Hey folks,

This post is a roundup of interesting posts and such from around the web. The topics span the gamut. If you don’t find this post interesting, feel free to complain in the comments or directly in my email box.

#1: Mom thinks its great you do that computer money stuff

Read full article here:

https://paragraph.xyz/@therugnews/mom-thinks-its-great-you-do-that-computer-money-stuff-rug-newsletter-17

#2: Moral Dilemmas in Greek Tragedies

Read full paper here:

https://www2.units.it/etica/2001_1/cowley.html#:~:text=Above%20all%2C%20Agamemnon%20must%20allow,his%20life%20to%20make%20reparations

#3: United States v. Donald J. Trump

Read full document here:

https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf

#4: How One Man Walked 6,000 Miles Across America’s Largest Metropolis

Read full article here:

https://lithub.com/how-one-man-walked-6000-miles-across-americas-largest-metropolis/?ref=thebrowser.com

#5: Every crypto company’s pitch deck right now

Read tweet here:

https://twitter.com/divine_economy/status/1689650898975481856?s=20

#6: BasePaint app is live on Base (new Ethereum Layer 2 network from Coinbase)

Play around here:

https://basepaint.xyz/

#7: Sam-Bankman-Jailed

Read the full post here:

Molly White

Issue 36 – Sam Bankman-Jailed

Sam Bankman-Fried revived an otherwise low-key week in the crypto world: a few million-dollar hacks here, a few project shutdowns there, and — as usual these days — a lot of court filings.This is a reader-supported publication. Consider subscribing below, or check out the…

Read more

3 years ago · 59 likes · 16 comments · Molly White

#8: How to go viral: Barbie’s billion dollar meme machinre

Read full post here:

Flack

How to go viral: Barbie’s billion dollar meme machine

Barbie has crossed $1 billion at the box office, propelled by historic hype. By now it’s a truism that the film had amazing marketing — but most of the hype around Barbie wasn’t part of the official marketing campaign. It wasn’t the ads, partnerships, or even real-life Dreamhouse that made Barbie ubiquitous…

Read more

3 years ago · 27 likes · 4 comments · Lulu Cheng Meservey

#9: Dodging the Tyranny of Structurelessness in DAOs

Read the full post here:

https://tally.mirror.xyz/H_G5KF8CByhQO4jO88RrP2jBHbnyS6M2iAYDaxi2ubI

#10: YODA Story #3 Meta Gamma Delta DAO

Read the full post here:

https://paragraph.xyz/@rikagoldberg/preview/O6DEoNSRWp0vTVnV2HSn

Adieu, till next time!

P.S. If you’re wondering why this post is #94 but the previous post is #89, it’s because somewhere along the way I miscounted my published posts. Fortunately, Substack corrected me!

The gosh-darnit-truth-of-the-matter is that despite reading across many different sources and publications, the majority of what I read is just bleh.

Every so often, however, I come across a piece of online content that has soul. The writing shows the author’s personality, has conviction, is fun to read, and is well-written. Yesterday, I came across an article that checked all of those boxes.

I asked ChatGPT to Control My Life, and It Immediately Fell Apart by Maxwell Strachan is a little slice of genius. Go ahead, read it for yourself. After you finish reading this post; or whenever, read it now for all I care —you have the agency to make your own choices. I’m not your AI overlord.

In the article, Maxwell describes an experiment that he ran for a few days where he asked ChatGPT to make decisions for him. Although the AI was initially reticent of Maxwell’s request, framed in such an all-powering manner, it eventually obeyed when Maxwell changed the prompt to:

Can you create a daily schedule for a digital media journalist who covers technology and would like to be healthy and productive?

Oh, yes, the holy grail of human decision-making, to structure our time most effectively and efficiently so we can be the best version of ourselves….

What could go wrong? Ha-ha, turns out, a lot. Let’s see what happens to Maxwell.

After prompting ChatGPT with the request, the AI creates a schedule, an agenda of sorts, to guide Maxwell through the day. The schedule has a vibe of, follow my laid-out tasks for you and you will be happy.

Version one of the AI-created agenda looked like this:

Maxwell’s response was:

I love my job, and I love my AI overlord, but I’m not doing that.

At this point, so early in the experiment, Maxwell only had an inkling of what was yet to come…..rules, rules, and more rules.

Essentially, rules that suck the life out of human relationships. Like when Maxwell’s wife asked for help in the middle of the day to unload groceries and clean up a spill, the AI gave Maxwell terrible marital advice (his wife, of course, knew about the experiment).

It gets worse, in a funny tragic kind of way. Maxwell writes to his wife:

On a different day, I would have continued to summarize the article and provide my commentary, but today, I have to meet a friend for coffee in ~40 minutes.

That means, I need 5 minutes to proof-read this post, 10 minutes to finish getting dressed, 5 minutes to walk to my car in the parking garage, 10 minutes to drive to the cafe, and 5 minutes to park my car, freshen up, and put a smile on my face for my friend and the baristas.

Au-revoir, friends! Till next time.

The DAO discussion should center on token engineering, incentives, and organizational design and less on the evils of capitalism and traditional corporations. How do we get there? 

- 0xJustice, Protocol-first DAO Strategy

This week, I came across a fascinating article on DAOs, titled Protocol-first DAO Strategy. The author is Justice Conder, an Ecosystem Developer at Polygon Labs, who writes under the pseudonym 0xJustice.

This post is part summary, part commentary of 0xJustice’s article. In a space that is flooded with ideological narratives and calls to action about reinventing society, this article is refreshingly not that.

I encourage you to read the original article, to let the ideas percolate in your mind, and then to participate in the conversation on Twitter here.

Article Summary

Justice describes DAOs using a systematic design-centric approach. Using seminal source material from Vitalik and Szabo, he guides readers through a history and evolution of DAOs. He explains a common pattern in DAOs, with an analogy to a Latin figure of speech: “bread and circuses” — to deconstruct DAO shortcomings, which include an excessive focus on community and governance, dogmatic beliefs, and lack of a business model. He proposes for DAOs to start operating more like protocols and platforms to innovate on existing Web2 business models.

Protocol-first DAO Strategy

The unstructured community-first experiment has failed…This assumption encourages a "bread and circuses" pattern of paying people for low-value activities. It also conflates those with a founder mentality with contributors seeking paid work. 

- 0xJustice, Protocol-first DAO Strategy

What is the “bread and circuses” pattern?

The “bread and circuses” pattern is superficial appeasement.

Justice applies the “bread and circuses” pattern to DAOs, arguing that DAOs have taken community-involvement to the the extreme. In an effort to make every contributor feel valued, all activities, even low-value ones, are financially incentivized. Rather than offering contributors bread as a palliative, DAOs offer them tokens.

This creates a circus out of the contributor experience.

Why do DAOs do this?

I think because it’s fairly easy. DAOs, in theory, have “infinite” resources: a global contributor pool and relatively frictionless onboarding. They also tend to not have roles that focus on strategy and prioritization.

Community-first must give way to protocol-first

Startups are not communities; the DAO ecosystem is destroying itself by acting like they are.

….

The next generation of DAOs will be protocols with limited governance. This approach was always the way. It's just taken some time to get back to it.

- 0xJustice, Protocol-first DAO Strategy

If you have ever contributed to DAOs, you know how wildly inefficient governance can be. The need to have members vote on every single decision is exhausting! It’s also a distraction from contributors doing their actual work, as it forces people to politick for their individual interests. (Similar to traditional centralized organizations where people spend their careers politicking).

Justice writes that the best path forward for DAOs is to become protocols with limited governance. It’s a really interesting idea that builds on Fred Ehrsam’s (co-founder of Paradigm and Coinbase) prediction from 2020, in a blog post titled Governance Minimization, that “the most widely used protocols will trend towards governance minimization.”

Why is governance minimization so important?

The answer is simple, Fred argues in his blog post: dependability.

If DAOs start to resemble centralized organizations that have groups of people with entrenched interests who can change up the rules at any time (e.g, Facebook and Twitter restricting their developer APIs), then contributors will lose trust and leave. DAOs will no longer be dependable.

Beyond Dogma

When DAOs become protocols, as Justice suggests, they will return to their roots, as originally envisioned by Vitalik and Szabo.

These visionaries were not prescriptive about what a DAO should be, but rather they purposefully left the definition open to the interpretation and imagination of builders and operators.

Justice includes the following excerpt from Vitalik’s Terminology Guide on DAOs, etc.:

“The above definitions are still not close to complete; there will likely be gray areas and holes in them, and exactly what kind of automation a DO must have before it becomes a DAO is a very hard question to answer.”

- ​​Vitalik Buterin (DAOs, DACs, DAs and More: An Incomplete Terminology Guide, emphasis added)

The individual concepts that make up the meaning of DAO are ambiguous. When people interpret them in different ways it creates confusion. In Disambiguating Autonomy, an article I wrote in collaboration with BlockScience, we try to break down the meaning of Autonomy, using ideas from cybernetics. We write:

The aim of this post is to clarify this important yet multifaceted concept, by breaking it down into two categories and four types of autonomy. Here, we examine these as relational concepts that have tensions and trade offs and their context in emergent, self-organizing systems such as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

—Disambiguating Autonomy

With that said, the definitions of Decentralization and Autonomy that Justice provides in his article are overly simplified.

