Monthly Learning Journal 12 (1/2/2021)

(Disclosure: links marked with an asterisk * are affiliate links)

Hi RIP readers, welcome to the Monthly Learning journal.

It’s been an intense month. Many things happened in RIP household and on the webs, and I’m spending maaaaybe too much time on the internets these days.

I’m trying to make this MLJ short because I’m prepping the 2020 Q4 Update Part 3, which will be the beginning of a new era for RIP 🙂

This Month WLJ themes are: investing, mastery, goals vs systems, thinking, and the anti-FIRE crowd.

Next Episode on Monday March 1st, 2021.

This MLJ is also available in my public Roam Database with expanded notes when available, and extra content 😉

Enjoy!

 

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RIP News

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Since next post will be about 2020 blog review and 2021 blog goals, I’d rather skip this section today.

Ok, just some quick updates:

• RIP Book Cub: I’m almost done with the book Designing Your Life, and I will write a full book notes article probably in February. But maybe I launched a project I don’t have enough time and energy to give it the attention it deserves. Procrastinating another month. If by the end of February I haven’t moved the project forward, maybe it will be time to let it go.
• RIP Coworking: I got several unclear signals of interests, and I feared not finding enough committed people. The three offices in my neighborhood are now gone, and I regret not having acted quickly. Maybe I should have been more brave and go for it alone anyway, but an extra 1k CHF per month (plus one-off setup costs, and recurring utilities and cleaning costs) on top of our high monthly expenses wasn’t something to sign up for lightheartedly.
• RIP Blog: I’m on a writing spree. I’ve published more words on January 2021 than any other month in RIP history. I’ve written more in January 2021 than during the entire year 2017. I’m loving it, but I’m also a bit tired. Writing the post about GameStop Short Squeeze from zero to published in 6 hours has been fun and rewarding!

• Ripsters: I’m happy to see many comments on my posts, it’s a sign that what I write has an impact and it’s considered worthy of your attention… but I find myself being at that inflection point where I can’t keep up replying to each one of you. There are comments that demand an articulated response, sometimes even some research. I’m procrastinating on “a day set apart to reply to all not-replied-yet comments” (~50 of them), but it’s a day I don’t find space for on my calendar. So please, don’t get offended if I don’t reply to you directly. Same with emails, I’m receiving one too many.
• RIP Identity: I’ve spent an amazing full day in Zurich with Marcello Ascani, an Italian Youtuber. We recorded a video (in Italian language) that’s going to be published in a few days. Yep, time to show my face 🙂

Stay tuned 😉

 

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Main Content

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Nat Eliason’s new project: Creator Towns (9.5/10)

The winner for this month is… drum roll… yeah, you already read it in the heading, of course.

Anyway, Creator Towns is the “obvious” idea everyone talks about but nobody acted so far. It’s the idea I’m discussing with whoever I meet. It’s obvious, it’s the future, it’s “there” for anyone to take it, it’s there for us to make the world a better place.

The idea is: why the hell aren’t we – ubiquitous workers – moving to cheap rural areas in critical masses and create intentional communities, or… towns?

Literally everyone I share this idea with gets immediately excited: “when are we moving to the south of Italy, buying a ghost town, and building the new Silicon Valley RIP?”

My original idea, hinted in I Have a Dream (back from 2016), was to center the “Tecno-village” around software engineer, better if already FI or close to FI.

Can you imagine what could happen if 20+ smart people with money, time, and skills take over an abandoned town? I’d bet within months something great will come out, and journalists would siege the town!

Well, Nat wants to act. He made the move. He’s doing it. His idea is oriented toward creators, not only software engineers or digital nomads (amazing idea!), and I guess it will be business oriented. Not a bunch of people buying land and building houses, but a business entity building things and offering services, like renting a spot, selling an experience… smart! I’m a bit more idealistic, but I’m all in with this idea as well.

Nat announced the project on Twitter, and followed up with a new website:

Twitter Link

Nat is a doer. He announced this is his main project for the next few years.

He will deliver 😉

Good luck Nat, I’m with you!

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Paul Graham about How to Think for Yourself (9/10)

I’m a simple person, when Paul Graham publishes a new essay I devour it within seconds.

This one is a kind of manifesto for independence of thought. An amazingly written one.

Can you make yourself more independent-minded? I think so. One of the most effective techniques is one practiced unintentionally by most nerds: simply to be less aware what conventional beliefs are.

That’s a good start 🙂

How to do it?

