Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Fungible name, non fungible sentence

Check out the full notes for “Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal and Redemption” by Ben Mezrich

From Bitcoin Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

“Dread Pirate Roberts was the online name Ulbricht had given himself, after the Cary Elwes character in the movie The Princess Bride. In the movie, he’s a mythic character who, it turned out, is actually multiple pirates, the name being handed down from generation to generation.”

Haven’t thought of anything beyond pointing out that NFTs are non-fungible and some of the history of early applications of cryptocurrency involved a site run by someone claiming that he was just the latest iteration of a fungible character.

Though now I realize I have no understanding of the nuance of the word ‘fungible’. I basically think of it as not tradeable or swappable 1 for 1 but I’m guessing there’s more to it than that.

Anyway, a couple other things that came to mind.

  1. Is James Bond the same James Bond across all the movies? It is across movies of the same actor but it’s not clear if it’s across all the movies. (Chuck Klosterman has talked about whether movies exist in movies. Conclusion: some movies yes, some movies no.)
  2. What if Fake Diesel and Fake Razor Ramon worked? When Kevin Nash and Scott Hall went to WCW, the WWF still owned their actual characters so they brought them back out with different wrestlers.

Anyway, Bitcoin Billionaires has been fun to listen to so far. Pairs well with American Kingpin. They’ve given me not much more understanding of the underlying technology (Tor is explained in a paragraph) but they’ve given a good glimpse into characters involved.

Which, of course, is usually what makes things fun.

Reading some crypto books

I want to make this blog the home base for everything I’m making. I got distracted the past few months with some things that weren’t getting distracted by and some things that very much were worth focusing on: a puppy and getting married (just a few days away!)

Currently in New York and have gotten some miles in walking. Still one of my favorite things. Current topic of choice for things to listen to: crypto/blockchain. I definitely feel late to the party, but then I’m reminded of James Clear’s interview with Polina Marinova where he talks about starting his blog in 2012. Blogs had been around for a decade.

It wasn’t early, but it wasn’t too late either.

Blockchain seems like a big shift for the future, so I thought it’d be good to start learning.

So it’s definitely not early (and good for the bazillionaires who were truly early to it) but it’s not too late to learn about something that will be around for a while.

The gateway for me was NBA Top Shot to NFTs to my go-to: audiobooks. Currently listening to Bitcoin Billionaires and The Infinite Machine to understand some of the history and culture of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Will continue to share as I learn. Here, hopefully. If I don’t get distracted by social media.

Drumline, approval from a distance, and playing without reading (PCxCP vol. 7 of 52)

There’s a scene in Drumline where Nick Cannon (is hilarious) is doing late night tryouts. The unofficial signal comes from the current drumline parked off in the distance. If you play the rehearsal piece and they honk their car horn, they’re signaling approval.

This is what writing online can feel like sometimes. You write your thing and send it off into the void and then someone way off gives you their approval.

I’m not saying NOT to do that. I’m just saying not to ONLY do that.

Also in the movie, he’s able to play without reading notes. He just watches other people play and can pick it up quickly.

Watching other people working can be incredibly effective for learning. Exposing yourself to how an expert in your indstry works will teach you things they wouldn’t think to teach. Because they forgot some incredibly valuable nugget is even worth teaching in the first place.

Even if that expert chooses to teach what they know, there’s a bottleneck in how well they’re able to teach. So a lot of knowledge is just locked up but you’d be able to soak it in if you watched them work.

Luckily there’s a growing number of people streaming their work process or otherwise documenting as they build in public.

That said, take the time to read books. Figure out the good ones with principles standing the test of time. Not being able to read music catches up to him eventually, but this line sets him on the right path:

If you don’t have the honor and discipline to learn your craft, then quite frankly you don’t deserve to be here.

Justin Timberlake, Zuck, and making things cleaner (PCxCP vol. 6 of 52)

A lesson from The Social Network: Figure out what the clean version is, but you don’t have to do it immediately

In The Social Network, Justin Timberlake is a Silicon Valley sage and gives some solid advice “Drop the ‘the’…” 

When I first started writing these posts, I had this tagged as “Pop Culture x Productivity”. I threw the “Creative” in there to

  • Make it a little more focused
  • Make it symmetric

PCxP vs. PCxCP

It’s cleaner.

In the end, either would be fine. But it gives me a little joy seeing that symmetry and that’s enough to make it worth it.

Some words matter a lot more than others. “Facebook” really is cleaner than “The Facebook”. I have no insight, but I’m guessing it mattered.

Spending an hour re-arranging a sentence in the middle of a book? Probably doesn’t matter.

MrBeast spends hours thinking of what title a video will have before actually making the video. In his case, every single word in the title really matters.

Spending hours thinking of a video title when you haven’t made or published a single video? The title doesn’t matter as much as actually making the thing.

MrBeast built up expertise to the point that single words  matter.

Zuck was in a situation where single words mattered.

Figure out when individual details matter and when they don’t.

Take the extra effort when they do. Don’t waste a bunch of time when they don’t.

Hobbits and moving slowly to move far (PCxCP vol. 5 of 52)

A lesson from The Lord of the Rings: Go very very far by walking

I remember getting the Extended DVDs of The Lord of the Rings—anyway, in one of the making-of DVD specials, someone points out that Frodo and Sam and always walking left to right. Which was a pretty important distinction, because they walk a whole lot throughout the trilogy.

You’re better off with a walking mindset if you want to create something for the long term.

There are times for sprinting, but Frodo and Sam would have never made it if they tried to sprint the entire way from Hobbiton to Mordor.

You need rest, you need to hide, sometimes you need to fake die.

I’m sprinting on this project right now. All the posts in this series so far have been written on a Saturday afternoon. This is #5 so far. I have some momentum and I want to use it wisely.

But I know I won’t get to post #52 today. Or even #20. I can sense some slow down and I’m going to take that rest soon.

Maybe I’ll do 3 or 4 more tomorrow also, but I won’t keep that pace up. Eventually it’ll slow down to (hopefully) 1 a day. That’s sustainable.

I’ll do 20% with the initial sprint, but the rest will come in that walking pace.

Figure out when you can sprint, it’s useful. But if you have a longer goal, remember that you’ll cover most of the ground by walking.