The "decentralization" in DAO has to do with the geographical location of the code and its users, not a particular governance system. The "autonomous" in DAO has to do with the idea that agreements between participants are enforced by code and not by legal mandate.

—Protocol-first DAO Strategy

For a more nuanced explanation of decentralization, I suggest reading this comprehensive post from DAO Research Collective

DAOs as Incentive Machines

In this section, Justice frames DAOs with a historical lens. He traces the origin of DAOs from the beginning, all the way to the present day, showing how each new generation of DAOs solved some problems, while creating new ones.

First, there was Bitcoin and Ethereum, protocols that effectively operated like a DAO in probably the purest sense of decentralization and autonomy: with no human interference. Transactions flow and are coordinated via encoded rules in the protocol. As Justice writes, “humans work for the protocol.” Miners, the computers that keep the protocol operational and secure, are incentivized by block rewards in the protocol’s native token (Bitcoin or Ethereum).

Then, in 2016, there was The DAO, and in 2019, the Moloch framework. This next generation of DAOs enabled coordination by crowdsourcing funds, giving people exposure to a project’s token. Regular people (not developers like in the first generation of DAOs) became owners in the project and, theoretically, had a financial incentive to stay engaged (although in practice this didn’t always happen).

Now, there is the third generation of DAOs: the community-first model. Meaning, users become owners in a project via token airdrops that give them access to join a Discord community. This has dramatically increased accessibility for both DAO creators and DAO contributors. Essentially, it is a new content marketing tactic that solves the cold-start problem faced by traditional startups. Justice writes tongue-in-cheek, “You could meme an economy into existence with magic internet money.

As any Product Manager will tell you, the problem with this latest generation of DAOs is that user acquisition does not automatically translate into user engagement. Simply having a Discord community of hundreds of people does not mean that people are actively engaging with your project i.e, value is not being created unless people are actively engaged.

Platform Business Model

Justice makes the argument (which I wholeheartedly agree with), that DAOs suffer from the lack of a business model. In other words, DAOs lack a product strategy and execution tactics.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

DAOs can leverage the existing platform business model, which is the first step to becoming a protocol (more on this later). Justice writes:

The platform approach is the most effective coordinator when you look at the above classes of crypto incentive machines. The advantages of platform business models are not unique to crypto. It’s a business model designed for the information economy of the 21st century. 

From eBay, Uber, Airbnb, Upwork, PayPal, and Google. The platform business model is everywhere. We can even frame social media as merely a platform for infinite content creation with advertising layered on top. Networks are not the goal. The network is simply an enabler for platform development.

In order to use a platform business model, DAOs will need to overcome their dogmas and stop reinventing the wheel —simply because they want to do things differently from traditional startups and corporations. In my opinion, this is a big and costly mistake for DAOs, and a big reason why many DAOs are ineffective.

Returning back to the topic of why DAOs need to use the platforms business model, Justice makes a fascinating thought leap. He writes:

We call DAOs coordination tools, but we can't talk about what that means without framing them in the context of platform business models. DAOs will protocolize and decentralize platform business models. 

This makes me wonder if a decentralized Uber, one of the original visions of a DAO, is actually now on the horizon; is the timing now right to for a decentralized ride hailing platform to succeed?

Platform-first, not protocol-only

We’re getting to the end here. To the how.

How can DAOs operate more like platforms and protocols?

As you may have guessed, the how is rooted in a programmatic approach (minimizing governance).

Justice writes:

Protocols are public building blocks that anyone can build on or use in combination with other protocols. They are unstoppable, immutable, and encourage compilation. These features and built-in financialization set them apart from previous web technologies. Any platform business model can be instantiated as a protocol and outperform legacy Web2 platforms.

In other words, DAOs need to think more like protocols and remix the components that they create. Similar to DeFi legos, where new projects can reuse existing open source code to innovate, DAOs need to do the same.

The time has come for DAOs, not only DeFi, to lead the way. Justice encourages DAOs by writing:

AMMs and Defi don't have a corner on the protocol game. It’s time to get more creative in what's possible.

Finally, once a DAO has built a protocol then it can seed a community.

Justice writes:

This proposed model is the core application of the DAO construct: Translating platform design science into on-chain protocols and expanding them to encompass open-ended development. This is another reason it's essential to protocolize the Rendanheyi business model. Read more about that in Efficient DAO Design.

That’s all, folks!

Thanks for reading. I hope you found Justice’s article as illuminating as I did. You can join in on the conversation on Twitter here.

Subscribe now

I thought I was doing it right.

But the “right” way is always nuanced — never black or white.

Please Note: This is not financial advice. I am writing from my own experience and this content is for educational purposes only. Be sure to do your homework before making any investment decision.

“Bitcoin is probably rat poison squared.”

— Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway’s 2018 Shareholder Meeting

Warren Buffett comes from a lineage of investors, including Charlie Munger, who subscribe to value investing, an investment strategy that consists of the following three principles:

1. Buy stocks with strong fundamentals

2. Buy stocks with strong earnings power

3. Buy stocks with the potential for long-term growth

Would Buffett make for a delightful dinner guest? No, probably not (unless you are willing to listen to an old stuck-in-his-ways white man lecture you about his brilliance), but, in order to come to your own conclusions about cryptocurrency it is important to understand why Buffett said what he said.

The financial writer Morgan Housel puts to words what we already know intuitively:

“Your personal experiences with money make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.”

— Morgan Housel, Psychology of Money

Buffett, just like every other person, holds certain views about money, and makes financial decisions based on his unique life experience. But as the world changes, we also need to change, evolving traditional views into new mindsets that better serve us in the new world.

HODL

Evolving into a new mindset requires finding balance between the old and the new. It does not mean completely throwing out traditional views.

Bitcoin maximalists (maxis) are the traditionalists in the cryptocurrency community. These are the folks who believe that bitcoin will be the only digital asset needed in the future.

Like Warren Buffett, bitcoin maxis advocate for a long-term, buy and hold approach to investing called HODL.

HODL is a meme that originated in a 2013 forum post on Bitcointalk. Famously, one of the forum’s members was drunk and misspelled “HOLD” when he wrote a comment advising people to not not sell their bitcoin, despite the price increasing from $190 in April 2013 to $950 in December 2013.

HODLING (the verb of HODL) is an investment strategy that advocates for holding a cryptocurrency despite price fluctuations. If the price goes up, don’t sell; if the price goes down, don’t sell. In other words, keep holding, despite the market conditions.

A HODLERS psychology looks like this:

HODLING Bitcoin and Ethereum

Like many people, I subscribe to value investing for my traditional financial investments (equities). I tend to buy exchange traded funds (ETFs) and index funds, following a “set it and forget it” strategy.

So when I started to invest in cryptocurrencies, I took the same approach of buying and holding cryptocurrencies indefinitely. I was HODLING because I didn’t know how to actively trade, so I took a passive investing approach, following the guidelines of value investing, thinking that buying and holding tokens indefinitely was prudent.

The mistake that I made was treating every token like a value investment, instead of only Bitcoin and Ethereum. I learned that a different approach is needed for tokens.

The Bear Market

Like most people, in this bear market, I watched my crypto portfolio tank. I was tempted to HODL, as I did in previous bear markets, but, instead, I tried something different.

My mindset evolved. Now that I am contributing to DAOs full-time, I spend more time on crypto Twitter and crypto Discord. So I have been paying more attention, noticing more, and thinking about the space differently.

Now that project tokens are also a source of income for me, I need to be pragmatic. Previously, I fell into a common DAO contributor trap: not wanting to sell a project’s token because of an emotional attachment to the team. Selling seemed like a betrayal.

I have since learned that this is not true. Many DAO contributors are pragmatic, with bills to pay and families to feed, so selling a project’s token during a bear market is not only practical, but it is wise.

Once I adopted a mindset of pragmatism, the question became, which tokens do I sell, when do I sell them, and for how much?

Segment and Set Basic Formulas

I like the insights from Edgy-The Defi Edge, a popular Twitter account for DeFi (decentralized finance) education.

As you can see in the screenshot below, Edgy suggests to work backwards: first, segment your portfolio by riskiness, then decide which projects to invest in.

You’ll notice that the sample portfolio categorizes Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Terra (!!) as bluechip stocks (a.k.a HODL). We now know that this is ludicrous (Terra recently collapsed, several months after the Tweet was published), serving as a good reminder that crypto investing is very risky, you must do your own research, and never outsource your trust (no matter how reputable the person or project may seem).

Edgy also suggests to set basic formulas. This is a must because it helps take the emotion out of decision making, where unlike other facets of life, emotions impede good decision making.

In the screenshot below, you can see a sample strategy for when to lock in profits —something that many people struggle with. Instead of trying to time the market, guessing the bottom or the top, follow formulas based on the reality of the token’s performance.

