Procrastinating again

I blog as a form of procrastination that also jumpstarts back again my productivity. Not sure if I have anything interesting to share other than I got my wisdom teeth extracted. What fun!

Part of this is kind of like, journaling to increase my motivation or to reaffirm my values and my sense of purpose. 

The work on climate change continues, but maybe I don't feel as much crunch time because I'm not working directly on climate, and it's not clear how we are going to veer into main climate. I don't know. Maybe I'm just settling into new grad and part of that is the removal of pressure / guilt that makes you want to go fast as a student all the time. Not sure. 

Like the "urgent mission" part of stuff is not really hitting me right now. But I am also doing some climate advocacy stuff on the side. So I don't know. I think the urgent mission thing will come back in a hot sec. I mean the thing I have learned about life is that you need to learn to not depend on inspiration or motivation, and that it's better to learn how to have a peaceful discipline or consistency with working on your thing for a long time, and then looking back your successes will be part of a narrative that then gives you juice to motivate yourself. Yeah.

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate (book)

You know, I think this book actually deserved 5/5 stars. It's 400 pages of some really fun stuff. 

So like, the tl;dr is that this is the memoir of the former Senator of Minnesota, and like he was one of the original comedy writers for SNL before this. The memoir is obviously therefore very funny, but moreover he spends his time talking about how he keeps getting in trouble during his campaigns and during office for making jokes. 

Unlike other celebrities, I think comedians are actually well fit to be politicians because they are highly charismatic, and moreover humor is a very strong sign of intelligence (he was also a Harvard grad) in terms of being able to connect dots in unexpected ways. If anything, I'm surprised more politicians aren't comedians. I do think it's interesting how much flak he got for his past life as a comedian, because it he made a bunch of jokes that are, I guess you would say inappropriate. But also it just shows how American politics has shifted so much where all the things he got flak for, comedy writing wise, is really minimal compared to current discourse.

Ode to sales (Dec 31, 2021)

Sales is a specific skill you can accrue over time and yet it makes full utilization of your wide variety of skills and interests. Do you understand a little bit about business, technology, engineering, economics, design, a company’s mission, philosophy, psychology, statistics, math, various industries, politics, literature, specific life experience, travel, general wisdom? All of this will be employed in the act of helping someone else through sales. Do you know about random stuff like how to nanny a child, hobbyist marine aquariums, or basketball? Great, now you can relate to other people in unexpected ways

Do you have strong empathy? Do you have good listening skills? Can you communicate with other people in a way that they can understand? Can you take your comprehension of an idea and compress it and transmit it and then have it reconstructed in the other person's head perfectly like a ship in a bottle? This is sales

We live in the future

My little cousins (you know who you are) are currently getting their piano lessons via zoom as I am writing this. And what's remarkable is that this is not even remarkable anymore. But there's literally a telepresence teacher in our room right now. You know? Crazy.

Procrastination musings December 2022

 Eh, I'm a little antsy tonight, so I figure I'm just going to blog some stuff here until it wears off. I've been jumping through a number of 5-10 books and haven't been sucked away by any of them. But I read 200 pages of Stranger in a Strange Land. In terms I've been skimming through and then putting down: Animal Liberation, Scout Mindset, The Power Law, Crying in H Mart, Smart People Should Build Things, When to Rob a Bank, The Armchair Economist, Business Adventures, The Power Law, and Idea Man. 

Well, right now I'm started getting into Factory Girls and Programming Rust (O'Reilly), so I think I will have these two as my books right now. But yeah, I think I am seeking a book that is going to be more optimistic, or give me more inspiration and centralizing focus. I do think this is a nice balance where the Rust book is instructive and the other is giving me some insight in what it's like to live on the other side of the world. But I guess I would say I'm bored right now. Something like that. 

When to Rob a Bank

Freakonomics authors. This is an easy, enjoyable read — it's just a curated collection of their blog posts

Fitbit

Me: I drove a zipcar a couple times 

Dad: what kind of car was it?

Me: I don't remember, some kind of crappy car, like a Honda something…

Mom: a Fitbit!

Persimmon

My dad: here dog have some persimmon

Me: Hey don't give him persimmon! Is that even okay for dogs?

Dad: Well, he ate it once before! 

Me: Alexa, is persimmon okay to feed to your dogs? 

Alexa: persimmon is poisonous to dogs. Take your dog to the vet if you think your dog has been exposed to a harmful dose of persimmon 

Me: Dad!!!!!

Dad: well no wonder he doesn't like it!

Metal detectors at the beach

Do you ever encounter some false beliefs retained from your childhood still not cleaned out from your brain? Today I saw a man using a metal detector at the beach, and I thought, "Ah yes, he's looking for buried pirate treasure." And then I thought, "Wait no that doesn't make sense. What the fuck is he actually doing?" And then I had to learn the real reason people use metal detectors at the beach

Somewhat related: http://www.paulgraham.com/lies.html

Reasons for why I am working in freight

If I put all my reasons in here, then I will stop doubting myself! Need to have reasons for why I should work on something for 10 years straight (++ indicates unique to this vs. immediate climatetech vs. biotech vs. pandemic defense work):

• Edge (uses our strengths and human capital as a competitive advantage, also our advantage in AI from our particular school, also this will be my third "try" which is a huge boost, considering I've been studying freight since 2018)++
• Makes money++
• Highest probability of success / many ideas / many doors instead of one++
• Feedback loops++
• Can demonstrate my talent in business specifically and as an organizer of capital++
• Good teammates / cofounders++
• Can work remote / travel benefits the business++
• Can be big / uses the leading edge of technology / has intrinsic societal vision
• Can be used for climate change
• Industry peers are missing, but can get them from serving climatetech companies
• There are many urgent problems in the world, but they aren't going away in 10 years / there will be new ones available where you can make a difference

Perhaps to convince myself to feel good about freight - the idea that we will be in a better position to do useful climate work once we have established ourselves in industry:

1) movement of wind turbines and oversized renewable energy projects, esp eg complicated ones like offshore wind

2) movement of hydrogen

3) movement of solar panels

4) special preference or specialization in serving climate tech to accelerate the dynamism/transition

5) facilitate carriers' access to climate rebates

6) establishment in freight debt —> help finance electric trucks

7) influence with rail companies allows solar railways

8) influence with ports allows laying hydrogen pipelines

9) influence with ships allows fixing ship problems 

The key point is that working in freight will allow us to work in the space of physical assets.

