As a software engineer, seeing AI permeate the industry from the front lines is both an exhilarating and nihilistic experience. Hopefully, this dispatch can prepare others for the mind-altering effects of AI, because as you shall soon see, getting “AI-pilled” is quite literally like taking a drug.

The Rush - The first time using a SOTA model hits you with a giant feeling of exhilaration and empowerment. You can build anything! A tech stack you’ve never used before? No problem. A tricky computer science algorithm, implemented. An annoying syntax, API, or configuration issue, done.

You can bring an idea to life in minutes. Projects that would have taken months, compressed to hours. The potential is off the charts.

The Trip - You explore what else you can do with AI. What bugs can I fix? More features to build? How much to automate? There are no limits now. Well, the only limit is you, and your capacity to manage this insatiable coworker. You start staying up late, running tasks overnight, squeezing in one more change before hitting your plan’s limits.

Addiction - You start “tokenmaxxing”, multiple concurrent sessions, multiple plans, multiple accounts. Working on multiple projects that you never had time for. Every idea, every problem, every nuisance, is now something that can be solved with AI. Why pay for any software if I can build it myself, just the way I want it?

Everyday is a hackathon.

You start losing track of time. Sitting down to make one small change, leads to hours of feature work you didn’t plan on. Why not /simplify, /code-review, and /security-review? Why not add hundreds of tests? You lose track of all the different projects you’ve been working on, forgetting their purpose, let alone what you were trying to do the last time you were working on it.

Tolerance - You always need more. Upgrading to the latest models as they come online. Once you get a taste of the SOTA, you can’t go back to using older models, they no longer compare, no longer give you the same effect.

The Comedown - You realize the nature of work has changed. How you work hardly resembles how you used to do it. The mentally taxing activity of programming, reaching a flow state, and hitting the Balmer peak has been replaced by a different flow. A trance, where you are directing, not coding; making decisions: approving, rejecting, verifying. You are lulled by the official sounding walls of text into hitting the “auto mode button” as often as possible, to be as productive as possible.

It has become more solitary. Coding has always had an element of solitude to reach flow, but this is different. What used to take a team of engineers to build, has been reduced to one - so there’s less opportunity for collaboration. Instead of asking for help, ask Claude. Even code reviews are becoming irrelevant, ask your AI to review a PR from my AI. Instead of bouncing ideas and brainstorming, it is “what does AI say” and “why haven’t you built it yet”?

Your expertise is no longer required, anyone can build things! You wonder why is what you’re building worthwhile? How long will it last? What matters?

The Withdrawal - But AI is too tempting, too powerful. You can’t go back to writing code by hand, it’s unthinkable. The writing is on the wall, but the coding is not.

This is the price of progress.

So to bring the blog back up to modern standards, I present version 3.0: David ex Machina on Substack. I hope the new home for the blog is better for the reader and makes it easier for me to write more content.

Why move?

• Blogger stopped keeping up. Design, features and the writing tools barely changed while the rest of the web moved on.

• Basic features broke. Worse than standing still, things that used to work stopped working. Even something as basic as previewing a post before publishing gave out. The friction to write a blog post was that much higher that I often didn’t even try.

• Readability fell behind. This is a readability upgrade, after all. Next to modern platforms like Medium and Substack, reading on Blogger lagged far behind, and your eyes deserve better.

• Substack is built for writers, and it shows. The editor stays out of the way, and posts go straight to your inbox. If I ever want to branch out into podcasts or video, that's built in too, which is a nice bonus.

• I still own the content. Back in 2013 I tried Medium and wrote that "having an independent publishing outlet is important to me." That's still true. Substack promises that the subscriber list and content always belongs to the writer. Given how platforms rise and fall, it’s important to maintain portability.

What happens to the old blog?

Nothing is lost. Here's how the archive works:

• Every post has been migrated. All posts from 2008 onward are here on Substack, with their original dates, images and categories (Blogger labels became Substack tags). Browse them in the archive.

• The Blogger site stays up as a read-only archive at davidd8.blogspot.com. No new posts will go there.

• davidexmachina.com now points here. Old bookmarks and links to individual posts (the ones ending in .html) automatically redirect to the same post here.

• Reading by RSS? If you followed the blog's feed, you've most likely been moved over automatically. If your reader shows an error instead, the new feed is davidexmachina.com/feed.

• The Google Group is retiring. If you were a member, you've already been moved over and will get new posts by email. Any unsubscribe link takes you off the list.

If you're curious about the nuts and bolts, I wrote up the steps it took to move.

Thank you for reading, whether you've been here since day one, or just arrived. I hope to write more content, more often, in the near future!

- DVD

However, things change. With advances in AI, I was able to use Claude Code to do the heavy lifting. So with an AI assistant and $50 for Substack's custom domain fee, I was able to migrate the blog in about a day and half. If your blog is stuck in the same limbo, you can do this yourself.

Things To Know Beforehand

The benefits: why I moved, and what Substack does better, are in Readability Upgrade 3.0, along with how the old archive works.

The downsides: the old comments didn’t come along. Years of Blogger (and briefly Disqus) comments stayed behind, because the import only carries post content. Substack has its own comments going forward, but those old conversations now live only in the Blogger archive. Then again, that’s par for the course these days: most conversations around a post happen on Twitter anyway.

If you are OK with the points above, below are the migration steps, and the key pitfalls I ran into along the way.

Migration Steps

1. Back everything up. Blogger's Settings → Back up content gives you an XML file of every post. Google Takeout also exports the blog's images, which comes in handy later when some of the old hosted images turn out to be gone.

2. Take inventory. Before moving anything, I listed every post, image, embed and internal link, and marked which posts were already on Substack. I had previously imported part of my blog and experimented with cross-posting, but this may not apply to you if you’re starting fresh.

3. Clean the posts. Years of Blogger templates leave behind a lot of inline styles, layout tables, Flash embeds and <br><br> everywhere. I stripped posts down to plain text, headings, links and images, swapped thumbnails for full-size images, and turned YouTube embeds back into plain links.

4. Import through a Gist. Substack's importer has no file upload; it only accepts a URL. Blogger's feed lists only the 25 newest posts, which is why my first import stopped in 2020. The workaround: I built a cleaned-up RSS file of the 50 older posts and uploaded it to a secret GitHub Gist. A Gist's "raw" link serves the file as plain text, and Substack happily imports it as a feed. Each post's original link became its new Substack address, and the publish dates carried over. Once the import finished, I deleted the Gist.

5. Fix the media [Longest Step]. Some images didn't make the trip, some external links no longer work, some videos had disappeared from YouTube, and every post needed a cover image for previews. I re-uploaded images from the Takeout backup and replaced or removed the dead links and media where possible.

6. Copy the labels. Blogger labels became Substack tags, word for word, so the old categories still work.

7. Repoint the internal links. Posts that linked to each other still pointed at old /2018/06/post-name.html addresses. I updated each one to the post's new Substack address.

8. Move the email subscribers. For years, new posts reached readers through a Google Group mailing list I managed. Here's how the list moved:

• Export: Google Groups exports its member list as a CSV

• Rewrite the welcome email first: Substack sends imported subscribers a separate welcome email, and the default is generic. I rewrote it to explain the move: why you're getting this, where the archive lives, and that you don't need to do anything.

• Import: Subscribers → Add subscribers → upload the CSV.

9. Switch the domain [Get your $50]

• In Substack, go to Settings → Domain and add the custom domain.

• At the registrar, replace Blogger's web DNS records with Substack's.

