Quick note about the posts, the latest posts are at the top, until the 7/11/2023, after which it goes in chronological order
Holy shit what a day in the markets, and what a lesson to be learned. Never blow all your cash on small dips, because days like today eventually come, and you REALLY wanna have cash to buy. I did not, and I lost money. This was a lack of patience and over complacency.
Another important quote - people are quick to act greedy when trying to grow capital, and slow when scared and trying to protect it.
On the bright side, I managed to survive (at least for now, pls stop dumping). Will be fun to come back and read this in a few months.
The only thing you should trust are your own doubts
Arrogance and overconfidence will get you killed, always stay humble.
Lesson of the day: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
I think the best path in life is rarely the easiest one, or the most comfortable, or the funniest. Risk pays, being young means you have risk in spades. Take huge risks, take every opportunity presented to you. Take risks, move quickly, fail quickly, learn quickly. Forge strong meaninful relationships. I don't think its too important to be too picky at the start of ones life. I imagine its good to throw a bunch of darts and see what sticks.
Get the compounding curve up and running as quickly as possible. Get your wealth compounding, get your relationships compounding, get your knowledge compounding. NOBODY, absolutely NOBODY truly comprehends the power of compounding. Einstein once said that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.
A huge mistake is working hard, then relaxing, and mistaking the fruits of your labour as the result of your relaxing. One cannot map ones results to the exact actions that caused it. I experienced something similar in my chess career, that being delayed rewards from hard work.
Hard work pays, and risk pays - all other success is pure luck. Young people have both of these in spades. If used in combination, they can have incredible results.Paul Graham's blog is a great place to learn more about this.
Feels good to write again, I think writing deep thoughts everyday is a tough toll to ask, I think my brain needs a few weeks to juice up with new thoughts and ideas. So I think it makes sense to work on the other areas of the website in the interim.
The world will always be imperfect. Conditions will always be imperfect. Stop waiting for the ideal conditions to execute on your ideas. Be like water, adapt to the current situation, make the best move given the present state.
Some Jesse Livermore quotes seem fitting today:
I heard you say once, that a lie is sweet in the beginning and bitter in the end, and truth is bitter in the beginning and sweet in the end.
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. - Albert Einstein
Read this article which I thought was pretty good:
Also read this
I think I will create a GPT for each knowledge domain. Speaking of GPT, here is a passage it wrote that I liked.
In the vast expanse of the cosmos, the fleeting existence of humanity is but a mere whisper against the eternal winds of time. We find ourselves, ephemeral beings, on a speck of dust suspended in a sunbeam, marveling at the profound complexity and majestic beauty that surrounds us. The grandeur of nature, with its intricate tapestries of life, interwoven and pulsating with an energy that transcends human understanding, stands in stark contrast to the transient nature of human existence. It is a realm where the simplest leaf or the gentle sway of a brook holds secrets of the universe, secrets that humankind, in its insatiable quest for knowledge, yearns to uncover.
Yet, in our endeavors to grasp the nature of the cosmos, we are confronted with the sobering realization of our own insignificance. Our lives, brief and bounded, are mere flashes of consciousness in the infinite expanse of a universe that is indifferent to our struggles and triumphs. But this realization, rather than diminishing our spirit, can instill in us a profound appreciation for the beauty and fragility of our existence. It is in the face of our own ephemerality that we find the courage to seek meaning and purpose, not in the external validation of an indifferent universe, but in the depths of human experience and the connections we forge with one another.
The mystery of the universe, with its unfathomable depths and arcane laws, is a testament to the boundless potential of the human intellect and spirit. In our quest to unravel these mysteries, we embark on a journey that is as much about understanding the universe as it is about understanding ourselves. It is a journey that calls us to transcend our limitations and to reach for the stars, not in the literal sense, but as a metaphor for the limitless potential of the human spirit. In this grand cosmic dance, where galaxies collide and stars are born and die, we find a beauty that is both humbling and inspiring, a beauty that reminds us of our place in the universe and the preciousness of the fleeting moment we call life.
Pristine is getting closer and closer to launch. LFG.
On Revenge
The best revenge is not to be like your enemy - Marcus Aurelius.
