(Bi)Weekly Learning Journal 5 (28/09/2020)

Hi RIP readers,

welcome to the RIP (Bi)Weekly Learning Journal.

Ouch, this last two weeks have been so intense! How did I manage to consume so much amazing material?

In this episode I tried to rank the material top to bottom. Those who didn’t make into the main list are not necessary worse, just less relevant.

Next episode on Monday October 12th 🙂

Enjoy!

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Folding Ideas documentary In Search of a Flat Earth (9/10)

Link

An incredibly good documentary NOT on flat earthers. Well, actually about them at the beginning, then moving on why conspiracy theories attract people. It’s because we need simple explanations to complex phenomenon. Watch the documentary, it’s very very good!

I learned a lot about the people I blocked on Facebook.

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John Green on going outdoor, and the indifference of nature (9/10)

Link

Ok, this is almost spiritual, reflecting my current state of mind.

I’d call it a stoic talk.

Like john, I’m also experiencing Autumn in a slow manner this year. I’m actually experiencing nature much more intensely. I’ve been following spring and summer very closely, noticing on a daily basis how the vegetation in our park changed.

Is it because of quarantine? Parenting? Five months off work? Ageing?

I don’t know, but what I know is that next spring/summer I want to keep track of every leaf’s evolution, grab every fruit (strawberries, nuts, blackberries, raspberries, apples, pears) that our park provides us free of charge, track sunflowers evolution, and all the different kinds of flowers that grow and die in different seasons, from early spring to late autumn.

I remember those first flowers back in March. I can’t name them. I loved them. And I loved each new wave of flowers and nature. We’re now experiencing Autumn colors coming quickly in our neighborhood. Last year we moved in this new flat in mid December, and the surroundings were dominated by red, brown, and some yellow. it was amazing, an impressionist painting!

Nature’s indifference to our struggles is relaxing.

It’s actually both relaxing and devastating.

It tells us “you’re unimportant, just live with that”. But it also tells us “you’re unimportant, relax!”.

My mood changes a lot with weather, usually going south during rain seasons, lack of sunlight, and cold temperatures.

I fear for this coming winter.

It’s the fourth year in a row that I’m back after a long “vacation” (2017 honeymoon, 2018 paternity leave, 2019 sick leave, 2020 unemployment) and I feel the “Monday blues” of Autumn…

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The Social Dilemma (8.5/10)

No Link (it’s on Netflix… or on Torrent 😛 )

Everybody is talking about it, right?

It’s a series of interviews, the most relevant of all being the one to Tristan Harris, former Google employee, interleaved with a fictional story of a family with a teenager girl obsessed by appearance and social affirmation, and a young adult boy who falls for conspiracy theories.

Ok, I must admit that after 30 minutes I was going to turn it off. Too fucking emotional and not concrete enough. No new perspectives, all stuff I already heard in several variations.

I should have expected that. This documentary is targeting people who don’t spend the insane amount of hours I spend in search of high quality inputs.

But then it changes pace, and even the fictional story becomes a terrifying dystopia that kept me glued to the screen.

Modern technology is bad for you.

It’s not about you and me. We’re – probably – well equipped against attention fragmentation, opinion manipulation, polarization, echo chambers, 24/7 monitoring… oh my god, no, we’re not equipped at all!

Anyway, it’s not about you and me, dear GenX or even Millennial friend. I have high defenses: I hate “recommendations” and I’m very intentional with what I follow and read/watch/listen to. I like computers to be predictable machines and not “smart assistant” and recommendation engines.

Who’s in real danger is whoever was born in the last 20 years. Those who grew up in the social age. Who’s going to show them that there are alternatives?

In the final scene, Tristan Harris is asked “do you think we can change this?”.

His answer: “we have to!”

