David ex Machina

Why Watch The NFL

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 06:14:00 +0000

The NFL is a Fractured Product

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.

A Sophisticated Crypto Scam & The Power of Social Engineering

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 06:42:00 +0000

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.

The Water Scale

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 20:10:00 +0000

via stablediffusionweb.com

The Water Scale
A more meaningful way to describe life.

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 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. Those 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?

Should You Buy an EV?

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 06:14:00 +0000

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).

Cost Per Mile Performance	Worst	Average	Best
Gas	13 (mpg) \| $0.453	30 (mpg) \| $0.196	39 (mpg) \| $0.151
Hybrid	25 (mpg) \| $0.236	50 (mpg) \| $0.118	60 (mpg) \| $0.098
Electric	.368 (kwh/mi) \| $0.125	.30 (kwh/mi) \| $0.102	.237 (kwh/mi) \| $0.078

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

On Protocol Labs

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 20:38:00 +0000

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.

Why web3 Is The Place To Be

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 16:00:00 +0000

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.

COVID Checkup

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 16:00:00 +0000

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.

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.
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.
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.
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...
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.

Environment Theory

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Mon, 31 May 2021 23:47:00 +0000

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 vs. Causation

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Sat, 01 May 2021 05:10:00 +0000

https://xkcd.com/552/

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!

Product Shapes

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 06:04:00 +0000

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.”

Miami Vice Capital

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 04:20:00 +0000

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:

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

Can't Stonk Won't Stonk Game Stonk

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 14:30:00 +0000

Via r/wallstreetbets

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.

The Builder's Hierarchy of Fulfillment

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 06:40:00 +0000

Builder's Hierarchy Pyramid
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.

Patience

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 06:05:00 +0000

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.

Election Night 2020 - Review

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 18:14:00 +0000

Election 2020 Finale

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.

Pandemic Living: Tips

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 07:15:00 +0000

Proper Food Pouring

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.

Television Meditation

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 05:54:00 +0000

TV (by which I mean the Film and Television medium) is the great modern meditation. Before you roll your eyes, hear me out. It’s one of the easiest ways to shut your brain off, escape, and transport yourself to another world. It’s powerful because it hooks into human imagination. How else can we so easily relate to characters with drastically different lives than ourselves, be it a lawyer, cop, billionaire, or superhero? TV is the visual representation of reading a book. Sports and other live TV gives us a chance to connect with other humans and experience a moment together; think Olympics, the World Cup, or an election night. TV is the original livestream. Reality TV gives us insight into how others live and learn about businesses, places to travel, and food to eat. Did I mention the news? TV expands your horizons. With so much content, TV is the original “netflix and chill,” the binging euphemism for a couch potato, whose actions are not too dissimilar from someone in a 3hr meditation. And when you’re fully engrossed in a film, caught in the trance of TV, is that not enlightenment?

Ok, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but being immersed in the spectacle is what I love about TV. Anything that distracts from the spectacle, or breaks the trance, gets on my nerves. My major qualm with TV is when the business of the industry seeps into the content itself. Let’s call it meta-interference. Honestly, this section should be a separate blog post in and of itself, but here are a few examples of meta-interference. I don’t want to learn that they rushed the end season of Game Of Thrones because of cost overruns (made up example, not true). I don’t want a rendition of Batman and Spiderman every decade. I don’t want a country to censor the plot of a movie. I don’t want the Amazon X-ray to overlay what music is being played or what actors are in the scene I’m watching. I don’t want an actor to be cast for multiple characters in the same fictional universe: Josh Brolin is Cable and Thanos?

Let me fully immerse myself into the story and reach enlightenment.

Trickle Down Salaries

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 06:56:00 +0000

Most government programs, non-profits, and for-profit corporations are tackling income inequality through a bottom-up approach: creating social services to help those most in need, whether it’s UBI or Medicaid and donating to reputable charities and organizations like food banks or the ACLU. While important, these programs work to ensure a bare-minimum quality of life in a developed country, while ever so slightly improving a person’s chance of achieving the American Dream. The programs address the symptoms of poverty, but do little to overcome the barriers for an individual to excel in America, and rise from the bottom 10% to the top 10%. The data shows it’s clearly not enough, as the income inequality gap is only getting worse. Therefore, I propose a top-down approach, to address income inequality, Trickle Down Salaries.