On Ego
To me, ego is a measure of ones self worth. One gets offended when another person makes a comment that values our self worth lower than we would - ie. they hurt your ego. Thus, it would appear the easiest way to never be offended is to lower our self worth to 0. However, there's probably some downside to valueing it at 0. Thinking about it more deeply, I don't think its the absolute value that bothers us, but rather the relational value. Most people will be happy being the biggest fish in a small pond, than moving into the bigger pond where he will be the smallest fish. Thus, its all relational, or maybe the word is relative, lel.
A man's character is not revealed when he is in front of a crowd, but rather when he is alone.
If you cannot find happiness in solitude, you have nothing.
Pretty big pause from writing stuff. One good way to tell if I'm not happy about something or feeling guilty about something is by the frequency of my writing and talking. If I know my daily habbits are not good, I tend to refrain from speaking to people, and it appears, writing as well. I'm the kind of person who spirals into bad habits pretty badly, or maybe its average but I just don't know of other people's lives. The fault in my behaviour is that once I commit one "crime", I tend to justify the next one by saying to myself "two is no worse than one", and then "three is no worse than two", and so on.
In my case, this "spirals" are usually in the form of twitter checking, and price checking. Checking either is like pulling a slot machine, you're unlikely to see anything extremely interesting or extremely useful, or that deviates from the time you checked it 10 minutes ago, but the slight chance there is something crazy makes you pull the trigger. In the case of crypto prices, things have been going crazy for the past week, which has exacerbated the problem.
Because of this, I've not dedicated as much time to my projects. Another reason I commit this mistake, is that I tend to think, "I don't have to autocorrect now, things will autocorrect in the future". But again, I should follow the same principle that says get things done today instead of tomorrow - tomorrow you will feel exactly as lazy as today, so just start today.
I think its impossible to be completely immune to slip ups every now and again, so perhaps my goal of cutting everything out was unrealistic and perhaps even counter-productive, because on any slip-up one will feel overly guilty when there is no reason to. Instead, I think the thing to focus on, as was mentioned in Feynman's autobiography, is the ability to autocorrect. Similar to how the wheels of a train work. As soon as they are slightly out of line, the laws of physics ensure that it slowly corrects its direction. I think the same principle should be applied to life. Let oneself slip up every now and again, but always carry a set of principles that ensure autocorrection.
There's a saying that things that are too rigid tend to be fragile, and break easily. An example is the economy. An economy with a currency with fixed supply is not ideal. That is why the government is able to print when the economy is in a recession, and constrict the supply when it overheats (inflation). Staying too rigid in ones life tends to make the swings even more extreme, which I don't think is neccesarily what you want. Better is a ship that buoyes up and down with the waves.
Anyhoo, I think this post will help me autocorrect in my own life. I think I should try to push to launch Pristine which has been an ongoing project for a while. I think the speed of autocorrection is what one should optimize for, he who reduces the feedback loop of autocorrection to zero, is unstoppable.
Crypto bull market seems to be back in full swing. Every other shitcoin is going up 50% daily, I'm here sitting in eth, the slowest horse of them all - sometimes its hard to tell if its even moving, cuz its so goddamm slow.
Su Zhu once said, unless your portfolio is 10figs + (ie, your a billionaire), so nobdoy, you should not own eth or btc. Might be worth buying stuff further out the risk curve now that everything is flying. Something to think about.
Looking back at the tasks I wanted to complete by week's end from the 30/10/2023 post, some things have been completed, and some things have not. One thing that has been an absolute success is working in coffee shops - seems pretty straight forward - despite the noise of crying babies, there's no distractions, there's no other thing to do than work.
However, the phone is available for checking twitter/ wasting time. Therefore, I think there's a deeper psychology effect at play when one is at a coffee shop, which is the fact that one is surrounded by other people. In a sense, the presence of other people has an effect on ones behaviour because you don't wanna look like the guy who goes to the coffee shop to look at twitter or waste time. Wow, we found a case where caring what others think is actually beneficial!
In addition, being at a coffee shop has the additional benefit of removing ones ability to take naps. I'm not 100% sold that naps are necessarily bad, I don't know enough to have an opinion, but certainly the length of naps I take aren't good for productivity, or sleep for that matter.