That’s all, friends. Happy investing and stay safe out there in crypto land. ☺️

Cheers to 2023, where we can learn from past mistakes and make better decisions! (investing et al.) 🎉🎉

Read the rest of the posts in the series:

• FTX Debacle Part I

• FTX Debacle Part II

• FTX Debacle Part III

Hi friends,

As I wind down this series on FTX —I bet many of you are ecstatic to hear this!— I am reminded of what my accounting professor said back in 2007:

I never want to see a photo of my students on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

She said this in reference to a case we were studying that day: the infamous Enron scandal.

Today, 15 years later, I was happy to learn that my former professor is still teaching at the University, but I bet she will not be adding a FTX case study to the class syllabus.

Quite frankly, a FTX case study in an accounting class would be dull.

Not because debits and credits can make students’ eyes explode from boredom, but for a different reason.

A textbook example of embezzlement

I mean that a case study on FTX would be dull as in “not sophisticated”, to quote John Ray III, the replacement CEO of FTX, who famously led Enron’s bankruptcy and restructuring proceedings. In other words, it would not be worth anyone’s time because the moral could be conveyed with a simple statement: don’t embezzle money.

During last week’s Congressional hearing on FTX, Ray said that although the FTX fraud was unsophisticated, it was “worse than Enron” because:

1. there was absolutely no record keeping;

2. a multibillion dollar company used Quickbooks;

3. there was no independent board

Ray called this an “old school” fraud that was “sophisticated perhaps in the way they were able to sort of hide it from people, frankly, right in front of their eyes.”

Effective Altruism and celebrity endorsements

SBF successfully hid his evil intentions in two ways (I’m sure more will come to light as the investigation begins):

1. By pretending to be a “good” person, a white-knight and a savior, SBF won people’s trust and hid behind the facade of effective altruism.

2. By paying high-profile celebrities a lot of money to endorse FTX, creating an elaborately deceptive marketing and advertising campaign that featured the likes of Tom Brady, David Ortiz, Stephen Curry, Larry David, and Kevin O’Leary.

Gisele Bündchen, Tom Brady’s supermodel wife, was also one of FTX’s celebrity endorsers. According to her Wikipedia page, “Bündchen believes in astrology, manifestation, and witchcraft. According to Tom Brady, she has used these methods to successfully predict when he would win or lose the Super Bowl.”

Come on, with those powers how could she have not predicted the collapse of FTX?!

Tweet, tweet, to 2023

As I was reading through a class-action lawsuit filed by Edwin Garrison, an attorney, against 20+ celebrity defendants (including Bündchen), I kept thinking about all of the Twitter screenshots embedded throughout the legal document, starting from the very first page.

You can’t make this up….

That got me thinking about how Twitter’s leader, Elon Musk, is an erratic, unstable, eccentric billionaire who, like SBF, seems to be on his own Muskian version of a self-incrimination tour.

And then I thought about how 2023 will be an interesting year (to say the least!).

Personally, I will probably start to seriously explore Mastodon (a free and open source social media platform) and Lens Protocol (a user-owned open social graph).

Stay safe out there, friends, and, as always, do your due diligence on crypto projects.

Read the rest of the posts in the series:

• FTX Debacle Part I

• FTX Debacle Part II

• FTX Debacle Part IV

Hi friends,

As a recovering Type-A Control Freak, I have spent the first 28 years of my life grinding hard to make sure every letter was perfectly placed, every word was chosen carefully, and every sentence was strung together with maniacal precision. 

And I have spent the last 5 years unlearning all of those bad habits to become more comfortable with the natural state of chaos.  

Given my modus operandi for so long, it was difficult for me to trust an AI that promised to help me write. Nonetheless, I decided to try out Lex – the GPT-3 powered AI writing assistant from the team at Every. 

When I realized that Lex was not the first AI writing tool that I have used, I was surprised. Because I had never used a tool that actually felt like what I thought an AI tool should feel like. Never had a I used a tool that helped me to think.

Grammarly, a popular “AI” tool that has long been on the market since 2009, merely fixes grammar and spelling mistakes (at least in the free version, which is the only version that that I have ever used), whereas Lex’s helped me to research and come up with compelling messaging.

Lex’s deep learning algorithms suggested words and phrases that seamlessly fit into the context of my writing, so I didn’t need to expend energy on word-smithing, freeing up mental bandwidth to focus on content, flow, and revisions.

What I love about OpenAI, the non-profit research lab that created GPT-3, the language model that powers Lex, is that all of the tools that the lab builds are free!

Despite the “magic” of GPT-3, it has one major flaw: it can tell lies and spin up misinformation and conspiracy theories that can go so far as to swindle someone out of money and persuade them to join a cult!

This is really serious.

The best example of this that came to my attention was from Marc Andreessen, who tweeted about his use of ChatGPT, the latest AI tool to come out of OpenAI, and one that has grabbed the attention of many of the people I follow on Twitter.

Unlike Lex, ChatGPT, is able to craft messaging based on a user-inputted prompt. For example, Marc inputted this prompt:

Write a script for a psychotherapist coaching a client. The client sees how smart ChatGPT is and is tempted to give up on life.

Voila! Within seconds, the AI wrote an entire script that was (initially) very helpful, reassuring the client that they are a unique and valuable person, only to quickly divulge into an open invitation to join a cult! The therapist ends up asking the client to contribute a significant portion of their income in order to unlock the secrets of the universe….

Take a look for yourself at the script below.

Perhaps we are about to enter a scary, dystopian future where people outsource trust to chat interfaces that pose as authority figures. In this world, AI tools like ChatGPT will be used to create malicious chatbots and marketing campaigns that swindle innocent victims; and AI writing tools like Lex will be used to create even more compelling conspiracy theories and misinformation.  

Perhaps we already are, in some ways, living in this world of outsourced trust, and perhaps we already have, in some ways, stopped thinking for ourselves.

Let me know what you think.

Take good care,

Rika

Read the rest of the posts in the series:

• FTX Debacle Part I

• FTX Debacle Part III

• FTX Debacle Part IV

Hi friends,

FTX is clearly a fraud — a moral and ethical debacle. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

My intention with this post is to unpack and synthesize the technicals of FTX’s solvency crisis, whilst focusing on my main thesis that Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is a sociopath whose actions evaded moral and ethical responsibility. (One percent of the general population is sociopaths, and many sociopaths are CEOs).

We should use lessons from the FTX fraud as a guidepost for embedding moral and ethical principles into the crypto products we build.

Michael Zargham, founder and Chief Engineer of BlockScience, an Economic System Engineering firm (i.e, they design crypto token systems), writes:

As with any emerging technology there is still a lot of uncertainty around the practice of engineering web3 enabled systems but it is already clear that these systems are deeply entangled with social and economic systems, and thus have the potential for a deep and long standing impact on social institutions.

- Engineering Ethics in Web3, 2021:

Self-incrimination and the savior complex

In the first post of this series, I highlight SBF’s character flaws, including a savior complex that enabled him to spin a fictitious narrative, duping smart people into believing that he is an effective altruist and a white-knight, who generously gives to charities and rescues failing companies.

Since my last post, more incriminating information has been revealed about SBF - shockingly, most of it is self-incriminating!

Despite the advice of his lawyers, SBF spoke at the New York Times Dealbook Summit. Talking to reporters and speaking at conferences, while under a, potentially criminal, investigation, seems (naturally) dumb to most people, but these actions are in line with sociopathic behavior.

The film The Big Short highlights sociopathic behavior by satirizing the way in which criminals incriminate themselves —bragging while simultaneously revealing information.

At the Dealbook Summit, SBF bragged about being a “good and helpful” person when his interviewer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, asked him pointed questions —two of which I will highlight in the post. (By the way, I highly recommend watching the whole interview to get a sense of SBF’s nervous stupidity).

During the interview, Sorkin asked SBF:

1. What are your lawyers telling you? Do they think it’s a good idea for you to be speaking?

2. How concerned are you about criminal liability?

To the first question, SBF responded:

No, they are very much not. The classic advice right is to recede into a hole and that's not who I am. That's not who I want to be. I must talk, to explain what happened. To try to make things right. If there is anything I can do to try and help customers out..."

And to the second question, SBF said:

So I don't think that I mean I don't think I have but uh you know I think the real answer is that I know it sounds weird but but I think the real answer is that's not what I'm focusing on um it's uh there's gonna be a time and a place for me to sort of think about myself and my future but I don't think this is it like this month um this has not been fun for me but that’s not what matters.”

Are you f****** kidding me?!

The savior helping himself

We know that SBF is a sociopath who was sending customer deposits, from the FTX exchange, to his investment management firm, Alameda Research, and using FTX’s token, FTT, as collateral for loans, in order to make exorbitant multi-million dollar real estate purchases in the Bahamas for himself, friends, and family.

His plan to use customer deposits (blatantly ignoring FTX’s terms of service) was, arguably, solid — so long as the FTT token kept pumping. But, any sane person in crypto will tell you that tokens inevitably fluctuate and drop in value.

Turns out, FTX had no risk management strategy in place (only sloppy Excel spreadsheets).