1) Surround yourself with other independent-minded people

If you’re surrounded by conventional-minded people, it will constrain which ideas you can express, and that in turn will constrain which ideas you have. But if you surround yourself with independent-minded people, you’ll have the opposite experience: hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to, and to think of more.

2) Skepticism

You can also take more explicit measures to prevent yourself from automatically adopting conventional opinions. The most general is to cultivate an attitude of skepticism.

You know that some accepted ideas will later turn out to be wrong. See if you can guess which.

More generally your goal should be not to let anything into your head unexamined.

unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely to lead somewhere interesting. The best place to find undiscovered ideas is where no one else is looking.

What are the traits of an independent-minded people?

Three components: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity.

1) There’s not Truth, just degree of belief (Bayesian/Probabilistic thinking):

willing to have anything in their heads, from highly speculative hypotheses to (apparent) tautologies, but on subjects they care about, everything has to be labelled with a carefully considered degree of belief.

2) Don’t tell me what to think:

The independent-minded thus have a horror of ideologies, which require one to accept a whole collection of beliefs at once, and to treat them as articles of faith.

3) Let me wonder (and wander):

there is a definite correlation between having a sense of humor and being independent-minded — just as there is between being humorless and being conventional-minded.

Everyone I know who’s independent-minded is deeply curious, and everyone I know who’s conventional-minded isn’t

Positive feedback loop:

The three components of independent-mindedness work in concert: fastidiousness about truth and resistance to being told what to think leave space in your brain, and curiosity finds new ideas to fill it.

Enjoy!

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Mad Fientist about Goals, Habits, and Mastery (9/10)

With MMM rapidly declining, the disappearance of ERE and LivingaFI, and the general quality degradation of old FI blogs, Mad Fientist stands as one of the best long lasting FIRE blog of all time.

This Mad Fientist’s post is about pursuing Mastery instead of goals. It’s philosophical, practical, personal, inspirational. It touches a lot of my “cords”. MF follows the Mastery / Deep Work school (he interviews Cal Newport and Scott Young recently). He was able to launch his first music album few days ago, something he’s been procrastinating for years until he decided to switch mindset.

Sadly he’s blogging way less, and this shows up in his numbers.

Anyway, please take a look at this post if you’re struggling with procrastination, habit formation, focusing, setting goals and more.

I extracted a lot of highlights and notes in Roam.

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Cortex Podcast about 2021 Yearly Themes (8.5/10)

Amazing episode! It’s long (2h40) but very rich.

Grey and Myke review their 2020 themes: Clarity for Grey, while Myke had a theme change during the year, from the year of Refinement to the year of Shift.

Then Grey introduced his new theme: Voyage, with subtheme Clearing Decks (can be considered Decluttering, or “via negativa”, or simplification… which could be my own theme!), and Myke: Reinvention.

Maybe you want to also watch CGP Grey short Yearly Theme video to get some context (8/10).

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Michael Stevens (VSauce) about Illusions of Time (8.5/10)

Michael is back!

VSauce is probably THE best YouTube channel of all times!

He didn’t produce much in the recent 2-3 years, but I think I watched each one of his videos several times over waiting for this moment! It’s an educational/inspirational channel, that will trigger your curiosity in ways that no other kind of exposure would. Like the good old WaitButWhy, which is also a bit dead now…

A couple of weeks before this one, Michael announced he was working on “Time” related content.

Hype level: over9000.

In this video he explored several paradoxes around the perception (and illusions) of time.

The punch in the face arrived at 23:40, where he kind of explained my current anxiety… and the K.O. came few minutes later, at 27:31, with the Short-Short, or TV Paradox.

Enjoy!

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Venkatesh Rao about how Immortality Begins at 40 (8.5/10)

Society is built for people under the age of 40. At 40 you become a meaning-maker for others.

You begin to experience immortality the first time you recognize the transience of experiences you thought were permanent, and more subtly, the permanence of experiences you hoped were transient.

Welcome into Midlife/Existential crisis full mode 🙂

Extracted some notes and highlights in Roam.

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The Knowledge Project Podcast with Hugh Howey (8/10)

The Knowledge Project is the Farnam Street podcast, hosted by Shane Parrish.

Hugh Howey is the author of ~20 books, including one of my favorite dystopian Sci-Fi (favorite genre) trilogy of all time: Wool(IT*,EN*), Shift(IT*,EN*), and Dust(IT*,EN*), also know as The Silo Trilogy.

This podcast is about traveling, cultures around the world, a borderless world, speculating about the future, writing, and self publishing. I enjoyed every bit of it.