Throughout the day also had thoughts on Past, Present, and Future
"Quit; don't quit. Noodles; don't noodles. You are too concerned with what was and what will be. There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present." - Master Oogway
Our physical form is trapped in the present, until the age of time travel. However, our minds do not obey the same laws of time, and are free to roam freely the past, present and future. It is an interesting question to ask whether we should try to steer our minds clear from longing the good memories from the past, or daydreaming of the plethora of beautiful futures that could be. I certainly am a victim of spending a good portion of mind time in times other than the present. Then again, the mind is such a complex thing, I'm not sure if one should try to direct the content of one's thoughts - this to me seems like a losing battle, the mind always ends up going the opposite direction to what one wants. I think the more doable thing is to let it roam free, and simply be a bystander of this process of ideas, memories, etc. floating in and out of our consciousness. I think this process of "bystander" was proposed by Sam Harris. It makes sense to me, to step out of ones mind, and watch it from a distance, like watching a movie!
Another thing that brought up the thought of past, present, and future, specifically future, was thinking about my last job interview - thinking about an event from the past solicited a thought about the future - ha. I remember him asking about my goals or aspirations for the next 1/3/5 years. It was funny because I ended up giving him two answers from the complete end of the spectrums. My first answers was all philosophical, I said I didn't like setting goals, because that only set one up to dissapointment in the case of failure. He said to tone down the philosohpicalness and give him a proper, concrete answer, to which I answered that if I had to give a concrete answer, I'd ideally want to be at the forefront of the latest ground breaking technology, and become an expert in AI and cryptography. An answer far out in dreamworld. In the end I didn't give him a satisfactory answer, which I assume would have been something concrete, and, importantly, realistic.
This got me thinking, jee, I always either set no goals, or extremely over optimistic goals. Somehow there's no specific, short-term, realistic goals that I'd say, wow, I'd love to achieve that. Things that motivate me is becoming a black belt in bjj, or building a defi protocol with 1 billion TVL, or becoming a billionaire. I think the attractiveness of these to me is derived from the fact that they are hard to achieve, and very few people have been able to do so. When few people are able to do something, that makes me want to give it my best shot to see how I fare against others. In a hypothetical, goal'less world, I think I'd spend my time just reading books. So why don't I just do that? Wouldn't it be better to remove all these "artificial" goals? Maybe, but I do need to specialize in something to make money. Another thing to consider is that maybe I like reading because its a way of acquiring knowledge passively. I also enjoy programming, and solving math problems, but as the difficulty increases, ones head starts to hurt, and as species who always choose the path of least resistance, will be driven away from said math problems. However, I think going through a struggle has a the benefit of greater gratification post the effort, so its a tradeoff.
Anyhoo, I've rambled a lot about this, probably will write a deeper post on life plans, goals and all that. Will end on some quotes from a philosopher I like, Betrand Russell:
Currently unemployed so more prone to spending time on these apps
as I have a lot of free time.
Default activities when idle should be:
Do stuff. Have noticed that when sitting idle I tend to overthink things too much. Should I start this project? Is it gonna be worth the time? Is is more important than this other project? I'm definetely a believer that choosing the right work is more important than hard work itself. But there comes a point where you have to choose something. Many times working on a project, despite it not being super important can lead to ideas for other projects, or make you learn something new.
Also, I'm currently on a job hunt. This should be a more pro-active endevour. I'm pretty lazy, layed back person by nature - my tendency is to read a lot and learn new things, and let lightning strike me, but in reality being active and seeking out things on your own is very rewarding in itself.
Projects I will be working on:
Moaaar random thought rambling.
Don't be comparative, be additive. Most things in life other than stuff like sports are not zero sum games. "Give, and ye shall receive". Be friendly to people, but not fake, as that is definetely counterproductive. The former is great because you never know when I good deed will repay you. In a way, doing good deeds is like purchasing a bunch of call options, the downside is fixed (the cost of doing the deed), while the upside is truly unlimited. Plus, the theta (decay in value due to passage of time), is pretty low - someone could repay after multiple years.
Growing up chess was my main hobby, and that truly was a zero sum game. There can only be one winner in any single game, in any single tournament. I definetely think this comparative mentality rubbed off on me quite a bit, to the point where I'd apply the same mentality to other aspects of life - wealth, fitness, etc. When it comes to sports like chess and jiu jitsu, this mentality is probably necessary to become the best. However, in other aspects of life such as wealth generation, this mindset is probably not as healthy.
