Kimmy's Scrapbook

Hi! I'm Kimberly! This is my informal blog where I write about things that interest me. I also write about my life and other things that are on my mind.

A Big Spoon is All You Need: On the unreasonable effectiveness of Big Spoon

Posted: 2026-04-01
AIL: 1 — Human created, minor AI assistance
More: Half-Baked Thoughts, Dumb-posts, Cult-ideas

(Dumb post incoming. Allegedly humorous.)

This morning, I discovered an incredible Life Hack involving the Big Spoon that will save Many Minutes And Dollars. This knowledge will be an incredible boon as I enter my bachelorette era.

Big spoon as yogurt enabler

Throughout the years, I've tried and failed to purchase yogurt in bulk. Like everybody, I enjoy consuming yogurt, but I would always get those 5.3oz chobani cups because they’re a cheap and plentiful resource that’s easy to procure on-site across a variety of operational theatres.

They’re cheap in isolation, but the cost adds up when you get ambushed by many at once. As with all grocery shopping dilemmas, the solution is to shop in bulk: get one of the big ones and eat the elephant one bite at a time.

In my hubris, I often did exactly the first half of that. “Sure, I can eat a healthy breakfast that requires modest preparation every morning. Maybe it could be like a lifestyle change,” I’d think to myself. I’d then leave the large container to sit unopened in my fridge for weeks and eventually throw it away, shamefully.

Why do I abandon my yogurt so? Part of this is ADHD attention blindness, but part of this is also due to the opportunity cost of ruining a perfectly clean bowl by ladling a schlopful of yogurt into it. No thanks! Who has time to wash one extra dish later when I could increase my disposable plastic use instead?

Today’s insight was REVELATORY. The issue disappears when you have a Big Spoon: just eat directly from the large container! Take the giant yogurt container out of the fridge, feast ravenously, then put the surplus back. A small spoon won’t cut it because the container’s too big—you’d get yogurt on your hands—but you don’t have a small spoon, you have a big spoon with a long handle!

With practice, you can unlock an advanced technique: grab some blueberries or jam and mix them straight into the container. You can put whatever you want in there. Berries? Cinnamon? Granola? Chocolate chips?

I tried this for the first time this morning, so it’s basically already a permanent lifestyle change.

Big spoon as utility utensil

The advantages of the Big Spoon compound when you keep one in your bag.

Artists of all kinds intuitively understand the importance of quick access to their instruments. Photography nerds know the best camera is the one you always have with you. Gun nerds fashion hip holsters so they can always feel the loving presence of their pistols and rifles. Ernest Hemingway famously kept a notebook around so he could write in public whenever he wanted.

Even Leonardo the Vinci himself was said to keep his chisel in his pocket protector so he would be ready whenever the desire to sculpt marble struck.

Longtime Kimmy enjoyers know that I too keep one of these suckers with me at all times. In this way, I follow in the footsteps of Hemingway, Vinci, Graham Bell, and the rest. My tool of choice is this weird camping spork thing, a combination spoon/fork with ends that clip into each other. It’s small enough not to be a bother, but when assembled, the handle is long enough to reach into narrow crevasses. It’s so aesthetically pleasing to me for some reason!

At a restaurant but the waiter didn’t bring utensils? Big Spoon. Burrito hull failure turns your lunch into a casserole? Big spoon. Need to reserve your table so strangers don’t steal it? Leave a Big Spoon there.

There is no problem the Big Spoon cannot solve. There are only problems you have not yet applied enough Big Spoon to.

Stealing the California Zephyr

Posted: 2026-03-25
AIL: 1 — Human created, minor AI assistance
More: Half-Baked Thoughts

An image of Point Bonita lighthouse, taken 2014-07-21

A couple weekends ago, my co-founder Peyman took a pilgrimage of sorts to San Francisco. One goal was strategic -- to raise money for our startup -- but another goal was spiritual, to rediscover his spark of the "California spirit," some innate sense that good things are still possible, that collaboration is abundant. I think he wanted to capture that easygoing nature in a bottle to sustain him for a hard road ahead.

What he came home with was quite different.

Could east-coast and west-coast personalities flip?

Throughout the 2010s, my Californian friends saw their home as a mythical land of the "yes, and." The mindset in 2010-2015 was that of a carefree abundance. Startup money was plentiful, YC was easy to get into, life was laid-back and casual, events started on "California time," Mountain View was where you moved when you wanted to get promoted. When I moved to San Diego for grad school, people said it was always sunny in La Jolla; that everybody was happy there. "Sure, people in Florida say they're always happy but here we actually are always happy," locals told me. The bay area radiated with a kind of magnetic energy.

"We run a chat system for distributed and remote teams"

"Must be willing to relocate to San Francisco"

It's funny how one's perception of home changes when viewed through other peoples' lenses. The Californians I knew saw East Coasters in a different light. New York City, the "city that never sleeps," retained a kind of panicked intensity in their minds. When my Ph.D. advisor moved to Cornell Tech, he was put off by the complicated process of buying a house in New Jersey. He lamented that "they require both sides of the transaction to retain a lawyer. It feels so slimy." Before I moved to follow, a dear friend pulled me aside one day to explicitly discourage me from moving to New York. He was earnestly worried for my mental health. "Cornell suicides are so common that they even have their own wikipedia page," he confided in me once. "I just don't want you to get depressed if you go there."

There's something in the wind

Peyman's spiritual journey a few weekends back was largely unsuccessful. He was hoping for abundance, but instead he witnessed a pervasive panicked energy; some sense that San Franciscans are either billionaires or just scraping by. He spoke of how every overheard conversation was about work, tech, AI, or startups.

Artificial intelligence is certainly responsible for a big chunk of this sentiment. College graduates are facing the grimmest job market in years and even established staff engineers in my social circles are having trouble finding work.

But I think the shift I'm seeing in the emotional resonance runs deeper than that. Across the board, engineers are worried about layoffs, efficiency, redundancy, even though we are the overwhelmingly dominant force reshaping the Bay Area. Startups on the west coast routinely expect employees to abide by the 996 work schedule - from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week. This schedule is already familiar to service workers with long commutes who have to go to extreme measures to just make rent, but the flood now rises to swallow every discipline.

A labor force that never sleeps, never leisures, never has time for art... What city does this remind Californians of?

Tech will probably continue to entrench itself as the dominant power animating the West Coast. Tech will probably continue to expect ever-more extreme dedication from its tradespeople. As this process happens, I wonder if NYC might someday steal the reputation as the place where non-tech disciplines can still "thrive," at least for the moment.

I earnestly wonder if the energy around "west coast" and "east coast" might switch places soon. I don't think NYC is becoming more laid back, but I certainly think the bay area is rapidly becoming more intense, and I think it may outpace the east coast someday if it hasn't already.

Final Thoughts

This sort of position piece is new to me. I'm used to academic, structured writing, where every claim is enumerated and supported by evidence, so it feels quite strange to write about my gut feelings, or my -- shudder! -- earnest guesses or worries, especially since I'm not prepared to support them in a debate.

But if I were to continue sketching this topic out, I'd want to outline:

Am I wrong? Is this post full of shit? Write your own blog post and tell me about it! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Bunkers, Vaults, and Biospheres

Posted: 2026-03-20
More: Quotes, Blogmarks

We already have a planet to hold us, whose repair is far more possible than its recreation

ICML is using prompt injections to catch LLM use in reviews

Posted: 2026-03-19
More: Blogmarks

This only affects reviewers who

From the article:

Reviewers can fall short of our expectations in many ways, with or without AI involved. This initiative focused only on one particular action (breaking previously agreed-upon rules for LLM usage) and still identified it for ~1% of all reviews.

We hope that by taking strong action against violations of agreed-upon policy we will remind the community that as our field changes rapidly the thing we must protect most actively is our trust in each other. If we cannot adapt our systems in a setting based in trust, we will find that they soon become outdated and meaningless.

ICML 2026 program chairs

FAFO

Posted: 2026-03-17
More: Quotes

Fuck around, find out.
High-risk experimentation often leads to significant, data-driven insights.