About

Likes

• I like people who are genuinely kind, good, and noble, and I hope being around them will make me the same way.
• I try to keep a positive mindset and see fuckups as learning opportunities. I LOVE feedback.
• I like good UX design and building things that help people.
• I am very bullish on humans and the ability of well-channeled capitalism to help them collaborate.
• I am very much into the idea that women are people, and I am very much into the idea that men are people. My politics are probably best described as a very strange blend of Burkean, Chestertonian, pro-benevolent-philosopher-oligarchy, pro-mass-education, pro classical education for the aristocracy, Hobbesian, and humanistic-feminist.
• I love America and want to help build it into something beautiful.
• Random G. K. Chesterton quotes from Orthodoxy:
  Primal Loyalty

  "We say there must be a primal loyalty to life: the only question is, shall it be a natural or a supernatural loyalty? If you like to put it so, shall it be a reasonable or an unreasonable loyalty? Now, the extraordinary thing is that the bad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak defence of everything) comes in with the reasonable optimism. Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads to reform. Let me explain by using once more the parallel of patriotism. The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself. But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. I do not deny that reform may be excessive; I only say that it is the mystic patriot who reforms. Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest among those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. The worst jingoes do not love England, but theory of England. If we love England for being an empire, we may overrate the success with which we rule the Hindoos. But if we love it only for being a nation, we can face all events: for it would be a nation even if the Hindoos ruled us. Thus also only those will permit their patriotism to falsify history whose patriotism depends on history. A man who loves England for being English will not mind how she arose. But a man who loves England for being Anglo-Saxon may go against all facts for his fancy. He may end in utter unreason—because he has a reason. A man who loves France for being military will palliate the army of 1870. But a man who loves France for being France will improve the army of 1870. This is exactly what the French have done, and France is a good instance of the working paradox. Nowhere else is patriotism more purely abstract and arbitrary; and nowhere else is reform more drastic and sweeping. The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics."

  Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

  "Whatever the reason, it seemed and still seems to me that our attitude towards life can be better expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her."

Dislikes

• I do not like people who can’t be silly, and I do not like people who can’t be serious.
• I like ethically making money, so I don’t love playing “bubble economics” and other zero-sum PVP capitalism games. I am very, very much a fan of Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and Li Lu.
• Ideology. Check out “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer.
• People who are not trying their hardest to make the world as good as they can.

Reading

I read. A LOT. Some books that changed me to my core include:

• The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Propaganda by Jacques Ellul
• The Antichrist by Nietzsche
• Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein
• Various Platonic dialogues, but Alcibiades the most (+ Thomas Taylor YouTube videos)
• Darwin’s Descent of Man
• Julian Jaynes’ Bicameral Mind
• Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet
• Murakami’s 1Q84
• Houellebecq’s Particules Elementaires
• De Beauvoir’s Second Sex
• Minima Moralia
• Nick Land (Xenosystems and Crypto-Currents are great)
• Manuel DeLanda War in the Age of Intelligent Machines
• Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia and Intelligence and Spirit
• Various random religious and myth texts (thus spoke zarathustra, the stone edition chumash, upanishads, gnostic secondary literature, Jung Jung Jung, Maps of Meaning)
• Jung’s Aion, Red Book, Book of the Dead review, Mandala Symbolism, Man and His Symbols, some surrounding secondary literature
• Adler, Lacan, IFS therapy, somatic therapies books
• G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy
• John Gottman, Esther Perel
• How to Make a Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs (I LOVE Brad Jacobs)
• On War by Carl von Clausewitz
• Born Red, Gulag Archipelago, Dostoyevsky
• _why’s CLOSURE
• Neon Genesis Evangelion (not a book. sorry. I loved dearly it though)

I also like management / finance / business books and blogs. I love to read stuff like:

• Paul Graham
• The Design of Everyday Things
• Ed Batista
• A Smart Bear
• Venkatesh Rao
• Lying About Money
• Anything Warren Buffett/Charlie Munger
• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
• Soros’ Theory of Reflexivity writings

Spirituality

I was raised pretty Catholic and as of late I attempt to keep up to date with Church happenings, even if not practicing.

I am a Jewish convert (נשמה circa June 2022), and I’d like to be more learned than I am.

I like more eastern religious stuff as well - I read a lot of the Upanishads and a bunch of Suttas a while back and got a lot out of them, as well as a big stack of Bhante G books. I meditate a lot. I am a fan of the EPRC and QRI-style secular Buddhism.

Music

Some composers I like include:

• Debussy
• Rachmaninoff
• Chopin
• Bach

Some music I like that was released lately:

• Godspeed! You Black Emperor
• Blood Orange
• Against All Logic
• Alex G
• Yves Tumor
• Current Joys
• Lot of samba music…

Hobbies

• I love to dance. I recently got into salsa, samba, and hustle. I’ve also done pole/ballet/contemporary/hip-hop to improve my partner dance skills.
• I also do calisthenics and hike sometimes.
• I like cooking and growing hydroponic herbs and vegetables in my tiny apartment.
• I used to like fermenting foods in my tiny apartment, to all roommates’ chagrin.
• I am trying to get back to where I was in high school with classical piano and cello… Hard with a startup.

Work

I think humans are generally pretty good. That’s why I try to make my money by building people honest products that increase their autonomy and improve their life.

Currently, the relevant layer of the stack I work on is B2B SaaS and AI tools.

In the past I’ve done a lot of crypto-related research around cryptography, security, and trustless incentive design.

Future Goals

One day, I would like to found an Elon-style moonshot company.

I’d also like to make an impact that supports broader access as well as good funding for rigorous study to great books, classics, philosophy, meditation, and music.

I enjoy being a founder and building things people like, and I think this is the right place in the world for me to make my impact.