• Once DNS has updated, the Substack dashboard lives on your own domain, which has its own login cookies, so expect to sign in again.

10. Detach Blogger. As long as Blogger still has the custom domain, it redirects the old blogspot address to your domain, which is now Substack. That makes the old blog impossible to reach. Remove the custom domain in Blogger (Settings → Publishing), and the blogspot address serves the old site again.

11. Make the internal links work. Substack automatically redirects an old Blogger address like /2019/05/trumpsylvania.html to /p/trumpsylvania, as long as a published post has exactly that slug. Two things got in the way:

• Odd slugs. My first, feed-based import gave 23 posts slugs like covid-checkuphtml, with the ".html" mashed into the name, so their old links hit a 404. Renaming each slug to the clean version (covid-checkup) fixed them. The catch: Substack doesn't redirect a renamed slug, so the old /p/…html addresses stopped working.

• Hidden duplicates. Unpublishing a duplicate post doesn't free up its slug. Three clean slugs were held by unpublished copies, so I renamed those copies (…-duplicate) first.

12. Don't forget the RSS readers. Email subscribers aren't the only audience. Some people still follow blogs in a feed reader, and the old feed addresses don't move on their own:

• Check where your feed actually goes. My Blogger feed had been quietly redirecting to FeedBurner for years, so that's where most RSS subscribers were. FeedBurner was still fetching from Blogger, which will never publish again.

• Point FeedBurner at Substack. In FeedBurner, edit the feed and change its original (source) feed to your Substack feed, yourdomain.com/feed. Every FeedBurner subscriber now gets the new posts, with nothing for them to do.

• Accept one gap. Readers subscribed directly to the old /feeds/posts/default address on your domain now get a 404, and Substack can't redirect it. A one-line "new feed address" note in your announcement post covers them.

13. Make it clear that the blogger site is an archive. Added a "we've moved" banner for anyone who happens to land on blogger:

• Check your theme first. My blog used the Dynamic Views theme, which builds the page with JavaScript and quietly ignores most gadgets. The notice I added never appeared. Switching to a modern theme (Theme → Essential; back up the old one first) fixed it.

• Add the notice. Layout → Add a Gadget → HTML/JavaScript, placed at the top. It's a short banner linking to the new site, plus a few lines of JavaScript: on an old post page, the link goes straight to that same post on the new site, using the redirects from step 11.

• Turn off comments (Settings → Comments) so nobody leaves comments on an archive that no one reads.

Mark my words: the 2025 NFL season will be remembered as the year the “product” finally started to crack under the weight of its own physical demands.

While the league office continues to tout parity, ratings, and global expansion, I witnessed: a lack of talent depth, increasingly lopsided games, and a growing war of attrition where “any given Sunday” has given way to “whoever is healthy today.”

Yes, injuries have always been part of football. But the scale, timing, and severity of injuries this season is a fundamental shift in the game, not just random luck.

Let’s recap.

The Meat Grinder

The number of notable players injured during the 2025 season was staggering. By Week 5, entire playoff pictures were already compromised. And take note of the severity - these are season-ending injuries, team playoff trajectory defining injuries, non-contact injuries (I’m not even going to mention CTE). Look at some of the names involved: Joe Burrow. J.J. McCarthy. Lamar Jackson. Jayden Daniels. Patrick Mahomes.

Below is a snapshot of how quickly the season unraveled.

Notable Player Injuries by Week — 2025 NFL Season

Week 2

• Joe Burrow (QB, Bengals) — Grade 3 turf toe (season-ending)

• Justin Fields (QB, Jets) — Concussion

• J.J. McCarthy (QB, Vikings) — High ankle sprain

Week 3

• CeeDee Lamb (WR, Cowboys) — High ankle sprain

• James Conner (RB, Cardinals) — Season-ending ankle injury

• Najee Harris (RB, Chargers) — Season-ending Achilles tear

• Nick Bosa (DE, 49ers) — Knee injury (later confirmed torn ACL)

Week 4

• Malik Nabers (WR, Giants) — Torn ACL

• Tyreek Hill (WR, Dolphins) — Dislocated knee / torn ACL

• Lamar Jackson (QB, Ravens) — Hamstring strain

• Roquan Smith (LB, Ravens) — Hamstring injury

• Joe Alt (OT, Chargers) — High ankle sprain

Week 6

• Fred Warner (LB, 49ers) — Fractured/dislocated ankle

• Puka Nacua (WR, Rams) — Ankle injury

• Anthony Richardson (QB, Colts) — Orbital fracture

Week 10

• Kyler Murray (QB, Cardinals) — Foot injury (IR)

• Jayden Daniels (QB, Commanders) — Serious elbow injury

• C.J. Stroud (QB, Texans) — Concussion

• Terry McLaurin (WR, Commanders) — Quad injury

• Zay Jones (WR, Cardinals) — Achilles injury

Week 14

• Daniel Jones (QB, Colts) — Torn Achilles

Week 15

• Patrick Mahomes (QB, Chiefs) — Torn ACL

• Micah Parsons (DE, Packers) — Torn ACL

Postseason / Season-Long Losses

• George Kittle (TE, 49ers) — Torn Achilles

• Bo Nix (QB, Broncos) — Fractured ankle

• Brandon Aiyuk (WR, 49ers) — Knee injury (missed full season)
  

Cause: The League’s Appetite

The NFL has been pushing for longer seasons, more weekday game slots, and more international games. More games and less rest and recovery time, leads to more injuries. Sacrificing player health for revenue is not new in the NFL, but it’s taking its toll now, and the result isn’t parity, it’s erosion.

… but Phillip Rivers!

The most damning indictment of the NFL’s precarious position was the Philip Rivers saga. In late 2025, the Indianapolis Colts—scrambling after losing Anthony Richardson and Daniel Jones on the verge of making the playoffs—reached out to a 44-year-old retired quarterback, who was coaching high school football, to see if he could still sling it.

Let that sink in.

In a multi-billion dollar industry, a man who hadn’t taken an NFL snap in years was considered a more viable option than any of the up-and-coming younger generation of quarterbacks.

Coaching Failures

Is it really possible that only 25 human beings on Earth can play NFL quarterback at a competent level? Or is it more likely that training structures — from college schemes to pro coaching — have failed to consistently produce good players?

Or is it more alarming that Philip Rivers did reasonably well, almost winning his two starts? Has the NFL’s level of play gone up or down? Or is the copy-cat league no longer evolving?

And why does the “Next Man Up” philosophy not apply to NFL coaches? Instead there seems to be a constant revolving door of nepotistic and mediocre hires that get shuffled throughout the league.

Reality Check

We must admit the NFL has become: drama first, sport second.

The league still sells a “game of inches,” but what actually drives engagement now are plot points in a sports soap opera. We don’t consistently watch for sustained execution anymore — we watch for fourth-quarter heroics, viral moments, and the politics of the postgame handshake.

The modern NFL has been brilliantly engineered to hinge on a handful of chaotic variables that give fans hope and, more importantly, someone to blame.

• A coach mismanages the clock

• A referee makes a controversial call

• One bad play flips the game

• A star player goes down

• A last-minute miracle or unlucky bounce decides it

• The sports bettor rigged it.

• The league intervened unfairly

• An owner makes a knee-jerk decision.

This isn’t accidental. It’s designed to keep you in your seat — not because the football is consistently great, but because the outcome is often decided by a single, volatile moment in the final minutes. It’s exciting. It’s unpredictable. That’s the drama.

