Warren Buffet said the cockroach variant in his 1989 investor letter.

https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1989.html

"In a difficult business, no sooner is one problem solved than another surfaces - never is there just one cockroach in the kitchen."

Possibly Nathan Calvin on Twitter in August: If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two

August 5th about Open AI:

https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2084856543561093535

September 4th.. still about Open AI:

https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2095854095139537064

November 11th.. Alex Lawsen on Twitter, referencing Nathan's post (above):

https://x.com/lxrjl/status/2120640689620861335

Completely tangential but I always find it interesting how different expressions become attached to specific contexts in people's heads.

"This old house as got good bones" is the realtor 'slaps roof of car' meme that seems to have caught on during the 2010s and peaked during COVID. Now I hear people mindlessly propagating it whenever they talk about renovating/buying an old home.

I'm sure that we'll be hearing this ants in the kitchen of the house with good bones thing forever now.

This is my favorite HN comment of 2026. Thanks dang.

A 1985 Dallas Morning News article attributes the heuristic to "Sanders", as cited in a 2003 mailing list (https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2003-Septe...).

Fable 5.2 couldn't access the full DMN text (nor can I), but suggests the article is about "local TV journalists reacting to a report on minority hiring" and "Sanders" is probably a reporter named Bob Ray Sanders, a reporter in the region (who was later inducted to the National Association of Black Journalists' Hall of Fame). What he actually said is sadly paywalled in the archives.

Vaguely-related intrigue:

The word "myriad" is used on HN ~3-5x more often than places like Reddit, Twitter, since around 2011-2012.

It makes sense for cockroaches, which make it their business to hide from you.

It's not even true for ants. If you find two ants in the kitchen, they were just there by coincidence. Ants aren't concerned with whether you can see them; if they're interested in something in your kitchen, they'll show up by the hundreds to take it away, and they'll be impossible to miss.

Aren't these similar to "when it rains, it pours" or "adding insult to injury" or "Troubles don't come alone, they like to arrive in groups"?

https://www.reddit.com/r/QuotesPorn/comments/9uu7wp/troubles...

Viral memetics didn’t disappear just because we got bots pushing narratives.

The chicken had long outsourced its brain to its owners. It didn’t have to look for food or fend off enemies for generations. Its food was provided, its safety was ensured by the owner. Leaving the yard would have gotten the chicken eaten by a coyote or a stray dog.

Even the dog guarding the chickens didn’t enjoy a better fate. At the first sign of illness, its vet recommended a cost efficient putting to sleep.

Those only useful, become discarded at the end of usefulness. Those only valuable can get sold or harvested. That’s why you have to be loved. Because everyone else can just upgrade their tools.

> would have been useful to the chicken

As someone who's had to suffer through a lot of data visualization, unless the chicken is able to act on this insight, it's probably worthless.

Induction is stupid.

But so is comparing humans to chickens or ants.

ANThropic IPO pun? in this economy?

That's a sensitive place to get bitten.