One of the reasons is that you're competing with a much larger set of people (the whole world). Although I guess you could say the subset of people that take wealth generation as a game is much smaller. An interesting difference between the wealth competition and any sports, is that the distribution of outcome is widely different. The former follows a power law distribution while the latter follows a normal distribution. I think this suggests that the factor of luck in the former, creates huge differences in outcomes (I don't think Elon worked 200,000x harder than an average millionaire, and yet that is what their net worth suggests). Whereas if you were to train just as much as Usain Bolt you'd probably get to a few seconds of his world record. Although you could argue Usain Bolt gets 100x more wealth fame than the second guy, so it also forms a power law in a way.
For this reason, I think getting trapped in the wealth generation game can be dangerous given how dependent it is on the factor of luck (eg. You could study the best method of getting rich, and reach a net worth of 10MM (top 0.1%), you still feel like a noob compared to a billionaire).
Another thing is that most people will say money should be a means to and end, rather than an end in itself. However, viewed from a purely competitive standpoint, I don't see any difference between making money to have more than others, to practicing running, in order to run faster than others (but for some reason there's a bad stigma with flaunting wealth, but not with flaunting being an olimpic winner, or faster runner). I guess my conclusion is that a lot of the things we value follow power laws, strongly dependent on luck factors, and hence we should avoid getting trapped competing for these things.
Anyhoo, I find this kinda topics interesting (those being human psychology, memetic behaviour (wanting what others want)). I'm definetely open to moulding my beliefs on these topics.
On change.
I think generally humans are creatures of habit. At least I know I enjoy having a fixed routine, or more generally, some level of predictability in my life. That includes the food I eat, the bed I sleep in, the people I interact with, etc. Despite this coming with its advantages (more spare mind power to concentrate/think about other things), I think when it comes to doing creative work, which is my case, it can be beneficial to periodically (like every couple months), have a change of scenery, whether that be working at a different coffee shop, office, or travelling to a different country. The reason being that I think having too rigid a routine is not conducive towards having fresh ideas (ie. seeing the same plant or garden or whatever outside you're window will tend to sollicit the same type of thoughts you had the last time you looked at it, at least this is my theory).
Yesterday, my sister showed me a math problem from a high school paper that she thought was interesting.
The problem goes as follows. There's a set S with thirty members {1, 2, 3....29, 30}. Bob chooses three members at random of the set, and sums the three numbers. How many sets can Bob get, where the sum is divisible by 3. The sets {1,2,3}, {1,3,2}, {3,2,1}, etc. all count as one (so order doesn't matter).
My initial thinking was to get the total number of possible sets that Bob can get. That would 30 x 29 x 28 = 24360, since there are 30 choices for the first number, 29 for the second, and 28 for the third. I thought, intuitively it would make sense that roughly a third were divisible by 3, so I did 24360 / 3 = 8120. Asked my sister if it was close - she said no.
I then thought, ok, what does the distribution of the sums look like. Well, the lowest possible value is 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, and the highest is 28 + 29 + 30 = 87. There is only one way of getting 6 and 87, while a middle number like 46 probably had the most possible sets. Therefore, my thinking was it was probably a normal distribution. Then I started thinking how this information helped me, it didn't.
After a long, long while, I reallized the 24360 numbers was pretty off, because it was taking into account sets that were the same {1,2,3} and {3,2,1} were counted as two different sets when they shouldn't. But was is the correct total number? I realized for any set of three numbers, there are 6 different ways of ordering them: {1,2,3}{1,3,2}{2,1,3}{2,3,1}{3,1,2}{3,2,1}. Therefore, we had to divide 24360 by 6 = 4060. Now if we do 4060 / 3 = 1353.33, the real answer is 1360 - close enough. She then proceeded to explain her brilliant method of solving it which can be found here.
Progress on Pristine project:
Razor focus on things is how progress is made. I truly believe the brain is like any muscle in the body, if not strained, it will get accustomed to being lazy, and over time you will lose the ability to focus on hard problems. On the other hand, getting burnt out is not great either. Therefore, I think its a good idea to have a balance between both, perhaps something like 80/20 (80 being focused work, 20 being more relaxed time).
