RANDOM FACTS
For example, patents generally have a 20-year horizon before expiry. Trademarks last for 10 years, can be renewed, and don’t have an automatic expiry. Copyright, on the other hand, has evolving regulation that ensures the holder retains the IP for 70+ years.
Paleolithic man had to walk five to ten miles on an average day, just to be able to eat.
This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can – George Bernard Shaw
Generalized trust” or “meta-trust” is “trust that whatever issues might arise between us, we can talk about things in a way that is workable for both of us and leads to issues getting resolved to our mutual satisfaction in good time.”
The more complex the movements, the more complex the synaptic connections. And even though these circuits are created through movement, they can be recruited by other areas and used for thinking. This is why learning how to play the piano makes it easier for kids to learn math.
Loving one person is really an opportunity to learn to love all people.
They buried the lede on this new study. It’s not that exercise beats out SSRIs for depression treatment, but that *just* dancing has the largest effect of *any treatment* for depression. That’s kind of beautiful.
I had written the book for Dad. I hadn’t known, but that was how it was. I had written it for him. I put down the manuscript and got to my feet, walked to the window. Did he really mean so much to me? Oh, yes, he did. I wanted him to see me. The first time I had realized what I was writing really was something, not just me wanting to be someone, or pretending to be, was when I wrote a passage about Dad and started crying while I was writing. I had never done that before, never even been close. I wrote about Dad and the tears were streaming down my cheeks, I could barely see the keyboard or the screen, I just hammered away. Of the existence of the grief inside me that had been released at that moment, I had known nothing; I had not had an inkling
Bitcoin is punk rock. You don’t get it? Fuck you we don’t care. We’re having a party — Peter McCormack
Sixty-seven percent of the prime ministers in her sample lost a parent before the age of sixteen. That’s roughly twice the rate of parental loss during the same period for members of the British upper class—the socioeconomic segment from which most prime ministers came. The same pattern can be found among American presidents. Twelve of the first forty-four U.S. presidents—beginning with George Washington and going all the way up to Barack Obama—lost their fathers while they were young.
Seinfeld: I’m never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I’m thinking, could I do something with that?
Howard Stern: That, to me, sounds torturous.
Seinfeld: Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you’re comfortable with
Now you know how exercise improves learning on three levels: first, it optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation; second, it prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another, which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus.
The direction for improvement is clear: seek detail you would not normally notice about the world. When you go for a walk, notice the unexpected detail in a flower or what the seams in the road imply about how the road was built. When you talk to someone who is smart but just seems so wrong, figure out what details seem important to them and why. In your work, notice how that meeting actually wouldn’t have accomplished much if Sarah hadn’t pointed out that one thing. As you learn, notice which details actually change how you think.
From an app’s perspective, blockchains offer three key features: consensus, composability, and availability 🧵
1. consensus – solve contentious race conditions
2. composability – access other liquidity and apps
3. availability – data is readily accessible
Supercharger / turbocharger = force more air into engine to go faster
The main reason why these lessons and bits of wisdom are so important to me now is because I had to work hard to learn them. I had to struggle, to fail and to challenge myself over and over again in order to gain a little more understanding about who I am as a person and about the world I live in. And in the end, it is the struggles, the failures, the challenges, as well as the successes, that have shaped who I am and that have led me to try and improve myself as a human being as much as possible.
The one thing that all educational researchers agree about is that teacher quality matters far more than the size of the class. A great teacher can teach your child a year and a half’s material in one year. A below-average teacher might teach your child half a year’s material in one year. That’s a year’s difference in learning, in one year
The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it. – François de La Rochefoucauld
“Optimism. One of the most important qualities of a good leader is optimism, a pragmatic enthusiasm for what can be achieved. Even in the face of difficult choices and less than ideal outcomes, an optimistic leader does not yield to pessimism. Simply put, people are not motivated or energized by pessimists.”