We can also commit the company to R&D investing in climate hardware, explicitly, via a PBC incorporation.

And as a reminder of why I'm not working on pandemic defense, even though it may be 100x more impactful than climate work, and I can see, emotionally, why we ought to throw significant weight behind it:

• May not be able to contribute anything useful, may be stuck as an underling, basically all the ++'s that are missing
• A 100x exists for pandemic defense, but I can compensate with a 100-10,000x impact doing something where I am actually successful with my big bets
• I guess the nice thing about pandemic defense is that as long as the world doesn't go to crap then you can pick it up later without much consequence, when you now have some prowess to kick butt and move bigger institutions
• Pandemic work may be 100x over climate, but it's also important to keep "The Middle Way" in terms of extremism and a well-balanced life, as demonstrated from learning from my older friends at the college reunion

Winter is coming

I think what's trippy is that it's true that we do enjoy these little pockets of societal stability that last 5-10yrs throughout the 20-21st centuries and makes us forget that it's not always guaranteed 

And like rn it's super nice to think about "Oh where do I want to live What kind of jobs and assets do I want" 

And it's like

We just emerged from COVID 

Still nobody is preparing for the next "winter" that is the next pandemic 

College reunion in Venice Beach

I just got back from Day 1 of a college reunion. I'm feeling genuinely quite happy, with a happiness level that is quite high in a long time, so I thought I'd journal a bit here tonight.

It's not a college reunion for the entire university, but it's for a student organization I joined in college. The main thing is that everyone is super tight-knit with everyone else, and so instead of small talk it feels like just seeing your friends again, but like a bunch of them all at once. Which is a lot to take in because in post-grad when you reconnect with a few of these friends, it's only a little subset at a time, and that already feels joyful and intense. 

I've also done a great job maintaining a lot of these connections--I just haven't realized it--and so having everyone in the same place was very much a reaping of what I've sowed in terms of keeping in touch with friends, texting them, meeting them in ad hoc settings, calling them, etc. That makes me very happy.

Not sure what else to say. I think the reunion is great because it's true that everyone has been feeling a little bit of nostalgia for LA; and also there is nostalgia for the fact that we all are a particular group of people with a strong set of shared values that are extremely hard to replicate or find in another context for some reason. It's really great to meet people who are 5+ years older than me, and they're making jokes with the same humor that I know and love, even though I've never met them, because we come from the same cultural background of our club.

Like, nobody's fake. Nobody's too nerdy but also nobody's too empty headed. Nobody's arrogant, that kind of thing. It's just us friends hanging out like normal. It's just that our tribe is absolutely massive.

We have two more days of hanging out, so it's definitely gives you enough time to talk to everyone without feeling needlessly pressured. That being said, tonight I had engaging, authentic, chill conversations nonstop from 5:30pm to 11pm. As an extrovert, that felt so damn good. Like I said, I don't even have to have smalltalk or do the "life catch up" because I really have put in the effort over the last few years to keep in touch with my friends even when they're not physically present. Or rather, because I've really rarely had them physically around, I've never taken them for granted. 

We ate at Wurstkuche, and I thought it was hilarious that they had the space to accommodate us without us having to make a reservation. It's almost as if Wurstkuche is a dining hall. I guess the one is Arts District is more crowded, and that's what I was expecting and thought we wouldn't have room. I mean it was Saturday night after all. 

It's really nice to reconvene with your old friend with whom you have so much shared context, but also shared values, who take certain things seriously but not all of life seriously, or as someone put it, making sure to take care of one's "peace" among it all. That's super vague in the context of a blog post, but I'm just going to keep it vague. And also to hang out with people who have tried covering the same philosophy or life perspectives that you have, and who have come to similar conclusions from it about what they want to take away from different input sources and how to harmonize it into a life well lived.

I'm very excited for the next 2 days. Goodnight!

Chicken

<a href='https://postimg.cc/cKGQrz6h' target='_blank'><img src='https://i.postimg.cc/cKGQrz6h/7-F941-C7-B-F94-C-4-A40-8430-4-C6-FAA957688.jpg' border='0' alt='7-F941-C7-B-F94-C-4-A40-8430-4-C6-FAA957688'/></a>

Cooked a chicken for the first time

https://postimg.cc/cKGQrz6h

Baked 

Trader Joe’s frozen salmon with butter

Basically comes with all the seasoning you need. Super easy, did a microwave thaw + pan fry and flavor came out perfect twice. And no issues with dry salmon. Only thing is second time I think I let the pan get too hot before putting the salmon in and the oil popped (maybe ensure the salmon is more dry next time), so I got a tiny burn on my thumb 

Undergrad runway

It has been an explicit goal of mine to start a profitable business, for as long as I can remember. I have always been fascinated by money.

