Dec - Feb ‘23

Hello my lovely friend,

You’re getting this quarterly email bc I love you and it’d be a pity if we fell out of touch.

I hope your day, week, month, and year are off to a good start :)

Where I’ve been:

Nashville for 3 weeks
Portland for 3 weeks
Utah for just under 2 months

Where I’m going (come visit!):

Ithaca and Brooklyn, NY (March 4-24)
Park City, Utah (March 24-April 2)
San Francisco, CA (April 2 - May 6th)
Then maybe Austin TX? Still feelin it out.

Going to make a trip into S America one of these months (probably May).

Of recent:

I want to live from my roots, shedding the simply respectable or fashionable. I desire a life *lived*, in the deepest sense of the word. One of authenticity and courage.
A life where outrageous things are done in the name of beauty and honesty.
I do not find the modern, passive-ironic attitude cool or romantic. It’s pathetic and destructive.
The metaphor of the conductor strikes me; back to the crowds, letting air to the tonal richness of existence; passionately curating the fore, mid, and backgrounds; letting oneself be lost and easily enchanted.
To play the personalities as one plays an orchestra.

Lately I’ve lost my grip on *what* to think, reality muddied (or clarified?) by a cosmos of datapoints.

*How* to think has become a mainstay of my muse.
The ability to procedurally generate ordered, rational, timely, and convincing thought is no small skill.
It’s clear I must not only be a student of chaos, I must become a producer of order - easier said than done.

I’ve begun sharing my thoughts less (verbally at least). Distributing thoughts out to a group tempts me to shove nascent ideas into declarative molds, damaging clear thinking & any idea’s evolution.

While my communication skills have taken a hit, I see clearer.
Put another way: deep thinking is rare when I’m in broadcast mode, so I turned it off.
These days my words are scrambled and my questions profuse.
*Sketch is by Saul Steinberg.*

AI had it’s iPhone moment with ChatGPT & the world will never be the same. Fastest product to reach 100M users.

AI will be more transformational than mobile & the internet combined. I’ve been saying this since 2019, but it’s materializing now and I feel less crazy than I thought I was.
Stay on your toes. AI won’t take your job, but a human using AI might.
AI and LLMs have made me believe that consciousness is an emergent phenomena of matter, but last week my mind was completely eviscerated by the math supporting matter being emergent of consciousness.
If the mind collapses the wave-function - dear lord it’d change everything!

I’ve been enjoying the indie movie scene in various cities, what a brilliant medium! Feels like I’ve lived another full year of life through film.
Sundance Film Festival had Q&As with the directors and cast after each film was premiered. Immersing myself in an art piece then hearing the heart of the artist immediately afterward was transformational. It was like reading the Psalms while deep in the woods.
Emerson said it well - “don’t read the book, read your soul.” Starting with the movements of the film, then working back into my context.

Recent faves:
Feature length: Drift, Aftersun, A Still Small Voice, Magazine Dreams
Short films: anything by Ben Proudfoot - I like A Concerto is a Conversation & The Best Chef in the World

On the career side of things I drove 1M new developers to NVIDIA technology in 2022 with virtually no budget (hard to picture that many people!)

In Dec, I accepted a new role within NVIDIA leading our Data Science campaigns (I have no experience with data science and my peers are all phds 😅). If I don’t have imposter syndrome, I’m not doing something new - happy to be back in the saddle of the unknown.

Goal is to scale this business from $5M ARR to $1B within 1.5 years. I have no idea how, but I will.

Here’s a thesis on why I took the job if you’re interested.

I’ve started a new business with my pal Ben as well. Will have more on that in the next newsletter as we pick up momentum.

Lucky to be doing some fun work with non-profits these days too.

I learned that the right side of my body is anatomically larger than the left side of my body 🤯 which explains all the running injuries. Still trudging toward that marathon goal for the year.

Happy to be running somewhere other than Utah now. Miles on ice in 9 degrees each morning was miserable.

I’m learning to be open with my parents, especially when it’s uncomfortable. It’s existentially important my closest people know the real me.

Had some tectonic shifts in family relationships over the holidays (praise God!). I talk briefly about it in the year in review.

I’m getting more serious about this Network State thing. Catch me doing something out of pocket like building a new country in Indonesia soon.

Especially as AI continues to get smarter -