We fucking have to!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZN0pRziHjE

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Italian – r/Italy post “Guida su cosa chiedere e cosa guardare prima di comprare casa” (8.5/10)

Link

The subreddit r/Italy is the best place where to have public and civil discussions among Italians. It’s essentially where the real political discourse is happening. Not on TV, not on the conventional media. Not even on YouTube.

r/Italy It’s a seed of hope in a sinking country. It’s the opposite of La Locura.

This thread is about what you should care about when visiting a flat you are interested in buying.

It’s a fucking perfect list, check it out!

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Andrej Karpathy 2018 talk on Software 2.0 (8.5/10)

Link

Andrej Karpathy is the director of AI and Autopilot Vision at Tesla. Which is more or less the field I’m working on now.

This talk is “amazing”, in the sense that if you are a AI/ML enthusiast, this is the first video you should watch. It shows you how we gave up on algorithms and a good amount of old Software Engineering techniques, and asked the machine to find their own algorithm.

Twitter Link

It’s truly an amazing talk, and I’m happy I found it (thanks to a RIP reader).

But it depressed me – and I’m assumed to be excited by it.

Software 2.0 killed whatever hope was left in me about enjoying being a software engineer.

I’m a hacker, a Software Engineer 1.0, and I’ll proudly sink with my ship.

Complex and always changing tech stacks killed me on one side, AI will kill me on the other side. Maybe literally. Hello Singularity, how’re you doing? if you happen to read this please be gentle with us.

I can’t wait to leave this modern Tech world, which is not something I’m happy to think, given that it’s not even passed a month in my new research role yet 🙁

I’ll eventually end up coding my beloved C++ videogame on my Von Neumann architecture, focusing on being “a God” in my small and insignificant world, instead of feeling lost in stuff that I can’t be passionate about.

I feel like Novecento in “The Legend of 1900”.

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Sloww on The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (8.5/10)

Link

Ok, there is a guy called Naval Ravikant, which is one of the most inspiring (to me) living person on Earth.

Then there’s a guy called Eric Jorgenson, who read, listened to, and watched a lot of Naval’s material, and curated a collection of Naval’s gems into a book titled “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant“.

Then there’s a blogger, Kyle Kowalski, who writes on a blog that I follow, Sloww, that published a deep dive into The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (link above).

Then there’s me, RIP, which is now trying to summarize the summary of the summary of Naval’s Philosophy.

No way, I give up on this!

There’s no way I can compress Sloww’s amazing summary and collection of gems. Progressive Summarization can’t summarize more.

Anyway, I’ve in my Learning TODO List to study Naval in Depth. Finally taking the 3.5 hours – plus pauses and rewinds – to listen to How to Get Rich Without Being Lucky (that Sloww also summarized nicely here), and maybe a lot more material which includes his podcast appearances (Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, Farnam Street…) and various articles and twitter storms.

I might actually buy the Almanack. David Perell recommends it as well.

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The Plain Bagel (Richard Coffin) chat with New Money about Stock Dilution and Stock Buybacks (8/10)

Link

The always superb Richard Coffin explains us what happens when a company emits new shares or buys back its own existing shares. When is it a good strategy? What are the implications on stock price? Why do they do that?

If you’re interested in understanding more about stocks and investing, this is a must.

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Ben Felix on Large Cap Growth Stocks (8/10)

Link

The “other awesome Canadian” also published a new video last week 🙂

This time Ben tells us why you shouldn’t invest in Large Cap Growth, but stick with a total market index. Enjoy!

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ESI Money Millionaire Interview #200 (8/10)

Link

I enjoyed the Millionaire Interview series on ESI Money (not only because I’ve been featured). I think I’ve not skipped a single episodes. Ok, for some of them I just skimmed thru the post, but I clicked on each one. No exceptions. There’s always some piece of wisdom worth the time spent on the website.

The interview #200 was claimed to be “special”. I was waiting for some VIP millionaire and when it came out I was disappointed. The guest is “reader and frequent commenter Apex“. Ok… was that it? ESI is announcing a “special guest star” since weeks, and… it’s a reader of his blog?

