It used to be we could distract ourselves from purpose by pushing buttons. No longer. Now you have to focus fairly singularly on your "why." Before machine intelligence, most economic output was just mindless button-pushing. Most jobs are telephone switchboard jobs: "Operator. City and number, please?" You collect a little context and then you start pushing buttons and flipping switches, moving that context from point A to point B. Think about your little job for a second. How much of it is higher order objective-setting or even the divergence of raw creativity vs. mindless button-pushing execution? How much of advancing in your job is getting better and more productive at button-pushing versus thinking really hard about why you're pushing those buttons? I spent years making Excels and Powerpoints, and a large chunk of my early-career rewards (5, 10 years or more for a banker or consultant) came from simply getting very very good at pushing buttons. It was actually a status signifier: "Lol you use a mouse? Don't you use shortcuts and macros?" That era is over. All the many years we as humans invested in honing our button-pushing skills have been rendered irrelevant. Instead we must now confront a daily existential prompt: What do you want? Because soon you can have anything. So now we are forced to confront the abject terror of whittling "anything" into "something." And very few people will digest that transition effectively because the vast majority of people have comforted themselves over the years by microscopically improving their button pushing skills. All of that was a distraction from purpose, and now we actually have to face the void. Our entire button-pushing identities are dead, replaced by blinking cursors that ask: "Why?"

TIL the technology used to convert heat to steam in locomotives is exactly the same used to convert heat to steam in nuclear reactors. The fundamental insight hasn't changed in 180 years.

Regular reminder that @maggielove_ runs an organization that onboards 10,000+ real human women to crypto, by hand, every year and growing. It's called @shefiorg.

the most attractive people have absolutely no neediness they are giving away energy, radiating adventure they don't need you to go with them, but they're pretty sure if you did you'd have a good time

- manufacturing bottlenecks - imperfect information - relative advantage - path dependency - risk management - opportunity cost - marginal utility - diversification - timing what'd I miss?

your job description should sound scary to most people the JD is for qualification, not top of funnel

the smartest people I know traverse the entire stack: • invent new math • jump up a level to implement it in an abstraction • go down to assembly to optimize • crank out a shitpost so anyone can follow have met <10 people who can do this multiple at @aztecnetwork

stop trying to discover yourself and start discovering God

most ngmi attitudes in 2025: - hating AI - complaining - hating crypto - applying to jobs - i just have to think harder - i just wish things were like they were 20 years ago most gmi attitudes: - i can have everything i want - proof of work - cold DMs - fun is fun - let it rip

stream-of-consciousness posting today vs. thread-posting 2 years ago: - way lower views - way higher engagement - way more real relationships