I spent my undergraduate years messing around with business ideas. I thought of my undergrad years as a “runway”: I needed to get my airplane, a viable business, off the ground before my runway ran out, or else if I waited until after having graduated, I’d lose my “cover.” There’d be a lot of societal and familial pressure to “get a normal job,” and the opportunity cost in lost income would start to go way up. I even tried to extend this runway by going to college early, then changing universities, thus taking 5 years to graduate. I did not get an airplane off the ground during this time.

And it turns out my fear was right! The pressure does seem to go up once you’re done with undergrad! So the time for me to finally get a plane in the air is, well, now!

In undergrad, there were 3 industries I started taking seriously for business theses—freight, biology, and climate change; and how one might sprinkle in some technology to these places—and I kept waffling between them! Maybe it would have been better to focus. But anyway, that’s where a lot of my ideas these days are coming from.

Takeoff of Migos has passed away

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/01/1133115916/takeoff-migos-dead-at-28

Went to Emporium in SF today

My friend got hit in the head by an errant basketball, then it ricocheted off her head and hit my other friend, her boyfriend, in the face / eye socket.

I dressed up as a black cape for Halloween.

Most of the bars in Haight and Cole Valley were dead. 

Finally going to the pool today

I miss swimming! Hard to get out there because there's a lack of pools in the Bay Area, and it's cold outside!!

Procrastinating lately (from Oct 13)

Been procrastinating lately lol… I will get work done today. Hold me accountable!

Boston progress

 Yeah, the move to Boston is taking some time, mostly because I have been stymied in my productivity by some sleep issues. But I made a great connect at a virtual conference today that totally would help me get a great start to a social life in Boston, so I definitely am a little bit more optimistic about this move.

I'm out here in the Bay Area and both today and yesterday two different friends cancelled on my for dinner plans. Fortunately yesterday I still way able to get dinner with my best friend instead. So a great save. I love my best friend. Anyway. I think this really speaks to the fact that for some reason the people in my circles in the Bay Area simply don't invest enough time in friendships, and that's a tragedy. Honestly I think a lot of people have gotten into the habit of avoiding other people after COVID. That's partly to blame. So yeah, I definitely need to uproot and go to Boston. Or New York. Something. Thanks for reading.

Parsnip improvements

 1. Feedback on how the dish went after cooking it

1.5. Intelligent responses to how you screwed up and how you can do it better

2. Spreadsheet-like scientific tracking of repeating this dish and what variables go into it and how you'd rate the dish until you get improvement

3. Way to record new dishes to preserve mom / grandma's tradition

Tried Metamucil for the first time

 Eh

Keoni's salmon recipe

Cubed salmon

Garlic

Asparagus

Salt/pepper

Hoissan sauce

Jasmine rice

1. Cook cubed salmon thoroughly

2. Remove cooked salmon and put asparagus in with salt and pepper in the salmon juice. Add some garlic at the end but don’t burn the garlic

3. Then put the salmon back in and steep in Hoissan sauce

Welcome to my cooking blog

    My mother is exceptional at cooking food. Most people are cooks; she is a chef.

    I didn't fully realize or perhaps internalize this until I went out into the real world and discovered that everyone else tries to cook, because they have to, in the same way that everyone knows how to drive because they have to. But they aren't actually good at it. They're ass at it. My mom is amazing at it.

    My mom is skilled in a tremendous number of different cuisines, and she can basically whip up any Eastern or Western dish. I've noticed that my mom has such a deep well of intuition built from experience that she just "does the thing" when she cooks, and often can't articulate why her sense is correct.

    I've also been reluctant to learn how to cook for a long time, much longer than my other friends, particularly because my mom is so good at cooking that there was never an incentive to learn how to cook. Turns out everyone else started learning how to cook in ~high school because their parents' cooking sucks.

    Neither of my sisters seem particularly eager to become as world-class in cooking as my mom. I think that's why a life goal of mine is to become as great of a chef as my mom, even though the only thing I know how to cook today is eggs (that dry or break), oatmeal, and tofu (fun fact the tofu is already cooked). Derr. But I think someone should preserve the recipes and traditions of my mom. And my grandma, whose Asian dishes are really quite remarkable. It would be weird if my mom's experience failed to pass to the next generation.

    The reason I know my mom is good and I'm not just biased or imprinted to what I ate growing up is because 1) the flavor profile, texture, and presentation that my mom does is objectively superior to others; 2) outsiders to the house (friends) will often remark how amazing my mom is at cooking.  

    Every year during Asian New Year (lol) my mom leaves out an offering to "the Kitchen God," to say thanks for nourishing our home. Yeah, honestly, thanks Kitchen God, for making my mom badass. But also hopefully this speaks to the extent to which we take cooking seriously in my childhood home. 

    I'm starting out as a runt of the litter in terms of learning how to cook, but because of my underdog status I intend to overcompensate and become exceptional at cooking. So I'm going to start blogging my progress here. The only way to surpass all of the median home cookers is through deliberate practice, so hopefully this blog will keep me accountable. I have so much to learn.

On sales (2019?)

 > do you think that when talking to potential users you should already be trying to close the sale?

Yes. Before going in to meet anyone you need to have a “hunch” or hypothesis beforehand that you have a solution to a problem they have. When you go in you need the mindset that by the end of the meeting you will close the sale with them. And if you don’t close the sale or at least push them to the next step then you have failed. 

Otherwise, your conversation with them will go on aimless tangents without a focused goal and you also can’t hold yourself accountable. What I mean by that is that it’s easy to “interview” someone: you just passively stare at them and write down whatever they say. You can feel like you did a lot of productive work and pat yourself on the back without actually having done anything. But to “sell” to someone requires that you genuinely push yourself in the moment because it’s hard as hell. 

