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!

Carbon emissions reduction vs carbon sequestration

In expectation, there's almost no question you will have a bigger impact on climate change if you work on major low-hanging fruit in emissions reduction--such as natural gas leaks or electrification of major household appliances (stoves, dryers, boilers, heating)--than carbon sequestration. However, one consideration that's nice about carbon sequestration is that you can do it unilaterally. You are not limited by country borders. So the upper bound of your ambition in the extreme sense may be dramatically higher. But, considering how big the planet is and how small an individual is, this may not matter...?

Minecraft: Sleeping Couch

Sometimes, you end up falling asleep on the couch. Now you can in Minecraft! Following the same idea as the baby crib design, placing signs around a bed can make an easy couch. Don't forget to shift-click when placing signs.

Minecraft Detail: Simple Wagon

This tiny wagon uses music discs in item frames to act as "wheels." Said wagon is great for narrow roads.

If you want, you can extend the wagon's length to 3 blocks, and it'll still look fine.

To add a horse, connect it to a lead that touches a fence post underground. Then, cover the hole up. Done!