But then I started reading the interview. Let’s not talk about the incredible amount of details and analysis that this guy dropped on us. Wow. Let’s focus on his growth and career choice instead.

This guy really implemented Paul Graham’s two-job route perfectly. Go check the interview out.

Apex’s interview was the n-th signal that pushed me to write a new post (in draft phase now) in the Dark FIRE series. I hope to publish it next week.

What triggered me was this passage:

In my Fire Dialogue page, my WIP all encompassing FIRE philosophy page – which is a bit out of sync with my current FIRE/Life philosophy, whose version 2.0 should become a book – I rank E, S, and I differently:

That made me think a lot. I’ve always been saving-focused, the MMM way. But I didn’t get my current wealth level by saving alone. It enabled me to (had I had bad money habits I wouldn’t be here today), but I think… ok, let’s keep this in mind until the post “FIRE is for poor people” gets published, ok? 😉

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Kelly Criterion for optimal betting (8/10)

Link

I had a vague idea of the theory of optimal betting under favorable odds, and this article explained it perfectly.

A must have weapon in the arsenal of a rationalist 🙂

I finally understood why leveraged ETFs won’t beat the non-leveraged equivalents even if there’s underlying expected positive return, like in the market over last century and half.

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Thomas Oppong praising pure Thinking (8/10)

Link

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking

— Martin Heidegger

Attention fragmentation, inability to deep think, necessity to set Thinking Time in your calendar.

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Can I Retire Yet’s review of “Money Saving Family for Next Generation Financial Independence” book (8/10)

Link

It’s a book by Doug Nordman (The military guide) and his daughter. It’s a book about how to teach money to your children. With the loop closed by his daughter’s own point of view of what worked and what not.

The review was so good I bought the book straight away, and I’m reading it (10% thru it). The Kindle price is $5.

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Italian – Roberto Mercadini‘s 2017 video about William James Sidis, the smartest man ever lived (7.5/10)

Link

Very good! I didn’t know about this James Sidis guy, and it made me think a lot.

You might have enormous talent, avoid doing anything stupid and… still not make it.

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Tommaso Gagliardoni’s post about Contact Tracing apps (7.5/10)

Link

Tommaso is an expert in the fields of Cryptography, Quantum computing and Security in general.

This controversial post in his blog shows several good points against the use of Contact Tracing Apps, with focus on SwissCovid and Immuni (the Italian one).

I approached the post with skepticism. How come CT apps are not secure and not privacy ok?

Tommaso demolished all the arguments in defense of the CT Apps (not against CT in general) with scientific evidence. I must admit that I have concerns with at least two of them: untrustability of app stores (which is a bit paranoid in my opinion), and lack of penetration (which can’t be used as an argument for not installing it, in my opinion). But in general I changed my mind on the “100% privacy safe” discourse that accompanied those apps.

Plus, the sociopolitical implications (emphasis mine):

In case you were not paying attention: this is what leads us all to Damnation and down the China model. It is a trick used countless times in history, and I am really puzzled how we are still blind to it: even the dumbest People on Earth will rebel to power if deprived of all freedom at once, but will behave sleepy and peaceful if the same freedom is constantly eroded and slowly stripped away. (RIP Note: Noam Chomsky’s boiled frog principle)

Here’s what happened in China: You might have heard of a smartphone app called WeChat, it is not very popular in the West but it is literally impossible to live in China without it. It is a voice/IM app, news feed, payment system, collaboration platform, all in one. It is heavily controlled by the government, with which it shares private information of every citizen and tracks people all around the clock.

It is literally The Orwellian Nightmare. For this reason, its mandatory adoption has been pushed heavily by regulators: you cannot call a taxi or do groceries without it, you cannot get housing or schooling without it, you are basically a ghost in society.

