HN user
Early-stage defense and energy investing @ Cubit Capital.
Freedom and markets and human flourishing
If there is that much demand for a more traditional bowling experience, it seems like one of the bowlers complaining about the "new" experience should open an alternative. And will make a killing.
Here's a recent X post I wrote entitled "What I learned about startup founders from being the worst pilot in the AirWing."
At the age of 25, I was sent straight from my F/A-18 training squadron to a forward deployed squadron aboard the USS Nimitz.
The fastest way to build a reputation as the New Guy is safe and predictable carrier landings. The fastest way to be put on notice is to suck behind the boat.
Within 2 weeks, I was solidly in the latter category. I struggled deeply, especially with night landings.
At first, I kept catching the “one-wire,” meaning I was too low when crossing the back of the ship.
Then, in later flights, to compensate, I started “boltering” a lot – meaning I’d put on too much power at the end, fly too high, and miss all the wires completely. Then I’d have to circle around for another attempt.
There was one night where I went around 5 times before finally catching a wire and landing. I expended so much fuel in doing so I had to hit the airborne tanker to refuel about halfway through.
I was ranked 98 out of 99 pilots in the AirWing after my first six weeks.
I was on notice. Whenever I came in to land, all the senior aviators aboard the ship nervously watched to see what would happen.
Then the bottom fell out. One night I landed the first time – but caught another one-wire. Over the common carrier frequency came the Voice of God. This was incredibly rare – the carrier CO never interrupted carrier ops.
“Son, I can’t have you landing like that aboard my ship.”
I was petrified – and what little confidence I had was destroyed. As I taxied off the landing area and was waiting for the plane to be chained to the deck, in the pitch black, I let my guard down and accidentally released the brakes. I almost ran over the plane captain – and was only saved because my back-seater screamed “brakes!” to me.
When I returned to the ready room, I got reamed out by my squadron CO. I was benched.
Those were the two longest days of my Navy career. I didn’t know if I would cut it. I saw no way out.
Then the skipper sent me back up. I was terrified – but he knew the only way to get confidence back was to Do the Hard Thing.
Again and again. And again.
Eventually, I figured it out. I was never better than middle of the pack in landing grades – but I was safe and predictable. I also found other areas to excel in, like air-to-air tactics.
This dark period in my life gave me a deep understanding of grit and resilience.
In conversations with founders, I now know what to look for in how people respond to challenging situations. How one responds in dark moments – and which people believed in them enough to give them another shot.
I also now have a desire to seek out the hard moments to walk beside high potential folks who hit the inevitable roadblocks in life.
It’s in the those moments where thought partnership matters most – and where being there matters most.
Do Hard Things. Keep moving forward.
You will figure this out.
Rob Henderson - deep insights in human psychology from the Lens of an ivy-league educated academic who grew up as an impoverished foster kid.
Also coined the term “luxury beliefs”
One of my good friend’s dad was brutally murdered by Kaczynski when she was a young teenager.
A small bomb in a package that used razor blazes, nails, and other bits of metal to nearly tear his head off while his young family was in the house with him.
And it turns out the victim was the “wrong” man, as he didn’t even work on the project Kaczynski wanted to bring “retribution” for.
Kaczynski May have said some interesting things, but he physically tore apart the lives of many, leaving a wake of destruction during his crusade.
Actions speak louder than words. Even eloquent ones.
Looks like PGs account is now back up.
Usually a lot lower than that - article mentions 50 feet. Which is insanely low. I got to 100 feet in training in a super hornet and was petrified.
Farcast | Multiple Roles | HYBRID (Los Angeles / Dallas) | Full-time | https://www.gofarcast.com
Farcast is a seed-stage, venture-backed hard tech company seeking to eliminate the Impossible Mile in logistics by building precision air drop systems that can be deployed from manned cargo planes or drones. Recently closed round.
Hiring for: - Flight Test Engineer - Manufacturing Technician - Sr. Mechanical Design Engineer - Sr. Robotics Software Engineer
https://www.linkedin.com/company/farcastinc/jobs/
Reach out to ben@gofarcast.com if interested
OP here - I was on the Stanford campus in 2016 and 2017, frequently riding my bike there. Never once saw a mask on a bike rider. Very little car traffic on the routes bicyclists regularly use to get around. Also a frequent bike rider in my new city of Dallas. Very rarely (if ever), have I seen a cyclist (even on roads) wear a mask. Very likely masks on the Stanford campus are in response to COVID.
The website may be the same, but at least they've "updated their privacy policy" in the lower left!
Sounds similar to what Pando is doing via future earnings pools: https://medium.com/@pearvc/making-things-possible-pandos-pat...
The power of the Presidency, especially within the party of the President, cannot be overstated - especially in the current political age. Similar to how when the Democratic Speaker tells her colleagues to fall in line...they tend to comply.
My understanding is that the Arbery murder became widely known because of Twitter, not the "news." The news reported on it after it became a phenomenon, not as the original source.
And this is where the "conversation" piece may come in with a 21st century twist. Enough folks highlighted it as the "most important thing" to make it widely known via retweets and likes.
Nearly all pilots are former US military (or allied countries) and contractors often get military security clearances. All the pilots flying these jets will have a vetted, active clearance commensurate with the types of tactics they are simulating / seeing from the military planes.
One of the most legendary paint schemes was a black F-14 with a playboy bunny painted on the tail - was from a test squadron in the 80s / 90s.
https://fullcolorbirds.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/grumman-f-14...
Very interesting. Another way to look at this using their numbers is that there is bias, but not very much.
Using the numbers from the study, of the 40% that used a pronoun, by the end, 60% of those folks used "They" - implying she or he.
It's unclear, but we could infer that about 25% used he and thus 15% used she.