– Robert Iger
When the customers want your products so badly that you can screw everything up and still succeed. – Don Valentine
It’s important to do things fast
-Going fast makes you focus on what’s important; there’s no time for bullshit
-A week is 2% of the year
There is little difference between obstacle and opportunity. The wise are able to turn both to their advantage – Machiavelli
Machine learning is essentially the automation of “experimental refinement” in software form: we start with an imperfect guess (a model), collect feedback from reality based on how it performs, and then optimize the model’s “parameters” (tunable knobs) to improve the result.
Natural resources are also stocks, and the rates at which we extract from them, and at which they naturally replenish, are flows. This makes the idea of measuring solely the rate of increase (not growth) of consumption (not investment) all the more horrifying because it could well be the irreplaceable destruction of natural resources that is being nominally counted as contributing to economic well-being. This is clearly insane and is the height of high time preference, short-term thinking.
What we do is we get really excited about something and then we start pulling the string and see where it takes us,” Cook told me. “And yes, we’ve got things on the road maps and so forth, and yes, we have a definitive point of view. But a lot of it is also the exploration and figuring out.” He concluded, “Sometimes the dots connect. And they lead you to some place that you didn’t expect
But if you give a fuck about the living, about all your living kin in all the kingdoms, they will give a fuck right back. Maybe not every one of them; maybe not every time. Some people’s bags have been empty for a long while, and they may feel the need to ration whatever they have; some people have been taught that to give a fuck is to lose something, not realizing that to withhold is what it means to lose
In truth, the use of honesty is indeed a power strategy, intended to convince people of one’s noble, good-hearted, selfless character. It is a form of persuasion, even a subtle form of coercion.
From Emergent vs. Transactional Conversations: “When there are little to no emergent conversations in a relationship it’s in serious trouble. This is true for romantic relationships, for friendships, and business relationships… When you want to improve a relationship, make more room for emergent conversations and facilitate them in whatever way you can.”
I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen, but as the years wasted on, nothing ever did unless I caused it.
Create Rites of Passage: “Today, young men don’t know when they become a man.” – Joe Hashey
The Value of Death: When a nation allows for free trade, a shockingly high percentage of the productivity gains come from the worst firms being bankrupted by the free trade
“What are my bigger-than-self goals?” and “How is this an opportunity to serve them?” If you’re struggling to find a bigger-than-self goal, consider spending a few moments reflecting on one or more of these questions: What kind of positive impact do you want to have on the people around you? What mission in life or at work most inspires you? What do you want to contribute to the world? What change do you want to create?
When Meyer and Fu extracted DNA from Tianyuan’s leg bones, they found that only about 0.02 percent of it was from the man himself. The rest came from microbes that had colonized his bones after he died.
the Wozniak Test requires a machine to enter an average American home and figure out how to make coffee: find the coffee machine, find the coffee, add water, find a mug, and brew the coffee by pushing the proper buttons.
Blockchains invert the hardware-software power relationship, like the internet before them. With blockchains, the software governs a network of hardware devices. The software—in all its expressive glory—is in charge.
Bezos shareholder letter:
We hold as axiomatic that customers are perceptive and smart, and that brand image follows reality and not the other way around. Our customers tell us that they choose Amazon.com and tell their friends about us because of the selection, ease of use, low prices, and service that we deliver.
For men, the worst effect of social media is inaction. How is scrolling through Tik-Tok or IG helping you become a better, more effective man? A: It’s not. Additionally, posting a ton is a bad look; remember, at baseline, posting on social media is begging the world for attention. Do top guys beg for attention? No. They get it without asking because who/what they are is worthy of attention
The Muse arrives to us most readily during creation, not before. Homer and Hesiod invoke the Muses not while wondering what to compose, but as they begin to sing. If we are going to call upon inspiration to guide us through, we have to first begin the work.
As a founder/CEO, Type I is likely to lead with mission and vision. Type II is likely to lead with goals and tactics, laser-focused and ends-justify-the-means vibes. On average I think Type I’s are more likely to be good brand representatives of their product, whereas Type II’s should more often let their product be the hero.