It’s important to note here that selling does *not* mean arguing with the customer, it does *not* mean manipulating the person into buying something that doesn’t help them, and it does *not* mean not listening to the customer. People who don’t actually know how sales works will assume this is how it works from stereotypes or from salespeople who actually suck at their jobs.

In fact it’s the opposite. Good sales requires extreme skills in listening and empathy. God-like skills. Because you almost literally have to transplant yourself into someone else’s life to 0. Warm up to them and get in their side, then 1. understand exactly their problem (emotionally and in THEIR terminology/mental heuristics, NOT yours), then 2. assess with a clear mind what is the best solution for them and objectively whether your solution is a right fit, and finally 3. communicate the knowledge in your head to their head in a language that matches their head. This requires much more interaction and engagement on your part than if you just sit back and “interview.”

The reason you need to have a hunch or hypothesis or a “prior” is because you need to bring your original thinking to the table. The customer you will interact with is on ‘automatic thinking mode’ when they think about their problems and life in general, not ‘creative thinking mode.’ You *cannot* ask the user for solutions or “What do you want?” outright because they will default to unoriginal solutions or most likely a cynicism of ‘I don’t know and everything sucks and there’s no solution possible ever because I’ve checked.’ They deliberately cannot see solutions on their own because they have mentally shut themselves off from their problem in order to get on with their life. 

They have come to accept their problem so much they might have even forgotten that they had that problem. So if you showed up to a meeting and just said, “So tell me about your problems,” they won’t even remember to tell you about the important problem X that they’re having because it’s too painful to remember. But if you showed up to a meeting and said, “We’re working on helping people with problem X. So tell me about your problems,” then they remember their problem and can open up to you about it. 

Moreover, sales breaks through the politeness firewall that everyone puts up. If you propose an idea to someone, they’ll tell you “Yes I love this” because they are being polite. Even if they are trying to be as honest as possible there is still a subconscious politeness filter. When you sell something to someone it’s the ultimate moment of truth as to whether this actually solves their problem. If it does then they’ll be insisting to pull out $100 from their wallet right now because they’re in such need. If they aren’t then it’s not what this person needs. If you think about how smart of a shopper you are in that you are always trying to avoid being fooled into buying something that is a scam, then you can extrapolate this mentality to everyone and therefore understand how hard it is to close a sale. 

Finally, even if your original hypothesis seemed great in your head but turned out to be shit in reality, the fact that you will feel hungry to close a sale will force you to continue exploring new avenues of how you can help this particular person. Note this only applies when you don’t already have a validated product. If you *do* have a validated product, you should still be helpful to this person 100%, even if you don’t stand to make any money (as you should do with all sales)—but you don’t have to close a sale. You instead need to focus on finding more of the right target segment whose needs fit your validated solution.

===

Sales is being pushed properly when it’s as painful as doing engineering. If sales is less painful than engineering that’s because people are giving up too easily 

Replace ‘painful’ with ‘skillful’ if you want

==

As a mantra, I would say that the salesperson should always be doing a shit ton of work before the engineer even starts. If the engineer is actually any good, they ought to stab you if you make them create something that ends up being useless because their labor is so valuable. If they are blindly willing to make shit for you that’s because you have an engineer who isn’t actually good and you have been warned.

Trump’s That’s So Raven moment

 I dunno if anyone else has seen That’s So Raven or any plotline cliché where the main characters see the future and try to change it, only for their behavior to enact the inevitable prophecy itself (it’s self-fulfilling), but:

I feel like the Trump administration’s initial response to the pandemic was a huge That’s So Raven moment:

2019 - the economy has been doing quite well for some time that the media starts promulgating baseless fears that we’re due for a recession 

2019 - Trump administration downplays the initial reaction to COVID because they fear reacting will make the stock market go down, which will be bad for Trump’s re-election. In their goldfish view they are too concerned with this presupposed inbound “recession” 

2020 - Because the US does not intervene to stop COVID (a role they usually play; see Ebola), COVID takes over the world and the economy goes to shit anyway. As a result Trump loses the election. 

2022 - now the economy makes no sense 

Maybe the more parsimonious view is that the Trump administration is completely stupid, and none of this actually was in their mind, and I’ll take that view as well I guess 🤷 

Plymouth pilgrims

For the last week or so, I've considered a move to Boston. I've spent my whole life on the West Coast and have never been to Boston in my life. I am aware that I am "in for a surprise" if I decide to move to Boston in the middle of December. 

I think I crave adventure, and this is sort of a "settling the frontier" kind of situation for me. I am also very intense and am seeking to start an intense project in collaboration with some scientists out in Boston. If I don't have an intense Manhattan Project to start, then I don't feel fulfilled for some reason. 

I think the considerations, of course, are that I will be starting fresh and have to make friends from scratch. That's obviously a "good for you" type of thing. I do think Nicholas Nassim Taleb's concept of Antifragility is pretty useful to life, and my hope is that a hard move will stimulate my friendship life, whereas in my current place things have gotten a bit stagnant and settled in their ways. Namely, I don't have any friends who want to collaborate with me on an intense Manhattan Project.

I also just graduated and realized that all of these post-grad people spend all their time working! For some reason I thought you're supposed to have more free time once you finish college! And if these people are so into doing their jobs all the time, then maybe I should make it a point to allocate myself to the most intense, exhilarating type of work that I envision, instead of thinking that some okay dayjob is a worthwhile trade for "beers after work." Because nobody's getting beers after work around here.

Why do I still use the same blog from 2009?

