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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.

Dislikes

  • I mostly do not like people with strong ideology or political opinions unrelated to their family or friends’ life and limb, as someone who has sworn off strong political opinions like that. Check out “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer. Please keep your brain worms leashed!
  • I do not like people who can’t be silly, and I do not like people who can’t be serious.

Reading

I read. A lot. Some books that changed me 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
  • Thomas Ligotti’s Conspiracy Against the Human Race
  • De Beauvoir’s Second Sex
  • Minima Moralia
  • Various random religious and myth texts (meditations on the tarot, thus spoke zarathustra, the torah, upanishads, gnostic secondary literature)
  • Jung’s Aion and some surrounding secondary literature

I also like management and finance books and writing. I love to read stuff like:

  • Paul Graham
  • The Design of Everyday Things
  • Ed Batista
  • Venkatesh Rao
  • Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
  • Soros’ Theory of Reflexivity writings

Spirituality

I am a Jewish convert (נשמה circa June 2022), I don’t know if I’d call myself super learned but I am mostly observant.

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 ton. I am en route to jhanas :)

Music

Some composers I like include:

  • Debussy
  • Chopin
  • Bartok
  • Bach

Some music I like that was released lately:

  • mewithoutYou
  • Mount Kimbie
  • Blood Orange
  • XXXTENTACION
  • Against All Logic
  • Massive Attack

Hobbies

  • I like yoga and dance. I am not great at dancing.
  • I also lift weights and hike sometimes.
  • I like cooking and growing hydroponic herbs and vegetables in my tiny apartment.
  • I also like fermenting things in my tiny apartment.
  • I am constantly trying to get back to where I was in high school with classical piano. Hoping to get good at jazz one day.

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.

Crypto subject areas I’m pretty skillful at, and would feel comfortable technically advising a startup on:

  • formal verification and solvers
  • intent solving and intent DSL design
  • cryptographic/MPC schemes
  • trustless design
  • anything with decentralized storage, infrastructure, cloud, or CDNs
  • decentralized infrastructure design
  • ZK applications and ZK circuit design, especially ZKVMs

I spent three years working (on technical problems) in the crypto industry. I would recommend anyone currently in this industry leave. If you’re anxious about leaving, I’m a safe person to talk to about it.

Future Goals

I like being a founder and building things that help people. I hope to found more companies and build more things that help people in the future.