And when last week I’ve heard from friends that some bars here in Zurich started denying entry to patrons who don’t have SwissCovid installed, I felt a little bit that way. I’m sure it’s somehow illegal (at least here in Switzerland) to deny entrance to a public venue depending on a smartphone app, but people are doing it anyway, on the basis that you cannot protest against such a clearly thoughtful decision, you would be a bad person otherwise.

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David Perell‘s challenge to write 100 posts in 100 days (7.5/10)

Link

I don’t generally like these challenges because having some output becomes more important that its quality. Derek Sivers tried something similar for 30 days and concluded it was not how he wanted to create.

But David’s experiment seems to be more effective, not only for the quality of the posts (The Island and Bridges Strategy, writer’s block, serendipity of note taking, writing can save you time, create a personal podcast – this last one is inspiring me to start a personal podcast, seriously!), mainly for the creative stretching of your brain. It’s like James Altucher 10 ideas a day on steroids!

David is producing an amount of good material that in comparison I’m a lazy asshole!

And just yesterday this How I produce a Podcast long and detailed guide popped up in my feed… food for next WLJ. Plus this Nat & David video about Nat helping David migrating his 12k (!!!) notes from Evernote to Roam. Apparently I won’t have time to get bored 🙂

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Thomas Frank on Habits, quoting Atomic Habits by James Clear (7.5/10)

Link

I think I need to raise Atomic Habits priority in my never ending TODO list. I think the way to improve productivity and overall life satisfaction is to install Awesome Habits.

Nice Thomas Frank video btw. Here are his 3 key takeaways from the book:

• Get 1% Better every day. This has incredible compounding effects.
• Blend habits with identity. If you’re struggling with running, you’re more likely to NOT quit if you picture yourself as a runner. If you’re a runner, it’s normal to experience hard times.
• Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. You don’t have to get all the votes, just the majority (RIP Note: not true if you want to quit eating chocolate or smoking). If you didn’t go to run today, tomorrow you’ll get to cast another vote. Don’t waste it!

The last two points are so powerful! I’m really buying into the narrative of identity.

I used to see myself as a guy with a blog. Now I call myself a writer, a creator, a guy with a mission (not 100% clear to me yet).

I’m a writer, I don’t “want” to write. I have to. That’s what I do. An Apple tree makes apples. You can’t stop that. That’s how I can write many hours per day no matter what. It defines who I am (at the moment).

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Farnam Street on the spiral of silence (7/10)

Link

This reminds me about life at Hooli, and 1984-like terror of saying anything controversial.

A good read on sociological implication of the Overton Window.

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Kurzgesagt and Wait But Why on the size of the Universe (7/10)

Link, Link

I really – really – wanted to give more than 7 to this collaboration. Two of my favorite creators together and… ok, I love space and astrophysics. Five years ago I spent an entire year into space-related rabbit holes. But guys, you’re just regurgitating things which are already out.

Ok, Both Kurzgesagt and WBW published content on the same topic (the largest star in the universe) few days ago, also announcing an App they developed together to visualize fun facts about big and small things in the universe.

I didn’t try the app. It’s not free, but it’s not the $3 price that prevented me to. it’s the… guys, I have incredibly high expectations on whatever you produce!

Anyway, enjoy.

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Jacob Falkovich against Victimhood (7/10)

Link

A nicely written controversial post against victim mentality. According to Jacob, it helps neither the individual nor the group/minority.

I agree of course, but some passages were hard pills to swallow, like those on Palestinians.

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Wendover Production on Covid-19 vaccine distribution challenge (7/10)

Link

Even if/when a vaccine will be available, solving the logistic puzzle won’t be easy.

Does the stock market know about it?

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UC Berkeley CS188 Artificial Intelligence Spring 2013 lectures on YouTube (7/10)

Link

Thanks to Phil Mongoose, a RIP reader, I discovered this series of lectures on AI.