 Answer: My belief is that longevity breeds its own form of art

See also:

(Also for some reason Blogger got stingy and now the image upload sizes are super crap)

Books September 2022

 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: 4/5

A beautiful society where everyone wears their heart on their sleeve and is quite loving 

The Innovation Stack by Jim McKelvey: 4/5 easy read, the language is simple, the humor is decent, the main insight about stacking innovations is useful, otherwise leans towards a motivational business book. You also learn that the founder of IKEA was a Nazi (literal Nazi). The book doesn’t waste stupid time repeating psychology studies. A pro-contrarian book a la Peter Thiel 

The Ministry for the Future: 4/5, personally it’s a 5 for me, and I read it cover to cover, but I realize not everyone will appreciate the subtle references which the book is trying to make, which is that it is parodying the neural routes that someone obsessed and particularly fixated on fixing climate change has gone through, including a sort of agnosticism for capitalism vs communism, growth vs. degrowth, technofix vs. political fix, etc. Because it surfaces a lot of these sort of arguments that are trite if you’ve thought long enough about how to practically solve climate change. This sort of reference-making is something that is likely to go over a lot of people’s heads. The book is also written from the perspective of “humanity” as a whole, which is why who the protagonist is keeps shifting until the later third of the book, but I heard that other readers found this style unsettling. I actually liked this of the book. As others say, I agree this book is by far the best imagery of what it’ll be like for humans and humanity to experience the consequences of climate change within this century. Read this in 2021 I think. 

The Uninhabitable Earth 4.5/5: A little bit dramatic, and the section on plastic I think is irrelevant, but surprisingly most of its views are justified because it’s simply a synthesis of all the bad things we know are going to happen because of climate change, and crammed into one book instead of shown to us one study at a time. Like I don’t actually think it exaggerated all that much. Each “doom” was something that can currently be backed by a scientific study somewhere. It’s that all the little dooms are real and do come together to make a big doom. Death by a thousand paper cuts. Warning: the book may increase your anxiousness or sadness, so you should only read this book if these tales of doom motivate you instead of demotivate you to work on climate change. Read this in January 2022.

The Rosie Project: 5/5, I already provided an earlier rating but I hadn’t finished the book by then. This book was an amazing page turner all the way through!!!

More advice on college admissions

 Another helpful advice on college essays I like to think of it is, it may be less effective to portray oneself as some perfect shape they have in their head; rather, a better way to think of college admissions is that you are trying to engineer the psychology of the person reading it. 

The admissions officer has drawn a psychological boundary between the applicants they are reading, and their admissions team aka their coworkers w whom they are passing notes back and forth

Part of the biggest psychological boundary is that the high school students are writing in a way that sounds like an A+ high school student writing an essay. But when these admissions people are talking to each other or writing notes to each other, they are just writing in simple English and giving reasons for why someone should or shouldn’t be let into the university. They basically translate the high school student’s writing into an argument that is more digestible within the body of the admissions group. 

It’s like the high school student essays have this foreign antigen on them

So one way to engineer their psychology is to write the essay in a way that is similar to the notes and reasons they pass to each other, if your essay subliminally sounds like this then when reading your piece they think youre their colleague giving good reasons for why you should be admitted. You have surpassed the immune system. 

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/disinterested

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersignaling

A new trade school for America

 

My hypothesis is that If you made a trade school it would get a lot of backing and interest

The key here is to get the marketing right and iterate on the training program to invent a new kind of trade school 

Crucially, it would have to play off contemporary American values which say that making money and starting a small business are good, being a blue collar worker is bad 

Eg hybridize with a community college such that it’s considered a college degree in a trade, or college degree x trade 

Furthermore, it’s an interesting contradiction because blue collar work in America pays extremely well due to supply and demand, and yet blue collar work is extremely looked down upon in American culture 

Partially it’s because the information about blue collar earnings haven’t disseminated properly and so the labor market isn’t correcting 

So instead of “go to trade school because youre stupid”, the messaging of a new, tech-branded trade school would have the messaging “start your own small business and be your own boss and make way more money by starting a business in X trade”

So itd be traditional trade teaching + help the person incorporate, teach them basic business skills, accounting etc in one package. Set up their website, show them how to do modern appointment booking on Calendly, modern invoicing on Stripe. Like a franchising model 

Itd be marketed the same way people get enticed into MLM multi-level marketing schemes or dropshipping etc

As for raising in Silicon Valley, one can pitch it as an Edtech startup 

Business x trade degree

Carl’s Barcelona, Spain recommendations

 My good friend Carl and I worked together in construction. He’s from Belgium so he’s been to Barcelona many times and has a lot of recs

Food:

https://goo.gl/maps/jd9ve34VvwYxhGxA9

65 Degrees Barcelona

+34 934 88 55 83

Amazing brunch place

https://goo.gl/maps/Wk988tPDDnoZWXuR8

Firebug

+34 932 44 02 09

Also good brunch

This place is fantastic for seafood and Paella

https://goo.gl/maps/mX3y9f74rcty9xke9 El Nou Ramonet

+34 932 68 33 13

Excellent burgers by the beach:

https://goo.gl/maps/p25dFzXjBEYwjGLG8 Makamaka

Activities:

Highly recommend these bike tours! Best way to explore the city. Be sure to book ahead

https://goo.gl/maps/RcqzMqJHQcWGXmww5 Steel Donkey Bike Tours Barcelona

+34 657 28 68 54

One of my favourite things to do: Go to the old bunkers at sunset and enjoy the view of the entire city. Totally stunning. It’ll probably be full with people hanging out with some drinks. 

https://goo.gl/maps/QmL39AbH9h3UwkdZ8 MUHBA Turó de la Rovira (Battery Viewpoint)

Obviously you have to go see the Sagrada Familia and a few other Gaudi landmarks. Again, be sure to book in advance. Lines can be super long otherwise. 