The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness. Take the example of the Zen masters. No matter what task or motion they undertake, they do it slowly and evenly, without reluctance.
One of Wikipedia’s power users, Justin Knapp, had been submitting an average of 385 edits per day since signing up in 2005 as of 2012. Assuming he doesn’t sleep or eat or anything else (currently my favored prediction), that’s still one edit every four minutes. He hasn’t slowed down either; he hit his one millionth edit after seven years of editing and is nearing his two millionth now at 13 years. This man has been editing a Wikipedia article every four minutes for 13 years
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He’s less prominent now, but YouTube power-user Justin Y. had a top comment on pretty much every video you clicked on for like a year. He says he spends 1-3 hours per day commenting on YouTube, finds videos by looking at the statistics section of the site to see which are spiking in popularity, and comments on a lot of videos without watching them
“AI is just in experimentation phase in enterprise right now” – Aaron Levie (comparing this to cloud, which is well into adoption, but still growing rapidly)
The one phrase repeated 365 times in the Bible: “Do not be afraid”.
A key rule of theatre is that the King is never played by the actor playing the King, but by all the other actors around him.
DID YOU KNOW, these everyday things have proper names:
The plastic end of a shoelace = aglet
The smell after rain = petrichor
The gap between eyebrows = glabella
The day after tomorrow = overmorrow
The cardboard sleeve around your takeaway coffee cup = zarf
The wire cage around a champagne cork = agraffe
So viewed through that lens, the unifying pattern of Trump, Elon, and Kanye is that at their core, they’re putting on a show. A massive, unlimited duration, infinitely varying, endlessly fascinating show — the greatest shows on earth. And that show attracts attention, yes, but also votes, feet in the street, shareholder investment, car sales, music sales, sneaker sales, etc.
Last year he launched the Vesuvius Challenge, offering $1 million in prizes to people who could develop AI software capable of reading four passages from a single scroll. “Maybe there was obvious stuff no one had tried,” he recalls thinking. “My life has validated this notion again and again.”
-Nat Friedman
HOW TO STOP GIVING A F*CK:
Remember that everything in life is temporary.
Nobody actually gives a F*ck about you like that. They have their own lives.
Keep in mind that you’re 1 out of 8 billion people.
Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from.
one can argue that currencies themselves are intrinsically platforms, and that coexisting multiple currencies should be analyzed as platform competition.
Thailand, #3 on that list, was the country first to gastrodiplomacy in 2002. This campaign for Thailand meant making it easy to open Thai restaurants – providing templates, sourcing ingredients, and helping chefs get visas. And it worked! From the start of the campaign to today, Thai restaurants globally tripled, from 5k to over 15k, also yielding a substantial increase in foreign tourists throughout the period
Meow states that “the most clear indication of a real culture is a self-referentialism, where basically the participants will not stop talking about themselves.”
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2. Communities spend (a lot) of time together.
3. Time together spawns a common story.
4. Common stories & shared ideals create culture
That said, when a token goes straight down, you can’t call this a screaming success. There is a good reason why IPOs generally go up. And there is a good reason for why BNB, ETH, and BTC are 3 of the most successful protocols today. When you price an asset low, and let early investors participate in the financial upside of your success, it tends to have long-lasting positive effects. Your users become power users and evangelists. But when something prices high and goes straight down, you alienate those who were true believers. And it’s hard to come back from that
Bezos formalized the principle into the company’s mission two years later when he wrote that Amazon was on a quest to build “Earth’s most customer-centric company.”
There is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: The north wind made the Vikings! Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy?
“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”
— William James
The beatings will continue until morale improves
Similarly, Egyptian and Sumerian script developed at very close to the same time, and while visually quite distinct, they share many of the same influences. One of these cultures invented writing while the other just lifted the idea, probably after seeing what a super useful invention it was.
Embrace Rejection or Don’t Try: It’s important to tune your reaction to rejection: “If you’re going to spin out after each rejection, you’re going to be exhausted a lot of the time.” – Tim
“Life punishes a vague wish and rewards a specific ask.” – Tim Ferriss
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