Again, we live in a era we’re not prepared for. We have everything a click away, including PhD worthy material for free, waiting for us to click on. At the same time we have the biggest and most powerful companies ever existed who are fighting for your attention, to serve you ads, to manipulate your opinions (see The Social Dilemma above)

If used properly, this tool called Internet will make you unstoppable. If used poorly, it will make you irrelevant. 95% (my guess) of the population is using it poorly. And nobody is focusing on the meta skills required to survive the digital age. I see an opportunity here.

Anyway, take a look at this Markov Decision Process lecture (9 of 25). I loved it!

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The Compound “what are your thoughts” (7/10)

Link

People are getting out of QQQ and in TQQQ (3x Nasdaq).

There’s also an option bubble.

More people are trading options on stocks than stocks directly.

45% of traders are leveraged.

It’s the caricature of a bubble.

P.S. market went down 10% since the date of this video. Just saying…

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Scott Galloway on the future of Education post Covid (7/10)

Link

He’s essentially predicted that Big Tech will come and destroy colleges. Like Google is trying to do with Career Certificates.

I don’t particularly like Scott’s written voice, I loved more his YouTube voice, but this post and its follow-ups are gold. Go check them out.

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The Plain Bagel (Richard Coffin) video Growth vs Value (7/10)

Link

Nice explanation of Growth vs Value stocks, P/E ratio, P/B ratio and few other indicators by the always-amazing Richard Coffin!

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Big Think video on Personal Finance featuring Vicki Robin and Daniel Kahneman (7/10)

Link

Nothing “exceptional”, but I love to hear Vicki talking. She’s the co-author of Your Money or Your Life, a book that changed my life. Plus Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner, renown behavioral scientist, author of the book Thinking Fast and Slow. Can’t pass on this!

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Brain Pickings quoting Charles Bukowski on Writing (6.5/10)

Link

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don’t do it. if you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it

— Charles Bukowski

This is me these days. I just open a computer and type. When I don’t do that, I have thoughts I need to write it down anyway.

It’s a necessity, and not necessary a satisfying one. Even if I spend 2-3 hours (usually more) per day writing, it’s not enough. it’s never enough. My writing speed can’t keep up with what my brain wants to get out. I suffer the opposite of a writer block. I wrote 9 posts in September so far, plus I’m rewriting the Fire Dialogue page, and updating daily the Ufficio Antisqualo. And I have 4 WIP drafts that sadly needs to wait next month to get finished, because now it’s time to write a 10k (at least) words post “2020 Q3 Update”. And of course, the other ~200 post ideas, 5-6 book ideas, and other projects associated to my blog need to be postponed.

Where can I buy more time? And I just started a new job…

Ok, on September 17th I couldn’t focus on anything else but writing. I spent the whole day writing almost half a book, something like 25k words, an inner dialogue between the several identities who are inhabiting my brain today.

It started as a “where I am“, a kind of regular quarterly emotional checkpoint I write for my own consumption. It’s a feelings-focused brain dump. I usually write how I feel, what’s happening on my life, and what questions are lingering on my mind. And maybe a view from above stoic exercise.

While writing, I realized that several internal “stakeholders” are fighting for this scarce resource called time: the father, the husband, the individual, the employee, the blogger, the creative, the financial planner, and 10 more. I started writing dialogues among them, calling myself as a whole “the system”. It was fun, I didn’t stop. Until late night.

I wrote 4 full chapters more than 25k words in one day. Just for the sake of it. At one point I thought it could be publishable… but then I realized “how egocentric am I? This is just my inner struggle, and it’s very personal. Why the hell should others be interested?” So I decided to not publish it. And not even finish it. I could write 10 more chapters… but I didn’t want to get devoured by “the flow”. I have a family, a job, and a blog. Writing for the sake of writing for 12 hours straight doesn’t seem to be make sense.

Or maybe it’s the only thing that makes sense.

Ok, now I’m going meta-meta-meta. Sorry.

I just wanted to share that… if you have to force yourself to do something, don’t do it. If it doesn’t come natural, if it’s not something your “creative” self would do even though your “financial planner” and “employee” self would scream and complain, don’t do it.