And it works — until it doesn’t.

Drama only matters if the lead actors are still on the field. When stars are gone, when playoff games are headlined by emergency quarterbacks and rosters held together with tape, the spectacle starts to feel hollow. The chaos remains, but the stakes don’t.

Why I Still Watch

I’m not entirely sure why I keep watching a sport I would never play. The heroic mythology of enduring the NFL meat grinder has lost much of its luster. A league more than willing to chew up its players for an extra nickel has pushed even harder — and fans feel the exhaustion too.

And yet, I still tune in. Especially in the playoffs. Part of it is escapism, like any other form of entertainment. But another part feels darker: watching while it’s still here.

All signs point to limits — on how many people are willing to play, how many are willing to coach, and how long the league can outrun the consequences of its own excesses. The wave of injuries overwhelming teams and the league office feels too large to dodge forever.

The 2025 NFL season will be remembered as the year the product finally started to crack under the weight of its own physical demands.

So watch while you still can.

We've all heard the warnings: "Don't click suspicious links!" "Be wary of unsolicited emails!" But what happens when the scam isn't a glaring red flag, but a carefully woven web of trust and delayed tactics? What happens when a seemingly innocuous catch-up call nearly compromises your digital life?

That's precisely what happened to me recently, and it was a chilling reminder of how vulnerable we all are to sophisticated social engineering. You never think you'll be the target – until you are. And when that feeling hits, the panic that you're about to lose everything is very, very real.

From Conference Connect to Cyberattack

It all started innocuously enough. Back in February 2024, I went to EthDenver and amidst the networking, I met a "Zoie Zhang", who worked for a VC firm, “Paramita”. We exchanged contact info on Telegram, snapped a quick photo to remember each other, and that was that. A crypto-standard conference connection.

Fast forward almost two years to November 2025. Out of the blue, Zoie reached out on Telegram to catch up. A friendly message, a Calendly link to schedule a Google Meet – all perfectly normal. We set a time.

The Subtle Twist: When "Normal" Becomes Dangerous

Five minutes before our scheduled Google Meet, a new message popped up from Zoie: "Here's the Zoom link instead." A minor change, and not out of the ordinary, some people prefer Zoom. But it was the first subtle deviation. I clicked, and it took me to a web-based "Zoom" interface. My audio wasn't working, which can happen. Then, a pop-up appeared: "You need to download a 'Zoom SDK Update'."

This was the first genuine jolt of unease. Why would a web version need an "SDK Update," especially when I already had the full Zoom app installed? Yet, the thought flickered: "Maybe the web version is different?" Zoie's quick Telegram message – "Someone just had this problem, the update fixes it" – served to calm my rising suspicion. It also doesn’t help that Zoom almost always requires an update when starting up.

So I downloaded the file. My stomach dropped as I looked at it: a .scpt file. For those unfamiliar, that's an AppleScript file – an executable script, not a standard software update. The instructions then told me to click a "play" button.

The Moment of Truth

At this point, the warning sirens were going off, this was NOT normal. I did not click "play" but it felt like I had already lost, I had been tricked. Had I been tricked? A frantic online search quickly confirmed my fears: .scpt files used in this context are a known vector for sophisticated malware, often linked to state-sponsored hacking groups like North Korea's BlueNoroff, specifically targeting the crypto space (here’s a great technical article on the attack). My suspicion was confirmed.

I immediately disconnected my laptop from Wi-Fi. On Telegram, I suggested rescheduling, citing the late hour. Zoie's persistence – claiming coworkers were already in this meeting and even sending an image of how to install the "update" – only solidified my conviction. I had been targeted. Now I had to assess the damage.

Luckily, I got enough of a whiff to escape right before the attack unloaded its malicious payload. But just barely. 

The Power of Social Engineering: Why It Almost Worked

This incident perfectly illustrates the insidious power of social engineering:

• Building Trust: The initial, legitimate conference connection created a foundation of trust. Zoie wasn't a random stranger; she was someone I had met, albeit briefly.

• Leveraging Brand Familiarity: The use of well-known platforms like Calendly, Google Meet, and Zoom created a veneer of normalcy.

• Exploiting Urgency & Convenience: The last-minute "Zoom link" change and the immediate "fix" for the audio problem pressured me to act quickly without overthinking.

• Social Pressure: I was heading into a business meeting, and having technical difficulties is not a great impression to give. So I felt pressure to fix the issue right away and get the meeting back on track.

• Minimizing Suspicion: Zoie's quick message about "someone else having this problem" was a classic tactic to normalize the unusual request.

• The "Slow Burn" Attack: The most chilling aspect was the nearly two-year delay. Who would suspect a scam from someone you met, in person no less, from so long ago? 

So why me, and what to make of all this? My best guess, there is a sophisticated crime ring that sends real people to all of these crypto/tech conferences (there’s a lot of them), who portray themselves to be VCs, because who doesn’t want to talk to potential investors?, and establish connections with as many people as possible. This set of contacts becomes the hit list that the attackers go after. I just happened to meet the wrong person and get on the list.

Stay frosty conference goers! And now I have more reasons to not attend work conferences.

Originally posted on https://davidexmachina.substack.com/p/the-water-scale

How often do you get asked How’s it going? Or, how are you doing?

99% of the time the answer is “good” - a one-dimensional answer that’s so common, it’s almost meaningless. In fact, if you say “OK”, it’s often followed up by “Is something wrong?” So the expected response, “good”, is a formality to confirm the status quo, and move on. 

I hereby propose an alternative “water scale" for describing your state in life. It stems from the familiar expression, “sink or swim”, conveying not just a fixed status, but also your trajectory and state of mind.

Let's see how it works by answering "How are you doing?" for a few sample scenarios.

• "Sinking" implies you're currently struggling, overwhelmed by responsibilities, and unable to keep up (think chronic stress at work, financial hardship, or relationship conflicts). You are being pulled underwater. 

• "Swimming" invokes the opposite - you're clearly in control of where you're going and making progress (for example, acing a new role at work, or making strides in a fitness routine). The water flows easily around you.

• What does the usual "good" translate to on this scale? It could be “swimming” but it may also be "treading water" - doing fine, but expending continuous effort to stay there, maybe barely keeping up. Or "floating" - doing well, but coasting along with ease. These labels reveal much more than a reflexive "good," don't they?

• My favorite term is “diving”. It implies going deep - whether it’s intentionally venturing into the unknown, taking a risk, learning a new skill, or going through a temporary hardship. But it’s a temporary state; you expect to resurface.

You can get creative with combining terms and inventing new analogies (any surfers out there?). But the core concept is conveying a vector - both your current state (height relative to the water) and direction (trajectory through the water). I’ll round out the basics of this scale and leave the rest as an exercise for the reader to personalize.

The Water Scale:

Drowning - You are in a dire situation spiraling out of control and need outside help.

Sinking - You are overwhelmed and falling behind on responsibilities.

Treading - You are working hard just to maintain your current status quo.

Floating - You are coasting along happily but could be affected by changing tides.

Swimming - You are thriving, in control, and making steady progress.

Racing - You are excelling, pushing yourself to your limits, and moving rapidly ahead.

Diving - You are venturing into new territory, taking a risk, learning a new skill, or coping with a temporary challenge.

Surfacing - You are coming up for air, recovering after a stressful period.

Try it out! Use the water scale to answer "How are you doing?" in major life domains, and see if it aligns with your instincts.

• How’s your social life? Making new connections or enjoying the company of good friends?

