Memes

It has now been two weeks.

I’ve moved to the roof. Using this mason jar ($17) to collect rainwater (hasn’t rained in ten days).

@v came yesterday, but when i tried to signal to him in the parking lot he pretended he didn’t see me. 

Not leaving until I have an offer in hand.

Life update:

Excited to be building something new with @jj

Our product portfolio is growing

🗽based; 

building skeet.build 🟠;
building @buoy 🛟; 
building check.supply;

Life update:

Excited to be building something new with @jj

Our product portfolio is growing 

https://skeet.build/

when funding new wallets, having to distinguish between L1 ETH and Base ETH is totally unacceptable UX. 

let’s get this abstraction pattern over and done with.

rish

In 2022, 692,334 new EU-made cars were exported to the US, worth €36bn ($37bn; £30bn). While only 116,207 new US-made cars went in the opposite direction, for €5.2bn.

He starts unwinding the catch and opens the window. "It's not that hard," he says with a smile as he climbs up and out. "It's not hard at all."

File storage "persistence" is not that big of a deal yet all of the file storage protocols solve for it. 

And by not that big of a deal, it's way down on the list of issues we think about at Pinata. 

It's easy to solve for with non-incentivized means. Proof of storage introduces massive technical and incentive overheads when there are much easier ways to solve the problem.

1/ I have a nuanced take on tariffs, as someone who actually imports/exports and has manufacturers in the U.S. and Canada for /humankind.

Originally when Trump was elected a lot of my manufacturing friends thought that he would get rid of the “de minimis” (which the media is referring to a loophole or subsidy). The de minimis rule outlined in the USMCA dictates that goods imported under $800 are not subject to tariffs. That means that Americans buying almost anywhere outside of the U.S. for goods under $800 are not subject to paying state taxes, because they’re paying for goods (incl. tax) to other countries. This gave a lot of room for Chinese manufacturers like SHEIN and Temu to dominate the market for fast fashion and home goods. 

However, me and my friends thought that he would get rid of the de minimis for *just China. It is unusual that he started with Canada and Mexico.

candid POV on US/Canada tariffs from a (great) founder of a consumer packaged goods company that imports/exports. recommended read.

Podcasts

Dialectic with Jackson Dahl

Chris Paik is an investor and co-founder of Pace Capital.

Chris is all about intentionality and discovery.

He combines rigorous frameworks about incentives, people, and markets with an insatiable appetite for the new. He is a true original thinker.

We discuss his intentionality, approach to explanations, how culture follows a pendulum, the efficient market hypothesis and other frameworks for evaluating businesses and markets—including his newest on top-down vs. bottom-up companies, how he finds new stuff, the pros and cons of the internet and capitalism, Pace Capital’s values, and the inner-workings of Chris’s unusual mind.

Episode 6 is out now on all platforms, more links below: 

https://pods.media/dialectic/6-chris-paik-intentionally-in-search-of-the-new?referrer=0x9b902482E62Db8FC486C3f1acAA568006021DbEC

Chris Paik on incentives, capital, systems, and power:

"The world has two sides: a for-profit world and a non-profit world. There are entities that are trying to drive profits, and there are entities that are not trying to drive profits (governments, religions).

For-profit companies are really good at pushing the world to the way that it will be. They are very bad at being paternalistic. They’ll give people exactly what they want.

The non-profit side is really good at pushing the world into how it should be. It’s really good at being paternalistic. We as individual actors depend on the systems to imbue society with paternalism."

It is a remarkable achievement for the 18-year-old, who said his English was "not so good" before arriving in the UK.

politics

dropglobalnews

May be a controversial opinion but if the Democratic Party has any hope of returning to relevance they need to put identity politics aside and focus on building solidarity for opposition to oligarchy that unites Americans of different backgrounds. I do not trust a handful of very rich people with avowed Social Darwinist views to act in the collective self-interest. But there is no meaningful opposition party presently visible and the Democrats seem as rudderless as the Republicans seem committed.

Not true 

They just need to focus on populist worker positions, its hard to counter the dnc saying we need to fight for better "insert identity here" conditions in the work place, or for medical care, when the avg Americans work rights or medical care rights are so fucked

We do need to abandon "identity politics "  but embrace a populist message that ensures all workers will get work rights or medical rights

Interesting factoid: The Seljuk Turkification of Anatolia in the 11th century was by like ~500k actual Turks from Central Asia converting ~12m Greek or Armenian speak Christians. Mostly peacefully it appears. Rumi and early Sufis had a lot to do with it, as did abandonment by a distant bureaucratic Orthodox Church in Constantinople that had long stopped serving any spiritual needs. It was a meaning crisis.

Also the Turks succeeded where the Arabs had given up because the grasslands were cold like the steppes and made for good pastures, unlike the agricultural land of Mesopotamia. They turned farmland into pastures. Agriculture only returned to Anatolia in modern times.

Fascinating.

Coop

Shopping in Japan seriously the best in the world.

2025 wardrobe secured ✅

AI researcher with a focus on AIGC, data analytics, and intelligent algorithms.

Ira Gard(i)ner

@iragardner