Btw what I experienced on September 17th has a name, and the name is…

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Zuihitsu writing style (6/10)

Link

Discovered thanks to David Perell’s Monday Musings mailing list, this Japanese writing practice is the eastern version of “morning pages”, where you let the pen flow without controlling it.

Awesome 🙂

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Morgan Housel’s a few rules (6/10)

Link

Good stuff, nothing deep enough to get higher ranking on this WLJ though.

Some notable mentions:

• Tell people what they want to hear and you can be wrong indefinitely without penalty.
• Behavior is hard to fix. When people say they’ve learned their lesson they underestimate how much of their previous mistake was caused by emotions that will return when faced with the same circumstances.
• “Logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by the universe,” historian Will Durant says. That’s why forecasting is hard.
• The world is governed by probability, but people think in black and white, right or wrong – did it happen or did it not? – because it’s easier.
• People learn when they’re surprised. Not when they read the right answer, or are told they’re doing it wrong, but when their jaw hits the floor.
• Simple explanations are appealing even when they’re wrong. “It’s complicated” isn’t persuasive even when it’s right.
• Self-interest is the most powerful force in the world. Which can be great, because situations where everyone’s interests align are unstoppable; bad because people’s willingness to benefit themselves at the expense of others is so seductive.
• It is way easier to spot other people’s mistakes than your own. We judge others based solely on their actions, but when judging ourselves we have an internal dialogue that justifies our mistakes and bad decisions.

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Daniel Vassallo twit about the perfect day (6/10)

Link

If you think about it, it’s simply perfect. And easy. But not simple.

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Index Fund Investor on what happens if a broker goes bust (6/10)

Link

Very good actual analysis of a topic I’m getting interested to since IB announced they’re going to move UK accounts to EU.

Where are you IFI?

After you wrote your book you kind of disappeared… We miss your awesome posts!

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Nat Eliason and Nick Maggiulli on Lifestyle Creep (5/10)

Link, Link

I wrote a post in response to Nat’s one. I wrote it 13 days after Nat wrote his. That’s because I discovered Nat’s post too late (didn’t have his blog among my Feedly feeds, how come?).

Nat was very kind to acknowledge my work, admitted his mistakes, and retweeted my post.

The day after I wrote it, Nick Maggiulli (who helped Nat with his original post) wrote his “response” on the same topic, that essentially confirmed my thesis (but in my opinion he is still wrong in believing that there’s a rule). What I’m 5% pissed off is hat Nick thanked Nat and replied to Nat but didn’t mention my work at all. And he published the post the day after mine, I’m not sure he was going to write that post anyway if I hadn’t pointed out Nat’s mistakes.

Nat was kind enough to ask for my opinion about Nick’s post but yeah… still no acknowledgement from Nick. Sad.

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ESI Money’s Millionaire Money Mentors (4/10)

No Link.

Ok that pissed me off quite a bit.

I’ve mentioned I like the Millionaire Interview series on ESI Money even in this WLJ episode.

On September 2nd I received an email from ESI where he told us, millionaires that have been featured in his series, that he was going to launch a new product: Millionaire Money Mentors program, a forum where you can get mentored by millionaires and you pay $50 per month (now discounted to $30).

In that email he asked us if someone wanted to join the project for free. Meaning we won’t have to pay the monthly subscription. Well, not exactly. If I don’t commit to be a mentor, I can only get discounted price ($20 per month).

Wait a minute… you’re charging people $50 per month to get mentored by millionaires and… you tell millionaires (the supposed mentors) that the bonus for being on the other side of mentoring will be… having access to the program for free?

LOL!

Not good.

He announced the project publicly on September 16th.

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Artificial Intelligence dress design (ResNet/10)

Link

Ok, welcome to the fun/nerdy section!

Cool dresses whose color scheme is based on Neural Networks’ execution graphs (Link).