• How’s school/work? Crushing your projects, or cramming to get stuff done on time?

• How’s the family? Healthy and happy, or dealing with some hardship?

Buying an electric vehicle today seems like a no brainer, it’s good for the environment and it will save you money on gas. And that last point seems like a given, gas is expensive, especially these days, and electricity costs cents on the dollar, essentially free - how can you argue with that?! 

But a few things are missing from that equation, the efficiency of an EV to yield mileage, for one, and the fact that energy prices can move quite a bit. So I decided to run the numbers myself, and see how much more economical EVs can be, and the answer was a bit of a surprise.

TL;DR Don’t buy an EV just yet. I made a simple “electric or gas” calculator you can use to find out for yourself.

Caveat: I’m strictly looking at the economical (variable) cost of “fueling” a vehicle. This calculation excludes considerations for emissions, environmental impact, tax rebates, maintenance cost, insurance costs, the current price premiums above msrp, and opportunity time cost of charging vs. filling the tank, etc.

To compare electricity to gas, we need to evaluate with a common unit, cost per mile. For gas vehicles,

cost per mile = cost per gallon / mpg

For EVs,

cost per mile = cost per kwH / kWh per mile

While one half of the equation focuses on the efficiency of the vehicle, the other half is highly dependent on energy prices. Here’s a table comparing car ratings from www.fueleconomy.gov, calculated with the current prices in SF ($5.89/ga and $.34/kWh).

What stands out is the most efficient EVs are the most economical, hands down. However it’s very often the average and best performing hybrid cars are just as economical as an EV. By that I mean the magnitude of “fuel” savings with an EV is quite small - less than $300 per year historically, and ~$500 per year with today’s unprecedented gas prices. That’s surprising to me, I would have expected a much larger gap given the premium being paid for EVs. Lastly, the calculation is highly dependent on your geography, i.e. local energy prices, because they can vary widely and change the equation. So use the calculator to figure out what makes sense for your situation.

So should you buy an EV?

Not so fast. On average, and on variable cost alone, yes. But if you live in a high cost area, i.e. Northeast or the West Coast, I’d double check. 

And if you walk back my assumptions and start to include the fixed costs of the car (purchase price, rebates, etc.), then your best bet is a hybrid vehicle, especially a plug-in hybrid, which gives you the flexibility of using gas or electricity, which may come in handy during these volatile times. 

Personally, I’m waiting until EV technology gets better. If you look at the last 10 years, Tesla’s cost per mile has improved 36%, compared to 20% for hybrids. If that trend continues, then it’s only a matter of time (~5-10 years) until EVs are the clear favorite.

YMMV

I recently wrote about why web3 is the place to be. Now I want to share some reasons to join Protocol Labs to work on web3 with me :): 

• The space.

• The mission. I’m a strong proponent of mission driven companies, and Protocol Labs has one of the most valuable missions I’ve been around - building the next generation of the internet.

• Open source work. It’s novel, progressive, and empowering to work in the open. It changes your approach to building not just for a company, but for the community.

• The people. A smart, motivated, helpful, and friendly workplace is worth its weight in gold Filecoin. And it all starts at the top with Juan, who leads the charge on setting the culture that is embodied throughout the company.

• The learning. Beyond wrapping your head around the web3 space, Protocol Labs prides itself on innovation: conducting R&D across many fields, investing in external projects and startups across the space, and even choosing to upgrade itself once a year. It’s a unique mindset of being proactive to change, not reactive.

• The timing. It’s still early, and the company is still very much a startup. There’s a whole world of opportunities to have a massive impact. 

• The product. What gets me most excited is what’s missing, and that is building the first major, practical application of web3 technology. Decentralized storage will be foundational infrastructure for the future of the web - every website, application, and service (both web2 and web3) has storage needs, and you can help build it!

If any of this resonates, we should talk. If you are passionate about the mission, we should talk.  If you’re curious to learn more, we should talk. If you are interested, but feel the web3 space is daunting (because it is), we should talk!

And I really mean talk, as part of the openness of Protocol Labs we’re making ourselves available to the wider network. So feel free to book time on my calendar to chat. 

Convinced? Look for opportunities here.

P.S. And if none of this resonates, I hope this post, at least, helps improve your decision-making framework for your next career move.

    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-iigN2WjvY&ab_channel=ProtocolLabs

There’s a lot of hype about web3, so much so that the New York Times recently ran a profile on the many tech executives leaving their posts to join the space. The article focuses on the financial leverage that cryptocurrencies offer and less so on why web3 matters as the next wave of computing. As a software engineer, and someone who recently joined the web3 space, I wanted to share my view of the excitement and challenges facing web3. 

web

Let’s start with the exciting stuff :)

• The Technology. Achieving consensus in an untrusted network is a technological breakthrough that the Bitcoin blockchain pioneered. It’s a real breakthrough, unlocking the digital ability to create scarcity, make guarantees in the future, and create the first resilient, real-world applicable version of digital money. Also, all of these protocols rely on some major advancements in the field of cryptography (i.e. zero knowledge proofs), which is super cool if you’re into computer security.

• The Principles. As software continues to be ingrained in our lives, it is imperative to give the user more control over the services they use, the assets they own, and the data they share. Centralized services, like Facebook, have too much power in making those choices for their users and exerting undue influence for the benefit of itself, not its users. Web3’s principles of decentralization, ownership, and self-certifying protocols shift the power back to the user.

• The Openness - It’s not just open source software, it’s all out in the open: whitepapers, improvement proposals, new ideas, airdrops, security vulnerabilities, governance mechanisms, and the state of the blockchains themselves are out there for everyone to see. This creates accountability, builds trust, and helps accelerate innovation.

• The Community - This is a movement that spans the globe, with projects blooming everywhere. You literally can’t go down a crypto rabbit hole without uncovering ten more holes to dig into. Plus, there’s an amazing level of support within the community that provides resources and help. But most importantly, the community brings people in - as evidenced by traditionally late tech adopters, i.e. banks and artists, already becoming integral parts of web3, through Defi and NFTs respectively.

• It’s Early - A lot of the technology is nascent with a lot of product left to build and many more users to come. So there’s a lot of room for impact.

web web

But all of these exciting properties have their challenges*

• The blockchain consensus mechanisms are groundbreaking, but they are notoriously slow. Scalability is a major challenge over the next few years.

• Decentralization is a great ideal, but it makes systems more complex to build and gain adoption. In reality, there is a spectrum and web3 projects need to balance purist ideals with pragmatism to build useful products and compete with web2. 

• The accountability of open source is high stakes. You make a mistake, have a bug, get hacked, or make a change that goes against the network ethos and you risk people leaving, or forking the project anew.

• A community with big principles can spread itself too thin. It’s hard to build one scalable service for the world. It’s hard enough for people in web3 to keep track of everything going on in web3! A little more focus and a little less FOMO will go a long way.

• The multitude of projects combined with financial speculation, lends itself to fraud, scams, vaporware, pyramid schemes, and more. It’s hard to know what’s real. So the onus falls on the individual to secure their keys, perform due diligence, know who to trust, and invest their time and money responsibly.

• It’s early days, so a lot of the software is not yet mature. As a developer, you have to prepare yourself for lag, broken builds, bugs, downtime, etc. You have to be technically savvy to actually participate (i.e. mine/validate) in many blockchains. And the end-user experience leaves a lot to be desired, even for technical experts. It’s no coincidence that the most popular NFTs are pixelated.