So, really, it's only 6% of the population that was "biased" - i.e. using "he" when they expected a woman to win. (Since expectations were relatively mixed, let's say 60/40%, we can take 25 minus 15 to get 10% of a "biased" potential population...and then assuming a similar distribution, about 60% of those expected Clinton to win, but still used "he")
Is 6% endemic of society-wide challenges? Probably. But looking at probable trend lines (and even the increasing use of "they" towards the end of the election), it would seem the bias is becoming far less pervasive, and what remains is a very small proportion of the population.
There’s no doubt these laws can be used to maximize gains by nefarious individuals.
At the same time, the ability to hold a property as an LLC, thus limiting overall liability to the property value alone in the case of a lawsuit, incentivizes more individual investors to purchase rental real estate. In many instances these assets help facilitate retirement savings that are more stable than market securities.
I’m all for transparency - and it’s likely the increase in LLCs could be attributable to more savvy, legitimate investors rather than only attracting wrongdoers.
I work in an industry where client coaching and teaching is critical to success. It’s amazing how much impact a 30 minute face to face has compared with the same (or far more) time via video chat or phone.
Offline, unplanned conversations often yield incredible insights. I have the option to work from home on Friday’s, but find being present with others gives me a far better understanding of what’s happening in our office.
Remote work works in a lot of contexts. And in many it doesn’t.
Definitely the latter. Bottom 5% of Harvard are likely legacies with little motivation - and unlikely to get into medical school.
An important corollary is that school and tests teach you not to be wrong. They teach you that incorrect answers will be punished.
Yet, most interesting questions in life don’t yet have defined answers. Thus you need to have and test a hypothesis, which will very often be “incorrect” the first time around. But that doesn’t actually matter - the mere act of thinking about and defining what an answer could be sets you up to iterate and test. Eventually, you may find product market fit (a - not the - right answer).
You have to be willing to be wrong at first to learn...and win.
In 50 years time, someone on this list will be mostly (or at least directionally) right in their predictions. If they are still alive, they will be lauded as a savant and sage. The more outlandish the 2019 prediction was, if correct, the more recognition they will receive.
And thus all we will actually learn in 50 years time is that human nature changes very little. We will still retrospectively reward success based on chance alone, not distinctive insight.
In short, statistics will continue to be an underappreciated practice.
I’m open to that option - and I can see it’s worth. My main point was Airbnb’s inconsistency. There is absolutely no incentive to rectify a stay if they will just punish you anyway.
And yes, I’ve stayed in many rooms 80 and above. Not ideal. But open a window and throw on a fan.
On the other hand, when an act of god occurs, airbnb holds the host completely responsible.
My wife and I own an airbnb (with a/c!). At midnight one evening, the a/c went out due to a mechanical failure. The temperature in the texas heat rose to 80 degrees in our condo. Our guests called us to complain.
We couldnt find any techs at that time of night (and at 1am we tried!), but had one come in at 8am the next morning - and it was fixed by 10am.
The guests asked for a refund from airbnb based on breach of contract...and airbnb agreed, saying our unit did not match what we had advertised. No matter that we've had over 600 very positive reviews in the past 5 years.
Maybe we owed the guests a refund despite trying to solve the issue as best we could. But seeing the internal inconsistency of this article angers me (our unit does have two ceiling fans!)
If you’ve ever paid rent, you’ve implicitly paid property taxes. The sustainable, market rate for rent factors in all costs of the owner.
Not exactly pertinent to "garage orphans," but i was struck by the picture featured in the article and the design choice of how electric chargers look.
They seem to be an exact replica of a traditional gas nozzle. Striking to me how initial conditions matter for human perception and adoption. While EV is an entirely new technology and thus could be built from a cleanslate, the easiest way to drive adoption was to shape it as close to the existing solution as possible - which was specifically designed to transmit a liquid. Clearly it works - but an important design lesson for me!
He’s looking to buy a company / working in micro private equity. Well suited for it.
I had a buddy in business school who insisted on meeting every one of our classmates for a coffee chat (~400).
By the time he got to me, it was the middle of our second (and last year). I was skeptical since I thought it was kind of weird, plus most friend groups had formed by that point.
Turned out to be one of the most intriguing conversations I ever had. We became very close friends after that.
No short cut to friendship. Sometimes you just gotta get face to face and see how things go.
After two weeks, Andy Rachleff’s class in business school was the only one I considered dropping in my entire academic history. What made it even worse was that I had burned one of my two “silver bullets” selecting it.
But I decided to stick it out for one more class...and then one more.
By the end of the course I came to the realization it was one of the most profound quarters I experienced. He was brash, strict, and a bit arrogant. But he knew his stuff. He pushed me to think about the world in an entirely different way.
I still disagree with him on a number of startup related issues (talk about arrogance on my part!), but he did what the best teachers do - forced me to take a hard look at preconceived notions and challenged my view of reality.
2+ years later, I still reflect on his lessons and the insights from the founders he introduced us to. A truly remarkable guy.
I’m a huge fan of nuclear.
That said, this is a great example of what may happen in the midst of a widespread, government push for it. Industry will extract as many concessions as possible to meet a “market” and “climate” need. They know they hold the cards and will maximize their return.
And this gets to a lot of challenges related to climate policy. It’s not so much that folks disbelieve in climate science (although some do). It’s that there are real costs to doing something about it which have deep financial and policy implications. That’s the crux of pushback.
Inflation was nearly that high, so while the nominal rate was high, in real terms it was more in line with historical returns. Mortgage rates were often in double digits too.
All for this - and if it’s successful, I wonder if cybercrime will increase in this region as folks with few prospects take a shot at getting a good job via “non traditional” means