MD. Money and Dreams are spun from gossamer. To build something lasting, make it from wood.
The forest.
Joined October 2020
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And to think, you only had to wait ( and keep losing money) for 4 straight years, to finally capture this tiny turnaround.
The solution is to just charge money for this. $100 for 2 minutes. Then $200 for 2 min. Then $500 for 2 min. Until only 5 people a day come, and you make $50,000 a day.
Imagine a world wherein only the super rich matter to economics and world events.
Now look back at human history and realize that's basically how it has always been.
Sad. But true.
"Good times create weak men" innit?
Horrible and detrimental attitude among many bitcoiners and crypto-people is the idea that they deserve to be rich and sit back and do nothing because they were early or active in this space
Imagine a bitcoin-economy where everyone just does nothing. If you believe in bitcoin as the new unit of account and store of value, you still have to be productive and actually do some useful service or produce something useful, so stop thinking you deserve massive wealth just because you are in this space
Of course Saylor with his nonsense-talk that hard work won´t make you rich does not help, tell that to anyone who actually did work hard to make money and not build a pyramid-scheme, but you should basically ignore anything he says anyway
SF is home to the poorest millionaires in the world.
The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen.
Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation).
Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there.
Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI.
As a result,
1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb.
Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more.
2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future).
Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire"
3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed.
Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies.
4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either.
No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money."
I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here.
Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success".
Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.
My twitter feed is super negative about the economy, the market, stocks, bitcoin, and finance in general.
Sounds incredibly bullish, tbh.
The world's richest centi-billionaire oligarch used his power to change the rules, so he could dump his garbage company (which is cartoonishly overvalued, unprofitable, and incinerating cash) on retail investors, using trillions of dollars in retirement funds as exit liquidity, all in order to become the first trillionaire.
This is the perfect metaphor for the US economy as a whole, which is entirely based on bubbles and scams.
Castor retweeted
You can crash your yard's mosquito population without spraying a single chemical with a Mosquito Bucket of Doom.
Fill a 5-gallon bucket about two-thirds with water. Drop in a handful of grass clippings, leaves, or hay. Let it sit for a day, then drop in a Bti dunk (also called Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, sold at any hardware store as "mosquito dunks," about $10 for six).
Mosquitoes are powerfully attracted to fermenting water and will lay their eggs in your bucket. Bti is a naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a toxin that kills mosquito, blackfly, and fungus gnat larvae only.
This method doesn't harm bees, butterflies, fireflies, fish, frogs, birds, pets, or people. BTI dunks are EPA-approved for organic use and safe in animal water troughs and birdbaths.
One dunk lasts about 30 days. Top off the water as it evaporates. Cover with 1/2-in Mesh Hardware Cloth to prevent animals from getting trapped and put the bucket somewhere shady where pets and kids won't get into it.
The bucket becomes a mosquito magnet and a dead end. Compare that to fogging the entire yard with pyrethroids, which kills every insect in it, including the predators that eat mosquitoes.
Doug Tallamy's Homegrown National Park has been running the "Mosquito Bucket Challenge" since 2021. The more buckets in a neighborhood, the bigger the dent. One bucket per yard is a great start.