*Recommended reading for more full-length criticisms of web3:

• Moxie's critique surrounding the challenges of making web3 decentralized

• Taleb’s paper arguing Bitcoin cannot be a currency

• The Case Against Crypto

• Cryptocurrency Is a Giant Ponzi Scheme 

web web web

So why get into this craze? For one, all of these challenges, and there are some major technical, product, and distribution challenges, are surmountable. Oh, and disrupting some of the world’s major central players… that’s hard… check.

Two, web3 is one of the most fast-paced, talented, innovative, and invested in areas in tech. Not to mention the hype, politics, and, of course, the volatility. It has the feeling of being in a startup rollercoaster for a whole industry. It’s fun… check.

But most of all, the mission. web3 aims to build a better internet for its users, aligning incentives to benefit the entire network, not singular entities. You can see the early promise, with web3 making headway in finance (don’t forget Bitcoin was a response to the 2008 financial crisis), supporting creators, providing alternatives to corrupt governments, and building services to rival the great monopolies of our time. And much like past internet and mobile trends transformed society, I’m hard pressed to find an industry that will not be disrupted by a web3 alternative. It’s a techno-optimist future that’s worth fighting for.

Almost two years into the COVID pandemic and with the Omicron variant on the rise, it seems as though we, as a society, should have learned a few important lessons by now. Most of these gaps seem obvious and addressable, but it’s frustrating how little, sometimes even backwards, progress there has been. I hope in pointing some of these gaps out, we can start to build a better society; one that is resilient to pandemics, rather than hope our emergency measures will take us back to the way things used to be.

1. People need space, so space is valuable, but hard to come by. Look at real estate prices! But public space infrastructure is also lacking, both in the quality of the space and the total area. It’s very difficult to find a place to sit down in a downtown. We should build more housing of course, but that will take years. Right now, we can be investing more in parks, recreation, and opening up private spaces: more seating capacity, more space per person, more open spaces, more multipurpose capacity, more protection from the elements. Continue the movement to take back space from cars through parklets, or closing them off entirely.

2. Schooling and child care are integral to worker productivity. Yet these services are less available than pre-pandemic: less hours per day, less days, and a shortage of teachers and facilities. Not to mention the fault tolerance of these systems are brittle, one exposure can sideline an entire class and their families for days. Kids can’t be expected to learn as well in a constantly changing environment. We should reorient the antiquated child care system away from the stay-at-home parent to a system that supports working parents. Simple proposal, have a system that accommodates the standard work day, i.e. child care from 8am-6pm instead of 9am-3pm. 

3. Speaking of education, Math. Critical Thinking. Both are key ingredients to have a functioning society. If people don’t know how to reason about probability and risk, how can you expect them to make the right decisions for themselves, without being swayed  by politics or emotion? We should be baking more of these real-world subjects into the curriculum. Instead, many schools are removing STEM courses, rather than requiring them. One idea, create a risk waiver that someone must sign before taking a disproportionate risk - the waiver can spell out the probability of harm to the person and others, and the consequences for taking the risk. A hypothetical example for flying: “Please make sure you do not have COVID, as flying with COVID can result in the infection of X* other people on the same flight. If you are found to have been COVID positive on a flight you will be on the no-fly list for 3 years.” *replace X with a data backed number.

4. Society’s moral fabric is ripping. What mobile phones started with “screen time”, COVID has kicked into high gear. I can already feel the effects of year(s) of masking and social distancing. My instinctual response to someone on the street is to back away, when it should be “hello”. Let’s invest in social etiquette, redefine courtesy for the modern age, so that we have compassion and common decency to work together. Which brings me to the most important reminder...

5. Unity is the way to win. You’d think a global pandemic would bring people together to fight for a common cause. But this virus makes it too easy to divide and create fear. There is a severe lack of unity across people, the country, and the world. You can taste the selfishness in the air, with the hoarding of supplies and vaccines, to the tribalism of only caring about your people, your politics… to not caring about others’ well being. The irony is that you need true, collective action to end the spread. 

I chalk up most of these to being in survival mode - holding on tight for the last two years and waiting for the worst to pass, hoping that things get back to normal. But my fear is that humanity is tired of surviving, watching COVID with a desensitized dread that it will not end; building an immunity through apathy.

The solution, start taking lessons from the gaps we’ve seen so far and fix them. Create infrastructure to support people in crisis, but also create a healthy buffer for the daily grind. Avoiding burnout and reducing stress will allow people to be more resolute, able, and clear headed citizens. Make sure citizens have the knowledge to make educated decisions and understand the risks they are taking for society. With a solid foundation of compassion, most people will make choices that benefit society, not just themselves. Invest in STEM to continue to create scientific breakthroughs for this pandemic and beyond. 

This is your COVID wake up call.

via Goodera

Environment Theory - The theory that the environment constrains your behavior and significantly affects your psyche, and these effects generally outweigh your will power over time*. Where environment is defined broadly, as any input to your mind and body that is external from your own person. Let’s look at a few examples:

People

• You are the average of the five closest people you interact with. Chances are if all your friends were talking about Bitcoin in 2009, you’d probably be a millionaire many times over by now. But if most of your friends did drugs, you’re more likely to be an addict. 

• This affects people in corporations too. How else could the same person who did cocaine and pulled 100 hour weeks at Goldman Sachs be a vegan, meditation retreat employee at Apple?

• Though controversial, the Stanford Prison Experiment shows how normal people can exhibit sadistic tendencies when adhering to perceived roles of authority.

Information

• Numerous reports show how doomscrolling on Twitter will make you depressed and your primary TV news source will determine your belief in QAnon conspiracy theories.

Physical

• Night owls that generally sleep in will wake up early when camping.

• Eating unhealthy food will make you feel sick.

Economic

• Winning the ovarian lottery. A child born in the USA is much more likely to have a higher quality of life, than a child born in a 3rd-world country.

• The wealthier a person, the more likely they are to fight tax hikes.

My assumption is you’ve already heard about most of these effects and agree with the theory. But you underestimate its impact, or at least its impact on you. I get it, yes, Twitter is not always a negative experience, or “I’m smart enough to tell the difference between propaganda and what is real”, or “there’s too much inertia to move out of this city.” But then COVID-19 happened...

The pandemic is the greatest example of an environment constraining your life. From lockdowns to wearing masks to testing your critical thinking. And not just negatively either, look how many people shifted their lives to fight the pandemic and help out. The extreme global focus tracking the disease and racing to discover, test, and distribute a vaccine is amazing (side note: I’ve never seen so many different tech people build so many similar versions of COVID tracking websites and vaccine appointment software). And people actually uprooted themselves in the remote work migration.

Although the pandemic is a wake up call, your environment is often this really powerful force in your life that is subliminal, accumulating in the background without your realization. On top of that, the human psyche is incredibly adaptive, so you tend to underestimate the effect of your environment the more you adapt; it compounds!

How can one measure the effect of the environment, without the need of a global pandemic to make it crystal clear? I suggest using thought experiments to contrast extremely different environments to get clarity. Here are a few simple examples:

• Take a loudly cheering baseball fan and put them in a library. They will stop yelling.

• Take a happy person, and put them in jail. They will be upset.

• Take someone that’s burned out, and send them to paradise for a few weeks and they’ll feel much better.

• Would this business proposal be accepted at a first-mover company or a copycat company?

So what’s the takeaway?

Even if unaware, your environment significantly influences your behavior and psyche. To the point where I’d argue your environment controls your destiny. To reassert free will you need to build awareness, break out of the mold, and experience other environments to gain more perspective. Build empathy by understanding the context behind a person’s actions. Take a hard look at the inputs you’re feeding into your mind, and curate them to avoid garbage in, garbage out. 

After sufficient exploration, choose the environment you want to live in, rather than be constrained by the one you happen to reside in.

*The strong version of the theory is that you can make any number of different people conform in the same environment.

Correlation is often confused for causation. You learn this in mathematics and statistics, and most people think it’s obvious, and then forget about it. Of course the color of my socks did not affect my grade on a math test. If it’s so obvious, can it apply to real life?

Turns out, it does. And the weird thing is that oftentimes the correlation is in the exact opposite direction of the true causation. Let’s see some examples (going from more to less obvious):

• Fact: LeBron James wears these shoes and is g.o.a.t. at basketball.

• Correlation: If I wear those shoes I will be good at basketball.

• Causation: LeBron James has his own shoes because he is good at basketball.

• Fact: Selena Gomez is on Instagram and is famous

• Correlation: If I get an Instagram account I will be famous

• Causation: You have to do something that warrants fame in order to get fans.

• Fact: Many successful people are on Twitter and tweet great ideas and learnings all day.

• Correlation: I need to spend a lot of time on Twitter to be successful.

• Causation: If you are successful, you will have a lot of time to spare on Twitter.

• Fact: Beeple made $69M selling a digital art NFT.

• Correlation: I need to get into NFTs to get rich.

• Causation: Beeple spent 5000 days making valuable art. 

• Fact: A lot of smart people have podcasts

• Correlation: I will get smarter by listening to podcasts

• Causation: To a limit, true learning is active, not passive.

• Fact: Person X was promoted and is highly recognized at work.

• Correlation: I need to get promoted to be recognized at work.

• Causation: Doing good work will get you recognized and promoted.

• Fact: Banks give loans to businesses and individuals.

• Correlation: I can go to a bank when I need money.

• Causation: The best time to borrow money is when you don’t need money. Only companies that have strong businesses have an easy time fundraising. 

Some patterns emerge. The first pattern is imitation, “Be Like Mike”. This works to some degree, since you need to put yourself out there to see what you can do. Call it a placebo effect, and having a good template and inspiration helps. But you can’t just rely on the superficial, at some point you need to actually do the work.

This leads to the next pattern which is similar but more subtle, call it work optics. You’re actually doing a lot of work, but you’re spending your energy on the wrong thing, namely, optics instead of substance. I’d be wasting my time if I spent years writing a book about tennis and expected people to buy it, since I’m not a professional player, just a casual observer. Andre Agassi can write a bestselling book about tennis because he lived and breathed the sport for decades.

The last pattern I’ll leave you with is labels. Many people strive for an external label, whether it is a title, award, or a blue checkmark. Many think "if I have this label I will have made it," so they optimize for the shortest path to get the label. When in reality, the label, or any label that truly matters, is a lagging indicator of a lot of hard work. If you can make the work speak for itself, you’ll never need, nor want, to chase a label.

I’m sure there are other patterns out there, so watch out!

via Pixy

YC has the slogan “make something people want,” a seemingly obvious statement that is as powerful as it is simple. Though it is insufficient to build generation defining products. Take a summer blockbuster movie, this is a product that most people will want, it is built to entertain the masses, and you will be entertained! But you will not come out a changed mind. Servant-style product development also feels uncreative. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very valuable skill to ascertain what people want versus what they say, and many incredible products are built this way (thank you Coke Coffee). But it takes away some of the fun when boiled down to “tell me what you want me to make for you.” It takes perseverance.

To go a little deeper, products that “make something people will want” tend to be more disruptive. People did not know they wanted to ride in cars with strangers to get around town, or sleep in a stranger’s home for relaxation. Someone imagined it, and now people do it. That’s exciting!

The truest sign of product influence is to “make something that changes what people want”. Lyft and AirBnB are redefining car and home ownership. A good book or movie, like The Jungle or An Inconvenient Truth, can change someone’s behavior. This requires creativity and conviction.

Altogether, “make something that changes what people will want.” A bit of a mouthful, but if successful, the change will happen, and the future will come, so the phrase reduces back down to the familiar “make something people want.”

Adapted from Flickr and transparentpng.com (cc 4.0 license)

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an SF tech exodus emerged. There are many well documented reasons for the exodus, namely a high cost of living, unaffordable housing, and increased crime - all accelerated by the switch to remote-first work. But few have been more vocal than Keith Rabois, the paypal mafia venture capitalist, after physically moving and encouraging others to move to Miami. The level of hype raised tech eyebrows, including my own, to wonder if this is self-serving publicity, or something more? 

Before I dive in, let me get a few things out of the way. First, I don’t have anything against the city of Miami. Second, I actually think it’s a good thing for tech to diversify and have many intellectual strongholds, not just one mecca. One of the few positives of the pandemic is making people reevaluate their lives and figure out what matters to them, including where to live. I also agree with many of the criticisms of SF. Lastly, I don’t have anything against Keith and while I realize in this day and age it’s heresy to criticize a Silicon Valley influencer, sometimes you have to call a spade a spade.

Let’s start with the hype. On the surface, it sounds like satire. What could be more contrarian than a rich person moving to beachfront property with lower taxes? It’s not like Miami is a secret. People on the east coast have been moving to Florida for winter and retirement for eons, but to the SV twitter crowd, it’s as if they’ve discovered a new land!

So why move to Miami? Rabois’ pitch can be broken down into quality of life (weather, crime, public schools, culture, nature), governance, tech talent, and money.

I won’t spend too much time on the quality of life piece, since I want to avoid a Miami vs. San Francisco debate. In short, it’s a wash. Both have excellent weather (a personal preference between shorts or hoodies), while crime is slightly higher in SF recently, crime has historically been much higher in Miami (stats for SF and Miami), SF has an edge in its proximity to nature, think hiking and natural parks, both cities have vibrant cultures, and I assume both have comparable public school systems. 

Governance is the next major argument. The current VC narrative is that California, and the city government of San Francisco in particular, is hostile to tech companies, whereas Miami has a new mayor that gets it. Francis Suarez became an overnight Twitter celebrity by tweeting a famous VC phrase “How can I help?” to people considering moving to Miami. So yes, how? I tried to look up specific policies beyond the tweets and welcome cafecito chats, but only found a VC in residence that was appointed in 2021. Sure it’s nice to be welcomed, but how is it not simply lip service, especially when compared to cities, like Tulsa, that are paying real dollars for people to relocate? And you do have to hand it to the mayor, if you go to howcanihelpmia.com you’ll see startup-like tactics with a swag store that’s ready to monetize.

This does not mean SF’s increasingly draconian measures against tech companies should be ignored, the opposite in fact. However, it’s worth noting that the city did pass many tech centered policies in the 2010s (i.e. the Twitter Tax Break) that did move the epicenter of Silicon Valley to San Francisco, making it what it is today. And I would have a little more sympathy for Rabois if he hadn’t  already benefited so much from the city and state that made him. A rank-and-file tech bro that can’t stomach the exorbitant rent prices after a few years is one thing, but a 20+ year industry veteran that inculcated Silicon Valley, made about a billion, and had ample opportunity to shape and improve government policy looks more like a parasite (now maybe he did try and fail, but he hasn’t mentioned it).

