jger15

For ref: https://x.com/cpaik/status/1907651448902660416

interesting note regarding chocolate versus vanilla flavoring ala the dark chocolate lead/cadmium report from a few years ago:

https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...

big fan of the below:

-Bookbear Express: https://ava.substack.com/

-Cedric Chin (not a Substack): https://commoncog.com/

-Henrik Karlsson: https://escapingflatland.substack.com/

-Rob Henderson: https://www.robkhenderson.com/

-Robin Hanson: https://www.overcomingbias.com/

good discussion with Friedman on the project here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcvMjoJdck4

39. The Spyglass Self: We develop our identities by glimpsing ourselves through others' eyes, imagining how they see us, adjusting ourselves accordingly. Since personality is a performance in the limelight of another’s gaze, we cannot be someone without someone to be someone for.

"The core problem is this: regulators can only protect so much of the financial system. Yet in a wealthy, peaceful economy the financial system often grows more rapidly than does gdp, if only because the financial system is based on the intermediation of wealth, not income. Simple accumulation boosts the ratio of wealth to income over time, thereby creating regulatory dilemmas for finance. Neither “regulating more and more of it” nor “letting more and more of it continue in a less regulated manner” are entirely satisfactory solutions."

paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/dUgvH

"In reality, a mentor is mostly just somebody that answers questions more than once."

"That leaves the question of crypto..."

good companion with eugene and kevin kwok:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbnDay35L8I

excited for his upcoming book on the subject with daniel gross:

https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Identify-Energizers-Creatives-...

related: "Perhaps the reason walking helps us think is that we evolved as persistence hunters."

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1429535366705463298

Thought this response was apt:

"Both covid and the taliban can be considered diffuse/decentralised problems the centralised state could not handle."

https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1429126269929668619

N.S.: If you could give some advice -- career advice, or otherwise -- to a smart 23-year-old American today, what would it be?

M.A.: Don’t follow your passion. Seriously. Don’t follow your passion. Your passion is likely more dumb and useless than anything else. Your passion should be your hobby, not your work. Do it in your spare time.

"It turns out many of the best jobs really can be performed from anywhere, through screens and the internet. [...] This is, I believe, a permanent civilizational shift. It is perhaps the most important thing that’s happened in my lifetime, a consequence of the internet that’s maybe even more important than the internet. Permanently divorcing physical location from economic opportunity gives us a real shot at radically expanding the number of good jobs in the world while also dramatically improving quality of life for millions, or billions, of people."

"If you can bring a crowd together and keep them together, you can accomplish almost anything you want; the trick is holding them together, not just getting lucky once. But if you can do that, then it hardly matters what you’re talking about; the power of the crowd itself is what’s important, and what people are drawn towards."

"We’re outraged if a restaurant makes us wait for a meal, but not if the doctor makes us wait for our healthcare? We’re outraged if the person at a hotel front desk is unfriendly to us—but we shrug and take a seat when that happens at the doctor’s office? It makes no sense."

"Interventionism is a sucker's game" - intervening in a system requires some kind of theory, some kind of model where the positive effects will definitely be better than the side effects - and given how little people know and how bad we are at prediction, this will probably be wrong. But removing things is kind of like a negative intervention, and so probably good."

seems especially apt today

"...it’s not that Substack will compete with existing publications for their best writers, but rather that Substack makes it easy for the best writers to discover their actual market value."

Thompson on point per usual

Great little lesson here:

"It's not that unprestigious types of work are good per se. But when you find yourself drawn to some kind of work despite its current lack of prestige, it's a sign both that there's something real to be discovered there, and that you have the right kind of motives. Impure motives are a big danger for the ambitious. If anything is going to lead you astray, it will be the desire to impress people. So while working on things that aren't prestigious doesn't guarantee you're on the right track, it at least guarantees you're not on the most common type of wrong one."

hmm...think this misses the point.

bitcoin is a store of value against inflation

accompanying Spotify playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/64OEWaPOALEtNXMIsbWG8F?si=...

Some I found especially interesting:

38. 報復性熬夜 is a Chinese term that roughly means ‘Revenge bedtime procrastination’ — when “people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours”. [Lu-Hai Liang]

44. A micromort is a one-in-a-million chance of death. Just being alive is about 24 micromorts per day, skydiving is 8 micromorts per jump. [Matt Webb]

Great thread.

"The measuring stick you are viewing the financial world with can drastically impact your ability to navigate such an odd and nonstandard environment that doesn't happen but once in a lifetime."

Is there a tool that converts company financials from USD to BTC?

Guess question is who will be next in wake of the possibility of negative interest rates.

Commend Armstrong for making this public. A valuable recruiting tool. Imagine other companies will follow suit.

i think you can distill it down to:

“You don’t want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one that does what you do” -Keith Rabois

Always find it interesting the narrative difference between those who stayed in the city and those who left. Each side wants to be right.

I'm biased but I don't think I've ever seen the city more beautiful than this summer with outdoor dining, street closures for more walkability, etc.

think this makes the paper less interesting (regardless of political views held)

Curious if this is related to the Balaji Srinivasan/Taylor Lorenz spat on Twitter.