On EV
One thing I should remember when focusing on work, is to consider the expected value that will come from said work. That value does not always have to be monetary, it could be in the form of acquiring a new skill. Also, when it comes to investing, I should be more pragmatic and objective. This morning, after solana pumped, I remember thinking whether to sell some of my position. Meanwhile, I also had a trading position shorting WLD. However, the WLD short is 1% of the size of my solana bag, yet I spent the same amount of time making decisions on both. Doesn't seem rational. I think its because I have a mentally to always win, so for me making two winning trades where I make 100$ on both would be more satisfying than making 1000$ on one and losing 100$ on the other. When phrased like that, I'd obviously, choose the latter, but then it doesn't make sense to spend the same amount of mental thought on trades that are 100x differnet in size.
Another thing is, when applying for jobs, I tend to not take it very seriously for some reason. Not sure why. Maybe because I've never liked taking orders from others, or maybe because earning a salary somehow doesn't feel like "winning", like trading/investing does. This might sound pretty bad lol. Maybe I should start a fund and manage money for a living, if "winning" is what motivates me. I guess you could say trading and investing are more akin to a sport like chess, its more "PvP", unlike working at a job. Starting a business however does attract me a lot. I imagine it like being the captain of a ship, and competing against other ships. Meanwhile working in a company feels like you're contributing to someone else's dream. So sure, you learn a lot, meet very smart people, and can make good money, but will never achieve exceptional results. Fortunes are made through leverage, that being through owning equity in a company, monetary capital, or human capital.
Visiting Singapore for 4 days, had the chance to meet my friends from Pendle, can confirm they are gigachads. Also, they are soo friendly, my friend Long gave us an amazing tour of the city. Maybe I should ask for a job offer? Sure would be cool to work with such great people.
On a not so positive note, the fact that crypto is pumping has once again caused me to break my rule of checking twitter - damn it. Every time it pumps I seem to get the urge to "stay alert", as if that will yield some opportunities. I'd say this is true in some sense - I should stay more on top of the market in a bull run, but twitter should not be my go to for information on the market - if anything, its a counter indicator. Also, crypto is still >50% down from the peak - so I don't wanna think what my twitter habits will be like when we actually do get a bull run.
Therefore, I think it will be useful to write down some rules to be prepared for the bull run:
Don't use what I call situatinal excuses. Oh, I'll break this and that rule because I'm only here for a few days. Avoid the type of thinking "It's Saturday", so I'll take Sunday off and Monday will be the day I finally do what I wanna do because it makes sense to start on a Monday. This is all well known stuff (dont leave for tomorrow what you can do today), and yet I realize I don't consistently apply it myself. That's why I like that I've started writing things down to take accountability, and measure my progress from day to day.
Treat everyone equally - and don't judge a book by it's cover. This relates to a point I made previously. Meeting a new person is like a call option - worst case they are not nice and you stop talking to them, best case is that they are amazing and you make a lifetime friend.
Huge BTC pump - that's all for today. (Also, humility is the greatest virtue)
Today was a bit of grueling day. Tried adding a light/dark mode to this website, with the help of my good friend GPT-4 of course, and ran into the most annoying problems I've ever faced. I guess I should actually read the code after copying and pasting from the chat to my visual studio code app, however, I do like the super fast feedback loop of copying and pasting until it just works, at which point I may consider reading the code to figure out what's going on. Anyhow, seems to work now, so I can focus or more pressing issues than light/dark mode.
On a separate note, I've noticed my projects are starting to grow in size (Pristine & my website), and I feel like certain code mal practices, while unnoticed as small sizes, is starting to take its effect. In other words, its getting harder to keep track of how everything works/ is connected. I think this means I should build a detailed docs for everything I've done so far, detailing the overall structure. Also, some bad code practices are definetely being made in this website, so with the aid of our good GPT-4 those will hopefully get fixed. Note: dealing with token decimals in ERC20 tokens is so annoyinggg, must make this cleaner.
