June 2022: Smart Young BC, Soccer, Posting
What I Did This Month
Published Smart Young BC. It is the longest piece I’ve ever published and took the most work. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback, read, or shared it. Also published Book Reviews (for Breath, Against Method, Freedom, Working Backwards, Beginning of Infinity) and Everyone Wants To Be a Poster. Helped Luisa with her Bahamas piece. Learned about the history of spreadsheets (from one of their creators).
Working on Camp Social’s Discord bot. Camp Social is social incentive infrastructure for DAOs (and other communities). I’m excited about the launch as it aligns closely with my views on what’s important for communities.
Got to watch the Canadian National Soccer Team play after multiple cancelled games. Also went to a Whitecaps game. Made pizza, had BBQs, and ate chilaquiles (twice). Got the framed Bison print my parents gave me for my birthday. It rained a lot.
Updated Mocha Match to use Slash Commands and work better. Did some marketing for it as well.
Thoughts
Many great things have started cringe. Don’t worry too much about being cringe. Other people will call you cringe when you are too far away from their worldview. This could be a bad thing, but it could also be a good one. People aren’t real, it’ll be fine.
Spending a lot of time on Twitter causes you to have a lot of thoughts about Twitter. Thoughts about Twitter are useless. It would take a lot of effort for me to implement my thoughts on Twitter. Sharing all my thoughts on Twitter would cause other people to have thoughts on Twitter which isn’t a good thing either.
It is the responsibility of people now to make the future as good as possible. We don’t realize how good we have it now. We are taking it for granted and cruising. We need to invest heavily in making the future as good as possible for the most possible people. Part of the reason I wrote Smart Young BC is that I believe BC should invest heavily in the future (young people) now. It is shocking how many people don’t care about this.
How much of anyone’s life are they really living? We zone out, get in flow, and blank out so often. We push the limits rarely, and can always go further. I want people to flourish more, and answering this question is key to helping that happen.
Preparing for conversations is underrated. Most people go into them with none. If you think of 3 questions you’d like to ask or things you’d like to learn, you can benefit a lot more and make them better.
The larger the author’s name is on a book, the less likely the book is to be good. It’s relying on the past reputation of the author, rather than the reputation of the book.
Expensive housing forces families apart. Multiple generations can live close to each other if it takes a generation to be able to afford to live together. People will move where they can live by themselves, and unfortunately in many modern cities, this is far away from their families.
Recommendations
From Santi Ruiz, Madeleine Schwartz’s piece on the Bataclan Terrorist Attacks. Extremely moving and thought-provoking.
I think about Tim Ferris’ podcast with Jim Collins a lot. The first 30 minutes suck, but once Jim starts talking about his work it is really good. It gives an example of what’s needed to do successful “creative work” and research.
A fascinating interview with Edward Luttwak about Russia, China, and the US. Did you know Putin and a crew of his friends own a vacation property together? They bought it before they were successful in the 90s and now they are running Russia.
Foster relaunched with a new structure. I’ll be a contributor helping edit pieces. I’ve been using it for. If you’re looking for writing training for a community (or group of some kind), check out my friend Grant’s Taptive.
Startupy launched Season 0. Here’s my referral link if you’re interested in checking it out.
I’ve followed Jon’s work creating soccer balls by hand for the past while (when they had 300 views on Youtube). Happy he is blowing up on TikTok.
Personal projects as gardening, some are cacti, others are flowers. Levelsio’s projects (NomadList founder) have a 5% hit rate, ship more. Generate more ideas. Shaan’s big decision framework. Napoleon. What does the future you succeed look like?
Do things that don’t make sense. Humanity is life’s steward. Get a library card. Happiness is inherent. All products are Excel or Powerpoint. Dumbbells have existed for a long time.
Asking good questions is underrated, a guide to asking better ones. Also useful, Tyler Cowen on How to Read Fast (always worth a re-read, you should raise your reading ambitions). Here’s a good podcast about his reading habits too. Robin Sloan’s definitions of influencer and creator are also worth thinking about.
From Third World to First: The Singapore Story is as good as people say it is. The details on building a successful country basically from scratch. Some is boring, but there is lots of useful info, will write a review in the future.
Riva Tez on having your own Walden Moment.
Rest of the World is really good.
Upcoming
Work on a project about learning hotkeys. Refresh and improve my coding skills.
Publish a piece against headphones and podcasts, and maybe one on Community Education Missions (among others).
Enjoy summer, write, build things, and meet cool people.