Trickle Down Salaries is simple in concept. Companies can improve the income earning potential of socio-economically disadvantaged minorities by paying them more, a lot more. To implement TDS, a company would have a number of highly paid, TDS positions, think 10x the market rate, for diverse hires. The key is that the targeted positions would focus on mid-level roles (i.e. 3-5 years of industry experience), not C-suite executives that are already successful.

Imagine a mid-level engineer that starts earning $1M a year. By propelling their income to the top 1%, you’ve accelerated the pace of change to fight income inequality. The impact is immediate and no longer theoretical, the individual is in the top income bracket. These high earners can pay off debt, fully provide for their family, and have leftover money to reinvest in their community and build wealth. After a few years, high earners would (most likely) move on, starting their own companies, spreading knowledge, hiring more diversely, and creating similar opportunities for others.

TDS would have compounding network effects, because unlike trust-fund kids and legacy admissions, TDS positions are earned, not inherited. The TDS employee is still an employee, and must meet performance expectations, or risk losing their job. It’s not charity.

The company also benefits. TDS roles would be highly sought-after positions. Even if the company could only afford one TDS role, the knowledge of the program would attract a constant stream of highly motivated and skilled applicants and bring a boon to the company’s reputation and workforce.

A similar idea has been discussed in VC land, why not provide 100,000 people $25k to start their own company? While I agree that this could be much more impactful than traditional social services, the difference is that success is not guaranteed; 90% of startups fail, and it takes an average of over 7 years for a startup to be successful. With TDS, there’s actual, not potential, impact right away, and it scales by leveraging already successful companies. For society, this could be the great income equalizer, cutting down the time to build wealth from generations to a few years.

The U.S. has over indexed on subsistence programs for the disenfranchised. It’s time to invest in maximizing a person’s future. And what better way than funding it through the most profitable corporations?

Litigious Tax

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 06:25:00 +0000

Image by Sang Hyun Cho

Here’s an idea to improve the legal system, introduce a litigious, consumption tax. More specifically, a punitive tax for litigious behavior that results in unsuccessful lawsuits.

How it would work. Every person, or legal entity, would have win/loss records as a plaintiff and a defendant in the justice system. A decision in your favor (be it a settlement or verdict) counts as a win, otherwise it counts as a loss. The tax is proportional to the number of unfavorable decisions, so the more losses you accrue, the higher tax you pay for the next lawsuit. The tax is non-refundable. A plaintiff must pay the tax before their case can proceed in court.

The tax is meant to deter frivolous and abusive legal behavior. Having separate plaintiff and defendant records disincentivizes the person that sues to intimidate (plaintiff) and makes it costly for mega corporations to be negligent (defendant).

To prevent legal disenfranchisement, the tax rate would target heavy legal consumers as shown below (99% of people fall into the first two buckets):

Number of Unfavorable Legal Decisions	Tax Rate (per lawsuit)
<10	$0
<50	$1,000
<100	$10,000
<1000	$100,000
>=1000	$1,000,000

The tax could dissuade the likes of Donald Trump or this couple from using the legal system as a bullying tactic. And on the corporate side, the tax could make patent trolling and Deutsche Bank money laundering cost-prohibitive.

Bubble Sports

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 04:44:00 +0000

Credit: Ninaras

You can’t force something to be something it is not. During this pandemic, people are learning this the hard way (wear a mask!). Counterintuitive as it may seem, the sooner we embrace the reality we are in, the sooner we can get back to “normal” and perhaps enjoy the journey a bit more.

Take sports for instance. There are all these plans to “restart” professional sports, none more extreme than the NBA Bubble Plan. As hard as it will be to pull off, why should the NBA spend all this energy to make a worse, literal version of itself? There’s always going to be an asterisk on the winning team anyway, so why not reinvent yourself? This is the perfect time to try something new and break out of the boring, old, repetitive basketball season.