Enjoy!

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CGP Grey Spaceship You (8/10)

How to keep functioning and being productive during Lockdown is your main challenge now.

You’re on a mission alone, your goal is to return better than you left.

Mental and Physical health is the core of spaceship you. If energy is low, start from physical. The brain “can’t think itself better”, while working out is easier and non-optional.

Define 4 stations within spaceship you:

• Physical: a place where to do physical exercise. You want to spend here at least T1 time.
• Sleep: just for sleeping. Protect, even sanctify it. Don’t browse there. Don’t eat there. It’s just for sleep. You want to spend here almost exactly T2 time.
• Couch: to relax, to consume The Stream, but it’s not a great achievement to finish streaming all the content you want to consume… But this recreation station can be recharging if used properly. You want to spend here at most T3 time.
• Creation: thru work, you create value, thru study, you create knowledge, thru practice, you create skills. Keep the station hygienic. When you’re here, you create. Like Sleep station. Come here only to create, not to consume.

Enjoy!

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The Plain Bagel about Investment FOMO (8/10)

A great video about regret, regret aversion, crowd behavior, and more.

Very timely.

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James Jani about the Law of Attraction and The Secret (8/10)

This is very good!

James mentioned Napoleon Hill, several cognitive biases, the concept of falsifiability, the cult-like attitude of this crowd, and the fake science around the cult.

The documentary quality is very high, both from the production and the content side.

James Jani, note down this name. This guy will explode in the next 2-3 years!

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Aella tweetstorm about Libertarianism (7.5/10)

Aella is an ex cam girl, a rationalist, a fine writer, a person with high IQ.

Here’s her Cam Girls Guide (8/10). Even if you’re not interested in the topic, please read the guide!

It’s a psychological deep dive on both sides of the participants in those games. And a great lesson in marketing 😉

About the tweetstorm on Libertarianism: I liked the “philosophy of strength and responsibility” bits. I also liked the accent on entitlement (its opposite, actually), and not on money.

Libertarians hardly ask for help, and that’s probably what correlates with higher salaries (better positioned in the risk/reward graph).

Twitter Link

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Patrick O’Shaughnessy about Growth without Goals (7.5/10)

Goals are bad.

Habits, Growth, Mastery, Systems are good.

Inventing the future is another way of saying “setting goals.” Success, especially in the West, then becomes about achieving those goals. We accumulate accomplishments and call it success. Success means something very different to me, and I think being a great father will be about effectively communicating this different definition of success to my kids. Success is about building a set of daily practices, it is about growth without goals. Continuous, habitual practice(s) trumps achievement-based success.

Accomplishments are traps.

I think “accomplishments” are traps. Accomplishments, by their very definition, exist only in the past or future—which are not even real things. Pride is the worst of the seven sins and it is closely related to past and future accomplishments.

Exploration is good.

Now I just want to explore. That may mean blog posts, research papers, new investing strategies, letters, podcasts, long periods of nothing, or maybe another book. Who knows? Exploration is continuous, there is no end point. Focusing on exploration is very rewarding all the time. It may produce things that look like end points, like achievements, but those things are just byproducts.

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The Plain Bagel about Tesla Stock (7.5/10)

I know, Tesla and Bitcoins are boomer assets nowadays… but please listen to Richard. Even if it seems valuations and Fundamental Analysis don’t matter anymore – and every stock is now a Digital Asset / Digital Collectible – this euphoria will be eventually over, and asset prices will have to be linked to underlying values.

Tesla – to name one that “seems” a bit off the charts – will have to keep up borderline crazy expectations for the next 10-20 years to just be fairly priced at today price.

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OpenAI CLIP and DALL-E (7.5/10)

I’m still a Machine Learning Research Engineer (not for long, I guess), so I have to be exposed to cool stuff in AI/ML.

OpenAI is connecting text and Images, and generating images from text.

This seems promising.

Now please, take a seat in a ML-generated “armchair in the shape of an avocado”, and watch the “baby daikon radish in a tutu walking a dog”.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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The Decision Lab about Regret Aversion (7.5/10)

The Decision Lab is my new favorite behavioral science website. Very factual and scientific, without being too scientific.

Regret Aversion is the cognitive bias that makes Regret Minimization Framework sound.

FOMO is listed as an example of Regret Aversion. Interesting. Never thought about it that way.

Also take a look at their articles on Pessimism Bias, and more.

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Morgan Housel about Writing (7/10)

Most good writing is a byproduct of good reading. You’ll never meet a good writer who doesn’t spend most of their time reading.

