Product & Startup Builder
An English Proverb
You can lead a horse to water but you can't force it to drink
You are a Dragon
Be a dragon
Travel Hack
Ever since I travelled to Silicon Valley for the first time with Nik I use his international travel hack: Get off the plane as fast as possible and run past all of the sheep to passport control before anyone else to skip the giant ass line that will form.
Streets of Hong Kong
Wow there's an instant stark contrast between Hong Kong and Tokyo. The streets were literally covered in garbage when I drove into the city in the very early morning (it's a thing like NYC apparently - it's been cleaned up since) and the buildings are all dark and serious - far less neon. Also people aren't hyper-friendly and there's Uber Mine was a Tesla!
Feels like I've re-entered the real world.
Beautiful Japan
Japan is a land of tradition and abandon. Beauty without brashness. Humidity, humility, and many, many humans. Love it.
A Genius Trick
Found a trick to overcoming my homebody tendencies. Leaving the house.
More Freedom, Less Laws?
Just ran Into a nice young kid from North Carolina who just graduated from high school. He's 1 week into a 6 month study abroad program in Japan.
After a quick chat he mentioned how America has the most freedom in the world and that by definition less laws means more freedom.
I explained a bell curve to him and told him I'm excited for him to learn about the real world.
Robot Overlords
I think soon, we'll all be running like the stick figure in this video - as our robot overlords begin the extermination.
Willfully Destructive
Blow to tech industry? Try blow to the US economy generally.
I'm so over it. It takes a special kind of effort to be this willfully destructive. It takes a special kind of stupid to support it. There's no "other side" to be civil with in the United States anymore - there's just rational and irrational - and even the rational people are losing their mind to overcompensate in the other direction.
“The 44 immigrant-founded billion-dollar start-ups now in the U.S. have created an average of 760 American jobs per company...”
#Personalperspective
I've started using a new hashtag #personalperspective.
I'll use it to annotate posts that are about personal, political or professional observations I make about myself, who I am, the people who contributed to it, how I think, how I make decisions, how I'd like to evolve and who I want to become.
I went back and tagged a few recent posts to get started.
Self-Reflection; The Right Side of the Line
There's a line where being kind and supportive becomes being a pushover. Being optimistic becomes being naive. Being resilient becomes being stubborn. Being open to feedback becomes giving up your truth. Being long-term focused becomes sacrificing precious short-term happiness while you have your health and autonomy. Being opinionated and setting high expectations becomes being unreasonable.
Finding the line (and staying on the right side of it) is one of the great challenges of my life. As I'm sure it is for many others.
I try to navigate this tension by a) biasing toward abundance and openness - being ok with crossing the line a little bit and b) constantly gut checking myself looking against multiple data points.
I often find myself accidentally deep into the wrong side and have to make a quick dash back over.
Beaming Onto Starships
Only a matter of time until we're beaming onto starships right?
"impressive work that sets the stage for much more ambitious goals in the future. “This work establishes the first ground-to-satellite up-link for faithful and ultra-long-distance quantum teleportation, an essential step toward global-scale quantum internet,” says the team."
North Korea Isn't Crazy
Fareed is a singular voice in American media. Notable because he knows what the hell he's talking about and/or doesn't just repeat the hyper-partisans garbage or toe the national narrative.
North Korea isn't crazy, they are the hero of their own story. As we all are.
"Why?" vs. "Why not?"
"If you tell people you want to do something you'll get slapped across the face by a bunch of 'Why!?'. 'Why do you think you can do that?', 'Why now?', 'Why don't I think this way?', 'Why are you acting this way?'. Get away from the 'Why?' people and find the 'Why not?' people."
Trump's G20 Visit
The most powerful and succinct assessment of Trump I've seen in a while. Truly devastating and totally true.
Overview Effect
View from the "Lost in Translation" bar
I wonder what it is with me and views. Maybe it's because the "overview effect" is powerful. Whether it's 17 floors up (as my apartment is) or 52 floors up (as this bar is) - the feeling of seeing the scope and scale of human accomplishment while also understanding just how small each of us truly is gives me both inspiration and appropriate perspective for anything going on in my life.
To me, this kind of luxury is priceless. In this case it costs ~$20/person cover charge and $20 drinks Hah!
Declaration of Interdependence
Rather than independence, we should now declare our interdependence (oldie but a goodie)
Things My Family Taught Me
Been talking about the way our families and cultures affect our behavior, capacity for risk and more. Remembering that my family (Maggie, Richard and Mitchell) have given me many gifts and behaviors that I take for granted.
Things my family taught me (either explicitly or by example) that seem non-uniform include...
- You can take risks and be whoever you want to be. You always have a safety net. You can come live at home at any time. We love you no matter what.
- Always get up to pay first. Sacrifice your money not your honor/dignity. Be generous and kind.
- Truth and rational thinking is paramount. Find it, spread it, fight for it.
- Entrepreneurship is the way to impact the world and earn a living. Work to manifest your own vision in the world
- Home is a place for friends and family to gather to share special experiences. Movie nights, pool parities, holidays.
- Relationships can end, and that's ok. What matters is that you're as kind as possible on the way out, remember/hold on to the love and remain friends.
- The kids come first. When budgeting, figuring out where to move or what to do, the kids must be offered every opportunity to get a stable, empowered and fulfilling childhood.
- Don't be cheap on quality food. Don't have scarcity when it comes to snacks and sweets either. My parents never ordered chicken nuggets off the kids menu for me - they let me order the steak and the lobster even if I could never finish it. My mother always had the fridge filled with fun sized candy. The lack of scarcity made it a "sometimes food" without any rules.
Get Out (of the Tech Industry)
Interesting how pervasive this feeling is at the moment. The feeling of disenchantment has been bubbling up for years as far as I can tell.