If you were given four months and the complete attention of superstar athletes with nowhere else to go, would your best idea be a summer basketball league? If I were a content strategist for the NBA, I would be jumping out of my seat with ideas for the bubble season:

A Hard Knocks show for every team in the league, simultaneously. It’s like Red Zone for reality TV.
1-on-1 tournaments, 3-on-3 tournaments, skills tournaments (like the NFL combine or All Star contests). Let’s put some GOAT questions to rest.
Heck, video game tournaments and chess tournaments. What other skills can these players put on display?
Reality TV shows with superstars: cooking, lifestyle, business, fitness, coaching. Why do a peloton workout when you can get worked by Lebron James? Take a master class from the NBA elite.
“Life in the Bubble” - A Big Brother show with NBA superstars, and learn what it takes to run a professional sports league.
Many seasons for the price of one. You can move from live sports to programmed sports, by playing four seasons in quick succession and airing them at later dates. This allows for more relevant, scripted shows around the seasons, with in-game commentary from the players themselves, and more suspense (the NBA loves dragging out series).
Experiment with different rules: Get rid of the TV timeout, no free throws, no charges or blocking fouls, eliminate all non-flagrant fouls, etc.
Allow the fans to pick matchups, playoff formats, and even the teams.
Superfan game shows, where winners get the option to quarantine and hang out with their sports heroes for a week in the bubble.

You would need to go through contract negotiations and a lot of other hoops to make this happen, but any one of these would pique my interest, as a casual basketball fan, way more than a compressed season.

It can take just a little creativity to adapt to the new reality.

Planet of the Humans

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 18:00:00 +0000

Proud to co-distribute Michael Moore's documentary Planet of the Humans. You can watch it at https://vimeo.com/408435877 or click play below.

PLANET OF THE HUMANS -- FULL VERSION from Jeff Gibbs on Vimeo.

The Curious Case of Elon Musk

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 03:59:00 +0000

SpaceX Demo-2 Launch by NASA/Joel Kowsky

The Curious Case of Elon Musk. Both brilliant and audacious, but equally stubborn and irritable.

The idol. Elon has greatly impacted our way of life, from PayPal to Tesla and SpaceX. I’m writing this literally the weekend of the first NASA SpaceX human space flight in 9 years! An incredible feat that few people thought possible a few years ago. The same holds true for all of his companies’ products: all solve hard problems that aim to make the world a better place, and always seem to be ahead of their time. Read the Elon Musk biography for more inspiration.

The worshiper. Let’s be clear, I’m a big fan. Elon has the amazing combination of vision, technical ability, and execution skills to deliver on big audacious goals and the reputation of backing it up time and time again. And his goals are noble; save the planet and the human race from destruction, whether it is evil AI, climate change, or an asteroid.

The tribe. He represents Silicon Valley, amassing fans who pay to be on a two year waitlist for a truck. Why? He’s the entrepreneurial archetype: a genius engineer who thinks outside of the box, builds disruptive technology from first principles, takes huge risks, is a workaholic, and has a track record of multiple billion dollar companies.

The critics. Journalists and coworkers have noted his odd demeanor and his unconventional family life. He routinely over promises, missing product launch targets (model 3) and makes fantastical technological claims (fully self-driving tesla cars). He has a short temper and is known to fire folks on the spot, and may have overcommitted himself, resulting in many drug-induced all-nighters

The stumbles. His anger over the Thailand Soccer Team Cave Rescue resulted in inappropriate and vulgar tweets that led to a defamation lawsuit. His use of Twitter is problematic as the CEO of Tesla, resulting in an SEC violation for market manipulation about a sale price of $420. More recently, his response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been incontrovertibly wrong, claiming it would be over by April, defying government orders, and hurting his reputation.

The haters. Those that view many of his actions as attention grabbing publicity stunts: mini submarine, sending “ventilators” to hospitals. And those that have felt his wrath, whether a rescue diver, former coworker, factory floor worker, or a healthcare professional that wants to solve the pandemic, not ignore it.

The ulteriors. All of us have stakes and confirmation bias that rushes us to judgement to support or condemn Elon: whether it’s an environment-destroying President, a space loving nerd, a Tesla shareholder, a thin skinned venture capitalist, or a stir crazy citizen.