Nightlife:

Best club ever! Must go!

https://goo.gl/maps/4F5rRSeBbtfYyN829 Razzmatazz

+34 933 20 82 00

Cute little bar with great cocktails. Not too touristy

https://goo.gl/maps/rQYmW5e4xNoGotMY7 Belladona

+34 609 00 07 18

Touristy bar (belongs to an English man) but has fantastic beers and great live music. 

https://goo.gl/maps/QzxEwb1F5qFB7ch48 Craft Barcelona

+34 936 25 49 68

Ah you can also do fun kayak excursions that take you to some nice place to kayak around. Very cool as well. Check GetYourGuide or so for these tours. 

Also you have to visit some of the classics like Mercado de La Boqueria

https://goo.gl/maps/vCzrZhwKqieNLP6Y9 Mercado de La Boqueria

+34 934 13 23 03

[Me: I went to Mercado and it’s watered down from the past aka kind of lame]

Just strolling around La Rambla and exploring a bit is fun

I‘d also check out Montjuïc

https://goo.gl/maps/Ws82qK6Ruw7Ddc1G6 Montjuïc Castle

+34 932 56 44 40

Books August 2022

 

The Three Body Problem 5/5

Liftoff (SpaceX book) 5/5

The Goal still reading maybe 4/5

Peopleware still stuck reading maybe 4/5

Becoming by Michelle Obama 3.5/5 better as an audiobook, gives you a nice connection to Chicago

Bossypants by Tina Fey 3.5/5 audiobook is kind of fast, pretty funny 

My advice on writing a college application essay

 

Please read this: http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html

The best advice I give is that you should produce a relentless amount of content. Try to produce one essay every day starting today

Eg every day write a brand new common app essay from a blank document. In the beginning It should either be a different topic or should be a new telling of a previous essay without looking back at what you wrote, like pull from memory 

You should start to exhaust every possible idea for a college essay that you have, and exhaust every possible biographical memoir concept you have, until you get to the point where you feel you are writing absurd content 

Then you will start to unlock creativity. Don’t worry if your first essays are boring as hell. Just keep writing. Produce a massive corpus of content 

Other good rules of thumb: almost never let an adult edit your essay, especially near the beginning. They will ruin your essay and more importantly your creativity. If there’s an adult mentor you really look up to who is more worldly in their thinking, then you can have them look at the halfway point or later. 

As for friends to read/edit, they should come closer to the end, mostly to check your grammar and spelling and coherence. If the friend is also applying to college, their advice on content will be counterproductive, since they don’t have experience, and will make your essay sound more indistinguishable from everyone else’s 

You can break these rule whenever you want. In the best case someone giving you feedback should be able to mark whether certain paragraphs or chunks are boring or not boring, and you should be responsible for making your essay not boring. If your essay feels boring to yourself, then it is guaranteed to be boring. Write a new draft.

You’ll know when youre getting close to a winning essay when not a single sentence feels painful to write. Don’t lie to yourself about this either. You’ll know when you almost have a winning essay when youre having absolutely the time of your life writing the essay, laughing your ass off, it will feel mischievous, like pulling a prank. You’ll be surprised by this feeling because so many previous attempts at writing the essay will have felt like pulling teeth 

* that last point is not to say your essay has to be funny. A deliberate attempt to be funny will likely fail unless one is already a comedian. It’s more like the joy of writing something that is actually enjoyable to both write and read. And the feeling is more so the realization that you have achieved originality, voice, and self awareness 

Ambition

I am thinking to increase the size of my mentorship program so that more people are working on climate change. What I will do is leverage my old connections from my old solar mentoring program (where I failed as a mentor), and see if any of those would-be mentees from the past know of any young up and coming youngsters who have a lot of potential.

The reason I do this is because the number of ideas for projects I have far exceeds my bandwidth (like I literally have 1,000+ ideas for projects as of today). And remarkably, there do exist ambitious young people who are willing to receive my indoctrination, books, and project planning, and execute on them. In fact, the creativity part is hard for them, but the execution they are flawless. So we complement each other well, because I think the projects I give them expose them to creativity and perseverance.

Lying by Sam Harris

 I’m not even going to give this book a rating. Why was it so short?!

Missed Translations by Sopan Deb

 

4/5 stars. It’s pretty sad, not melancholy because he’s a comedian. But if you think about it pretty sad and sadder than expected in the beginning. It was enjoyable like a memoir but not as dry as a memoir. I can never finish memoirs. It was fun to travel to India with Sopan.

Work orders / FixIt requests

(February 19, 2022)

I love submitting work order/FixIt requests. You can make the world a better place without doing any labor yourself. I feel like a magician!

Other people just take the world for granted. The other day one of the key card access devices was broken and so everyone was using a different entrance to the building. I submitted a work order so I was the only one who knew it was fixed, and my friend was like “Whatt!! How did you enter through there? My card doesn't work on that entrance”

My response: “Weird, maybe it's just you” :)

First day of my new job, hopefully not a bad omen

7am before work

I accidentally bumped your two eggs while getting my salad and dear god they rolled and fell into a mysterious cavern at the back of the inside of fridge 😳 

I will have to remove the top drawer later today to clean/ remove the eggs, they are in a cavern of their own

My friend Tiki’s Hawaii Oahu Recommendations

“Tiki” is the nickname he goes by but that is a COINCIDENCE

“cliff diving at china walls is a must

shimazu shave ice

leonards malasadas 

i think diamond head is overrated

off the hook seafood

in terms of clubs and stuff moani had not bad music 

and buho is this place where the floor turns into a dance floor 

farmers markets are great too!!

north shore has way better beaches

mermaid caves on west side were okay

lanikai beach was amazing

so was giovannis shrimp truck

carry around lots of cash btw!”