To paraphrase another argument, there’s a buzz in Miami right now where everyone bumps into each other and is meeting other interesting people (there are many tweets). A few thoughts here: 1) I’m sure you’ll meet interesting people anywhere you go, especially after social distancing, and just about anything can be refreshing after living in a tech monoculture for so many years (that the aforementioned perpetuated). 2) You shouldn’t be bumping into people during a pandemic! This goes back to what real governance looks like, is it tweeting or protecting your citizens? According to the New York Times, as of February 26, 2021 “1 in 21 people who live in the San Francisco metro area have been infected and at least 1 in 1,557 have died, where at least 1 in 9 people who live in the Miami metro area have been infected, and at least 1 in 603 have died.” So by all means go to a meeting of the minds, but acknowledge that it is 2.5 times more dangerous to your health.

At this point, there’s no clear data unless you think SF is in a death spiral, or COVID is not real. So why all the fanfare to convince people to move? It’s the money. A state income tax rate of zero is a big incentive, and the only clear one. But moving to save money looks greedy, and not very contrarian. So what does a contrarian do? Since contrarians only prosper if the world bends to their will, they shout it from the rooftops! They need to create the FOMO so a herd will follow in order to build a critical mass of tech acumen* to create companies and hopefully be proven right (btw it’s quite amazing to me that people can be convinced to move somewhere by tweet). It all boils down to self-serving publicity.

But I do admit that even if it is self-serving publicity, bordering on arrogance, the plan is well intentioned, quite ambitious, and better than Keith’s retirement. And if he turns out to be right, it will be better for the world.

So in the VC manner of trying to be helpful, here are a few pieces of advice:

1. To better replicate Silicon Valley, make sure you don’t enforce non-competes in business contracts, and better yet, remove it from the state law.

2. Focus on climate change technology, it’s the future.

3. Avoid becoming a parasitic industry that eats the world one city at a time; learn from the lessons of San Francisco.

*Don’t get me started on the VC hypocrisy that just a few years ago claimed Silicon Valley’s competitive advantage was the people, and it’s centralized ecosystem of network effects.

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Disclaimer: This is a guest post from a friend that works in finance. The views and opinions expressed in this post are of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

The most miraculous aspect of last week’s wild swings in Gamestop share price, is not the fact that an orchestrated short squeeze leading to a massive asset bubble captivated the market. Indeed, high drama short squeezes and bubbles have been part of the fabric of the free market since it began. The most amazing part of the story are the conditions and narrative that resulted in a perfect storm, leading thousands (millions?) of small-time investors to believe that by participating in a classic pump-and-dump they were leading the charge of righteousness and justice.

First, I should clarify, as a supporter of the free market, I believe that the “retards” and “autists” have every right to trade, whatever their reasons. However, the righteous “sticking it to the man” cause behind which they have rallied requires a level of mental gymnastics that suggests that the goal is not worthy of risk that they have taken.

Let’s start with the conditions, which are primarily social in nature. First, the advent of Robinhood and its classic flick-through-the-fine-print-to-get-to-the-pretty-graphics Silicon Valley interface has made access to investing in individual stocks and options easier than ever for the Millenial and Gen Z set. Second, the boredom of the pandemic has led to a rise in retail trading, reaching the highest levels ever in the US (to almost 25% of trading volume in 2020) as well as many other countries. Third, the economy has bifurcated materially during the pandemic, as white-collar desk workers continued their jobs uninterrupted while their stock portfolios expanded, but service workers impacted by the lockdown were sent home, sending unemployment in the US to a peak of 13%. This has led to even more enthusiasm for the populist narratives that have dominated the political landscape across the globe in the last few years. Finally, misinformation continues to accelerate in social media.

The populist motivation is there. The free-commission trading tools are there. The time to devote to and the platform for developing the viral memes is there. Now, we just need a story to put it all together.

So, what is it? Buying GameStop stock will bankrupt hedge funds and expose a system that reserves special treatment for the boomer elite at the expense of the common Gen Z / Millenial. It sounds like a great reason to fight "the man" with your savings right? And it's not completely divorced from the truth: it's just truth that has been sprinkled with enough fairy dust to turn a rather ambiguous set of observations into a cause worth crusade-like devotion. So, let's go step-by-step through the assumptions one has to make to become a true believer.

First, you have to believe that hedge funds just help the rich get richer. This is probably the truest part of the story. While it is true that many hedge funds invest money for good organiztions like public pensions and endowments and also that most hedge funds are not actually successful, many do invest money for the already rich, like sovereign wealth funds, and family offices, and pay their managers well into the top .01% of incomes.

Second, you have to believe that these excessive hedge fund returns are propped up by the government. Again, there is a grain of truth here--many hedge funds, like the general public, were able to salvage their businesses due to the government bailout of the banks that held their accounts during the 2008 financial crisis. But, it's also true, that the first organizations to discover the overlevering of the mortgage market were hedge funds, and that hedge funds did not and have not directly received bailouts from the government. . .just as Melvin Capital, the current target of redditors' ire, did not receive a "bailout" last week. Yes, Melvin inked an emergency recapitalization from their investors after losses on their short position in GameStop, but it was no different from any tech start-up receiving another round of funding from their investors.

Next, I think you have to believe that all of the most evil hedge funds were short GameStop. Yes, the redditors did their homework, GameStop is one of the most shorted stocks at the moment, with over 140% of shares lent. But buying volume shows that many large asset managers were also long, and/or took profits on the stock in the last week. It's likely that for every Melvin capital, there is another hedge fund quietly taking advantage of redditors' enthusiasm.

Another helpful piece of evidence to support the crusade, is the woefully-timed and poorly explained halt on buying from Robinhood on Thursday, which is certainly consistent with the idea that the evil financial system shut down retail traders in collusion with "big finance." Later, Robinhood explained that the increase in volume in trading led to them being unable to meet margin requirements, and they too had to go to investors for a fresh injection of $1bn to meet those minimums. Turns out, margins are legally required to ensure investor safety, consumer protection if you will. Many of the most strict of those rules were adopted after the 2008 financial crisis, designed to prevent financial institutions from the overleverage that led to that kind of systemic failure.

Finally, you have to believe that hedge funds behave like a single coordinated entity. Of course, some, who have been savvy enough to avoid the SEC, probably are. But there are thousands of hedge funds, diverse in both strategy and size. Very few are very large, and there are a great many who will come and go without ever making it into a newspaper, which they do about as frequently as tech start-ups in dorm rooms.

How does it all end? Likely how any bubble does. The WSB mantra of "hold!" is not enough to keep the price going up. More and more of the righteous need to be recruited to continue the outsized returns. Every new redditor who joins the cause is putting money directly into the bank account of Roaring Kitty, and the other early participants in the trade (which includes many hedge funds!) As soon as some realize this and begin to take profits or shore their losses, the gig is up. Not to mention, there is a shorter of last resort, who is both incentivized to and can flood the market with infinite shares of GameStop. . .GameStop, the actual company, who can issue new shares, and why wouldn't they considering the value they can apparently get for them?

So, what does the story look like now? Invest my hard-earned savings to potentially shutter some hedge funds, many of which are just a couple of guys in their garage, while also helping others get even richer, to expose a part of a system that was designed to protect my assets, all to eventually line the pockets of the movement's so-called leaders. It doesn't sound so righteous anymore does it? The financial system is by no means perfectly just, but in this case all the safeguards are working as expected. It's the social commentary this episode represents that I find even more interesting. Even though I wouldn't put in my own savings, I still support the movement-- the memes have been awesome.