The lessons. There are no infallible idols (replace Elon with any other celebrity, and you could write the same story). Yet we all idolize; we want (our idols) to win and be right. But don’t fall for absolutist thinking, hardly anything is ever as simple as right or wrong. Recognize when you replace truth through understanding with truth by proxy. Don’t blindly follow, and avoid truth based on ulterior motives. And when you do trust an expert, make sure it’s in their field of expertise.

The big lesson. Hold your idols accountable. Don’t turn a blind eye, nor immediately give up on them. Check them instead. Give them a chance to improve; challenge them to be better and learn from their mistakes. Limit their power over you and root out false idols. No one is perfect, but real heroes do emerge.

COVID-19 Antiviral Prescription

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 18:35:00 +0000

via Flickr

For: Individuals and Society

Prescription for COVID-19 (3 Refills):

Science is important, math is important, and nature is real. Continue to learn, think for yourself, and innovate. Critical thinking will help you take better precautions, prepare adequately, reduce panic, and help gauge risk more effectively.
Build better safety nets. COVID-19 is the textbook definition of an exogenous shock to the system that even travel insurance does not cover. No one caused it, yet billions will suffer.

The value of a well-run healthcare system has never been more clear. Accessible facilities, plentiful testing, and a coordinated response would have greatly reduced the spread in the U.S.
The merits of Universal Basic Income are becoming more evident. As Twitter aptly put, “maybe we should rethink a global system that collapses if people stop eating out for a week” and put more resiliency into the system.
Understand your needs and build your own safety net.

Vote. Effective government is needed to save millions of lives; bad leaders do the opposite. Invest in people, civics, and government services to enhance public goods and utilities.
Channel empathy over self. Parents are getting a taste of the education system’s role in keeping society from falling apart. More people are realizing the predicament of having to work multiple jobs. Understand your privilege before buying that extra case of toilet paper.
Avoid the media cycle as much as possible. Stick to the facts.
Pause and reflect on what truly matters in life. Never has society universally hit the pause button, so make the most of it. Time for self care, deep thinking, doing that project you always put off, and making real connections with family and friends. The superficiality of social networking and binge streaming will fade for more meaningful human activity.
Help. The good news is that many impactful people are on it - from Larry David to Bill Gates, but that’s not enough. Make the sacrifice, social distance, support healthcare workers, do your part and the world will heal.
Wash your hands, and lotion. Discover the magic of lotion.

Directions:

Take at least once a day for 90 days, until the curve flattens or vaccination.

Signed By:

David ex Machina

Viral Coefficients

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 18:26:00 +0000

How did COVID-19 get this bad?

People underestimate exponential growth. Taleb and Graham have touted this for a long time for risk taking and startup growth respectively. The data is there, but it is not in our nature to extrapolate nonlinear growth, so it’s hard to believe and we don’t want it to be true. But the truth is that COVID-19 is an incredibly infectious and lethal virus.

A related factor at play is the psychology of proximity; people discount the effects of non-localized events. Even once the exponential growth factor was established in December of 2019, the COVID-19 threat was downplayed since it occurred in China, very far from the U.S., then the epicenter moved to Italy where it was still far enough away, and so on. This continues to play out, country-by-country, state-by-state, no government acts, let alone acts effectively, until it hits home (at the time of writing it is irrational and irresponsible to not enact shelter-in-place for any U.S. municipality). Unfortunately, delayed response compounds COVID-19’s danger, where the saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” has never been more literal, days save thousands lives and months save hundreds of thousands of lives.

The media cycle amplifies anxiety. One thing the 2008 Financial Crisis and COVID-19 have in common - is the thirst for information. Suddenly news becomes 2-10x as addicting, there’s a lot of competing theories as to what’s happening, plenty of misinformation, alarmist personalities, and conspiracies. As the facts get worse, the hunger for answers grows, hoping to come across ‘the cure’ or at least some good news. For COVID-19, it’s even worse because it’s hard to distract yourself with the constant reminder that you’re stuck at home.

Capitalism rears its ugly head. Profit maximizing is a double edged sword that is great during boom times, and cuts deep during downturns. A long-term, rational outlook would note that as bad as COVID-19 is, all signs point to a transient pandemic - society will recover. However, the capitalist is a short-term, profit driven maniac.

