanks for growing with me. Let me know what you think.

See you at 10 AM on (some) Sundays!
Rob

Footnotes

I’m looking at you AR. ↩︎
Though I still reserve the right jab in a special edition between posting dates ↩︎

Life Lessons

Grant Me the Wisdom to Do More Than Cope

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date May 30, 2025

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Serenity Prayer

I first heard these words in my twenties and thought they were the pinnacle of self-help wisdom. It’s known as the Serenity Prayer—famous in Alcoholics Anonymous. Here was a path to peace, proven in the crucible of real suffering.

Kids Life Lessons

Why E-Sports Are Sports—And Why it Matters

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date May 24, 2025

My son Ari is playing on his middle school’s E-Sports Team. Each week, he and his classmates log on to play Super Smash Brothers against kids from other schools. Their uniforms are school-branded hoodies with their names printed on the back.

At first, it felt weird. A school E-Sports team? I’d always thought about sports as a physical thing where the coach would run him so ragged outside that he’d come home tired enough to fall asleep in his soup. Sports were supposed to leave him sore and grass-stained, not sitting in a classroom tapping buttons a controller.

Life Lessons Meditation

I Never Listen to Music at 2X Speed. Why Try to Live Life That Way?

Post author By Robert Schlaff
Post date May 17, 2025

I’ve been noticing a pattern: no matter how much I do, it never feels like enough. This make sense at work. The more I accomplish, the more money I can make, the faster I might get promoted, and the sooner I can wrap things up and spend time with my family. But I also feel compelled to do this at home too.

I catch myself listening to books and podcasts at 1.5x or 2x speed, just to get through them faster. Sometimes I even feel annoyed at a book—not because it’s bad, but because I have to finish it before moving on to the next one.

But I’ve noticed that I don’t do this with music.