June 2023: Banff, Waterloo, HogQL
What I Did This Month
Went to Calgary, Banff, Waterloo, and Bellingham. Doing this involved waking up at 3 am 5 times in 2 weeks for various reasons. Banff has optimized the tourist experience very well, with so many outdoor activities to do. Waterloo continues to expand every time I go there (and seems to have a lot of space to continue). Also how such a strong University ended up there is still a mystery to me.
Had dinner with friends and family, made pasta (twice). Ate lots of burgers, feijoada, and pastel. Drank raw milk (fun fact: illegal to produce in Canada, but not to consume).
Wrote lots, mostly for PostHog. Published real user monitoring, feature flags vs configs, a bunch of tutorials on HogQL, and more. Wrote more code for personal projects which I am very happy about.
Thoughts
To be or to do. Once you get over the hump of having agency in life, the next hangup many people get caught on is wanting to be someone rather than wanting to do something. The world has more money than ideas and more ideas than agency.
A lot of people say “we need to build more housing” without any practical way to do that. Just saying it isn’t going to make it happen. The alpha in housing development is in regulation (I think), so you need to figure out practical tactics to leverage this. Dezoning, public-private partnerships, expanded role in government actually developing housing, and higher levels of government providing lower levels more leniency are all potential solutions. Labour, materials, and processes are pretty optimized otherwise (no alpha). Big projects are done because the fixed(ish) cost of dealing with the government is spread over more investment.
For any skill you want to improve at, pretend you have a coach (for accountability and programming), and follow their lead. Push yourself, do things every day, and look up what experts say online (YouTube, papers, books).
Intensity is the strategy, work harder, you can figure things out and make them happen.
So much of work is constrained for random reasons that people believe those constraints are real, and it warps their thinking about their whole lives.
Weightlifting teaches you strategies to defeat local maxima.
Coding requires downloading and holding a massive amount of context. The more effectively you hold the context, the more successful you'll be.
You need to live somewhere you can walk. Walking reclaims the world from hostile, unseen forces in your mind.
WWE has the 10th most subscribed YouTube channel.
“I once heard that 90% of culture is just ‘winning’ - when a company is winning, everyone’s happy, rich, being promoted, and they see their work as contributing to something bigger than themselves” or in the wise words of Al Davis: “Just win baby.”
Instead of building physical monuments, rich people now just build monuments to themselves. Homes, experiences, health, “charitable foundations.”
Creativity is literally magic. You are combining ideas pulled from the ether to shape something real.
Most good opinions are copied from someone else. Good AND original opinions are the product of a lot of work.
Recommendations
Have enjoyed discovering
’s writing this month. My favourites are “How to build a worldview,” "I am asking you to want something,” and “You should consider yourself exceptional.” A lot of the ideas of simple in theory, but difficult in practice, which is why they are important to constantly repeat. Pick a thing and believe in your ability to bend the world for that thing.Your monthly reminder that the world is a malleable place.
I have been thoroughly George Hotzpilled for a while now. Truly a man bringing power to the people (from iPhone jailbreaks to self-driving cars to now AI computing). One and two good podcasts with him this month.
A lot of America is chronically sick because they don’t eat well. Justin Mares talks about this health crisis and Simon Sarris writes about how he eats (which is a potential solution).
There are a lot of places in the world that are shockingly different from the place you live now, Benin is one of them and Nigeria is another. You can learn a lot about the world by exploring these differences.
Michael Crichton wrote a lot. During medical school, he wrote “seven novels, a movie, several more manuscripts and screenplays and a fast‐paced, provocative book of non‐fiction on the state of the American hospital.” He could write “16 hours a day for a week or two, often turning out 10,000 words a day.”
In my travels this month, the Calgary Central Library was one of the highlights. Definitely an acceptable monument to the wealth of the region. Bonus: they have a cover outdoor basketball court across the street.
Jena had scenius in the late 18th century, a group of people in one location with interesting and impactful ideas. Not talked or researched at all compared to Scotland, Vienna, Silicon Valley.
I have enjoyed Cindy Sridharan’s writing about software development, favourite ones include: “A decade in review in tech” and “What is DevOps?"
Large technical projects are difficult, but critical to advancing. Especially with the power of computers, you can take them on. Mitchell Hashimoto provides advice, highlights include “I try to think what a realistic project is where I can see results as soon as possible” and “No matter what I'm working on, I try to build one or two demos per week intermixed with automated test feedback as explained in the previous section.” Similarly, Ryan Kulp on new products (wireframe, data model, frontend, backend).
A mainstream narrative of history is progress is the ability to “expanding circle” of moral concern. It turns out this ignores a lot of narrowing that happens too. For example, we care much more about animals, but much less about religion or ancestors.
MrBeast is at the top of the YouTube game and isn’t stopping. Says repeatedly he is optimizing for making the best videos possible (and doesn’t mind spending tens of millions to do so). Can’t help but wonder where are the MrBeast’s of other fields.
Future Canada plan. 31% of Canadian new home cost is government taxes and fees. Canadian startups should look global rather than local. 40% of men and women are still in school in their 20s (up from 8% in 1940). The car robbed us of our friend, the horse. Incomes are up, net worths are down.
There are more efficient ways to turn money into status for relevant stakeholders. Recreate the masters, rewrite the classics. Just go do the most important thing right now. You are not writing the state of the union, you are writing to your friend. Don’t try to build an audience, read some books.
Fire joke in the team chat. VCs are the army and navy. Jacked candidates. Rotisserie chicken. The Social Network soundtrack has created a lot of enterprise value. Cormac McCarthy was the last real writer. Every social network contains a bad implementation of half of Urbit.
Upcoming
Writing, writing, writing.
An Iliad-related website that my coding time has been going towards.
Traveling to Europe (specifically London, Romania, and Bologna). If you know someone I should meet or have any recommendations, let me know.