Have an interview with Matter Labs, a technical interview to be precise. On the one hand they're scary because I think, what if the guy starts asking stuff that I have no idea about, and I look like an idiot. Then I remember, looking like an idiot is fine! And on the topic of thinking what other's think of us, and giving importance to our public image in general, I think this is something I struggle with. It's hard to say what the ideal is - should you aim to not care at all about anything. This seems somewhat extreme, but then again why not? I think you certainly shouldn't avoid doing something based on what others would think.
I've certainly been a victim of this type of thinking. I think it also has to do with wanting to maintain a "consistent" image. In other words, when you're naturally a introvert person, it's even harder to do non-introvert person things, because you'll draw more attention than usual given you're behaviour will appear "inconsistent" with your public image.
I do realize this is all getting very meta, and instead of thinking what others think about what your thinking about others, you should just fucking do whatever you feel like doing, lol. However, the reason I personally ponder these things, is that I do see some benefit and forcing oneself to be slightly more extroverted if you're naturally and introvert. I feel like some things you just naturally can't get around without it, such as asking for job opportunities, growing you're network, or meeting a girl. In my case these are all things which I'd default to putting little to no effort into, but might be worthwhile investing the time to improve on. Also, initiating conversations with random people is definetely something you only get better at with practice - ie. no amount of books will get you there.
Nearing the end of my stay in Bangkok. For some reason was reminded of Steve Jobs' famous quote: "If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you'll be right. Every morning I looked in the mirror and asked myself: If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I do today?"
Everytime I think of this quote, it really hits deep. It would seem like something so obvious that its not even worth saying, and yet I realize I don't apply it myself. I rarely sit down and ask what is it that I really want. Normally when deciding what to spend my time on, I tend to decide on, what will make my future the best, or the happiest, and that usually involves doing something productive that will increase my knowledge/skills to get a better job or make more money. The reason I don't spend as much time thinking what I really like is I tend to find a lot of things interesting, and hence I rather optimize for economic returns. However, I do think its possible to stray too far into optimizing the economic side, that one ends up doing something not enjoyable.
Then there's some people that would recommend doing the thing with highest economic return, screw your happiness in the short term until you amass enough wealth that you can pivot to doing what you really love doing. And who knows, maybe you end up loving the thing with highest economic return. I'm defintely simpathetic to this point of view too.
Another interesting thing on the topic of focusing ones time, is the debate of depth vs breadth. Should one focus all ones time on one subject and become an expert, or should one spread their focus on more than one subject. Or perhaps focus ones effort until a certain point, and switch to something else, therefore becoming decently good at many things. I do think this is something personal that varies depending on ones goals, but in my opinion, if one is trying to maximize their chance of success, the latter approach makes the most sense. Perhaps one will find more enjoyment becoming a master at one thing, and learning all the subtle intricacies there is to learn about that one thing, but to me it feels like putting all your eggs in one basket, so you better be damn sure that basket is the one.
Writing down a progress snapshot - hope to get pending tasks done by week end (06/11/2023)
Progress on Pristine:
Progress on this Website:
Progress on Hyperliquid:
Also, have my Matter Labs interview this afternoon, letsgoo.
Update on how the Matter Labs interview went - other than the fact that I didn't know how many bits are in a byte (loooool), I think it went well!
One interesting thing I found was that many of the things we talked about in the interview, were dead easy after the interviewer explained them, and also thinking about them post interview. This could obviously be attributed to the typical brain farts one gets during an interview, but I don't recall being nervous at all.
I think the more likely explanation is just that knowledge tends to be forgotten when not used on a daily basis. When writing solidity code, I don't usually try to optimize the shit out of it by bit packing, and using low level yul, so I don't have to worry about the individual bytes involved in storage and memory.
However, I wouldn't say the knowledge is erased, given that when he explained it, everything clicked as it would when suddenly remembering a distant memory, as if curtains had been lifted in my subconscious. I also wonder if the brain compartmentalizes information related to the same subject in the same areas in the brain, or if its one massive brain mess, and whether two pieces of data can be retrieved faster if they are from a related topic - I would imagine so.
Orrr, my failure to understand bytes and hexadecimal representations in the EVM could be due to laziness in patching that area of knowledge that is slightly weaker than the rest. I do tend to do that a lot, that being if I'm reading a technical article and stumble across a section that is out of the scope of my understanding, I'll decide that's a good place to pause reading the article and switch to a different article - mental note to fix that.