Note: Every additional layer has a higher degree of difficulty

The Builder’s Hierarchy of Fulfillment ...or how to fully actualize a thing.

Think

You consume information. You read and learn to formulate a hypothesis for a novel idea. It may be nothing, a flash in the pan, or something bigger, a spark of genius. Everyone always has ideas running through their head, but this one sticks with you.

Talk 

You’ve convinced yourself the idea has merit and is worthy of sharing with others. Can it pass social muster and make sense to the peers you respect? This is a big step, after all, most people keep ideas to themselves. Talking through an idea can be exhilarating, especially in a circle of trust, where one can flow with the discussion, provide context where necessary, fill in the gaps, and take in feedback to make the idea better.

Write

Now to the hard part, writing it down. Most people don’t make it this far because they get deterred by the “doubters” and it’s notoriously difficult to write. But writing is one of the best ways to clearly think through an idea and communicate true understanding; it forces you to convert a fluid concept in your mind into a blueprint for reality.

Build

The old adage “easier said than done” couldn’t be more correct. The blueprint needs to pass your reality test, and there’s no faking it. You need to be willing to spend time and energy on this, not something else, because it’s time to do the real work. Where writing is putting your thoughts down on paper, building is bringing your idea to life.

Value

For some, it is a labor of love, and building is fulfilling in and of itself. For others, building is proving the concept. Did it work? Does it solve a problem? If it does, scale it. Scaling takes more work, but there’s nothing quite like building something that improves people’s lives. Capitalists refer to this as adding value, and the more value added tends to correlate with higher levels of satisfaction.

Inspire

The rare, upper echelon of invention. There are many incremental innovations that make society better, but very few inventions inspire others to create and move society forward. Many people take “sure-thing” routes to value creation and stop at profit. But it is the rare breed that focuses on a breakthrough, norm-defying technology that changes the world. Think going to the moon, using Google for the first time, and mRNA vaccines. You may not know how to get there, but you’ll know when you’ve reached it because the response is a unanimous wow.

Crowd waiting in line outside of White House for New Year reception.

Most people hear the word, patience, and think of a boring personality trait, a social virtue that demonstrates calm, rational thinking. A desirable self-control mechanism: the ability to forego short-term pain (or gain) for larger, longer-term gains. But it comes with the cliche, “patience is a virtue”, so much so, that the value of patience has been obscured. Many folks assume patience only benefits others and not themselves (i.e. politely waiting in line), when in fact you stand the most to benefit from being patient.

Patience is correlated with success. “Good things come to those who wait”, a related cliche proven by the now-infamous marshmallow experiment, paints patience in a passive tone. Sit around, hold still, and you’ll get more marshmallows. But patience is an active trait. It underpins almost all of today’s success stories. Look back 10 years and pick any asset class whether it’s investing in the stock market, cryptocurrency, tech startups, ride-sharing, or real estate. All of them have experienced awesome growth. Those that benefited were able to hold their positions through the turbulent times. While this may sound easy in hindsight, it requires a lot of self-restraint and conviction to carry out in the moment, especially in today’s go-go-go world.

It’s the conviction that makes it clear that patience not only embeds the notion of discipline, but also passion. How else could someone in 2009 invest their life savings in a little-known project, called Bitcoin? Or wait for 2 hours for a good bowl of ramen? Or start a company?

Outside of social etiquette and business, patience can also save your life. Look at the COVID pandemic we are living through. Being patient and taking the necessary precautions until life can return to normal are critical to reducing your risk. Unfortunately, many people couldn’t wait and have suffered.

But that’s the underlying secret of patience, you need to be able to afford to wait. Patience is a privilege. To see any investment returns, you need to be able to set aside money to invest and be willing to lose it. To develop a strategy for what company to join or investment to make, you need the time to think and form that perspective. Even after joining the right company or making the investment, you need the discipline to hold your position through thick and thin, even if life demands otherwise. COVID may be the starkest example of patience as a privilege, where essential workers have no choice, but to risk their lives.

Patience is more than a virtue. Patience is a powerful privilege. Use it wisely.

Having freshly watched the 2020 election unfold, with the build up, the stress and drama, a lengthy vote count, a sore loser, and ultimately the result, I couldn’t help but reflect how strange of an event it is to experience.

It’s like you’re at a movie premiere, but someone is interrupting you every five minutes to tell you their opinion and how the movie is going to end. Can we please just watch the movie and see what happens?! That “someone” is the media covering the U.S. election. But no analysis, extended media coverage, or punditry will change the outcome. The script has been written, the scenes already filmed; all written and directed by the citizens of the United States, as their ballots have already been cast. The producers (Biden and Trump) are also in the theater with you, having spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help produce the movie they want. Biden watches patiently for the end result, whereas Trump is making a scene, threatening to stop the film, and shouting for an alternate ending. But the director makes the final cut, and that is US.

While the film’s ending is consequential, the plot is quite boring. You are watching counting after all, the literal counting of ballots. It does not have to be this suspenseful. The media has perfected the art of storytelling the addition of numbers in an incomplete and quasi-random order. The movie preys on our hope and anguish, as if there is momentum to be gained by providing in progress commentary. But it has been written. There is no purpose besides entertainment.

Major plot element in Election 2020, look at those ups and downs. Credit New York Times 

Should counting election results be a form of entertainment? Must we watch the strenuous, tallying narrative and put ourselves through a rollercoaster of emotions?

My recommendation, skip the next Election Night movie and just hear how it ends. It’s too long of a movie anyway.

After living with the pandemic for 8 months, I’ve compiled a list of learnings and activities that have helped me cope*. Maybe they can help you too.

• Have a token to remind you that things are not normal, like growing out your hair. This is especially good for remembering to wash your hands. 

• Chores are the new commute. I would always listen to a podcast to and from work, but lost that luxury when the pandemic started. It took me months to realize I could listen to one while doing dishes. So much more enjoyable.

• Rest your eyes. With so much telework, it’s easy to overload them. I have come to re-appreciate and trust my other senses. From touching the carpet to find crumbs, to using my hands to clean dishes, and to using my sense of smell to determine outdoor air quality.

• Use a physical divider, or a virtual background, during work video calls. It gives privacy and reduces anxiety. 

• Don’t wear headphones all day, it’s probably bad for your hearing and becomes uncomfortable real fast. Use speakers when possible. 

• Prefer phone calls when possible; much better dialogue. 

• A few tips around the kitchen: 

  • Stack cleaner plates under dirtier plates. This helps reduce the spread of mess, although it is more precarious when carrying plates to the sink.

  • Reuse the same set of silverware and dishware throughout the day. It preserves flavor and requires less cleaning.

  • When storing food into containers, try to match the width of the plate into the widest part of the container to reduce spillage during transport. I had this breakthrough when I matched a bowl with the diagonal of a rectangular Tupperware (pictured above). 

  • Compact your cans. Physically compressing the items in your recycling and trash bins is fun and will reduce the number of garbage runs you have to make. But do not compost, expunge immediately to avoid foul odors.  

• Stress relievers when daily exercise, reading, painting, and meditation don't quite cut it:

  • Punching boxes to breakdown recycling is incredibly therapeutic.

  • Make a sauna out of sunlight. Make the most of your surroundings.

  • Get organized, or minimize. The choice is Marie Kondo or a Prepper/Hoarder, but you must pick one, and you’ll feel better when you do.

  • Give yourself a break. Eat dessert every day. 

  • Change it up, if it’s not working.

*I do not do all of these.