Media – Page 16

Five articles to recommend: Diamonds, Surveilled cities, Zero to One, PG, and Kevin Kelly’s countdown clock

Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? [The Atlantic]

Since “young men buy over 90% of all engagement rings” it would be crucial to inculcate in them the idea that diamonds were a gift of love: the larger and finer the diamond, the greater the expression of love. Similarly, young women had to be encouraged to view diamonds as an integral part of any romantic courtship

The most surveilled cities in the world [Statista]

The Chinese city of Taiyuan, located in the Shanxi province roughly 300 miles Southwest of Beijing, tops the list with 120 public CCTV cameras per 1,000 inhabitants. The highest-ranked non-Chinese city is London, also notorious for its strict surveillance of public spaces, with 67 cameras per 1,000 people, with Los Angeles the highest-ranked U.S. city in the ranking with 6 cameras per 1,000 inhabitants

What makes Zero to One a masterpiece? [Ellen Fishbein]

A great company: a conspiracy to change the world.
(A company’s) secret: a specific reason for success that other people don’t see.

Early Work [PG]

But even if Silicon Valley’s encouraging attitude is rooted in self-interest, it has over time actually grown into a sort of benevolence.

My Life Countdown [Kevin Kellyy]

My friend Stewart Brand, who is now 69, has been arranging his life in blocks of 5 years. Five years is what he says any project worth doing will take. From moment of inception to the last good-riddance, a book, a campaign, a new job, a start-up will take 5 years to play through. So, he asks himself, how many 5 years do I have left? He can count them on one hand even if he is lucky. So this clarifies his choices. If he has less than 5 big things he can do, what will they be?

I mean, it makes sense, but then again…?

In short, the bank is already and at all times bankrupt; but its bankruptcy is only revealed when customers get suspicious and precipitate “bank runs.” No other business experiences a phenomenon like a “run.” No other business can be plunged into bankruptcy overnight simply because its customers decide to repossess their own property. No other business creates fictitious new money, which will evaporate when truly gauged.

…only one way to find out ;)

From the free PDF, What has government done to our money? by Murray Rothbard.

Interesting articles I recently read: Mosquitoes, Palantir, F1 Racing, Trolls, and the Amazon (rainforest)

How Mosquitoes Helped Shape the Course of Human History [Smithsonian Mag]

We don’t know yet if mosquitoes have an absolute purpose ecologically. The males do drink nectar and pollinate plants, but not to the degree that other insects do, like bees. They don’t ingest waste, like some other insects do. As far as we know, they don’t serve an indispensable food source for any other animal. So no—looking at the historical impact of the mosquito, perhaps their role is a Malthusian check against uncontrolled population growth, and within the ecological balance and equilibrium of Mother Nature.

Techie Software Soldier Spy [NY Mag]

Another plus for Palantir: It didn’t crash nearly as often. Its software wasn’t necessarily any better at parsing intelligence, but Shyu could see why some soldiers, particularly infantry who didn’t have time to learn a complex program, preferred it. “I walked away convinced that Palantir is much easier to use,” she says

Engineers, not racers, are the true drivers of success in motor sport [Economist]

…it assigns drivers in the 1950s 58% of their teams’ points; today, that share is 19%. Fangio, who was a mechanic by training and won titles using cars from four different firms, was known as “the master”. The masters of modern F1 are engineers who sit behind laptops, not steering wheels

Internet trolls may not be the type of people you think they are, according to Japanese research [SoraNews]

…while 30 percent of replies were from unemployed people, students or housewives, 31 percent of replies were from people in managerial positions

people who write hateful comments feel like it’s their duty, and by letting their feelings known they are dealing out justice.

This is my message to the western world – your civilisation is killing life on Earth [The Guardian]

It took us thousands of years to get to know the Amazon rainforest. To understand her ways, her secrets, to learn how to survive and thrive with her. And for my people, the Waorani, we have only known you for 70 years (we were “contacted” in the 1950s by American evangelical missionaries), but we are fast learners, and you are not as complex as the rainforest

And the obligatory crypto recommendation:

“Eth can do everything that Bitcoin can do, plus a lot more” [Twitter thread]

2. BTC has simple goals: 1. >21 million coins ever, 2. max censorship resistance, 3. there is no three. Being willing to accept all tradeoffs in service of those goals means we assume BTC is likely to be the best at those 2, even if or even *because* it sucks at other things.

Genius: A self-interested obsession that happens to be useful or important

That’s my one-line takeaway from PG’s essay, The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius.

A few excerpts below:

Which leads us to the second feature of this kind of obsession: there is no point. A bus ticket collector’s love is disinterested. They’re not doing it to impress us or to make themselves rich, but for its own sake.

An obsessive interest in a topic is both a proxy for ability and a substitute for determination. Unless you have sufficient mathematical aptitude, you won’t find series interesting. And when you’re obsessively interested in something, you don’t need as much determination: you don’t need to push yourself as hard when curiosity is pulling you.

So what matters? You can never be sure. It’s precisely because no one can tell in advance which paths are promising that you can discover new ideas by working on what you’re interested in.

Even Newton occasionally sensed the degree of his obsessiveness. After computing pi to 15 digits, he wrote in a letter to a friend: I am ashamed to tell you to how many figures I carried these computations, having no other business at the time.

Jonathan Blow shares some powerful, practical, personal advice on mental health

Since I know Jonathan as an indie game developer (an amazingly successful one), I didn’t have an expectation from this online talk he gave on self-motivation, mental health, and elements of stoicism.

It was very good. 10/10 would recommend. Some of my notes are below:

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Key takeaway:
There are 3 aspects – Thoughts, Bodily sensations, Emotions
1. Thoughts – don’t identify too closely; stand back and watch them happen
2. Sensations – they’re fundamentally neutral; your mind interprets and amplifies, see thru this
3. Emotions – they tend to disappear instantly when you look at them

“You are not your thoughts. There’s a limit to how useful they can be”

How much do your thoughts weigh?

Your mind is interpreting and translating all of your experiences, doesn’t represent the totality or reality of what happened

Lots of everyday physical experience is imposed by the mind

Emotions don’t last long, but we can keep them burning for a long time with our thoughts and perceptions, even years

Was mild to moderately depressed in past, could have multi day episodes

Antidepressants are not well understood, unlike other western medicine, “science’s weaker medicines of last resort”

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There’s an additional 1-hour Q&A which I haven’t watched yet.