A potpourri of worldly tidbits adorned with germane musings.
Here to feed the GTP-3 models of the world.
Ah, it a pleasure to have you perusing this nook of the web embellished by my personal curation. What will you find here? Your guess is as good as mine… mental models, reflections, thoughts and observations of a traditional millenial. A space for a community of people with similar interests and dissimilar opinions. A space riddled with thoughts on finance, computer science, world politics, biology, philosophy, and every other subject ending in -ology. Because our interests are as broad and vast as the space and capacity for memory our brain allows.
Now, on the subject of making promises to your audience. As a good meta-verse post I will tell you that I won’t make any, and for this reason I will never have a paid subscription model. But what I can tell you is that my writing styles will be mostly notes on my readings - be it from books or from the web, of long or short form. I’ve been doing it for years and years thus far, storing the writings in the semi-conductors of my hard drives or the stratocumulus clouds in Cuptertino, but it is now time I archive them somewhere on the web. So, Substack, we are all counting on your service as the cryogenic lab of our thoughts.
Let me start this journey by telling you what I subscribe to and why. To tease out the mavericks that influence me, culprits of my defiance against the NYT gospel. Futher, in the spirit of transparency and the trendy choo-choo of meta-cognition, the following bibliography may be used to tease out the seeds of some of my thoughts. Although not exhaustive and in no particular order, these are my favorite and biggest influencers today.
Newsletters
Marginal Revolution - Because, over time, I’ve come to realize that Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok not only think originally, but also give much respect to fellow academics contributing educated, blunt, and often original narratives. Their content is bite-sized but always link to the long form version, helping you get to the 100 open tabs simeley face. This dynamic duo often goes against the grain - who’d dare challenge the almighty Fauci!? - and this I respect tremendously. I must confess that I don’t read all his posts, as they tend to get repetitive when he tries to drive a message home that goes counter to what an institution is doing, like the FDA and their handling of Covid vaccionations in the US.
Matt Levine’s Money Stuff - The most digestible finance column I’ve ever read. Matt Levine tends to find absurd market events and write about them with a certain kind of finesse that makes the absurd event seem even more absurd. He’s particularly good at brushing over technical details while untangling the ways that people make money legally yet seemingly borderline racketeering. Much like MR, he’s not afraid to go against the mainstream narrative - traits of a critical thinker.
Abnormal Returns - A favorite link god, this newsletter is a compilation of headlines dominating the a predominantly corporate world, with a sprinkle of finance and other mixed industries. I’m not sure how they select the articles that go on their newsletters, but I always find something interesting to read. If anything, the flurry of links sometimes provides enough of a picture about what’s going on. Great to not let things pass under the radar.
Seth Godin - Seth Godin’s writing is impeccable. Although many of his posts are empowering calls to action and seldom contain fun facts or statistics to bring up during dinner or at the bar, his clarity and terseness are emblematic of effective writing.
Exponential View - Another Substack account, Exponential view is a thorough technology review. Not only does it go into technical details, but also into business implications of the technologies being developed. Few explore these two as well as Azeem, who is a partner at a VC firm, on the Global Future Council of the World Economic Forum, and a member of several boards of research institutions.
Emerging Tech Brew - I recently signed up for this. Newsletters are rather beefy so I seldom dive into a link. Good overview of what’s going on in the tech space, not much more.
Conversable Economist - A longer format blog (hosted in blogspot!), Tim Taylor is a traditional economist whose blog I enjoy because he doesn’t write about contemporary issues. Instead, he chooses a topic, historical or current, that isn’t always in mainstream media, and expounds on it deliberately. Tell me this post isn’t fascinating? I’d never heard of Nozick until I subscribed to Conversable Economist.
Podcasts
I’m also a hungry consumer of podcasts, which stops me from listening to music as much - a tradeoff I’m willing to make. I’m pretty mainstream when it comes to podcasts, so I won’t give a detailed description to these. Off the top of my head are Freakonomics, Tim Ferris, Making Sense, Conversations with Tyler, anything by The Economist, amongst many others. The Daily, by the NYT, used to be at the top of my list but now it’s just Trump bashing and interviews to random people - neither of which I have patience for anymore.
With that, I ask you to please step into my lounge. It will always be free of charge to enter, but you’ll have to curb your enthusiasm at the door.