“The markets will have a bigger effect on the economy than the economy will have on the markets” - Ray Dalio

The economy is a chain reaction engine, one strained sector exacerbates another. Short term profits go down, stocks take a hit, layoffs ensue, and the cycle repeats. Structurally sound businesses, through no fault of their own, are forced to make drastic changes to survive. Some form of price gouging takes shape, resulting in a competitive rush to secure essential items, causing shortages (even for non-essential items!). All the while, more people suffer by losing income, losing jobs, declining savings, and being unable to buy essentials; survival of the fittest becomes survival of the richest.

In short, a combination of exponential factors are working against us to create this pandemic: a really infectious disease, economic chain reactions of inequality, media amplification, and a slow, human response; a butterfly effect of viral proportions.

That’s the prognosis, here’s my recommended treatment.

Privacy Matters

noreply@blogger.com (dvd) — Sun, 01 Mar 2020 06:13:00 +0000

People underestimate privacy; so much so, that the value of privacy has become hidden, non-obvious. Why? The public is disillusioned and disinterested, with people holding these typical views: a lack of awareness (or disbelief) of the level of surveillance, they have “nothing to hide,” they assume nothing is private anymore, so what’s the point of being reminded of it? (the futility of privacy), or the convenience of modern life is worth giving up privacy (defeatist).

Let’s break down each of these arguments. Lack of awareness of privacy intrusion, is a case of not being informed. To be clear, governments, companies, and adversaries can view your most intimate details today.

The “nothing to hide” argument is a fallacy for two reasons: (1) The connotation that things discussed in private are bad. True, criminals may discuss illegal activity in private, but that does not mean everyone’s private conversations are illegal. (2) The notion of what needs “hiding” is subject to opinion, and changes over time. You may not be breaking any laws today, but if the law changes and governments have access to your past data, you are now vulnerable and have nowhere to hide.

It’s easy to grow accustomed to the constant data breaches and assume privacy is dead. But this fails to consider that consequences are not equally distributed across society. Those with valuable data invest in privacy protection. There’s a reason shell companies are more pervasive than ever (read Moneyland), corporations make you sign non-disclosure and mediation agreements, and governments still have secrets. Ask yourself who suffers the most during a data breach, I guarantee you it’s not the executives at Equifax and Facebook.

Convenience is a tough habit to break, and the sad reality is that many of today’s indispensable technologies are abusing their users’ privacy. Many users make this tradeoff, often getting a service for “free” by selling themselves short. Why short? Because privacy is valuable, and though hard to measure, it’s more valuable than you might think:

The human mind needs the freedom to think, without worry, without fear, without consequence; and privacy provides this environment. The best ideas emerge from thinking in private spaces - not in a meeting or town hall debate. It works this way because in private you can test the limits, be creative and carefree and think outside of the box. Maybe most importantly, you can be wrong, controversial, ask the questions no one asks, and then you can simply move on to the next idea without any judgment. Privacy also prevents bias, the bias of others, and removes the self censorship to adhere to others’ perceptions. All in, privacy gets to the truth faster. Add this up across all people, and you realize that privacy is the lifeblood of human progress, its value is uncapped human potential.

Companies understand this and sell “free” services to tap into that unlimited profit stream. But the consumer is getting a sucker’s deal, capped upside and unlimited downside. Get a service with a fixed benefit (i.e. photo sharing), give up any future benefit from data you provide to the company (i.e. advertising revenue), and expose yourself to the risk of data mismanagement (i.e. identity theft).

Privacy matters to governments and corporations. It’s time for privacy to matter to society and individuals.

Cost Per Mile Performance	Worst	Average	Best
Gas	13 (mpg) \| $0.453	30 (mpg) \| $0.196	39 (mpg) \| $0.151
Hybrid	25 (mpg) \| $0.236	50 (mpg) \| $0.118	60 (mpg) \| $0.098
Electric	.368 (kwh/mi) \| $0.125	.30 (kwh/mi) \| $0.102	.237 (kwh/mi) \| $0.078