Good ideas can’t be scheduled. They come randomly, usually after you read something that connects the dots to an unrelated thing. A lot of bad writing comes from scheduled writing.

No one wants a lecture. Everyone wants a story, which is anything that subtly puts data into relatable terms. It makes everything easier to remember and contextualize.

I disagree with last one though.

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Nat Eliason about Personal Leverage (7/10)

Nice article on how to scale a personal business. “Personal Leverage is a measure of your ability to extend your productivity beyond yourself. Here are two ways you can increase your personal leverage”

Extracted some notes in Roam.

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r/fi thread about the Qualitative aspects of FIRE (7/10)

FIRE won’t change who you are.

Focusing too much on it while neglecting the qualitative aspects of your retirement (meaning, happiness, purpose) is a path to failure and loneliness.

I totally agree.

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Coffeezilla about Napoleon Hill (7/10)

The author of “Think and Grow Rich” was probably the father of all Fake Guru!

Awesome!

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David Perell on One Big Idea (6.5/10)

We live in the age of Performative Reading. Consuming as many books as possible has become a competitive sport for knowledge workers who want to show off their intellectual curiosity. This modern reading habit stems from a deep-rooted cultural insecurity. We no longer believe that one idea can be transformative.

We follow a binge-watching, TED-Talks-before-bed strategy where we hop from epiphany to epiphany without investigating any of the ideas. Our obsession with learning has descended into an obsession with consumption.

You’re so right!

Charlie Munger once said: “Take a simple idea and take it seriously.” Many of the most successful people I’ve studied have found their edge by putting their faith in one big idea. They’ve committed to the idea, and studied it so much that its implications have become second nature.

TIL: Rich Barton is the founder of Expedia, Zillow, and Glassdoor. “Bringing power to the people” is his motto.

Everybody has a worldview, a unique way of looking at the world. There is no such thing as pure objectivity.

“In the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” – David Foster Wallace, This is Water

If we are destined to follow the compass of our worldview, we should design it deliberately.

David is still searching his One Big Idea, but it will be around “people systematically under-estimate the scale and interconnectedness of the Internet“.

What’s yours?

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Will Marshall’s TED Talk about Satellite Imagery and Machine Learning (6/10)

I physically met Will on a flight from Zurich to San Francisco, exactly 6 years ago.

I was reading The Black Hole War by Leonard Susskind. Before FIRE, I had a crush on astrophysics that lasted ~5 years. Will was sitting next to me. He saw what I was reading and told me “that’s great book!“, out of the blue.

“Yeah, it’s really great! Are you into space?”

His face turned into a giant smile, I knew it was going to be a great flight.

We talked for something like 8 hours about space, black holes, astrophysics… He was a former NASA scientist, his PhD advisor was Roger Penrose, and he’s now the CEO and founder of planet.com.

I late discovered that he spoke at a TED conference in 2014.

Few days ago, my Roam “On This Day” script resurfaced this amazing 2015 flight experience. I then googled for Will and found he was on stage again in 2018, with another short TED Talk. He now works on satellite data, imageries, and machine learning.

Sadly in this second TED (in 2018) he said that the main product was free for personal use but I can’t find it on their website…

Enjoy.

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r/FI about FIRE bringing more stress than joy (5.5/10)

Here we start a mini saga of “complaints against FIRE”.

Maybe we – bloggers – made mistakes in popularizing FIRE as the be-all and end-all of life.

And that FIRE is a math problem.

And that Frugality must be extreme.

We made mistakes, but I can see people are not getting it right.

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Mad Money Monster about why we ditched the FIRE Movement (5/10)

Article by a former FIRE seeker who’s now complaining about extreme frugality, and the unhappiness associated to it.

This is trending, this is one of the main theme of this MLJ.

Our extremely frugal lifestyle took shape by cutting out almost everything we ever enjoyed.

We cut our cable, slashed our mobile data plan, halted our habit of going out for dinner, and even put an end to our Sunday coffee dates. You name it, we cut it. But hey, we were going to retire early so we didn’t mind making necessary sacrifices to reach the FIRE finish line.

But then something unexpected happened. As we watched our net worth climb higher and higher, we realized that our happiness level seemed to be in free fall.

Not only were we not as happy as we used to be but I suddenly started to dread going into the office and sitting under those fluorescent lights – something that never bothered me before.

Again, if you cut your expenses too much and get obsessed by reaching FI you’ll suffer. We’ve all been there, to some extent.

Yes, you should cut your expenses, even pushing a bit your comfort zone and feel the pain – exactly like working out!

if you’re fat, out of shape, never trained… you need to feel the pain. It’s good for you.

Once you’re in a good shape, and work out regularly, it won’t hurt anymore. You will actually crave for that feeling if you miss a work out!

That’s how you should feel about your spending.

You don’t need to train for a marathon (though someone might want to go there), but I think your life will be much better if you have a workout routine, and you look forward to your next training session and its accompanying pain.

But no more than that.

If it makes your life miserable, then you’re working out too much. If you get obsessed by it, you’re working out too much. If you won’t eat a pizza anymore in your life even though you love it, you’re sacrificing too much.

Don’t fall into the False Dichotomy fallacy, please.

Extracted more notes and highlights in Roam.

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Chris Mamula on Early Retirement is the Wrong Goal (5/10)

Yet another FIRE critique… let’s analyze it step by step:

FIRE means instead of keeping up with the Joneses, you’ll start comparing yourself to other FIRE seeker on your saving rate or on how early you can retire.

I’ve never experienced it, and I guess it’s a minor problem anyway.

Maybe it can affect young people, those who don’t even want to put in the expected 15-20 years of hard work.

Another challenge was becoming overly focused on early retirement as a nirvana. I felt the need to retire early. Then I could be happy

If you only care about retiring from something you won’t be happy. You need to retire to something.

And it’s ok not to know “what to retire to” in advance, especially if you’re burnt out. But it’s important to know that the eventual “detox” phase is just a phase, and you need to do something meaningful. If you’re a naturally curious person, with a tendency to do things it won’t be an issue.

What I and others have discovered is that early retirement is often the wrong goal. Instead, we need to start with a completely different construct. Rather than focusing on the future goal of retirement, we should focus on financial independence.

You know my philosophy of FIRE Spectrum, right?

Any false dichotomy argument makes me frown.

Rather than waiting until becoming fully financially independent, when your assets will support your spending indefinitely, you can progressively exercise your increased freedom to live a better life.

Maybe you want to have a stay-at-home parent. Or have both parents cut back work when the kids are young.

Instead of waiting until full retirement, you can start fitting in work around your life while you are in a position to enjoy it rather than trying to squeeze in life around work while delaying gratification until retirement.

Exactly, FIRE Spectrum 😉

Extracted more notes and highlights in Roam.

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Italian – r/ItaliaPersonalFinance thread about the impossibility of FIRE in Italy (5/10)

People don’t get it.

This mini rabbit hole in “complaints against FIRE” demands a full post, but I hate to have to do it. It’s not fun to state the obvious.

Financial Independence is not a black/white game. It’s a Spectrum.

Plus, you can’t reach FI. Because there’s no FI. Because there’s no real Freedom.

You can improve your situation though. Conquer partial freedom. Quasi-total freedom. Reach a point where confidence in your skills closes the gap.

And btw, a successful entrepreneur will be able to reach “full FI” (whatever that means) anyway.

Of course it’s harder for employees, with shitty Italian salaries, but it’s still possible.

The math presented in the thread is full of errors and wrong assumptions, and I don’t have the energy to go there and state the obvious.

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Dennis Friedman’s Humble Dollar article Too Thrifty? (4/10)

This article has been recommended to me by Mr. VCF (Very Close Friend, yes, the same guy who is losing 20-14 in our Terraforming Mars challenge).

There’s an anti-frugality trend these days. I see a wave: “FIRE is impossible, too much sacrifice. So I spend all my money now, frugality is painful“.

This article is mostly nonsense: of course you can “save too much” and regret it, but this guy tells us a story of extreme, uncomfortable frugality (crappy cars, crappy flats) with a high salary, just because he “wanted to save more”.  And now he has more money than he can ever spend…

Well, am I the only one who sees the nonsense?

• Of course if it consistently hurts, then you’re saving too much! But that doesn’t mean saving is bad. It has to hurt a little at the beginning, like a new dietary regime or a new workout routine.
• And of course if you do it for too long, being uncomfortable for so long, it is wrong. The author seems to have been saving too much for at least 35 years!
• Plus, I don’t see dying with 5M in the bank a big deal. I can leave a nice inheritance to my children, and maybe fund few charities or a foundation. If you only save for selfish reasons there’s no way you’re going to die spending your last dollar, unless you’re planning to kill yourself! You gotta accept “longevity risk” 😀

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r/FI story of a 27yo retired burned out Software Engineer (4/10)

There are so many thoughts I’d like to add to this story, but I wouldn’t know where to start.