My recs (family favorites):

Marugame Udon

Ramen Nakamura

Recent books as of July 1, 2022

 The Power of Habit (still reading, 3.75/5 stars)

The Rosie Project (4.5/5, enjoyable, funny)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (5/5, absolute page turner, both funny and heartwarming, an easy and memorable read, made me cry)

Becoming Guan Yin (3/5 spiritual fairytales that emphasize compassion)

The Diamond Cutter (2/5, boring not super focused)

Nonviolent Communication (4.25/5 really useful) 

Open Borders The Science and Ethics of Immigration (5/5 brilliant)

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire (3.5/5 clever prose style but not a page turner)

Aspergirls (4.5/5)

Bill Gates How to Prevent the Next Pandemic (4/5 couldn’t finish because information was obvious) 

Secrets of the Autistic Millionaire (4.5/5 easy read, interesting but perhaps not novel)

Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids (4/5 hard to give a fair reading because I already listened to a podcast about it so found it boring)

Radical Candor (2/5 crappy kind of obvious but had some nice unique anecdotes throughout that you can only get from this author about office life in tech)

The Stench of Honolulu (5/5 hilarious I died laughing)

How to Talk to Anyone 92 Tricks (4.75/5 very good refresher and tool expansion read if you are a student of conversationalism) 

The Road to Character (sampled, seems interesting maybe not a page turner but very thoughtful but a little too focused on sin)

Come Fly the World (sampled, will buy, sufficient page turner, good primary sources perspectives on what it was like to be a Pan Am stewardess and the interplay between this and feminism) 

The Comic Toolbox (sampled, will buy, sufficient page turner)

Finding the Funny Fast (sampled, bad writing quality) 

Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships (sampled, a little bit dry)

Uniquely Human (sampled, a little bit dry) 

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan (sampled, will buy, a solid intriguing read on psychedelics and the current “psychedelic renaissance”)

Reading The Stench of Honolulu

 A bit like Idiocracy but better quality humor

Money is not energy

 Money is energy

Dear ————-,

There is a real, academic, commonly-recognized distinction between the definitions “currency” and “wealth,” and it is important to mind this difference in speech. The reason it is important to mind this distinction in speech is because it would be bad to mix the two up, in the same way it would be bad to confuse “volume” and “mass.”

Now, how is this point related to the word “money”? Money is a vernacular word that blurs the definitions of currency and wealth into one, since that is just how everyday people talk. However, as discussed, this is bad. Therefore, anyone who intends to engage seriously on the topics of economics and business knows to avoid using the word “money” as much as possible. Because otherwise it would be too confusing to communicate with others.

I now reach the point I want to make. When someone is properly educated in the humanities, they know not to say “all XYZ people are ABC”, because blanket statements are inaccurate. Thus to make a blanket statement makes someone sound dumb. When someone says “money is energy”, it sounds like too much of a blanket statement. (It sounds too dumb). One, because “money” is a really ambiguous word. Two, because “money” is not literally 1:1 exchangeable with other forms of energy in physics. 

“Money is energy.” If this statement is clarified and qualified, it can express a very useful point about the relationship between human society and energy sources/energy flows, or a point about labor in society. For instance, “Human society is fundamentally dependent on energy sources, especially for the more interesting things that it does, and so more of our economic activity than we realize revolves around the acquisition and transformation of energy.” Or, in another, unrelated sentence, “Currency represents an IOU for one’s prior work done for someone else, and so can be used to motivate someone else to do current work for oneself. Therefore one’s savings account is kind of like a battery that can be used when needed.”

To say “money is energy” by itself sounds like an ignorant slogan you are repeating from someone else, and so because of that it is making you sound unnecessarily ignorant. I don’t know where this slogan is most common or where it is coming from. My hunch is that this is a slogan repeated by people who are very enthusiastic about Bitcoin and use this slogan to explain to themselves what is going on during Bitcoin mining because they don’t exactly grasp what is going on on a technical and economic level. I could be wrong? 

It seems that people like this are confused about the motivation and mechanism behind Bitcoin mining. To their understanding, you provide electricity to a computer, the computer uses this electricity for the task of “Bitcoin mining,” then this Bitcoin mining results in a Bitcoin allocation, then this Bitcoin allocation can be exchanged for USD. When they try to understand what happens during the Bitcoin mining process, they get confused when someone explains to them that the computer is doing useless computations (brute force algorithm). “How could it possibly be that this processes ultimately results in USD, especially when this thing is doing useless computations?!”, they think to themselves. “Normally, people acquire USD by doing labor, and labor means doing useful tasks, so this is weird.” 

The incorrect conclusion they arrive at is that, since electricity was the input to this system and USD was the output to this system, that the electricity was quite literally converted into USD. Moreover, because they feel guilty about the whole ordeal (because now they can trade this USD for someone else to do useful labor for them) (and because they think to feel guilty about wasteful uses of electricity), they tell themselves, “I turned electricity into money, and then that money ‘powered’ someone to do work for me. Therefore, money must be energy.”

In actuality, Bitcoin mining is successfully remunerated in a Bitcoin economy because the collective process of Bitcoin mining happens to contribute to security and therefore trust in the Bitcoin medium of exchange, and trust is economically valuable. However, the incidental conversion of electricity to friction heat during the process of Bitcoin mining is not intrinsically valuable. This friction heat bears no connection to the calories a laborer may expend to be compensated in USD. Money is not energy.

I wasted a lot of time writing this up, but I bothered to because, as my friend and business partner, I want you to be the best that you can be. My fear is that nobody else will care enough to explain to you why “money is energy” sounds ignorant, and that one day someone will just snicker at you and walk away. This person might even be an important business connection who is sizing up our business acumen in how we speak, think, and present ourselves. Perhaps I worry too much. But I care.

I welcome you to respond if you feel the need to. Before you make an ad hominem attack, I should clarify that I have read the 2011 Bitcoin whitepaper, and that I understand the benefits of Bitcoin as a noninflationary currency. Just, for the love of God, please stop running around saying “money is energy.” 

Warmly,

—————

Make money come out

In order to be respected and have your voice heard in a team that has a lot of extremely talented people (ie lead a successful startup), then one has to specialize in something. Eg be a world class software engineer or some really experienced PhD. And so if you are young but want enough respect to do some capital intensive project you have to be a whiz kid like Wozniak. But if you are not a true outlier at a technical or art skill then you have to climb up the ladder. Alternatively, you can more easily make yourself a “whiz kid” at entrepeneurship with some effort because most people on earth are not trying in that dimension.

But entrepeneurship is kind of confusing because a lot of my other friends who “try” to do entrepeneurship aren’t aware that even if you are an entrepreneur there is still a specialization you are required to cultivate, which is “make money come out”. Because it’s like, I might be an engineer who’s old enough to be your dad but I’ll respect you as a leader even though youre very young because you specialize in “make money come out”. We are each specialized in something, therefore we have mutual trade and respect for each other. 

So my other friends just dabble in a bunch of stuff but don’t focus on cultivating this skill and they don’t get very far or are taken very seriously. In fact sometimes they actively shy away from the “make money come out” part, which I’ve always found confusing. And then they just stick to their job at Google.

Synonym for project closure document: postmortem

 Hopefully this makes it easier for someone to Google one day?

The women's blouse

This is a story repeated by Ajahn Brahm, and then paraphrased by me. Ajahn Brahm is a British-born Australian Buddhist monk I really look up to. He cuts a lot of the bullshit out of religion and gets straight to the parts about how to live a more loving life, in simple English.

Once, an American journalist was following the Dalai Lama around for a month in the Himalayas. They approached a remote village, and all the villagers came out of their houses to crowd the streets to see the Dalai Lama. 

And everyone was cheering, and touching the Dalai Lama, and he was smiling and greeting them too.

And among the crowd, there was this middle aged lady who was quite frail and quite poor, and she was in quite a rush to present the Dalai Lama a gift.

And the gift was some article of clothing like a blouse or a skirt. The Dalai Lama accepted the gift, and this made the American journalist raise his eyebrows.

And after everything was over, and the Dalai Lama and the journalist were by themselves, the journalist was quite upset and confronted the Dalai Lama.

“Why did you take that skirt from that woman?! She clearly needs that more than you. And what the hell are you going to do with a women’s skirt anyway?! You are the Dalai Lama! You already have all of the respect and material possessions you could ever need. You could have a helicopter if you asked for it. This is terrible. This is immoral. I thought you were the Dalai Lama! Where is your compassion?!”

And the Dalai Lama looked at the journalist, and said calmly,

“She needed to give it to me. That’s why I took it.”

And the journalist understood. 

Worldview decisions

We don’t actually make many decisions in our lives. It seems we make pivotal decisions at certain points in our lives, and the rest are automatic “decisions” that follow, but aren’t actually decisions. 

One of these pivotal decisions is choosing what kind of worldview we want to have. It’s usually when something unexpectedly tragic happens do we realize we’ve been taking everything for granted, not in the sense of gratitude, but in the sense that we already have the world figured out, or that the world only obeys a very specific set of rules.

One worldview I’ve held for 8 years is that you can only do something meaningful, or only do something altruistic, if it’s born of sacrifice. And frequently that sacrifice is the discomfort of going outside the status quo, of being ridiculed. But often that sacrifice is the suffering in your body, and the worry in your head. And so when you are unmotivated, you can motivate yourself by telling yourself to get up and push because it is for the good of humanity. And what gets really dangerous about this is that at some point you get addicted to sacrifice, and addicted to overwork, and addicted to your own mental anguish because you think, it’s all justified as sacrifice. And if you just gave up on feeling bad then also all your previous feeling bad will all be for waste. 

And the thing is that being altruistic and compassionate to humanity includes being compassionate to yourself. And that if you want to help others, you have to learn to help yourself as well. Otherwise you are really just running yourself into the ground, and helping nobody. And this is a hard lesson and worldview pivot I now have to make after 8 years.

I’d say the hardest thing about changing your worldview is that all of your planning has to be redone, so you don’t see the road ahead anymore. And I’d say that’s pretty scary. And so meditation as a practice is extremely useful because the point of meditation is that you’re in the present, even if you can’t see the road ahead, you know to have faith in the process and faith in yourself.

I think that’s the main thing I’ll be taking away from school now that I’m graduating, even though I never expected it.

On the Russian invasion of Ukraine

 Putin couldn't just content himself with watching Korean dramas on Netflix like the rest of us...?

Reading The Power Law

 Chapter on Genentech is the best one so far. Really interesting in that you get a sense of how the "overlooked" thing is most promising, but also how you are able to derisk a biotechnology via consulting, contracted research, technoeconomic analysis.

Reading Richard Brandson's Autobiography

Pretty good, 1/3 of the way through. What's really interesting is how much of a nerd he was back then. Everyone else in Student/Virgin Records is having the time of their life partying, whereas he is the responsible one who goes to bed early and makes sure the company can make payroll. Just goes to show that even the most charismatic, daredevil entrepreneurs are also nerds.

Gardening August Harvest

Draft post from 2014:

I grew enough beans to feed a five year old!