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Gallery of Winners and Finalists for The Comedy Wildlife (ROAR/10)

Link

Funny nature shots to bring attention to wildlife preservation. Also check previous years competitions!

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Captain Sinbad funny videos (GOOOOD/10)

Ok, apparently this guy talks about productivity and whatever. His channel looks really like Thomas Frank’s.

But he did few funny caricature videos of YouTube celebrities like Jocko Willink (Link), Gary Vaynerchuck (Link), Thomas Frank (Link), Jordan Peterson (Link), Tai Lopez (Link) and few more.

I don’t understand why he doesn’t ONLY do such videos. They’re so hilarious! check this GaryVee one, and please, at least the Jocko Willink’s one!

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Others

Here follows a list of other resources I’ve consumed over the last two weeks that didn’t make into the main section 🙂

Richard Sutton‘s 2017 lecture on TD Learning. Link. Ok, this is just for ML enthusiasts (am I?). Sutton is the co-author of the main book on Reinforcement Learning. He’s so passionate about the topic he devoted his entire career, that he deserves your time!

Nick Maggiulli on 9 income producing assets. Link. Meh.

Spencer Cornelia about Uber drivers getting scammed. Link. The dream that sharing economy could have made the world a better place is one of my biggest delusion. R.I.P. idealistic young-RIP-self.

Mark Manson on Cognitive Biases. Link. Nice selection of biases mentioned. I see a connection with This is Water around the end.

Wisecrack video about Archer. Link. Archer is in my “Leisure pipeline” of series to binge.

Tech Lead on Investing. Link. Not a good video about investing (TL sucks at it), but an acceptable one about wealth preservation and the impact of daily market swings on your mood. I felt exactly like he described at 2:41 until 3:45.

Mike Winnet Contrepreneur Bingo with John Crestani. Link. Perfect Contrepreneur! And I also spotted some artificial scarcity, Mike!

Michael Batnick on how much you should have saved for retirement by age. Link. Oh, come on! Thinking having saved 3x your salary by age 40 is impossible? Really? and 10x by age 65? Only 10x??

David Epstein (the author of Range) TED Talk Anti-Specialization. Link. Good stuff, not the first time I heard Roger Federer and Tiger Woods stories, but always exciting to see that you need to explore before exploit.

Coffeezilla exposing Nourtrades, a 20yo scammer that claims to have turned 20k into 2M in2 years. Link. Fun watch. Fake Gurus that are so pathetic are always fun to watch.

The School of Life video on the Arrival Fallacy. Link. One of the fallacies who affect the high achievers. Keep it at bay, please.

Spencer Cornelia videos on Kanye West. Link. Link. A nice deep dive into modern music contracts, and how even successful artists like KW are abused by their majors.

Ben Carlson on T.I.N.A. and why negativity doesn’t work in investing. Link. “You could argue that the investing landscape has never been harder than it is today considering the level of interest rates around the globe.”

ITA – Roberto Mercadini‘s recent interview. Link. Very cool. about Curiosity, Learning and more.

ITA – Marcello Ascani video on Fake Gurus, mentioning RIP again 🙂 . Link. Well done Marcello, well done!

ITA – Giopizzi on the tragedy of Jonestown. Link. I knew about Jonestown, and I saw some aerial pictures. But I didn’t know some of the details Giovanni shared in this very good video.

ITA – Colazione a Wall Street video about last week on the markets. Link. My Antisqualo researches led me to this interesting guy and his very good videos! Not a Squalo (shark), not a Fake Guru.

ITA – Pietro Michelangeli and The Crypto Gateway talk about Bitcoin. Link. A lot of Italy today, thanks to Ufficio Antisqualo. Two non-sharks talking about Bitcoin and cryptos. One of them is a crypto enthusiast, the other not really. Worth your time.

ITA – Rick Du Fer on the War against Meritocracy. Link. Good meritocracy defense, now that it seems it’s under attack even in the most liberal countries.

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That’s all for this week 🙂