From understanding and empathizing about how consuming the SWE job is, to complaining a bit that “c’mon bro, One More Year and you’d be set for life – for real… because you know your 100% investment in stocks is A BIT overexposed to a bad sequence of returns in this bubble markets, right?”.

Let alone “being retired at 27” which is of course a bug in the entire system…

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Italian – Francesco Lancia and Federico Guerri about Johann Trollmann (R.I.P./10)

Johann Trollmann was a German Boxer with gipsy roots who died in concentration camps during WWII.

A sad story.

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r/dataisbeautiful about Cell Phone Market (5G/10)

Time to invest in Nokia and Blackberry stocks! YOLO!

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DeepFuckingValue has a name: Keith Gill (GME/10)

I assume that you know about the GME GANG, GameStop Short Squeeze, and WallStreetBets, right?

Here’s the face of Diamond Hands 🙂

 

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Other Content

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

Chris Dixon about Climbing the Wrong Hill. 2009 article about not getting stuck in a local maxima! Don’t commit too much before having explored.

Nat Eliason against being a Full Time Creator. This speaks to me a lot: “The most interesting writers and thought leaders to me are the ones who are out doing something, and then use what they’re working on to influence their writing and other media“. Paul Graham can say whatever he likes because he’s not a full time creator. “When you primarily make money from your following, you are no longer as free to say whatever you want or create whatever you want to create“. So true.

Sam Harris‘s Making Sense Podcast episode: A Few Thoughts for a New Year. It’s about extremism, the low quality of politics these days, and the need for a more constructive dialogue. Plus few words on capitalism and wealth inequality. I really liked it!

Michael Batnick about why you shouldn’t wait for a market crash. Buy and hold is the only strategy that works. I must admit that this is seriously convincing.

J.D. Roth (Get Rich Slowly) about His Financial Situation. He’s poor. His NW of $1.37M is mostly in his house (430k), and retirement accounts. Only 190k in his taxable account. He’s kind of broke. Unexpected.

Coffeezilla long interview with The Plain Bagel. I expected higher content quality from a 1h15 video with two of my favorite Youtubers.

Italian – Wesa about influencers, trust, conflict of interests, and affiliate marketing. Very good. Brands are controlling their reviews via providing special access to products to influencers, and via agreements (sponsorships) with them about positive reviews. In Italy the cult-like following of influencers and the lack of desire for critical thinking make the environment fertile for this kind of problems.

Veritasium about Asteroids and potential threats for Human Extinction. Well made, a bit scary.

Domains Of Science video about The Map of Doom. Connected with the previous one, it’s a classification of disasters by likelihood and fatalities. Awesome! And Scary.

MyPersonalFinance about Tax Optimization for ETFs. Definitive guide on income taxes on dividends for Swiss.

Mad Fientist Podcast episode with Jacob Lund Fisker (ERE*). I had incredible expectations for this podcast episode… but a poor audio quality on Jacob side made the listening annoying. I’m waiting for the transcript. Audio quality is EVERYTHING in podcasting.

Italian – r/FireIT, the new subreddit for FIRE in Italy. Just a shut-out to this new sub 🙂

r/QAnonCasualties, a subreddit about people getting mad about the QAnon bullshit. Take a look at this sad story: a family was broken, and violence has ben committed in the name of this shitty, stupid conspiracy.

The Plain Bagel about Bitcoin. I wanted to write a post about Bitcoin, but I don’t have much to add to what Richard said here.

Coffeezilla about Earth2.0. A kind of Ready Player One videogame idea. This is the explosion of digital intangible assets, collectibles… I’m getting too old.

 

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Leisure Corner

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We need mental challenges, but we also need Leisure time 🙂

Italian – Ciao 2020

Simply. Awesome.

A 1 hour Russian TV show in Italian language, Live on air on Last Year Evening!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYgu75EwuPo

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Italian – Sanpa

The story of the most famous rehab community in Italy, and its “king” Vincenzo Muccioli.

Philosophically challenging.

Psychologically touching.

P.S. it’s also available in English 😉

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Italian – Liberi Tutti

If you loved Boris, you’ll love Liberi Tutti. Most of the cast, a nice story, part of it filmed in my neighborhood in Rome.

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The Undoing

I and Mrs. RIP binge watched this mini-series (6 episodes of 1h each) in 2 evenings.

What a story! What a cast! Amazing acting quality, amazing storyline… It will grab your eyeballs from the balls. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant over the top!

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That’s all for this month 🙂