May 2022: Montreal, Testing, Feijoada, Agency
What I Did This Month
Published Better Testing Is Better Learning and republished Spatial Communities on Vienna Hypertext
Updated mochamatch.xyz to house all of the information about the bot.
Went to Montreal. I was surprised by the amount of French (spoken and written) there. Bagels were overrated. Random restaurants are really good. beer, and coffee culture are underdeveloped compared to Vancouver. Food tours are a really good way of understanding a city, especially in a city where food is so important like Montreal.
Ate good food like Feijoada, homemade Pizza, green veggie gnocchi, and Jean-Talon Market meats and cheeses.
Went to a couple of local tech events. I think networking should be the main priority for these events, but they have to have speakers to draw a crowd. An interesting balance is needed.
Started with a new project in the crypto, community, and DAO space. Very excited to share more closer to launch.
Thoughts
How do we create the most amount of agency in the most people possible? People must have different levels of innate agency. How do we find the people with the largest gap between their actual and potential, and help them bridge that gap? Honestly, I think a lot of internet media and posting do a good job of this. It expands people’s state of play which is agency building. We have a great opportunity here.
Everything that isn’t maintained will break down. What we have in our world today is what we’ve maintained. Maintenance is always undervalued. It is not new, shiny, exciting, or happening now. An incomprehensible amount of value has been destroyed because of lack of maintenance, but that is just how the world works I just.
Rarely do we seek out the weirdest example of something (like books). They are extremely hit or miss, and often require a lot of energy to understand and enjoy. You cannot rely on other people to guide you through weird things. If actually weird, they’re largely illegible.
Etransfers in Canada cost $1.50 and it is the most popular way to send people money. Shouldn’t crypto solve this?
Everyone wears headphones all the time, a bad sign that they are good for you. There is still no alpha in listening to podcasts.
We seek frontiers endlessly. We’ll make new ones if we have. The internet is that now, crypto/web3 more specifically, but there will be more. Frontiers are riskier but have much higher rewards. Ambitious, smart people flock to them.
Recommendations
Go to your local library and check out way too many books. Pick whatever is mildly interesting to you. Read what’s interesting and feel free to abandon. Definitely a good way to read more.
Use your messaging app to keep track of your thoughts. It’s fast which is the most important thing. You can also keep track of thoughts with other people by making specific group chats for them.
Breath by James Nestor was excellent and converted me from a mouth breather to attempting to become a nose breather. The stories and anecdotes collected were fascinating. Breath might see a rise in importance in health circles (more than now) based on trends like Wim Hof somewhat detailed in the book.
Against Method by Paul Feyerabend was also very good. Science should be more chaotic and free to think more strange thoughts. Good things have come out of it in the past (and have been rewritten to fit).
Matt Lakeman on Ukraine was very interesting. You can learn a lot from actually looking at what is there.
Optimism shapes reality. Capitalism draws capital inward towards being capital and away from production.
Zack Kanter book recommendations. 20th-century manufacturing books and knowledge are underrated. No cars were sold in Shanghai in April.
Upper Midwestern DIY YouTubers will keep the embers of Western Civilization through the coming darkness. Twitter CEO confirms NPCs are real. How Apple worked: vision, demos, feedback.
Don’t accept yourself, accept nothing. Working is a good indicator of caring. Courage is in far shorter supply than genius. Keep your energy up, spend it to expand it,
Edward Thorp seems cool. Beats poker because it was a cool math problem. Got rich and quit stock trading. Squatted like 375.
Upcoming
Publishing Smart Young BC tomorrow. Wish me luck. Another piece for Codex coming soon.
Upgrades to Mocha Match.
Continuing to work, write, and read.