Kevin Habits - podcasts, crypto, AI, NFTs, personal bible

Edge of Tomorrow

I re-watched Edge of Tomorrow last night – probably my fourth or fifth viewing – and it’s just a great film. If you haven’t seen it, would highly recommend. Rotten and IMDB ratings seem to generally agree.

Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt deliver strong leading performances. Cruise is in his element – I’d argue that his tendency to overact (not necessarily a criticism) lends itself to sci-fi even more than “realistic” plots like Mission Impossible. Minority Report is another example. Heightened acting complementing heightened stakes.

Strong supporting performances from Brendan Gleeson and Bill Paxton. Bill’s iconic line “There is no courage without fear”

Standard Hollywood 3 act structure, executed very well. The Act 1 twist (Cruise acquires the power to restart the day), the midpoint low (Cruise’s despair at their inability to cross the battlefield), the Act 3 break (using the transmitter to find the Omega’s real location), the maxed out stakes of the desperate final attack

I need to read the Japanese manga from which the movie is adapted (All You Need Is Kill)

Similar to Inception’s use of “a dream within a dream”, Edge of Tomorrow layers repetitive patterns within the broader repetitive loop which Tom Cruise finds himself trapped in: He wakes up in a helicopter to begin and end the movie, and he wakes up repeatedly throughout to signify resetting the day; He falls in love with Emily’s character by watching her die countless times, just as Emily’s own character fell in love with a man named Hendricks in much the same way when she held the “reset” power

The sci-fi concept of repeating a day (/week/year/life) fascinates me. Groundhog Day was the first such film that I remember watching. There’s also 50 First Dates, Run Lola Run, Primer, among others. I always wonder what I would do with that extra time, and what changes I would make if I truly had a “reset” button.

When things become free

From Kevin Kelly:

A universal law of economics says the moment something becomes free and ubiquitous, its position in the economic equation suddenly inverts. When nighttime electrical lighting was new and scarce, it was the poor who burned common candles. Later, when electricity became easily accessible and practically free, our preference flipped and candles at dinner became a sign of luxury.

🤔

I started thinking about what might happen to important areas of our lives if suddenly the currently “luxurious” thing were to become ubiquitous and free:

What if smartphones were free and everyone had one? Luxury would the person who didn’t need a phone, perhaps because they have assistants, or perhaps they have a job that doesn’t require smartphone access.

What if calories were free? Then eating less – or not eating at all – would become the new luxury. Fasting. Caloric restriction.

What if computers were free? Similar to smartphones above, perhaps luxury then is not needing a computer at all. Or having an army of assistants (AI or human) that use computers for you. Or living off the grid.

What if car travel were free? Imagine an era of free energy + self driving cars. Imagine summoning a private car to drive you anywhere you want, within a reasonable distance, and all for the cost of a bus fare or less. Then luxury might look like someone who doesn’t travel at all – who has built himself an all-inclusive resort with every comfort they could need: a home gym, a home garden, a home theater, and so on. Sorta like what the elites did during covid lockdowns.

What if quality healthcare were free? Imagine a machine or system that could examine, diagnose, and cure you of 98% of common ailments, all for a very low fee or completely subsidized by the government. What would an inversion look like? Would people purposefully get sick so they’d better appreciate health? Or would they invest so much in preventive healthcare and personal fitness in order to eliminate the need for common medical treatment?

What if high quality university education were free and universally accessible? Perhaps luxury would be those who skipped university entirely (not unlike today’s fetish around college-dropout-billionaires), either to pursue a career early, or to follow their hobbies and passions (like art or music). Or luxury could be homeschooling, people who opt-out of the institutional education system.

What if life extension were free? What if you could add as many years to your life as you wanted? Then perhaps luxury would be choosing to die.

And this is what “free university education for everyone” looks like to Stable Diffusion:

Random thoughts on the FTX scam implosion fraud

I’ve been following the FTX bankruptcy like a mouse in a cheese cupboard. Aside from bankruptcy lawyers, the clear beneficiary of this whole saga is Elon Musk because crypto Twitter usage must be through the roof if my own recent addiction is remotely indicative.

Some half baked thoughts as this saga continues to unfold, thoughts that I wrote in 30 minutes and are worth exactly what you paid for them:

I’m surprised that BTC and ETH – the ONLY two blue chips in crypto (and don’t let anyone mislead you into thinking there’s any other token that qualifies) – have held up fairly well, price-wise. Of course that may change before I even hit publish

SBF’s level of psychopathy is off the charts. Apparently the term “psychopath” is more accurate than “sociopath” because psychopaths have better emotional regulation and can appear more charming, whereas sociopaths are prone to rage and more erratic behavior. Perhaps SBF is transitioning now from psychopath > sociopath. I’m just a blogger what do I know

Prescription drugs are powerful. There’s a reason they’re “prescription”. And even with all that research and regulation, we still barely understand what they do to our bodies and minds. But it’s clear they’re doing something, perhaps quite powerful, perhaps quite permanent.

