I’m jotting this down quick so apologies for run-ons and shit that doesn’t read well. Scaling markets with non-human operators There’s this common adage that you should do things that scale beyond yourself. Doing things that are limited by your capacity to complete them and garner little long term value moving forward don’t “scale”. Uber, autonomous trucking, and scaling If you drive for uber your earning potential depends on your willingness to take more rides and how you act during those rides.

An unbounded supply of Chess I used to play chess only on lichess everyday. Lichess is great, it’s free, open source, and I’ve been donating to the site monthly for years. I prefer Lichess to Chess.com in nearly everyway, but, recently, I’ve been playing/practicing on chess.com. Why? Because it offers a stopping point. Chess offers me a slippery slope. On one hand it’s an outlet for deep thought and creativity and on the other its an aggravating time suck that leaves me infuriated with little improvement in my abilities to show for it.

Right now, circular financing and AI bubble takes are a dime a dozen. These may prove true, but be warned: “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” ― John Maynard Keynes I think another kind of circle is forming: The Weaponized Spam Circle. Thesis LLMs are great at commoditized tasks because it lowers the cost to produce them. People love this so much they leverage them for non-commoditized tasks, in doing so, they shift the burden of actually thinking to the reader.

This is a collection of semi-coherent, random thoughts I have on “gambling”. The inevitable gambling state My brokerage wants me to gamble on sporting events When I watch sporting events I’m bombarded with ads to gamble at {insert sportsbook} My credit card wants me to gamble McDonald’s wants me to play Monopoly and hope for a lottery like payoff if I buy their food Go hang out at a gas station for a while and see how many people go in and buy scratch offs Prediction markets want me to gamble There’s someone out there looking to take the other side of my bets in the stock market Crypto… do I even need to?

A new project You’re setting off on a journey to build a new {table, whole series of tables, dashboard, predictive model, pick your adventure book, etc…}. The initial request from THE BUSINESS lacks any semblance of detail required for immediate execution. You’ve done this before, people love quick calls to discuss the minutiae (a.k.a any level of detail) that was left out of the request. Lets hop on a quick call.

Reading I tend to put my fingers under the right page of a book in a rush to get to the next page. As soon as I do it, I’m already thinking about the next page and struggle to focus. Other times I’m not even thinking about the book… just reading on auto pilot, paragraphs slipping by. I’ve been catching myself doing this more. I can’t decide if it’s a sign to move on from the book or a sign that my mind can’t (doesn’t want to) focus on reading.

Found myself giving a bit of advice to new cyclists, so I figured I’d store my thoughts here so I can share it. This is primarily for road cycling, but a lot of it could be applicable more broadly. These are just semi-organized tips this is not an exhaustive list of everything you should or need to do. I like riding bikes, I’m not a mechanic, I’m not a pro, and my opinions are subject to change.

It was my dad’s birthday recently, which sparked a bit of reflection. What are the past situations where I’m grateful for having learned appropriate behavior? What positive qualities have I successfully incorporated into my own life? Vanity purchases Ever since I was born, I’ve known my dad to only be extremely reasonable when purchasing things. Never flaunty or flashy always purposeful and value oriented. He buys a Honda accord and drives it for 150K miles.

Intelligent and deep-thinking people may hold opposite opinions of one another. If you hold an unshakeable opinion about anything that exists in some state of probability or confidence its almost certainly a mistake to be doing so. One of Amazon’s leadership principles is Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. I wish it would elaborate a bit further, Have Backbone; Disagree, Reevaluate and Commit. It shouldn’t be disagree, hunker down, and ram my opinion through… but rather an exploratory process where people that respect each other’s opinions get closer to the truth.

Last Tuesday I went to The Parlor. I was back in Phoenix and wanted some pizza. I couldn’t find anyone willing to drop everything and go with me, so I went by myself. I rarely go to restaurants by myself, its somewhat uncomfortable because I feel limited in what I can stare at. I’ve been trying to fight the feeling that I always need to stare at something. Sometimes, I get pretty in my own head about what/who I’m staring at, how much eye contact to make, etc… Anyway, reading that back that sounds pretty weird, but I’m just going to leave it… this is off the cuff.