Now that you’ve grown up, it’s time to parent yourself.
NO ONE is coming.
No one is going to tell you to turn off the TV, or get out and exercise, or write the business plan for you, or start that tutorial ...it's all up to you.
To the people who take photos of restaurant menus and post them on Google Maps: may both sides of your pillow always be cold, I am forever grateful for your service
Years ago, I lost a family member to commercial sex work. She contracted HIV and couldn’t accept it. Within two years, it progressed to AIDS. I nursed her for three weeks before she died. I had her phone throughout and it kept buzzing 🧵
Cabinet declared a 24hr economy, and I was confused about the excitement. Isn't that just... staying open? I did the research, so you don't have to. Here's what it actually means and whether it's worked anywhere else. 🧵
Two years ago, a developer I know launched a small product here in Nigeria.
Everything was going fine.
Users were signing up, logging in, and using the platform daily.
Then one morning he woke up to something strange.
Several users were complaining their accounts had been accessed… without their permission.
Kindly bookmark for yourself and retweet so others too can learn
I found out my girlfriend cheated on me. Instead of breaking up right away, I made a fake account, sent her the proof anonymously, and told her that if she didn’t send me money, I’d tell her boyfriend everything.
I shared this whole plan with my best friend for advice, but this mf went behind my back and shared everything with my girlfriend.
When confronted, he said:
“Why does it matter? I thought she deserved to know.”
He wasn’t just betraying me. He was performing information leakage.
In information theory, information leakage happens when confidential or hidden information inside a system becomes accessible to someone who was not supposed to know it.
Many systems are designed so that certain variables remain hidden. As long as those variables stay hidden, there is uncertainty about them.
The moment someone reveals information about those hidden variables, the uncertainty decreases. That reduction in uncertainty is exactly what we call gaining information.
Information theory gives us a mathematical way to measure how much uncertainty exists in a system. The standard measure used for this purpose is called entropy.
Entropy measures how uncertain we are about the value of some variable.
Entropy formula:
H(X) = − Σ P(x) log₂ P(x)
Where
H(X) = entropy
P(x) = probability of a specific outcome
Σ = summation
The higher the entropy, the more uncertain the system is. The lower the entropy, the more information we have about the system.
Let's take an example and solve step by step:
Imagine a technology company is secretly developing a new product. Internally, the company has created four possible designs.
Only one of these designs will eventually be released, but that information is confidential and outsiders do not know which one will be chosen.
The four possible designs are:
- Design A
- Design B
- Design C
- Design D
Now consider a competitor trying to guess which design the company will release. Because the competitor has no inside information at all, they assume that each design is equally likely.
From the competitor’s perspective, the probabilities look like this:
Design A = 0.25
Design B = 0.25
Design C = 0.25
Design D = 0.25
These probabilities do not mean the company actually plans to release each design with equal chance. They simply represent the competitor’s belief under complete uncertainty.
Now we calculate the entropy of this system:
H(X) = − Σ P(x) log₂ P(x)
H(X) = − [4 × (0.25 × −2)]
H(X) = − (−2)
H(X) = 2 bits
So the entropy of this system is 2 bits.
What does that mean in plain language?
It means that before any information leaks, the competitor needs 2 bits of information to fully determine which design the company will release. In other words, there is a high level of uncertainty.
Now imagine an employee inside the company leaks some information. They do not reveal the exact design, but they reveal something partial.
They say: “The real design is either A or B.”
This statement eliminates two possibilities. Now the competitor knows that C and D cannot be the correct design.
So the competitor updates their probabilities:
Design A = 0.5
Design B = 0.5
Design C = 0
Design D = 0
Notice what happened here. The competitor still does not know the exact design, but their uncertainty has decreased.
Now we compute the entropy again:
H(X) = − Σ P(x) log₂ P(x)
H(X) = − [0.5 log₂(0.5) + 0.5 log₂(0.5)]
H(X) = − [0.5(−1) + 0.5(−1)]
H(X) = − (−1)
H(X) = 1 bit
Now compare the two results.
Before the leak, the entropy was: 2 bits
After the leak, the entropy became: 1 bit
The uncertainty dropped by 1 bit.
That drop is the information that leaked out of the system.
The employee did not reveal the full secret, but they reduced the uncertainty by half. That reduction is precisely what information theory measures.
Congratulations, you have just learned the concept of information leakage.
It was 8 PM on a Friday, and my partner was dead asleep on the living room sofa, still in his work clothes.
I was on FaceTime with a friend who was getting ready for a massive night out. She asked what my weekend plans were, and I flipped the camera to show him resting.
She sighed, doing her makeup. “Girl, doesn't it bother you? You’re young, it's Friday, and you're just watching a man sleep. You deserve the princess treatment. If he really wanted to take you out and show you off, he would.”
I looked at him. I looked at the dark circles under his eyes and the laptop still open on the coffee table.
What my friend didn’t see was that earlier that week, he had quietly taken over two of my biggest bills so I could afford to take a lower-paying job that I actually loved. He had been pulling 14-hour days for months, absorbing all the financial pressure so I could finally breathe.
I didn’t argue with her. I just calmly said,
“He is giving me the soft life. The soft life is me waking up without panic because he goes to war every single day. I’m not going to punish him for returning from that war exhausted.”
The line got quiet. I told her to have fun, hung up, and draped a blanket over him.
The internet has completely warped our idea of what love looks like. It has convinced women that "princess treatment" means endless aesthetic dates, constant entertainment, and a partner who operates with infinite energy.
But a man cannot simultaneously be in the trenches securing your absolute safety, and have the carefree energy of a guy with zero responsibilities.
I realized that night: The ultimate luxury isn't a man who takes you out to be seen. It’s a man who makes your life so incredibly secure that fiercely protecting his rest becomes your biggest priority.
Nobody prepares you for the amount of pain and grief you experience when you have to forgive yourself for believing someone was actually a good kind genuine person. The hardest part isn't just their betrayal, it's the shame you carry for ignoring your instincts, for giving your best to someone who only mirrored what you wanted to see.