Crypto will survive and thrive in the long-term. Nothing fundamental has changed. This was a centralized failure, a massive bank fraud and trading scam. There’s a reason the two most mentioned comparables are Enron (a public corporation) and Madoff (a Wall Street investment fund).

Bear cycles are ALWAYS more painful than you expect. History never repeats, but it rhymes. In 2014-16, it was exchange failure and bitcoin clones. In 2018-2020, it was ICOs and China ban and regulatory fud. In this cycle, it’s comprehensive institutional failure – lenders, exchanges, and funds. Crypto has problems, many of them, and the criticisms are deserved. But the tradfi water we’re floating in is secured by a very fragile opaque aquarium. Swimmers beware.

The end game is approaching with accelerating speed, both in the broader global financial system, and for crypto’s own place inside it. This debacle will prompt hard questions and even harder regulations, but crypto continues its march towards global adoption and growing usage. The crypto tail increasingly wags the tradfi dog. Meanwhile the tradfi dog appears more and more sickly, limping behind its Central Bank owner.

Prices could dip another 50% from here, or we could see a massive wick up through some combination of a short squeeze, flight to quality (altcoins>BTC & ETH), Fed slowdown, and survivors’ euphoria. I don’t know. And if you have patience, it doesn’t really matter.

“Another hard money renaissance will occur in our lifetimes”

I agree:

I’m placing my bets that another hard money renaissance will occur in our lifetimes, as many have before, and that Bitcoin will be a key beneficiary. I don’t believe it will be the /only/ money, but that its role for the generations ahead will be an important one.

Source: https://alphabetasoup.ghost.io/a-penny-spent-a-penny-lent/

And Stable Diffusion’s take on “hard money renaissance, art by leonardo da vinci”:

Podcast notes – David Senra on Invest like the Best: “A great biography is like a movie for your mind”

Guest: David Senra, host of Founders podcast
Host: Patrick O’Shaughnessy

Lifelong love of reading, visiting bookstores
Family has a hard history – parents didn’t graduate high school, first male in family not to go to prison in many generations
Married for 15 years

“Great biography is like a movie for your mind”
Warren Buffett – “pick the right heroes”
Charlie Munger also read hundreds of biographies

Most of the heroes he studies are imperfect human beings
But if he had one as a blueprint, it would be Ed Thorp (math prof, blackjack)

James Dyson – 14 year struggle to build the Dyson vacuum, went through 5K prototypes to finally succeed

Sam Zemurray, Fish that ate the whale – banana company founder – poor teenage Russian immigrant in the US, succeeded through his incremental obsession; funded a coup to protect his business

Vanderbilt – at death controlled 1 in 20 dollars in the economy; tried to kill someone who wanted to seize a part of his business

Francis Coppola – dad was a failed musician; fanatical obsession to learn and make films

Sam Walton – long before he started Walmart, landowner screwed him over and copied his first retail business; but he didn’t quit, he went to more towns and replicated the success

Largest predictor of business success is the market you’re in, more than the idea – yet the great Founders all have to relentlessly execute for decades

All Founders had deep historical knowledge of their industry, influences

Steve Jobs – recruiting talent is most important job as a founder
-Steve said “I wanna make insanely great products” not “I wanna build a billion dollar company” – focused on the right things
-“Made and re-made Apple in his own image”
-At NEXT (after he left Apple), it’s like he was Bizarro Steve Jobs and did all the wrong things

Michael Jordan – “I believe in practice”, realized that he practices on different level than others

Richard Branson – business is a product or service that makes someone’s life better

Ed Thorp – every hour in fitness is one less in hospital

Larry Miller – owned Utah Jazz, wrote book on his death bed, regretted his overwork and how unhappy he was through it all

Masters of Doom – John Carmack: “Romero wants an empire, I just wanna make great games”

In N Out founder – only 17 stores when he died, but was obsessed with quality the whole time

“Who are your entrepreneurial heroes? Everyone copies someone”

Tony Xu – Doordash founder – “culture is 80-90% personality of the founder”

Walt Disney – both he and Ferrari’s first companies went bankrupt; most proud of Disneyland; worked til day he died
“Their mediocrity is my opportunity”

Warren Buffett said David Ogilvy is a genius – no business is boring, only boring advertising

David ends up reading each book 5 times through research, recording, editing, and promoting it – also uses Readwise to refresh highlights

“Find your obsession, and make your exit strategy death”

Most highlighted book of his is Ed Catmull’s biography (Pixar)

“Excellence is the capacity to take pain” – Four Seasons founder

“Podcasting is printing press for spoken word”
-Completely permissionless
-His fave podcaster is Dan Carlin (Hardcore History)
-Also likes Bill Burr’s Monday Morning podcast
-Podcast is like choosing a friend

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Below is “podcaster reading famous biography books, pixar style, photorealistic” from Simple Diffusion: