“The origin of good ideas according to @tferriss:
1. What are the nerds doing at night and on weekends
2. What are rich people doing now, that everyone might be doing 10 years from now?
3. Where are people cobbling together awkward solutions.
pure gold.”
“@EricJorgenson Unpublished essay I have: Treadmill Friends vs Sofa Friends
1. Treadmill Friends - After hanging out with them, you have so much energy that you want to run on a treadmill to calm down.
2. Sofa friends - After hanging out with them, you are drained that you want to lie on a…”
“A violinist played for 45 minutes in a New York subway. A handful of people stopped, a couple clapped, and the violinist managed to raise about $30 in tips.
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. In that subway, Joshua…”
“When young founders build something that they don't want themselves but that they believe some group of other people want, 90% of the time they're building something no one wants.”
When young founders build something that they don't want themselves but that they believe some group of other people want, 90% of the time they're building something no one wants.
“Here's a big list of things that don't seem to work, based on the last 20 years of running Tiny:
• Giving an advisor or advisory board free equity to advise a CEO without putting any real skin in the game and investing their own money (they usually go "thanks for the free…”
“@telmudic @ESYudkowsky A nontrivial part of the value of YC is that we give people a high-status brand under which to do low-status things. Being able to tell your parents "I got funded by YC" gives you cover to do things that don't scale.”
“Naval for kids. 2 years ago my nephew and I had conversation on important ideas from @naval
Turned his ideas suitable for a 11 year old conversation. Back then he forbade me sharing the project on any social media. He changed his mind last week, sharing this now.”
Twitter revealed its algorithm to the world. But what does it mean for you?I spent the evening analyzing it.Here’s what you need to know:— Aakash Gupta 🚀 Product Growth Guy (@aakashg0) April 1, 2023
Interesting claim from the book Mixed Signals: creative people don’t necessarily have better ideas on average; they have more ideas, some of which are highly creative pic.twitter.com/wXCGbimbI2— richard shotton (@rshotton) March 27, 2023
“I had dinner with Charlie Munger.
I spent over 3 hours with him.
I got to see his library. I could ask him any question I wanted.
At 99 he is still *ferociously* intelligent.
The most important lesson I learned from him that night was: GO FOR GREAT.
In typical Charlie…”
"Never argue with people in private (you will not convince them); argue in public to convince others." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb— Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Wisdom (@TalebWisdom) March 22, 2023
"Never read a book written by a journalist. Never read a book if you understand the table of contents" - Nassim Nicholas Taleb— Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Wisdom (@TalebWisdom) March 16, 2023
“In 1974, author Ray Bradbury was asked, “What is space travel going to do for man?” In response, he gave the most mystical, mind-blowing, and strangely moving answer I could have imagined.”
“1) Value: is what they get
2) Price: is what they pay
3) Cost: is what it costs you
Great business: 1 > 2 > 3
Most businesses: 2 > 1 > 3
Bad software startups: 3 > 2 > 1 😂”
When one person edits your writing, it usually gets better. When a bunch of people edit your writing, it usually gets worse.— David Perell (@david_perell) January 20, 2023
FOREWORD
I sometimes say in lectures that I suffer from "survivor's syndrome," but not because of the Battle of the Bulge or the firebombing of Dresden in World War II, man-made calamities during or after which I saw more corpses than you can shake a stick at. A young woman complained to me after my lecture about that war, evidently feeling incomplete, that she had never seen a dead person. I made a joke. I said to her, "Be patient."
I do feel lousy, however, about the many passionate and gifted artists I know or knew, writers, painters and composers, dancers and comedians, actors and actresses, singers and cartoonists, who died or are dying in obscurity, more often than not in poverty. To quote the humorist Kin Hubbard: "It's no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be." Audiences failed these friends and acquaintances of mine. Audiences were too barbarous and inattentive to realize how good they were and to reward them with sustained applause and a living wage.
I am reminded of a cartoon of long ago which depicted war as a rouged, warty old whore. She says to a youth about seventeen years old, "Hello, Sonny. I knew your Dad." She could represent the arts instead of war, and the cartoon would make just as much sense to a lot of people. The creation of works of art that a sizeable audience may appreciate and even pay for isn't all that different from an attack by either side in World War I, in which thousands of brave, good-hearted young people left their trenches at dawn, and practically everybody wound up draped over barbwire, or drowning face down in water at the bottom of a shellhole.
Again: I suffer from “survivor’s syndrome.”
Anyone who survives a human wave attack against such daunting odds, whether in war or the arts, does do because of dumb luck. Agility and courage and character, or whatever, have nothing to do with how it all turns out. Gifted artists have to be what they are, have to do what they do the way they do it. Whether they earn a living and fame thereby is a matter of happening by chance upon breaks in the barbwire, unswept by machinegun fire.
So to speak.
Mark Twain, a better writer and human being than I am, marveled, when an old man like me, at the durability of his works' popularity. He thought this might be due to his willingness to moralize. It was lucky for him that moralizing paid off so handsomely. In any case, Mark Twain was simply born to moralize.
I think I was, too. When I look back at my incredibly lucky career as a writer, it seems that there was never time to think. It was as though I were skiing down a steep and hazardous mountain slope. When I look back at the marks my skis made in the snow on the way down, I only now realize that I wrote again and again about people who behaved decently in an indecent society.
I received a letter from a sappy woman a while back. She knew I was sappy, too, which is to say a New Deal Democrat. She was pregnant. She wanted to know if it was a bad thing to bring an innocent little baby into a world as awful as this one is. I replied that what made living almost worthwhile for me were the saints I met. They could be anywhere. There were people who behaved decently in an indecent society.
Perhaps, you, dear reader, are or will become a saint for her child to meet.
I thank you for your attention.
KURT VONNEGUT (JR.)
NOVEMBER 11, 1998
People who provide less value than you and who are less brilliant than you will go further than you because they're more likeable than you.Being human isn't a meritocracy, it's a popularity contest.— Illimitable Man Bot • Red Pill (@IllimitableBot) January 3, 2023
People want to believe different things. You can only communicate with them within the framework that their held belief system allows for.— Illimitable Man Bot • Red Pill (@IllimitableBot) January 3, 2023
