What’s good, a year in review: Good books, Good quotes, Good blogs, Good good good

Turning 39, wanted to look back at the year’s media consumption & production – blog posts, podcasts, books, quotes, etc, and just share some favorites.

Some good quotes:

Whatever your idea is you’ve got to do more of it than anyone else — a task that’s easier if you structure things so that you like doing them. Since doing more almost always leads to greater accomplishments, in turn you’ll have more fun. And then you’ll want to do even more because of the rewards. And so on. – Bloomberg

The effort is the reward

Addiction is a progressive narrowing of things that bring us pleasure – Huberman

I would say being able to stay present in the work…is probably the most important part of it. – Rick Rubin

A great life is a string of great days – John Malone

A vibe is an emotion pretending to be an explanation – Venkatesh Rao

A good writer will almost always discover new things in the process of writing. And there is, as far as I know, no substitute for this kind of discovery. – PG

How am I supposed to fight someone whose me? Sages have struggled with that question for an eternity

Trust your instincts. Don’t think, just do. – Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick

Some good books:

(most of them are noted here)

Children of Men by Adrian Tchaikovsky

J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise

Breath by James Nestor (it influenced me so much, I wrote about it here)

**as I reviewed the books I’d read / finished, a thought occurred to me: I miss playing video games. I was having some fun times playing PS games like Elden Ring and Sifu — need to restart!**

Some posts I’m glad I wrote:

22 learnings from 2022 including:

…even up against powerful prescription medications like Adderall and Modafinil: sleep and all sport categories are in the top-10 for every metric, weightlifting and low-intensity exercise are ranked 1st and 2nd for “probability of having a positive effect”, and weightlifting is ranked 3rd for “probability of changing your life

Recommended / newer podcasts that I like

Matt Ridley on the lab leak hypothesis 🧐

Steadily adding to my Personal Bible (and Rafa’s memoir is just 🤯)

Wise advice from an experienced meditator in Hacker News comments. The internet remains undefeated:

There is a huge difference in effects, between a casual practice (a few minutes, some of the days) and a robust practice (long sessions every day).

Obligatory bitcoin post, but seriously, Wences is the best

Some fun use cases for ChatGPT: studying Jay Chou song lyrics, and rewriting my podcast show notes

More AI, podcast notes from Sam Altman + Lex Fridman

And the SHOWS, SO MUCH GOOD TV: starting with SUMMERTIME RENDERING

Some good TV / movies:

I am an addict, seriously.

Perhaps the highlight was Summertime Rendering as noted above. Anime.

But also:

Arcane (which I’ve watched multiple times now)

Cyberpunk Edgerunners

Last of Us

Physical: 100

Ok that’s it. I had ambitions to do a more thorough and comprehensive review (including books which I sorta update monthly here), but I lost the desire to finish this properly and will just end here. Share your good stuff with me too :-)

Ark’s Big Ideas 2023 report: Pure tech dopamine

Full PDF here.

Bitcoiners don’t want no gubmint gettin they hands on dem coins:

There’s a similar statistic which shows average LA<>NY flight times have not decreased in generations, either:

It continually surprises me, how much more we can do online:

Apparently robots don’t just dance and somersault:

web3 is the lovechild of blockchains, tokens, and VCs:

Ack, I just drooled onto my keyboard:

US taxpayers keep paying for US banks’ (and the Fed’s) incompetence

From Jesse Myers’ Substack about this week’s JP Morgan takeover of failing First Republic Bank.

All I can say is le sigh:

80% of losses on the assumed loans will be “shared” by the government, meaning they are funded ultimately by the taxpayer. Similarly, the $50B FDIC loan at an undisclosed fixed rate is risk borne ultimately by the taxpayer, in order to fatten the deal enough for JPMorgan to expect a 20% IRR on what would have been massively unattractive without taxpayer-funded incentives

Privatized gains, socialized losses. 2008, but bigger, and fewer people care. Homo domesticus.

The Fed prints $3T, oops we have 10% inflation.

Let’s fix this by rapidly jacking rates; oops, we have bank failures.

Let’s blame it on crypto and supply shocks and anything but our own self-serving incompetence.

Come on, people, just buy BTC and ETH and at least partially opt the f out!

Source: https://jessemyers.substack.com/p/651-may-2023-market-update-on-bitcoin

Homo domesticus (excerpt from Against the Grain which is a fantastic read)

I was struck by this passage from Against the Grain (by James Scott, who also wrote Seeing Like A State; thanks to my friend Cathy for the rec):

Domesticated animals—especially sheep and goats, in this case—can be seen in the same light. They are our dedicated, four-footed (or, in the cases of chickens, ducks, and geese, two-footed) servant foragers. Thanks to their gut bacteria, they can digest plants that we cannot find and/or break down and can bring them back to us, as it were, in their “cooked” form as fat and protein, which we both crave and can digest. We selectively breed these domesticates for the qualities we desire: rapid reproduction, toleration of confinement, docility, meat, and milk and wool production.

Isn’t this what governments and large institutions are doing to us? Whether intentional or purely through the invisible logic of incentives…

The main exception from the above list seems to be rapid reproduction, as fertility rates in developed countries are very clearly declining. But confinement…docility…production… one only needs to look at the inexorable march of capitalism and centralized power structures to see some worrying trends…

Two Degens – George’s interview with Daniel Hwang, and more 5 Minute Crypto

Howdy, how is everyone?

Just some Two Degens updates to share. George had a great chat with his friend and crypto OG Daniel Hwang (who’s been in crypto since early bitcoin mining days, worked at Terra among others, and just knows a TON). Pardon the bit of background noise there.

I’ve also been doing the daily 5 minute crypto update. With a few breaks here or there lol

Check ’em out, and please let us know how we can do better. I have to admit it’s been a joy to get back to making content. We’ll probably add video soon so you can see our filtered faces ;)