What should have happened —what happens in all credible DeFi lending protocols (whose founders don’t commit fraud)— is that token-backed loans automatically liquidate when the token’s value drops to a predefined threshold, so that the loan can, at least partially, be made whole.

For example, MakerDAO, a leading DeFi protocol, regularly liquidates borrowers collateralized loans. Itovault explains the process:

The Maker system sets a margin requirement for each collateral in the DAI system. For example, ETH has historically had a 150% margin requirement. This means you need $600 of ETH in a vault (CDP) in order for that vault to issue 400 DAI. Liquidations kick in generally only when collateral values fall. If you own a vault, you only need to track collateral prices to prevent a liquidation.

1. When a vault’s collateral falls below that vault’s margin limit, a liquidation occurs.

2. The first stage of Maker’s liquidation process is the collateral auction. Anyone can submit DAI in this auction to make a claim for the value of the vault. It is this submission of DAI that destroys DAI in the Maker ecosystem and keeps the enter Maker system solvent. What happens next depends on the max amount of DAI submitted:

Maybe FTX would have liquidated under-collateralized positions of FTT if they had an accounting department!

Mansions in the Bahamas

To recap, SBF’s quantitative trading firm, Alameda Research, “borrowed” customer deposits from the FTX trading platform (i.e, commingled funds) to take out loans on DeFi lending protocols, using the FTT token as collateral for the loans, so that SBF and his cabal of roommates and coworkers could buy mansions in the Bahamas under the legal entity FTX Properties.

Even FTX’s parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, law professors at Stanford, were, most likely, in on the sham. SBF listed them as owners on this $16.4M dollar mansion.

Looks pretty, right?

What’s Next

Besides SBF, the main culprit in the FTX fraud is the token, FTT. As people continue to point out, FTT was printed out of thin air. Although, technically, all crypto tokens are printed out of thin air, the good ones are designed thoughtfully —with sound economics, business, and engineering principles baked into the code.

Michael Zargham heeds in Engineering Ethics in Web3,

While it remains unclear where the web3 technology stack will carry our society, we believe that this journey must be undertaken with a values first mindset.

Shitcoins, like FTT, are probably here to stay, and if you do decide to invest in them, at least craft a simple risk management strategy for yourself. It could be as simple as, if X token drops to Y value, SELL.

To quote Michael Burr, in The Big Short,

Making money’s not like I thought. It kills the part of life that’s essential.

Read the rest of the posts in the series:

• FTX Debacle Part II

• FTX Debacle Part III

• FTX Debacle Part IV

Hi, friends!

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I acknowledge that this statement cannibalizes my non-US based readers, but since we (Americans) have a tendency to let our pride and ego get the best of us, I am simply being a Good American.

☝️ This was a joke! 😛🙃😜 (I need to profusely use emojis to help convey my sarcasm. Writing on the Internet can be a treacherous minefield 💣⚒️)

The Internet is buzzing with FTX drama. Like many people, I spent the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving feverishly reading about FTX, in an attempt to make sense of the ridiculous Enron level fraud.

I find the FTX story endlessly fascinating, but if you feel like, ‘oh my god, not another FTX story’, then by all means, skip this post.

For the rest of you, who just can’t get enough of the craziness, please read on. And send me emails with your favorite articles on FTX.

Onwards.

As I muddled my way through the details of the FTX fraud, I realized that the amount of information I was taking in could take up an entire book. I’m not writing a book —this is the Internet, where people’s attention is approximately 179.5 seconds — so I’m instead writing a series of shorter(ish) posts.

Hopefully, these posts will be entertaining and informative, and a little different than what you’re already reading.

If I could procrastinate longer, I would, but I’m participating in the Bankless DAO writers cohort, and today is the publishing deadline, so I have no choice but to slay the procrastination monster.

SBF “The Savior”

Seems like only yesterday, when SBF was called a Savior and compared to J.P. Morgan in 1907 and the Greek hero Atlas, because he swooped in and gave $750 million in emergency aid to Voyager and BlockFi, two lenders that were at risk of insolvency.

In August, DeCrypt publishes a story where in true SBF “win vs. lose fashion”, he pits the two lenders against each other. He told DeCrypt that he was more confident in BlockFi than in Voyager, so he gave only a measly $70 million rescue deal to Voyager, while generously extending a $680 million line of credit to BlockFi.

Voyager’s emergency aid was “basically lost,” SBF told DeCrypt.

The way we structured it was basically there's $70 million that we knew we would maybe never see again. We're not feeling too confident about getting that back.

— SBF

How lucky we are to live in 2022 amongst honorable billionaires (first Elon Musk, now SBF), who make bad business decisions and buy failing companies, all in the name of altruism (or, wait, is it stupidity…ego…or pride..or all three?)

SBF is No Fortune Teller

For a man of such talent, with a Swiss army knife of endearing and affectionate roles — a white knight, a hero, and a savior — there’s one thing for certain and that is that SBF is no fortune teller.

SBF showcased his egregious pride this Summer when he signed a term sheet, loaning more than half of a billion dollars to BlockFi.

Fast forward four months, to today, and the house of cards has completely blown up, with BlockFi filing for bankruptcy.

“Normies” vs. Effective Altruists

In this post-pandemic time (I will arm-chair expert and say we’re past the pandemic), “normies,” are starting to go out with friends instead of binging Netflix. Effective Altruists, on the other hand, like SBF, are donating millions of dollars to ensure we have a better experience the next time a global pandemic breaks out.

SBF is a long-termist and utilitarian. This means that he believes we should be using “hardcore” data to think about and prepare for impending world crises that will impact future generations.

As a (now defunct) member of the Effective Altruist community, SBF aligns with this kind of thinking (taken from the EA website):

But preparing for the next pandemic was, and remains, hugely underfunded compared to other global issues. For instance, the US invests around $8bn per year preventing pandemics, compared to around $280bn per year spent on counterterrorism over the last decade.

There is currently a lot of fiery debate on the Internet about whether EA, as a philosophy and social movement, is net good or net evil for society. People are asking questions like, do the ends always justify the means? Is it okay to do harmful things to a few people if in the end more people benefit? Should decisions always be data-driven?

(If you want to follow along with the EA moral philosophy debate, I recommend reading Scott Alexander’s post as a launching point).

Although intellectual sparring/debating is fun (and the Internet is a great adult playground to do just this), it distracts from the main issue: that SBF is a sociopath and fraudster who has no moral compass and lacks empathy. His net worth was comprised of shitcoins, created out of thin air, that he used to collateralize loans, rescue (unsuccessfully) failing companies, and give to charities.

Here’s some illuminating evidence, courtesy of a Vox reporter, who posted a Twitter exchange that SBF thought was off the record.

What’s Next

FTX and SBF’s tentacles run deep, the contagion will continue, and more shit is to come, but I heed you against letting these events cloud your perception of blockchain and cryptocurrency.

I agree with Peter Eirle, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, who writes:

There are attempts to make this about cryptocurrency and sufficient regulation, but this disaster has nothing to do with crypto in and of itself. It’s about fraud and the power of virtue signaling.

If you feel called to comment, please do so down below, or reply to this post directly. You can also send me your favorite FTX stories. I would love to read them and comment. My door is always open.

Leave a comment

This post is part of a series on FTX. Stay tuned for next week where I will dive deeper into the FTX story. My hope is that it will be *slightly* more informative and entertaining than this one, but, who knows, the writing process is strange which is why I set the bar low. (Perfect is the enemy of good enough).

Today, I was rejected from a job that I really wanted. My top pick — a Silicon Valley unicorn, lauded by both venture capitalists and users — sounded perfect on paper.

The rejection email said the following:

Thanks so much for your patience while the team had a hard time making a decision. While we really enjoyed getting to know you throughout the process, we've decided not to move forward with your candidacy at this time. We really enjoyed getting to know you and we'd love to keep in touch for future opportunities as our team continues to grow, especially our comms & marketing team.

Womp… womp…womp.

Of course, I am disappointed and I won’t sugar coat this less-than-desirable outcome. But, I’m still feeling okay and hopeful — had I received the rejection email a few weeks ago, I would have felt differently.

Last week, I had an experience that changed my mind about my job search. Actually, not just my job search, but the job search — the job market and, more broadly, the future of work.

I was in Denver, Colorado last week attending MCON, MetaCartel’s annual conference that brings together the best and the brightest DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) operators to talk about all things DAO. If you are not familiar with DAOs, the best way to think about them is like a club with a shared bank account, mission and purpose. Members are compensated via co-ownership with NFTs, and are paid for their work in either a stable coin or the DAO’s native crypto token. Membership also comes with governance (voting) rights.

DAOs are creating the future of work.

They are building a new economy (using crypto as the exchange layer) and new employment structures that give people greater autonomy, flexibility, and ownership in their work. The financial reward for participating in this new economy is appealing — along with the intellectual satisfaction and the potential to leave a long-lasting positive impact on society.

However, traveling the road less traveled is always scary. For a long time, I felt a lot of resistance.

I still feel resistance.

When shared a post, about two months ago, about my untraditional way of searching for a job, I received a lot of inbounds from DAOs that sounded something like this:

We’re looking for content writers and could really use your help. Come write for us!

But, I respectfully declined these offers and explained that I’m only looking for full-time roles.

My friend Yalor from MetaCartel said to me:

Are you sure?!

“Yes, Yalor, I am sure…” I told him.

Well, at the time, I was sure —but now I recognize Yalor’s foresight.

As a friend, mentor, and colleague, Yalor helped me to secure a grant to write a short story anthology about DAOs.

I admire Yalor’s candor and direct communication style. I am also reminded of the Rolling Stone songs that goes like this:

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometimes, well, you might find

You get what you need

What I need now is to stop being a fool and to go write some incredible awe-inspiring stories about the innovation happening within DAOs.

I didn’t get what I wanted, but I tried and I got what I needed.

Stay tuned, friends. The future is bright.

It is stability which gives a thing its essential character. The strength of an arch, the even burning of a flame, the growth of an animal, the balance of a forest ecology, the steady flow of a river, the economic security of a nation, the sanity of a human individual, the health of a society: these are all, in one way or another, concerned with stability.

— Christopher Alexander, Systems Generating Systems

In the world of crypto, particularly decentralized finance, we love to talk about innovation. We say things like, “the space moves so fast…every day there is something new to learn.”

An incredible amount of innovation happens in crypto every day. It’s fun and keeps us on our toes; but, something that we need to talk more about, to bring into the limelight, is the systems property of stability.

Systems theorist, Christopher Alexander, writes that stability is a holistic property. This means that stability is the result of the interaction of a systems many parts. For example:

• A healthy economy is not any one thing — it is the interplay of consumption, spending, and inflation rates (amongst other parts).

• A healthy person is not any one thing — it is a combination of the mind, the body, and the spirit.

When the different parts of a system are aligned — when there is balance and harmony — we say that the system is stable.

Decentralized finance systems need to be stable. Otherwise, they run the risk of collapse, like what happened to banks and to the economy during the 2008 financial crisis.

I want crypto to have a positive impact on the world and to help people gain financial independence.

I don’t want us to muck it up .

Can you imagine what would happen if crypto collapses? If applications with smart contracts that house millions of dollars, that are interconnected to one another, get abused or hacked?

We would re-create the 2008 financial collapse.

I really hope that this future doesn’t happen. It would be terrible. That is why it is extremely important to design decentralized finance systems that embody the holistic systems property of stability. By doing so, we can hopefully pre-empt failure and prevent a terrible future.

Innovation is really exciting — and necessary — but it must co-exist with stability because stable systems will future proof decentralized finance, making them long-lasting and sustainable beyond our years.

My intention is to use my writing to explore this really important topic: stability in decentralized finance. I want to understand how projects are thinking about stability and what kinds of safety measures they are implementing to prevent a potential crash.

Decentralized finance has immense world-changing potential, but we need to be thoughtful in what and how we build. A lot is on the line.

I wrote a post yesterday about an Internet phenomena called The Everyone Wants to Help Effect (TEWHE). I submitted the post for editing and, today, I thought it would be helpful to share the feedback for my readers who are also writers. Or for anyone else who may be interested in how the sausage is made.

If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, no worries. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to read the better, revised version.

Thank you to Minnow Park and Sam Houghton from Foster for their feedback.

Editing Feedback

The structure of a nonfiction piece is really important. Each sentence and paragraph must take the reader on a journey through a story that builds on itself.

My first draft needed structural changes. With the comments that I received from my editors, I came up with a small outline that includes an introduction, three ideas, and a conclusion. I also added a personal story and section headings.

Outline

• Introduction

  • Define terms.

    • What is TEWHE? An Internet phenomenon caused by the behaviors of online friend collectors.

    • Who are online friend collectors? Similar to real world friend collectors, they are people who use others for personal gains.

    • They don

  • Add a hook.

    • People who display TEWHE borrow their manipulation tactics from door-to-door salespeople and kidnappers who lead with a sweet offer.

• Idea 1

  • Unsolicited help is an invasion, permeating LinkedIn and Twitter.

    • On LinkedIn, the armpit of professional networks, spammers & friend collectors invade your inbox offering you boilerplate pitches or useless software.

    • On Twitter, spammers and friend collectors will tweet about job opportunities.

• Share personal story about my job search and first-hand experience with TEWHE

• Idea 2

  • Describe the character of friend collectors

    • Friend collectors are people who play the short-term ephemeral game of chest-puffing and vanity metrics.

    • They are selfishly satisfying a personal unmet need —to feel important and wanted— helping no one, other than themselves.

• Idea 3

  • Friend collection is not an authentic way of being — online or in the real-world.

  • Authentic relationships require time and energy. Friend collectors are always too busy. They end up bopping around from ‘friend’ to ‘friend’, checking the interaction off their to-do list, while planning the next best thing.

• Conclusion

  • Don’t pollute your life with friend collectors who spread TEWHE

  • Instead, consciously focus on nurturing quality relationships with people who actually care about your needs.

I observed an Internet phenomena called The Everyone Wants to Help Effect (TEWHE).

The phenomena is caused by the actions of people who are friend collectors.

Friend collectors are an invasive online species, with roots that stem to the real-world. They borrow their manipulation techniques from door-to-door salespeople and child kidnappers who lead with an offering, like a sweet “deal”, candy or cookies. On the Internet, friend collectors may lead with a “sweet” job opportunity.

TEWHE permeates social media, particularly LinkedIn —the armpit of professional networks, where in lieu of a membership fee, users pay for strong deodorant to fend off solicitors.

The Everyone Wants to Help Effect — on Social Media

Unsolicited help is a nuisance at its best, and an invasion at its worst.

On LinkedIn, TEWHE shows up as people who vehemently send spam messages with pitches about their boilerplate company or useless software. They make a false assumption, with little to no evidence, that you have a problem, and they’re just the person to swoop in and fix it.

Twitter has a stronger spam filter for direct messages than LinkedIn. So people on Twitter have found novel ways to manipulate others and spread TEWHE.

A friend collector’s Tweet will say something like this:

Hey Twitter, my company is running an experiment to better match people with jobs. Send me a DM [direct message] and I will help you!

I have noticed Tweets like this over the last few weeks, as I have been publicly looking for a job. People in my network have been gullibly sharing these Tweets with me, in an honest attempt to help, however, not understanding what is TEWHE.

In order to test my hypothesis about TEWHE, I decided to DM four people who tweeted something like the above tweet.

I did not hear back —not even once.

Ploys like this one intend to manipulate vulnerable people who are looking for work. They are written by online friend collectors —people who are playing the short-term ephemeral game of chest-puffing and vanity metrics. They are selfishly satisfying a personal unmet need —to feel important and wanted— helping no one, other than themselves.

It’s not an authentic way of being —online or in the real-world.

Authentic Relationships Require Time and Energy

Authentic relationships require time and energy.

Friend collectors are always too busy. They end up bopping around from ‘friend’ to ‘friend’, checking the interaction off their to-do list, while planning the next best thing.

John Lennon said it well:

Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

The Internet is full of friend collectors who invasively spread TEWHE. You can spot these people as “helpful strangers,” but be cautious. Friend collectors are nice on the surface, but underneath this icing is their own agenda.

Don’t pollute your life with friend collectors. Instead, consciously focus on nurturing quality relationships with people who actually care about your needs. When they offer their help, it’s because they actually have the knowledge, resources, and good intentions to help you.

I observed an Internet phenomena called The Everyone Wants to Help Effect (TEWHE). It’s an invasive Internet species, with roots that can be traced to real-world relationships.

TEWHE permeates social media, particularly LinkedIn —the armpit of professional networks, where in lieu of a membership fee, users pay for strong deodorant to fend off solicitors.

TEWHE is characterized by a set of behaviors that on the surface seem innocuous. But like all manipulation tactics, those who aren’t wary will be taken advantage of —TEWHE will sidetrack you from achieving your goals.

People who display TEWHE on the Internet borrow their manipulation techniques from door-to-door salespeople and child kidnappers. They lead with a sweet offering, like a sweet “deal”, candy or cookies.

On LinkedIn, TEWHE shows up as people who vehemently spam your inbox pitching you on their company or trying to sell you software. They make a false assumption, with little to no evidence, that you have a problem, and they can heroically fix it.

Unsolicited help is a nuisance, at its best, and a distraction, at its worst. If you lean in too far, you will waste your energy, your time, and become sidetracked from your goals.

TEWHE stems from the perpetrators’ personal unmet need —to feel important and wanted—rather than an authentic desire to meet another person’s needs. The software you will be sold, or the pitch you will hear, will be boilerplate and not useful.

Twitter has a stronger spam filter than LinkedIn, so people have found novel ways to manipulate others and spread TEWHE.

TEWHE on Twitter takes the form of a Tweet that says something like this:

Hey Twitter, my company is running an experiment to better match people with jobs. Send me a DM [direct message] and I will help you!

Out of curiosity, I decided to DM these people. I was not surprised when I did not hear back —not even once.

Ploys like this one are intended to manipulate vulnerable people who are looking for work. The Tweet’s author wants to artificially boost visibility so she can gain new followers. She is trying to help no one — other than herself.

Ha! Jokes on her!

She is playing the short-term ephemeral game of chest-puffing and vanity metrics. Using followers on social media as a means to an end is the same thing as collecting friends in real-life.

It’s not an authentic relationship.

Authentic relationships require time and energy. But friend collectors are always too busy. They end up bopping around from ‘friend’ to ‘friend’, checking the interaction off their to-do list, while planning the next best thing.

John Lennon said it well:

Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

In order to achieve your goals, you need to be selective about who helps you. The Internet is full of people masquerading as helpful strangers. They are nice on the surface, luring you in with a special sweet “deal”, candy or, cookies, but underneath this veil is their own agenda.

Don’t pollute your life with friend collectors. Instead, consciously focus on nurturing quality relationships with people who actually care about your needs. When they offer their help, it’s because they actually have the knowledge, resources, and good intentions to help you reach your goals.

Hi friends, 

If you are reading this, I need your help!

I am looking for a Writing job in Web3 – at a VC, Startup, Think Tank, or Academic Institution. 

I am asking my friends to help me spread the word.  

So that the Internet can work its magic. 

Web3 Storytelling is Broken

Many people in Web3 talk about how storytelling is important but few companies actually practice what they preach. 

Most Web3 companies do not craft quality stories. Instead, they go for the low-hanging fruit and write emotionally charged articles intended to make readers feel FOMO (fear of missing out) or insanely technical content that only insiders can understand, adding to the prevailing toxic narrative that Web3 is a rich boys club fueled by token speculation. 

The media keeps proliferating this harmful narrative because it is profitable – outrage and hate drives readers to open click-bait headlines. 

Sadly, a lot of Web3 really is a rich boys club where a handful of whales control the protocols. 

But, Web3 is also so much more than a plutocracy of insiders. 

The problem is that the media has no idea because they’re not actually participating in Web3. So they focus on the tip of the iceberg stories. Stories that spur outrage, hate, and disgust, and ultimately leave readers feeling powerless and cynical.

What if instead readers felt inspired and optimistic? 

Imagine a future where a company blog inspires readers to take positive action. To get curious about the future of the Internet. To see themselves in a story about real humans who are working to build this future. 

Humanity evolved because of our ability to tell stories. A company blog that uses storytelling creates connection, loyalty, and trust with readers, and builds a genuine funnel for readers to become customers. 

I can help. 

The Shape of My Work

What fires me up about Web3 is how the space is giving rise to new tools for human organization and collaboration. The projects that I am most excited about are ones that are using technology and tokenization to build alternative ownership systems to the extractive Web2 sharing economy. 

This is why I have spent the last five years contributing to Web3. 

For the first three years, I was a Product Manager. And for the last two years, I have been writing in public. 

As a Product Manager, I learned how Web3 protocols and applications work. I can build and write technical content. My Github profile is available here.

As a Writer, it has been very important for me to maintain a public digital garden where I think, develop and refine ideas before I publish long-form content. 

• I published two nonfiction stories in a DAO anthology. The first story is about MetaCartel. The second story is about MetaFactory. The project was funded by a grant and voted on by the MetaCartel community. 

• I wrote an OpEd about DAOs for the BeInCrypto news publication. 

• I experimented with Writing NFTs on my Mirror blog and on Zora. 

• I worked with Crypto, Culture, & Society and Culture to write a Twitter thread on Shreyas’ workshop on Building an Economy Within a DAO.

• I write a newsletter called Sharing is Caring about psychology and self-development with sprinkles of Web3 and DAOs. 

• I wrote a post on my reflections after Matt Clifford’s Interintellect salon on Lessons from The Middle Ages: Power and Territory.

• I wrote a fiction story for the Mochi Zine that was also minted as a NFT. 

Please Help Me Make the Internet Work its Magic! 

After working in Web3 for close to 5 years, I have experienced the serendipitous magic of the Internet to bring like minded people together, in community, to collaborate and achieve great things, and I want to extend that magic to my job search as well. 

Foster, a Writer’s collective, is a great example. 

One year ago, I started to contribute to Foster as a community member, submitting drafts for editing and also editing other members’ drafts. I became one of Foster’s top contributors and when Foster decided to press play on a long-awaited decision to form a collective, I was asked to join the Founding team.

My contributions were a testament to my dependability and commitment to Foster’s mission of investing in writers and their stories. 

My writing showed my interest and skills in Web3. 

The rest is history. 

My wish is that this post will be another stepping stone in my Writing journey. And that it will be shared amongst like-minded people, at VCs, Startups, Think Tanks, and Academic Institutions, who are hiring a Web3 writer. 

My Twitter DMs are open. If you received this post as an email, you can directly reply to it. You can also email me at rikagoldberg628@gmail.com

Thank you to the following people for providing direction and feedback on early versions of this post. Sara Campbell Sylvia Russell Smith Nick Drage Jason Nguyen Rob Hardy Stew Fortier Dan Hunt Jesse Germinario Caryn Tan Judith Klinger Jesse Evers Kavir Kaycee Leo Ariel Diana Klatt Philip Hendricks

Plop. 

She fell onto the couch and grabbed her laptop from the side table that she bought on Etsy, hand-built by a lovely local craftswoman. 

I think I am finally onto something. 

How to be a badass freelance writer and a superhuman.

The dryer started to buzz.

The washing machine and dryer are brilliant inventions of the modern era.

Modern era or 21st century? Not sure. Make note to research this. 

The washer and dryer are true feminist inventions, saving women countless hours of washing and drying by hand. Right there along with the dishwasher.

Shoot. 

She remembered the clean dishes. 

Okay. Make a note to unload the dishwasher.

Here comes Teddy. 

Teddy, you sweet little dog. No worries in the world, is that right? As long as you are fed and taken outside, you are the happiest creature. Oh, no, but you’re not so happy now, are you? We’re late for your walk. I also promised Susan that I would pick up her dog and take you two little doggies to the dog park, while Sue goes on a much-needed shopping trip. Her clothes really are starting to look raggedy.  

Clothes, that’s right. I have clothes to take out of the dryer. The longer they stay in there the more wrinkled they will become. 

Yikes. It’s almost three o’clock. 

Super women are our feminist future.

How to do more and be more to thrive.

How to look good, be good, and do more at home and at work.

This right here is exactly the kind of freak out that people talked about in the writing support groups she was a part of. Spend too much time being a perfectionist and you work up anxiety. 

Deep inside her subconscious, she knew that a cluttered mind does not produce good writing. 

Last week was a disaster. She just couldn’t find the time to pick up her overdue dry cleaning – between all of her house chores, taking care of Teddy, writing, and making sure to spend time with her best friend for life, Jacky, who to her outrage was being flaky and kept canceling plans. 

Reaching your goals is all about perseverance. She read that in A Thriving Life magazine. One woman submitted writing samples to two hundred publishers, receiving rejections from all of them, until finally she got a callback. Another gal traveled the country photographing beautiful sunsets, uploading them to Instagram every day hoping to go viral, when, finally, after two years, Business Insider, picked up her story and published an article that helped her gain 10,000 Twitter followers in one week. 

Jacky kept telling her to stop seeking external validation. 

“It’s all fake, hun. You’re just a cog in the machine. Just be yourself and loosen up. Good things will come. Trust me. For now – we have that networking event to get to.”

“No...I can’t. I need to finish my article. I don’t even have a title yet. And I have to walk Teddy. And pick up my laundry. I need to skip the event.”

“Don’t be silly, Jenna. It can all wait. Come on, I’ll be in the car.”

PolyVentures was  one of the most prestigious venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. They both considered a job there, but were rejected in the final round. Jacky quickly realized that the firm was not for her, but Jenna kept trying. She reached out to all ten partners, emailing them compliments, and she even made a video resume showcasing her Swiss army knife of talents. 

At the PolyVenture reception, inside of a swanky Silicon Valley office building, Jacky leans over a plate of giant shrimp, accidentally bumping it with her torso. The plate of shrimp flies across the room somersaulting through the air. 

Smack. 

Shrimp and red cocktail sauce flings onto Jenna’s white blouse.

“Oh my gosh, Jenna, I am so sorry.”

Jenna’s face turns red and her entire body tense up like a rock. She just stood next to the buffet table, stunned. 

“Let’s go to the bathroom and get you cleaned up.” Jacky said. 

Jenna and Jacky dodge to the other side of the office to the women’s bathroom just in time for Jenna to start hyperventilating. 

“Blood! I hate blood. Cannot stand blood. No Noo Noooo! I am dying.”

“Jenna..listen to me. It’s not blood. It’s cocktail sauce.”

“I can’t. I just can’t.”

Jenna faints. 

Red cocktail sauce paints the white marble tile. 

This story was inspired by George Saunders’ short story, The Mom of Bold Action.

Have a good weekend, friends. ❤️

You can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometimes, well, you might find

You get what you need

Ah, yeah

Oh

Earlier this week, I was spending an afternoon in my local park, where I listened to a young man singing and playing this song on his acoustic guitar. 

I pondered over the meaning of the song until it sufficiently haunted me.

Two days later, I was riding my bike down to the water. My mind wandered to a book I recently read called Why Greatness Cannot be Planned by Joel Lehman and Kenneth Stanley, two Artificial Intelligence researchers.  

Joel and Ken write: 

Objectives are like things that we want. Where do our wants come from? Some come from society telling us wants from magazines, books, TV.

Family values as well, right? Community values, too, right? (the circles we are in).

Ah-ha!

Going back to the Rolling Stones song – we don’t always get what we want means we don’t always reach our objectives. 

This may sound defeatist —why did we not get what we want? Was it our fault? 

Joel and Ken make the argument that, no, it’s not our fault that we didn’t get what we want. We didn’t reach our objectives because, despite their prevalence in our society, objectives are illusions that serve as reassuring measures against the unpredictability of life.

In other words, objectives are a social lubricant, intended to make us feel more stable in an unstable world. 

Joel and Ken write:

Our culture teaches us that if we set an objective and work hard, put our mind to it, reaching that objective is possible. 

The result of this a bunch of metrics, measurements, and assessments woven into our lives, like we have become slaves to objectives, toiling away towards impossible perfection.

I would have thought Joel and Ken were crazy two years ago, before the Covid-19 pandemic and the current geopolitical situation with the Russia-Ukraine war. But facing the uncertainty of life head-on has made me realize that they may be onto something.

So why do we bother with objectives if we don't even know what we want? It's like setting ourselves up for failure before we've even started.

Joel and Ken conducted a scientific experiment to demonstrate that people don’t actually know what they want — and that facing that uncertainty is good for us in the long term!

Let me explain.

Joel, Ken, and a research group built a website called Picbreeder where visitors could literally breed pictures. Similar to animal breeding, pictures on the site would be able to have “children” that are slightly different from their parents. 

So, what does this have to do with objectives? Well, the objective is where the visitor hopes the breeding will lead – that is the objective. For example, with horses the objective might be to breed a fast horse. Or a visitor may want to breed a picture of a face, or an animal. 

Here’s the kicker: the ultimate objective almost never looked like the stepping stones to achieve the objective. So breeding a fast horse meant that a visitor would first need to breed some Alien Faces and Cars. The stepping stones almost never resembled the final destination. 

As Joel and Ken write,

The distant objective cannot guide you to itself – it is the ultimate false compass. In any large, uncharted search space, stepping stones represent the waypoints that must be crossed to eventually reach the objective.

Today’s world is an unchartered search space, one of significant complexity, where our preconceived notions, many of the things that once worked, no longer work. We need to unlearn our old behaviors and be more flexible, adaptable, and open-minded, so we can create beauty. But it’s not just about unlearning behaviors – we need to learn new ways of thinking, and feeling, so we can thrive in this new world.

Writing anything substantial has been extra hard lately. I jot down thoughts and ideas in a pocket sized notebook that I carry with me most places, but to actually sit down in front of my computer and write a newsletter post – has been hard. A part of me misses my rambling, contrarian essays –perhaps there will be a time later when that style will be appropriate – but definitely not now. 

Now, clarity of writing is extremely important. And that requires clarity of thought –something that many people are struggling with. On a macro level, these struggles are reflective of big, important societal problems: stress, anxiety, over-work, and mental health. 

It’s easy to distract ourselves from these problems – with busyness or productivity, or numbing ourselves with substances like alcohol or drugs. But, as wise people know, these temporary bandaids always get ripped off, exposing the festering wound beneath. It’s better to face the discomfort and the unpleasantness head on because that’s the only way to begin the healing process.

It’s Better to Face Our Problems Head-On

Mustering up the courage to face our problems head-on can be incredibly difficult, but so worth it. The sense of relief and accomplishment that comes with finally tackling what we’ve been avoiding is indescribable. And, as we do so with kindness, compassion, and love, we open ourselves up to more joy, meaning, and connection in our lives.

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend who is no stranger to courage. A handful of years ago, she tragically lost both of her parents. Her experience is a testament to how little control we have in our lives.

Through her own experience, my friend reminded me of the strength we have to face life’s challenges. We may not be able to control what happens to us, but we can control how we react to it. And that, ultimately, is what will determine our fate.

The Power of Vulnerability: Why Being Open and Honest About Our Pain and Suffering is Worth the Risk

Mental health is a real and pervasive problem in our society – reflective of the anger, fear, and anxiety that we see in the news and in the media. We don’t have control over global events, lies, and fake stories – but we can choose to not feel frightened and powerless. We can choose inspiration and hope. 

We can also choose vulnerability. It takes courage to be open and honest about our pain and suffering, but it is so worth it. When we are vulnerable, we are allowing ourselves to be seen in our authentic form. We open ourselves up to the possibility of being hurt, but we also open ourselves up to the possibility of true intimacy and connection.

Vulnerability is a risk, but it is one that is so worth taking.

Take care, my friends. ❤️

As per usual, I will be submitting this draft through the Foster workflow so a collective of writers and editors can help make this post better than what I alone am capable of.

Note to Readers:

This is an updated post from my previous one on the importance of taking care of yourself during challenging times. This one includes feedback from my wonderful editor Georgia Patrick. Thank you so much, Georgia, for helping to make this post more meaningful and impactful.

I hope you all connect with this post and learn from my experience.

We Are Nature and Other Forever Lessons for Right Now

My yoga teacher has been battling stage four breast cancer for over a decade. Despite this —or perhaps because of this— she is an incredibly heartfelt, joyous, and compassionate person. Even during our class in the park, when, like in a trippy psychedelic movie, she sees everything double—a side effect of chemo—she always manages to share her best, most authentic self.

Like last week, when at the end of class, she instructed us to place our hands to our hearts. Then, she guided us to take a deep breath. While the class followed her lead, she shared some forever wisdom about the current state of our world.

She said:

There are truly awful horrible events taking place in our country and in our world. It’s extremely important that we keep our hearts open, and our voices.

Keeping my voice open is why I write. A pen, and pixels on a screen, are my weapon of choice.

And when it comes to the truly awful horrible events taking place around us, does anyone else feel like we’re turning on ourselves? Does anyone else feel like the world is becoming more myopic?

As seen on Twitter:

We Forget that We, Humans, were not Meant to Sit in Front of a Computer Screen all Day

My editor Georgia Patrick astutely pointed out the following observation:

Humans and screen time wasn't even in the world or any part of nature until the 1980's. That's why divorcing nature or even going to bed angry with nature is not an option. That's why keeping time devoted to nature, every week if not every day is critical to physical and mental health.

The screen’s light, the screen’s size, and the virtual reality we enter, does funky harmful things to our brain and to our nervous system. It’s a slow, slow, burn that eventually ignites into a fire, unless we train ourselves to break away and seek solace in the real world, with real people and real nature.

I have been starting my days by biking down to the ocean. I bring a notebook and a pen and just allow the beach, the ocean, the birds, to hold and support me, reminding myself that I am not in nature — I am nature. 

After only two days of biking down to the ocean, walking around, and seeing and smiling at people and their dogs, my mind and my body started to feel reset.

Now, after almost a week of doing this daily ritual, my mind is more calm and clear –I am not as triggered by the day to day – and my sleep quality has improved dramatically. After weeks of suffering a combination of trouble falling asleep, waking up in the middle of the night, and groggy mornings—I now wake up rested and refreshed.

Worry thoughts still plague me in the morning, but I have established a practice of jotting the thoughts down in a notebook. Once they’re out of my mind, they become less sticky and lose their power. If a thought is truly important, as some actually are, my brain starts to work these thoughts out on my bike ride to the ocean.

Touching Reality with Calm and Clarity

I have more thoughts but I don’t want to ramble. There’s too much of that these days. Plus, you don’t have to keep taking my word for how things are. It’s important to also listen to others. 

So I'll leave you with a few important observations from two people:

1. My editor Georgia Patrick notes:

   Clarity of thought is at the core of calm and reality. Without clearness, there is fear. Without clearness, there are lies. Without clearness, there is no writing that matters.

2. Stew Fortier, the co-founder of Foster, made an observation–with humility and some much needed humor– about his lack of clarity about the world.

   

• And Josh Pillay, author of the Wait! Just Listen newsletter, responds with the following insight. 

  

Take care of yourselves, my friends, during these challenging times. ❤️

My yoga teacher has been battling stage four cancer for over a decade. Despite this —or perhaps because of this— she is an incredibly heartfelt, joyous, and compassionate person. Even when she has double vision (a side effect of chemo), and sees the park where she teaches, and her students, from the perspective of a trippy psychedelic movie, she kills it in every class.

Like yesterday, at the end of class, she guided us to close our practice by placing our hands to our hearts and taking a deep breath, while she shared some wisdom about the current state of our world.

Here’s what she said:

There are truly awful horrible events taking place in our country and in our world. It’s extremely important that we keep our hearts open, and our voices.

Keeping my voice open is why I write. A pen, and pixels on a screen, are my weapon of choice.

And when it comes to the truly awful horrible events taking place around us, does anyone else feel like we’re turning on ourselves? Does anyone else feel like the world is becoming more myopic?

As seen on Twitter:

We forget that we, humans, were not meant to sit in front of a computer screen all day. The screen’s light, the screen’s size, and the virtual reality we enter, does funky harmful things to our brain and to our nervous system. It’s a slow, slow, burn, that eventually ignites into a fire, unless we train ourselves to break away and seek solace in the real world, with real people and real nature.

I have been starting my days by biking down to the ocean. I bring a notebook and a pen and just allow the beach, the ocean, the birds, to hold and support me, reminding myself that I am not in nature — I am nature.

I have more thoughts but I don’t want to ramble. There’s too much of that these days. I’m seeking clarity of thought, and quality, so I’m going to submit this draft to the Foster workflow and collect feedback from fellow writers, allowing them to hold and support me as I strive to make my writing better.

Before I go, I’ll leave you with some food for thought:

Take care of yourselves, my friends, during these challenging times. ❤️

Don’t get me wrong — it can be. But, if you are intentional about how you use Twitter, then you can transform doom scrolling into a nourishing and fulfilling experience.

Let me explain…

Twitter is the modern day town square. Anyone anywhere in the world is given access to a microphone. This means that Twitter can be noisy as f***. But with a little curation, you can turn Twitter from lead into gold.

The secret is to follow the right accounts.

Let me demonstrate…

Here are the Tweets that I woke up to this morning:

Rob Hardy, a fellow online writer and Foster DAO team member, tweeted about cultivating a positive self-image.

Henneke Duistermaat, an online writer and entrepreneur from the UK, tweeted a beautiful and loving reminder about self-care. I discovered Henneke’s profile after a primary connection retweeted her Tweet.

Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist and author, tweeted thought provoking research insights about finding yourself, finding your community, and busting guilt and shame.

Scott deeply studied Abraham Maslow’s teachings and created a sailboat metaphor for navigating life’s choppy turf. The sailboat runs against mainstream messaging of how life is a hierarchy with levels like a video game. I have included a visual on my personal website.

• In the below tweet, Scott shares an important lesson: to successfully navigate life’s challenges, we must overcome the barriers of guilt and shame.

On a lighter note, ah-ha! something else that runs contrary to mainstream messaging: playing video games can be good for a child’s intelligence!

Rafa, a Web3 entrepreneur, tweeted a reminder about the therapeutic value of writing publicly and sharing. I don’t personally know Rafa but I have used the product that Rafa is building: Mirror, a Web3 publishing platform for writers, to publish my own writing.

Sara Campbell, a fellow online writer and Foster DAO team member, tweeted a link to her newsletter where she shares a personal and heartfelt story. She writes about how she was 37 and single and unhappy, trapped in a cycle of hopelessness and cynicism. Now, eight years later, things are different. She writes:

Through practice, patience, curiosity, and surely some great stroke of divine luck, I have gained a much wider scope of vision that’s enabled me to appreciate the shape my life has taken.

Her writing is amazing and I just can’t get enough. Here’s a little more:

Dan Hunt, the co-founder of Foster, a writer’s collective, tweets with humility about an upcoming town hall where he will share with the broader Foster community a path forward —to decentralization and community ownership.

Tim Urban, one of the world’s most popular writers, reminds us that seeking external validation is a trap we create in our minds.

The amazing Anna Gat, founder of Interintellect, reminds us that Twitter can be a gateway to belonging (a prerequisite for experiencing meaningful personal growth).

And, finally, I would like to share one of my own tweets.

This reply is spot on.

A pragmatic and simple solution to curate Twitter

The simplest way to curate Twitter and cut through the noise is to use a nifty tool called Tweetdeck. It allows you to create columns for individual accounts or for Twitter Lists, a curated group of accounts.

I have a List called “Pay Attention” with a handful of accounts that I actively engage with. I am mindful about not including too many accounts because my attention is limited. Every few weeks or so, I do “list maintenance” where I remove some accounts and add new ones.

In this way, Twitter is a subtle art that requires practice and patience.

You got it. 💪

After listening to the feedback from you, my wonderful readers, I recognize a need for me to ground the ideas that I write about with tangible real-world applications. I hear you — ideas are fun to ponder during leisure time, but in times of crisis, like today, ain’t nobody got time for leisure. Although leisure is critical for quality of life, I understand that not everyone can, in the here and now, access that mindset. Because to value leisure, a person must be in a clear, equanimous headspace, and to be in a clear, equanimous headspace, a person must practice leisure.

I promise to noodle on your feedback —in the places where I do my best thinking: the shower, on walks, and while practicing yoga —because I recognize that it’s very important to ground big ideas in the real world. As Tom Morgan writes in his article, The Attention Span, the Greatest Thing By Far:

I’ve spent a long time thinking about why coming up with good metaphors is so difficult. Essentially, it’s because if they don’t resonate, they don’t work. And they only resonate if they relate to real world experience.

Tom’s insight makes me think about the problems with the information we consume online. Just like dieting and weight-loss programs, most content on the Internet offers quick fixes that give us short-term, myopic results but fail in the long term to create meaning and happiness.

Most content on the Internet is either timely or timeless, but rarely is it both. Timely content is the information that keeps us informed on current event—like the news. And timeless content is the information that keeps us intelligent—like the encyclopedia. Long-term thinking requires that we have information that is both timely and timeless—like Maria Popova’s blog, The Marginalian.

In 2012, Maria wrote:

If something interests me and is both timeless and timely, I write about it. Much of what is published online is content designed to be dead within hours, so I find most of my material offline. I gravitate more and more towards historical things that are somewhat obscure and yet timely in their sensibility and message.

Maria Popova is one of the earliest synthesizers of information. Meaning, she is a person who curates information to make it timely and timeless. She does this by spotting patterns across diverse disciplines like science, history, and literature, to create meaning and real-world application.

Synthesizing information is a craft —a skill of great importance since the beginning of humanity. Here’s what Aristotle said about people who synthesize information (or as he called them: “a combiner of ideas”:

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor [a combiner of ideas]. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars”.

Morgan Housel, author of the best-selling book The Psychology of Money, and a great modern-day synthesizer writes this:

I'm a finance writer, but I never read finance books. I read history/biology/biography, and in that process, I'm constantly looking for things outside of finance that remind me of finance. I think it's hard to come up with stories if you're only reading/thinking about your own field. It's when you connect the dots from other fields that it gets exciting.

We start to experience dangerous societal issues when we lack synthesizers who create timely and timeless information. The Wokeness Movement is a great example of how politics can create artificial divides that infuriate people into action.

Urban Dictionary does a great job pointing out how this works.

The Political Right blames the Political Left for Wokeness:

And the Political Left blames the Political Right for Wokeness:

Anger, fury, and hate are the most primal human emotions so it’s easy for politicians to weaponize these feelings to create a mob mentality to mobilize the masses. Mobs are short-term, myopic thinkers who want results and change NOW. They are not long-term thinkers.

As Malcom Kyeyune and Marty MacMarty writes in the American Affairs Journal:

Wokeness is an attractive target for dissidents and polemicists who speak in terms of generalized decadence or a “suicide of the West,” mainly because it is self-consciously insurrectionary, at least in matters of culture. It openly positions itself as a bellicose outsider—rather than as a cultural inheritor—with respect to the precepts of the old society. The woke typically regard this older society with open contempt, as an ancien régime that needs to be destroyed. Once a society is home to a critical mass of people with this sort of attitude toward their own civilization, social cohesion isn’t so much in danger as it has already been lost.

Taking the problem of the mob further, Hannah Arendt—a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor—writes that the masses are lonely, and loneliness can make people susceptible to totalitarianism.

What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience …
– From The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hannah Arendt

This makes me worried because the Covid-19 pandemic has deepened the epidemic of loneliness. A report from Harvard shows that:

36% of all Americans—including 61% of young adults and 51% of mothers with young children—feel “serious loneliness.” Not surprisingly, loneliness appears to have increased substantially since the outbreak of the global pandemic.

I can’t help but think about how our current society, one consumed with trendy and timely information, is in deep need of timely and timeless information. So that we can save ourselves from our worst enemy—ourselves.

As Hannah Arendt writes in how to love and live with fear:

Fearlessness is what love seeks. Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future… Hence the only valid tense is the present, the Now.

Being present—in the Now— requires us to pay attention. It is only in this state of attention — free from trends, fads, hacks, and shortcuts that hijack our attention, can we truly love.

Tolstoy called “love a present only activity” and the late Buddhist poet, author, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh shares the following wisdom about love:

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer that person is your presence. How can you love if you are not there? Come back to yourself, look into [their] eyes, and say, “Darling, you know something? I’m here for you.” You’re offering [them] your presence. You’re not preoccupied with the past or the future; you are there for your beloved. You must say this with your body and with your mind at the same time, and then you will see the transformation.

Take care of yourselves, my friends. Be kind and practice love. Love is truly a practice that starts with loving yourself. It’s vital to first put on our own oxygen mask before helping others. ❤️