Earthbound - Home Sweet Home Orchestra by Blake Robinson

     With the advent of my newest project Autodidactic, which premises itself on harnessing the power of "fate and irony," I thought it'd be timely to explain just what that means and how it is actually more literal than one might think.  At its core, it's about setting up the least likely situations to always be in your favor, what others perceive to be your worst case scenarios to actually be your best case.  You set yourself up such that the most ironic thing that can happen to you is the best thing that could happen to you, and everything else falls in line behind that.  This is a lot of the thinking that bleeds into most of my endeavors, whether it be in my trading, planning my life, or even just making sure I get from point A to point B on time.

     It sounds a bit like superstitution or voodoo, but it really is more about planning, psychology, and just staying ahead of the game.  When planning any sort of event or organization, for example, the biggest mistake one often makes is leaving open that 0.0001% chance that things go terribly wrong.  Instead take that and flip it on its head.  Make the 0.0001% case the case where everything goes terribly right.  In practice, I often *seem* like the more conservative risk taker on any team (despite my super left-field ideas and approaches to things),  but when the unthinkable happens, it's to my favor.  What better irony than the safest plans thriving in absolute chaos? And there's nothing to say you can't simply be so in control (or so impervious to a lack of control) that it just looks like you're passive when you've actually already set plans in motion to take over the world.  It's about always knowing your edge cases and putting them in alignment with your goals.  It's about eliminating chance from the equation and only leaving open possibilities that help your cause.  When the unthinkable happens, you win, and when it doesn't, life just continues as usual.

     The other aspect is just mental, when you declare the most absurd things with no expectation they happen, when you jinx or counter-jinx things, when people give up at the exact moment they should have doubled down, etc.  This definitely sounds much more like superstition now, but think of all the situations in the past where you or your friends jinxed things and how often these ironic situations actually came true.  Words have meaning, whether they leave a guilt chip in the back of someone's mind or make yourself doubt your best judgement (too good to be true, unwillingness to go against what you just said, etc).  The key again is to let the things you think most absurd always be in your favor but also in a psychological aspect.  If someone else is doubting something (often you), let them be on the losing side of the ironic outcome and not yourself.  If someone is about to give up but thinks something will work out right as they quit, be on the receiving side of that luck.  Sometimes, it's almost like witchcraft, where in order to ensure my success, I purposely make sure there are enough people thinking or making a claim they'll regret, where they unintentionally jinx themselves such that, in the (misleadingly) remote chance they're wrong, it leads an outcome most extremely in my favor.  Think of famous last words; often times I purposely get someone to declare verbally the opposite of what I want just to jinx him.  This extends to all other activities mental and psychological - trading, poker, etc. If someone is about to exit a trade they think they'll regret doing so, take that as a sign that trade will probably work.  If someone thinks they'll fold a good hand, let that be in your favor if it comes true.  Often times, my reputation in poker is that of a blind better with beginner's luck, when in actuality I'm letting my opponents self destruct against themselves.  It's letting people's own irrationality and biases get the better of them... at least, that's the politically correct way of putting it.

    ...[More]

In the mean time, this will have to do, though it's not as adjustable as I'd like.


At worst, I suppose I can go back to my lie-down desk if I get tired.



The desk is from Japan, called a Super Gorone Lie-Down Desk.  Was super hard to find and had to ship internationally.

50% does not mean random.  If you beat a grandmaster chess player 50% of the time, you are pretty damn good.

More reality checking on Silicon Valley with the startup that declared $70K minimum wage now hitting hard times because of it:
CEO Who Set Firm's Minimum Wage at $70K Hits Hard Times

Had already pointed out that things like this were unsustainable in my Perfect Storm for Silicon Valley write up a couple months back. It's all well intentioned but overly idealistic with not enough thought put into the consequences.  It's not the first time a company has tried to create somewhat of a utopia for its employees (aka paternalism), but it would be nice to look back on history and not repeat the same mistakes.  One simply has to look back on 19th and 20th century history to find past companies pursuing similar policies (Pullman, Ford, ...). It seems to be a trend now to always charge forward and deny any lessons from the past as old ways of thinking....[More]

I recently read an article about the University of New Hampshire's "Bias-Free Language Guide" this morning.  At first, I thought it was a joke or satirical post of some sort on political correctness, as it seemed like something straight out of Orwell's 1984, but it was on the college's official site as an actual resource.  It's since been taken down, but it's hard to "unpublish" webpages now, especially if it's been up for years. I managed to save a static HTML copy here: University of New Hampshire's Bias-Free Language Guide (as of Jul.29 2015)

One novel that immediately comes to mind is Orwell's 1984.  When I first read it in high school, most my peers and I thought it very unrelatable, but now it's pretty scary how close we're getting to some of its themes.  Here are some comparisons to illustrate the point:

Orwell's ...[More]

Every person is the God of their own world, just pitted against the will of all others out there.

You seek fairness, yet you'd rather we all fail together and never reach our dream than allow any suffering along the way. How is that fair?

     "What do you see when you hear this music?" I once asked someone.
     To my surprise, he said, "Nothing."
     "Really?" I asked.  "Not even a story or anything?"
     "Nope.  I just like how it sounds.  Why? What do you see?"
     It still surprises me whenever I come across others who can be appreciating the same work before us but seeing nothing at all.  It never really occurred to me until after college that others might only hear the sound or see the word, the notes, or the colors.
     I still remember a conversation several years back where several coworkers were debating whether thought was organized based on what language one spoke.  "Of course not," I wanted to say, "Otherwise what would you be thinking as a child before you knew any language?" But the debate simply moved towards whether children had any real thoughts...[More]

The only thing I'll miss from my years in SF.

Jurassic World Piano and Cello Cover by Brooklyn Duo

Clair De Lune by Azuria Sky

Time by Azuria Sky and AIMM

Stellaria by Azuria Sky

Thought this was a very interesting article, special thanks to Kwelstr at xrptalk for originally sharing.
Why Indigenous Cultures Don't Have Back Pain

It reminds me of the several occasions where I actually stressed my neck and back trying to follow advise for sitting up straight (I'm a short guy and tend to sit with legs folded, which then leads to the usual "sit up straight" advice).  IMO it makes the most sense to stick with what felt most natural/comfortable as a child rather than *think* about what your posture or lifestyle should be like.

Thought this was pretty hilarious but spot on with the tech culture I've been dealing with for the last three years.
The Real Culture Wars or Hollywood Vs. Silicon Valley

Very typical quantified, tech thinking to want to watch more movies as opposed to actually appreciate movies.

The last few years have been pretty incredible for the San Francisco Bay Area.  You really have to have lived here as I have to see how easily capital has flowed into the area, the effects of it trickling into nearly every industry even remotely tech related.  Just two years ago, there was San Francisco being more expensive than most cities but not quite at the level of New York or other top tier cities.  Now an apartment that once rented for $2500 can command mid-$3000s or higher.  A place the size of a walk-in closet at under 200 sqft can be found at $1700 or more.  When I first graduated college in 2013, the predominant attitude I saw in my peers was still that of caution and skepticism about the job market.  Now I have peers who have literally switched full time tech jobs every 4 months, some who would buy up an armful of snacks at a convenience store only to throw it all away...[More]

When you deny the existence of the rest of the world, the only things left in your head are facts.

The trend has been pretty clear I think.  We're going to get to the point where DSLR quality cameras can be small enough to carry in your pocket.  Three years ago when I suggested this, even with the release of the first Sony RX100, I'd have to answer to claims that getting that quality in a small camera is physically impossible, but it looks like that's slowly no longer becoming the case.

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/sonys-new-sensors-exciting-new-cameras/

Previously, you always had the tradeoff of more noise with higher megapixels or camera resolution if the sensor wasn't large enough to accomodate, but now it seems Sony has managed to minimize this trade off so that it's no longer a consideration.

Obviously a high-end DSLR today is always going to be better than a pocket camera today, just as it always has been, but the difference is getting much smaller.

     One thing I've come to notice is my thinking style tends to be much different than most when it comes to planning or managing how to pursue multiple tasks.  Some have suggested I think very linearly when much of the world is moving towards nonlinear or multitasking, but I'm not exactly the person one would consider tunnel visioned or laser focused nor is it accurate to say I only do one thing at a time.  Instead, it's more like I plant the seeds of each of my tasks in a way that allows me to shift my focus to other things while each continues in the background.  If you're familiar with business terms, it's like balancing lead time, where one does the things that just need to be started but not tended to for a while so they can be returned to later.  If you're more familiar with engineering terms, it is like pipelining to have multiple things done at the same time, not by having multiple processes but by having one process...[More]