All in all I did enjoy the interview, despite fumbling some dumb things. It also seems like a pretty solid team all around, I mean they are building a friking zero knowledge thingy. The only drawback is the fact that its an 120 person team - yikes, I was looking for a startup sized company, so 5-10. Buuuut, if ze money is good, ze money is good, vot can I say.
Now, addressing the elephant in the room, Solana, the coin I have been preaching to every friend and their mother, has absolutely mooned beyond anything I could have expected. There is a pretty big Sol conference so that could be partly the reason the price action has been how its been. Despite my constant preaching, I'm disgraced to say I sold my Sol for an avg price of 30$, so for a 50% profit. Don't get me wrong, the trade was fantastic but I truly believe the coin will go up much more in the long term. My reasoning for exiting was the pending sales of the FTX estate, which will account for 1.1b of sol selling. Will it go up/down? No idea, and now that I've exited the position, will not make the mistake of playing "catch up", which would likely lead to worse decisions. Therefore, my current plan is to stay put. I still have 75% of NW exposure to crypto through ETH and PENDLE, and having a decent chunk of cash now from the solana proceeds is nice for any opportunities that may arise.
Alas, all good things come to an end.
Even my trip to Thailand was not immune to such a fate. Finally back home, and feeling like despite the many many downsides of this trip (such as expenses, and being pouring in sweat outdoors and become a block of ice indoors), I think the experience and the reflections I made on this trip were indeed worth it. However, the jury is still out on whether I will successfully apply such learnings at home.
I could talk about the sickening Solana price action, but I'd rather direct my thoughts at more interesting things. In today's section I'm gonna dwell on the topic of WANT.
As I write this, the github copilot extension I have is suggesting whole paragraphs of stuff to write, and its definitely hard to resist clicking the tab button to autocomplete. I'll try to avoid reading the suggestions and give my geniune thoughts on the topic.
What is wanting? Wanting, by definition, is the dissatisfaction of ones current state. Only when one is completely happy with ones current situation in life, can one be free of the feeling of want - or rather the disease that is want. In a sense, you could say want is the cause of all unhappiness. Want is the source of things like envy, jealousy, greed, avarice, etc. The issue with want is that the world has finite resources, but our imagination is infinite. Our baseline of happiness sure reverts to the mean quickly after the short term spike of acquiring a current item from our want list.
However, I don't think train of thought leads to the conclusion why pursue anything in life if ultimately that pursuit is just of things we want, which when acquired will lead to other wants. I think the key is not to see the end goals as our source of happiness. These things being material possesions, money, status, fame, etc. These things are not in our control, they are zero sum, acquiring them means hoping they're not acquired by others (if everyone is rich, no one is rich, if everyone is famous, no one is famous).
Instead, I think the key is to enjoy the pursuit of these things. I don't think there's anything wrong in pursuing these things (despite them being purely important to us because they are important to others - ie, if you lived in a hypotheticl world of abundance by yourself, these wouldn't matter. I guess that thought experiment is not great but anyway). I just think it's extremely dangerous to tie ones state of happiness with the end goal. Then again, how can we control what makes us happy and what doesn't? I don't think there's a definite answer to this, but there's definetely things that I think we should stay clear from. As already mentioned, I think social media is a huge conducer of unhappiness, by tieing our wants with the end goal. Social media specialized in giving you short clips of dopamine, and what fits better in a short clip, the end goal, or the long pursuit of the goal?
Moreover, social media has the perfect example of survivorship bias. One only sees the success stories, and not even the hardships involved is those success stories - so its essentially a skewed view of the world beyond belief. No matter how aware one is of the phenomenon, I don't think anyone can prevent its negative impacts on one's want and happiness, which is why I think the best solution in most cases is to stay away from them.
If a problem is fixable, then there is no need to worry. If its not fixable, then there is no help in worrying"
Multiple updates:
Other than that, will continue working on Pristine/Website.
Spotted a small issue with my "Random thoughts" page, the latest posts appear
at the very bottom instead of the top. Asked my good friend chatGPT what to
do, and it suggested doing a server side solution. My next prompt to my good friend
was, of course, what is a server side solution. It replied with the following: