#15: Justin Fineberg - Heretical thoughts, the curator economy, and creating content

When you do the things that you're good at, you know, versus like you just enjoy that time more, you know, and you— and so like finding things you're good at and continuing to work on those things, you'll enjoy your time. You get the— you got the constant validation and the feedback. And so, um, and then you end up wanting to work on that more. And, uh, it's just how you like to spend your time.

All right, welcome to another episode of Brain Blast. Today we got my good friend Justin Feinberg on. He is the founder of Reckless, a customizable newsletter full of the reading list of your favorite thought leaders. He's got Paul Graham, Tim Ferriss, Chamath. You get to see all of their readings, all their Twitter likes, everything that they are reading. It's really cool. He is building the curation economy. Justin's also the person who inspired me to start my newsletter Brain Blast. So thank you, sir. By the way, I want to make it clear that Brain Blast is separate from my work at the Defiant. All right. I hope you enjoy. All right.

All right.

I want to start off a couple of things. Good to have you on, obviously. But Kevin Kelly, you know that guy? You've heard of him?

I, I don't know. Do I know Kevin Kelly?

He's the guy who wrote A Thousand True Fans.

So, oh yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I just, um, so I'll do an intro for you before, before, and I'll record that after so people know who you are. So it's all good, but let's go through this right now. He, he has this essay called Some Contemporary Heresies. Um, let me send you the link and they're just a bunch of unpopular opinions and I want to hear your thoughts on some of them. Let me text it to you. Okay, cool.

This is fun.

Yeah. All right. Number 1, aliens are already here. This is— these aren't all— they don't— he doesn't all believe them. It's just beliefs that he's heard that are somewhat heretical. Hmm.

Okay. So these are things.

Okay.

Gotcha. Yeah.

All right. I probably should have sent it beforehand, but then Whatever, get your candid—

oh, it's good. This is— it's more improv. Yeah, candid thoughts. All right, aliens are already here. Yeah, you want to start off? You want to leave the show here?

I don't think aliens are already here. Like, I think they would have taken over by now or something, or it's just— I don't think they're here.

Yeah, no, I don't think aliens are here. Um, you know, I think, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I— maybe the argument is that You know, if aliens wanted to know, wanted us to know that they were here, like they would make that known. That's why I also don't believe any of the UFO stuff, right? Like they're traveling across the galaxy and like, oh, we got a quick shot of them on a camera. Like how? Like aliens, they traveled across the galaxy, but they're not, they can't cover up, you know, them moving across the skyline. Yeah.

So facts, facts. I did just listen to the Lex Fridman and Grimes podcast. It was pretty incredible, but Grimes was just talking about how she read in this book, I forget what it was called, but just the idea that we are kind of the start of the universe instead of us searching all the time. Like we're the beginning. We will become the, like the other life forms on other planets and whatnot.

Like we're the aliens.

Yeah, exactly. All right. Number 2, robot AI soldiers are preferable to human soldiers. I'll go first on this one. I, yeah, I think that's mostly true, but humans are necessary and like humans think differently and are just like also have compassion and will do like the weird things that humans do that are just like innate to keep them alive. So.

Yeah, I mean, I think if we can remove as much suffering as possible in the world, and, um, being a soldier, you're just, you're kind of meat in a way, right? You're just kind of being put in this situation to, to sacrifice your life for something. Why not, you know, build a technology that fights these kind of wars for us? Um, so I, I agree with that.

All right, what about number 3? Polygamy. And I don't know what polyandry is.

Yeah, polygamy should be legal, uh, that you could be with multiple partners.

Yeah, yeah. And have like multiple wives or multiple husbands for the ladies out there.

Or yeah, um, I don't know. I mean, look, it, uh, to each their own, you know. If someone wants to do that, I, I guess there's, there's problems associated with like how do you set up the legal requirements, and there's other complexities that I probably can't think of right off the top of my head. But I mean, it's a slippery slope, right? Of like, okay, you let polygamy, then at what point do you let bestiality? Maybe?

Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, I'm—

no, it's probably different.

It's totally different, but definitely different. I— that's a, that's a funny argument, because I could hear people screaming that like, it's slippery slope, you know. Yeah. All right.

Doesn't seem that bad.

Yeah. No. Yeah. I feel like, you know, people do it, whatever, you know, it's their decision. It sounds really— it's not up my— like, I'm a full-on monogamist. I don't think I'd do well with that, but hey, to each their own. All right. Cannibalism is okay. I'm gonna go with no on that one, but I did have a conversation the other day with Kevin, who was on my podcast, about crypto cannibalism. And we both came to the conclusion that there's probably a higher percentage of cannibals in crypto than in other places due to crypto's libertarian beliefs and anti-rules in general. So if crypto cannibalism becomes a thing in the next few weeks, just don't be surprised. [Speaker:JASON_LEVIN] Really?

So you think there's a community of people in crypto who have an interest in eating other humans generally?

No, I think out of all the cannibals in the world, say it's 1 out of 10,000 people, I think it's a higher rate in crypto just because of the sense of libertarianism and sense of non-rule following. But that's just my thought, a wild opinion.

Look, Web3 is eating Web2 for a reason.

There you go. There you go. I'm gonna skip down a few. Let's see. Yeah. Neanderthals were smarter than humans. I disagree, but I don't know. I was— this Grimes podcast, man, it just made me think so much. But she was talking about how we're not Homo sapiens anymore. We're like Homo techno. Like, brains have changed our neural pathways. And so I don't know if we're smarter, but I feel like, like our attention spans are definitely shorter and, you know, but we figure things out faster.

Yeah. I mean, I wonder what like smarter in any, like, in the sense of like who's smarter because we like, so smarter seems subjective, right? Like, I mean, humans, Homo sapiens survived, Neanderthals didn't. Would that mean that they, you know, are smarter in some sense? I don't know if if that's your definition of smarts, to survive evolution.

That's fair. Um, all right, let's hop into Reckless and tell me about it. Tell me what's up. Um, creating the curator economy one day at a time. Totally.

Um, yeah, Reckless is, uh, is our startup that we've been working on, uh, for, for a bit now. Um, Basically, it's a customizable newsletter where you could subscribe to your favorite people to see what their favorite kind of reads, watches, and listens are. So that's really the simple way to put it. But basically, yeah, it's a way to receive high signal content in a world where there's a lot of noise.

Yeah. And how is it going so far? I've seen you I've seen like really so many people comment every time you tweet about it. Like people will comment, this is such a smart idea. Or like, I just signed up and you're doing it really strategically, like commenting under Chamath's Weekly Reading. Like he just throws that out there for you guys to do it. Like, hell yeah.

No, exactly. Chamath's Weekly Read. So, so for some background, Chamath has been tweeting for the past like 4 weeks now. Once a week, he's been tweeting out everything he read that week. Which is pure validation towards our idea, right? People have been loving it. The replies to it are always like, oh, send more, send more. And what we're doing essentially is compiling the weekly reads for a bunch of other people, right? Chamath is kind of a one-off case where he's doing the work for everybody and compiling the list. And it's great. It's how I get the news for the week as I read, hey, here's Chamath. But we basically do it for a bunch of other people. So Sam Harris, Naval, Paul Graham, A lot of people in this kind of tech and kind of, I would say like philosophical space right now. But we have a lot of cool plans to expand in really every niche of the internet. So whoever your favorite thinker is, you'll be able to get their list of weekly reads. So yeah, you don't have to really scroll endlessly on Twitter looking for content. You could just go directly to the people that you trust.

No, it's super cool. I think The way you guys get it to blow up is you or Ian blows up as being like writing curation threads will blow it the fuck up. Cause one of you guys, yeah. If you blow up, then, then it blows up. Like you ever see that guy Abhishek? I talked about him in my last essay. He's like, he has 35,000 followers and all he does is write curation threads. Like he never has posted an original thought, but like, hey, like whatever he's doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But Um, the, the, the thing we've seen at this point is that like what we're building and, and is like, as soon as someone sees it and they're a fan of Sam Harris and you say, hey, you could get Sam Harris's favorite content. Like people are, yeah, sign me up. Like it's, yeah, it's just a matter of getting eyeballs on it right now. Um, I mean, obviously there's more to it. Like we're, we wanna really build a great product and, um, so we're taking it slow. But so far, you know, things have been pretty good. Uh, things are looking good and, uh, yeah, we're taking it day by day.

That's fair.

But do you— Yeah. So yeah.

All right. Just, uh, psychoanalyze here for a sec. Why doesn't Chamath put books on there? I think he's reading some dark shit. He only puts articles.

I think that's the thing though, is that like also, you know, on a week-to-week basis, you know, you can't really finish a Chamath, especially how busy he keeps. I can't finish all these books, but he's reading these articles. I don't know. I think all content's equal, you know? So these are interesting articles. You get, you learn a lesson as long as you're reading, right? That's the whole Naval thing is like, you know, skip your books around. Like, who cares? As long as you're consuming content that's valuable. And so maybe for Chamath, it's just articles, but yeah, I don't know. Maybe you're right.

Yeah.

I know you're into these specific books.

Yeah. I've been questioning that Naval belief like a little bit lately. And I believed it very heavily for a while, but I kind of have been questioning it. It's like, there's such a good feeling of just reading a whole book and feeling like, hey, I dived into this this week. And that's, you know, what was like all, you know, that's what I was thinking about. That's what I was focusing on, you know? And I guess I understand it. Like, don't feel bad when you do skip around and shit, but I don't think that should be like encouraged, you know?

Yeah.

But I don't know. I do it. I do it myself. So it's hard to, I look at like guys like Ryan Holiday, if you've ever like heard about his work ethic and like, yeah, he just, he shared up one book at a time. Like what he works on one project at a time for years. I'm like, damn, like, how do you do that? It's amazing.

So I think this actually goes along with what we're trying to do at Reckless. Like if you know, this is a great book. And, you know, it's one of these, like, you are reading Seneca or you're reading something that Ryan Holiday recommended, like, yeah, sit down and like really try to read it. But because we have so much content out there, and there's so many options that like, if you don't have the approval of someone, hey, this is an amazing book, and you take the risk, hey, this sounds interesting, and it sucks. Like, yeah, I mean, you might have to skip it. You know, there's just so much content. There's all this good stuff. But hey, look, if Naval, you know, who I look up to a lot, recommends a book, yeah, I really want to sit down and try to get through it. I'm not going to just throw it away. And so that's that high signal content. And so, hey, if there's a book on Reckless and you like someone, try to read the whole book. That's—

dude, that's— I mean, just thinking about that, like, it's analogous to Like dating, like when you get like algorithm is, is like an Amazon purchase, you know, Amazon purchase book. It's like dating apps and then versus a recommendation from a friend or an introduction from a friend. Like you're obviously gonna take that a little, little more serious. Like, you know? Yeah.

Well, and, and that's the thing about content curation, right? Is like you only, you only really care about what your close friends recommend, like, yeah, you know, Jason, we're close. Obviously, if you were to recommend me a book, like, or an article, like, I'm gonna read it, you know, I trust you. And then you also, on the other side of it, you trust wholeheartedly these big smart kind of influencers who you follow along. And so these are the people who like really are the ones you trust, and you want to get content from them. The middle of the road, like, hey, here's this New York Times editor who's curated this list, or these kind of random names. Aren't as like powerful of like providing high signal content. Um, you know, it's just not who you trust. Uh, so that's what we're trying to tap into is those two spectrum of like your close friends curating content and like the very big names who you trust.

Nice. Nice. Yeah. I know, um, Ryan Holiday's reading list. I went through some of that. He has it on his website. Um, has some good books. Yeah, for sure. Naval has that. It's, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm thinking all the way back to like somebody like, uh, like Bill Gates is doing a book list for a long time. Like, and, um, and then isn't there some literati? Is that a thing? Um, if you heard of that, it's like book clubs by influencers. Like I know my stepdad is in like Richard Branson's book club where Richard picks out a book every month and he gets it sent to him. Yeah, it's— That's cool. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Along the same lines. Interesting.

It's like you need the human touch, you know, you need like the human like approval. It can't just be like, hey, here's a recommendation. Like here's the algorithm, what the algorithm feeds to you. Like, yeah, yeah.

I don't know. So no, I got you. What other things could that apply to? You know what I'm saying? Like what other industries? We might have to like think on that one for a bit.

But like where, where, where does the human, the human curation versus the algorithm curation, like, yeah. Like, I mean, dating, what you just said.

Yeah. Dating. But like, say, say on Google, I went on Google and rather than just 5 stars for Taqueria or like Chipotle or whatever, it just says like, Which of your friends went there? Like if that was in there, like, oh yeah. But I guess food is so personal and different. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know.

It's tough. I mean, but that, but that is, there is something totally real there. Um, you know, I like, I go on Yelp, like Yelp when I'm trying to find a restaurant, it's not that good. It doesn't, it doesn't really help me, but you know, and then if a friend told me to go to a restaurant, like I go there. You know, it makes it very easy. So yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah. I feel like it's been tried before for movies like IMDb. Has that capitalized on that or whatever? But I don't know.

There's actually one of my, one of my friends actually is working on it. It's called Q. It's Garrett, Garrett Rothstein. We've met up a few times. Like he's, he's a great guy, but he's, he's actually trying to build this, which is yeah, basically like open sourcing your reading, your, your watching list. Like what are you watching on Netflix? And it's pretty cool.

Yeah. So nice. I could, if it becomes more low friction, I could see that taking off. Like if Netflix automatically like imported into there, so there was like an API or something. Yeah. Or Amazon or whatever, like Amazon Prime or something that could just, it'd be so easy. Everyone would use it. Yeah. Speaking of content, what have you been consuming?

Oh man. I've been—

It could be anything, essays, articles, movies.

Well, I actually just, I just read what's this? He just, yeah, Kevin Kelly just released What was— did you re— what was that?

Yeah.

It was like he just turned 70.

Yeah. Yo, let's pull that up. Yeah. Nice. Oh, I think I found it. 103 bits of advice I wish I know. There is some good stuff. Like it's hard to disagree with this stuff. Yeah. Cultivate 12 people who love you because they're worth more than 12 million people who like you. I like don't keep making the same mistakes. Try to make new mistakes. I like that. I, uh, yeah, I need that. Um, see, if you stop to listen to a musician or street performer for more than a minute, you owe them a dollar.

Oh, that's funny.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you find the article?

Yeah. If you repeated what you did today 364 more times, will you be where you wanna be next year?

Hmm.

Copping others is a good way to start. Copping yourself is a disappointing way to end.

Ooh. Ooh.

Yeah. How do you think about that? Like, um, cuz that's something I, I think about a lot too. Like when you, obviously you're creating a lot of content.

Mm-hmm.

Do you, how much do you steal? You know, like, you know, in the sense of like, hey, here, here's an idea.

Yeah.

Like what's your process of thinking about, hey, you got inspired by something. How do you take that and rephrase it? What's your mentality on that?

[Speaker:JACK_MALLERS] There's two philosophies in my head, which is one is inspired loosely. So my boy Jack Raynes just wrote an essay called Fuck You Money, and that's not his idea. That's a Taleb idea, which is also an Antonio García Martínez essay that came out in 2009 or '11 or whatever. It's not his idea, But he did it really well and talk and like had a new spin on it. So that's kind of what I do with a lot of my ideas, which is like digital immortality. Like people have talked about it before, but like haven't put it that way or digital self-reliance. Like people have talked about these ideas where being self-reliant, and then there's also like, so that's what I do with most of my work. But then like 2% of the time when I'm just thinking of straight up witty tweets, like I'll look at funny quotes or look at like Seinfeld jokes or whatever. And just like replace a few words and screw around. Cause like, it doesn't matter. It's a little tweet. Like when I was doing ghostwriting, like I'd get $75 a tweet. Like I might as well just do that, you know? Like, and like that was just kind of fun. It wasn't anything too intellectual. I wasn't super, it was pretty boring actually to do, but I was doing it for—

So are you, I mean, with your, with your, the way you tweet, like, do you, Are you like, hey, I haven't tweeted in a while, let me go to Seinfeld and pull up some jokes and put some Web3 spin on Seinfeld? Or yeah, yeah, it's still like every day. Are you like, hey, I haven't tweeted anything today, I need to put something out there?

Um, I mean, I tweet every day multiple times a day, but it's also— I schedule my posts as well, um, using Chirr. And, um, so that way I always have content going. Um, and I'll do that like on the weekend, I'll just schedule like a few posts for the week. And then throughout the week, now that my job is writing, there's just always something for me to tweet about. There's always content and just so much going on in Web3. But yeah, it's very deliberate. I delete tweets often. I think about it a lot. I have a lot of shit in drafts that I haven't put out. Yeah.

[Speaker:JASON_LEVIN] What's the criteria to delete a tweet?

Can I be canceled or just like, not even that, but is it worth my reputation? And sometimes, sometimes I like see something one way and other people see it another, obviously. And I just, I don't think things through. So if it was just a funny tweet that I thought of, like even something I tweeted a half hour ago, which is I deleted it, the first one, and then I thought about tweeting it this morning and then tweeted it today. It was like, which is more likely to be CIA-run, Tornado Cash, which spreads your Ethereum across multiple accounts, or ENS, which literally you're doxxing yourself on the blockchain? I was like, which is more likely to be CIA-run? The chances of the CIA seeing that or the government, whatever, is very, very low. But at the same time, is like, is it worth risking my account? Uh, probably not, but people have gotten banned for less. So, um, yeah, like stupid shit like that. You know, I, I'm a little paranoid with it, but my career is like based off my Twitter account, so I can't like not be paranoid.

Yeah. So, I mean, have you talked about your new job on the, on the podcast here at all?

Uh, not much. I, I keep it separate. Um, For the most part, but I've talked about it a little bit. 'Cause this podcast will be coming out in 2 weeks or so. So yeah, I've talked about it a bit by now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's, but I mean, it's very heavily, like, did you get it through Twitter or? Sort of.

Like, no, but I wouldn't have gotten it without Twitter, if that makes sense. So all the, like, I got every, all of my freelance jobs were via Twitter DMs. And then this job I applied for just on their website. And because I had all the freelance jobs, I had like a resume to show them. So, okay. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Gotcha. So because you had freelanced so much through Twitter that, yeah. Yeah. Like when you, when you say like, are you getting a lot of inbound, like freelance opportunities inbound through your Twitter? Like right now?

Is that occasionally? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just had to pass off two freelance jobs to a friend at Rutgers, cuz I just didn't have time for it. Um, nice.

Yeah, I mean, it's great to be busy and to have to turn to say no, you know?

Yeah, well, it was a combination of I didn't have time for it and also, uh, because I'm a journalist in Web3, it's a conflict of interest, so I can't do much Web3 freelancing, um, right now.

Oh, because they, they kind of own the rights to you right now in a way?

In a way, yeah. I could do my own thing, I could write about whatever, but, um, it's also just like a, an ethics thing if I'm going to be writing to an audience of 50,000+ about companies, we want to be as objective as possible. And if I'm writing for said company or said NFT collection, I have an incentive to write about it for The Defiant, which is not what we're about. So I'm not freelancing, giving up decent money, but I think it'll pay back in reputation and in my career.

I'm not too worried, but I mean, look, as long as you're having fun, right? That's yeah. Yeah.

I'm having fun. It's, it's such a good time. It's like, so I haven't gone into the specifics on the podcast, so I could talk about it a little, but it's one meeting a day, 12:30 meeting every day, and then just work on articles the rest of the day, basically turning, doing a new story every day, interviewing people, messaging, having calls. Just released a story about SuperRare. The NFT platform is hosting a gallery in SoHo coming this March or this May, around when this podcast drops actually. So yeah, it's been fun. I'm excited.

Should we go together? Should we go to the—

Dude, I'm down. I'm down. All right, let's run. Yeah, that'd be a good time. I'm definitely going to make it happen. And then I'll also be in New York for NFT NYC. Um, she's in mid-June. Okay.

Awesome. We'll see you here then.

Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. Good stuff, man. Um, I'm curious also, uh, yeah, content, content, content, content. I've been reading a book you might like. Um, 4,000 Weeks. Um, okay.

What is it about?

You have Tim Ferriss on Reckless, right? I'd assume. Uh, yeah.

Yeah, we did.

Yeah. Yeah, of course. He mentioned it on his podcast or actually did a whole episode, but it's just like time management for mortals kind of, and accepting like, hey, you might not finish everything before you die. And that's okay. Like everyone's like that. You know?

How do you determine what, like what, I guess, what is the, how does he go around that? Like, do you live a life where you choose things that you will be able to accomplish before you die or what's the solution to that?

Yeah, so something really, Something really hard for me that he's talked about is the idea of sometimes you have to give up things that you want to do, but just aren't as crucial or aren't as important. Like I want to make NFT art and I'm like decent at Photoshop and I've screwed around and made some NFTs, but is that like my mission? Is that where my strengths lie? Like I have to give up that, in order to write. I have to do that in order to create because that's just not where my strengths are and that's okay. But it's not—

So you're giving up making the NFTs because that's not—

Yeah, I don't really do that. Like I don't want to start an NFT collection. Like part of me does, but starting an NFT collection sounds actually really miserable and stressful. So I'm not going to do it probably. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know, it's just that kind of stuff. So he talks about that, just so many good quotes. I'm writing an essay actually based off my dude Jack Raines' essay about Fuck You Money. I'm writing an essay called Fuck You Time. And so the idea of you can also have too much time, free time. It's not good to be the dude working 3 jobs, but it's also not good to be the dude with nothing to do. Yeah.

Do you have a lot of free time?

Yeah, I do.

But I really, it seems like you're, I mean, you're constantly pushing articles.

I guess I don't have a lot of free time necessarily. I have a lot of alone time, but I do have a lot of free time, especially in the mornings before I get assigned the story for the day. So I do, I write essays then, but more my experience was like in 2017, I took a semester off from University of Michigan. I was dealing with like depression and stuff and I just, literally had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted, and I was just miserable. Maybe it was because I already had depression, maybe whatever, but I don't know. I think just having too much time can lead to meaninglessness, and I think having community and purpose and those things is just necessary. And so that's why none of these investors and billionaires retire, because they want that purpose and that drive that they still have.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think also when you get like— I've been thinking about like when you do the things that you're good at, you know, versus like you just enjoy that time more, you know, and you— and so like finding things you're good at and continuing to work on those things, you'll enjoy your time. You get the— you got the constant validation and the feedback. And so, and then you end up wanting to work on that more. And it's just how you like to spend your time.

Damn, how— we haven't talked about Blade. How's it going?

It's good, it's good. I've, uh, I've been there now for I think about 3, 3, 4 months. Um, so yeah, I mean, still, still pretty early there, but, um, it's like, I mean, it's, it's a really cool company. Uh, they're— they, you know, have a big vision, um, and it's just fun to be a part of it for sure.

Yeah. Are they trying to expand to other cities?

Yeah. I mean, so they, I mean, the big thing that they're kind of pushing is eVTOL, which are these like electric vehicles that basically would eventually replace helicopters. And the big thing, the big unlock there is that they're a lot quieter. And when you could do that, you can access and do more urban travel. 'Cause that's the big limitation right now is, the helicopters are allowed. But they are potentially and working to kind of build the, the infrastructure to be able to kind of be that first mover for when eVTOL is here, which I guess it's like 2025 is the estimates. But my focus right now is I am just kind of a product manager there right now. So working deeply into into the tech and just improving products, which is just, this is what I like to do, you know? And it's working on that, working on Reckless and making products that are good and people enjoy using, you know?

Yeah, I mean, you're gonna go very far doing that. I appreciate that. I've seen people like joke about product managers, but just working with two of them at Amex, I was like, that looks like the hardest job in the world. You have to know the nitty-gritty details of every little thing. It feels like, yeah, I just, I couldn't like keep track of all that shit.

I think even at a startup it's yeah.

Yeah. I guess the question that I had was like, do you, do you take physical notes? Do you keep it in like a Notion? Like what's kind of your process for keeping track of a whole product? And like a, like a, you know what I'm saying? Like a whole line of shit.

Um, we, we love, we love Notion. Um, I love Notion, so I use a lot of Notion as like, as the organizer. But, um, yeah, I mean, product manager is super interesting. There's, uh, I don't know if you know Lenny Rachinski. Yeah, uh, he's, you know, he's the, he's got Lenny's Newsletter. He's a big product manager guy. He's, he's a big inspiration of mine. And, um, His whole thing is that product management, the 3 things you're supposed to do is sync the people, ship the product. What's the last one? I'm forgetting. Let's see, sync the people.

That's already 2 very, very challenging tasks.

Yeah.

I would have trouble with those.

It is shape the product, ship the product, sync the people.

That's impossible.

There's a lot there. There's a lot there, but it's like, it's fun. You know, it's a fun— I'm super glad I ended up here. I mean, and that— well, I'm here because— and this is how we met— it was Lambda School, Bloom Tech.

Yo, I'm paying— my last payment is tomorrow.

Oh, let's go. Awesome. Congratulations.

Very excited. Bloom Tech. Lambda or IP.

I think it, I think, I mean, this is just, we, we talked about this when we first met, but it's just like learning to code and like learning that skillset. I think there's no, right? Like I, I think you and I probably agree to this, just like even that early, like quick introduction and just having that basic knowledge of coding is so essential. I mean, you're, you're writing now, but I'm sure that like, it's given you a level of confidence to talk about and be in the technology space that you wouldn't have otherwise.

It's given me that, but it's also given me experience being really shitty at things and remembering what that's like. Because when I write, like, I wasn't like taking a lot of risks, you know, I was writing essays for school. I was writing like here and there, but nothing like as risky as I'm doing now and nothing that required as much experimentation and screwing up and like erasing or like redoing. And like, but with coding, like I was doing that all the time. It was like being a 4-year-old again, like learning how to walk. I, and I was clueless. I would, yeah, it was. Yeah, I think that was a beautiful feeling. And it was like, gave me the faith that like, oh, like if I wanna learn something and like, you know, I could go out there and kind of do it. Like, yeah. Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Yeah. It's awesome.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

I'm very grateful for Lambda School and it's a very cool story now that I get to like explain to people. It's like, yeah, I didn't think I could make money doing English, so I dropped out, learned to code, and now I'm writing again. Like, it's just a, yeah, it confuses a lot of people, but also is like, oh cool.

You found that overlap. I mean, you found like, you took the English writing background, you learned to code. You got deep into Web3 and you've just like created this, you've created kind of a perfect like career for yourself, at least right now.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, we'll see what happens when Web4 comes out.

But what, what will be Web4?

What are you going outside?

Going outside? Yeah, just hanging out in the return. Yeah, back to Web0.

Yeah, exactly. Um, I, I've been touching grass a little bit more, which has been nice. Much needed.

Like you've been going outside more?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like actually like hiking and like being in the, like, like, um, taking Ron places, my dog. And, um, it's been nice now that it's a little warmer again. But yeah.

Before you weren't, you weren't going outside. You were—

The winter, it's just so hard to, like, I, I was brutal. Yeah. I was definitely, um, last fall and spring and shit, but Winter, I feel like I just hibernated like a bear and worked, worked the whole winter.

Something, something I've been thinking about a lot. And would you ever do anything like nomadic? So for example, my roommate and I were, we're thinking of having only a 6-month lease. So it ends in December. So January, February, get out of New York City and maybe go to like Bali or something crazy or something just totally warm weather for those 2 months that are just fucking brutal. Um, I don't know what you ever thought about doing something like that.

Yeah. I mean, I used to think about that a lot, like snowbirding as a 20-something-year-old. It's kind of fun. Um, yeah, you know, I, I have to, I think I, I have to stay in the US just because of the dog. Um, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, unless it's for like a week or 2, I'm, yeah, I can go out, but which is totally fine. My dad has a place in Florida. I could go down there for a couple weeks with the dog and just hang out there, or my grandpa, Jewish grandparents and shit. So yeah, but that's actually what I talk about a lot in this essay, Fuck You Time, is I think happiness and real meaning comes from planting your roots and settling down in a community rather than the digital nomad bopping city to city to city. Yeah. I think like pleasure and excitement maybe for a couple years is the digital nomad life, but like real meaning and like, you know, friendship and that kind of shit comes from staying in one place. And that's what I found in New Brunswick for sure. I'm definitely ready to start doing that in New York and I'll be moving there in August, but—

Oh, no way. You're confirmed. You're moving here.

Yeah. Yeah. I haven't gotten a place, but I'm making enough money and my office is in Dumbo. So I'm just going to find somewhere in between the Upper West Side and Dumbo. So fuck yeah. Yeah. Just got to have you here.

That'll be fun.

Yeah. It'll be good. I'm definitely excited to make it happen. Something else this Oliver Berkman guy was talking about. Yeah. Like I just got invited to a game night tonight, like New Brunswick. That's dope. Like having a little community around here, but for sure, uh, something he was talking about, um, was for every hour you have more freedom and time freedom, that's another hour that like your schedule isn't synced with the friends who don't have that time freedom. Like, you know, like I don't know how to describe it. Like, you know, when you're like a kid and everybody gets off for a snow day, Colorado, you knew that shit. And it's super fun because everybody's off and you go sledding and like do that. Like, Now, like if I take a sick day in the middle of the week, like what am I gonna do? Like everybody's busy. Like I'm just gonna walk the dog and sit around and watch movies. You know, it's, I don't know.

And what does he say? So he says that like, is it like he's just making a point that—

Yeah, we should, we should have like, when we get time off, we spend time with friends, like, like having time off basically. So there was this research done in Sweden where they found that The amount of antidepressants that people take over the weekend and holidays goes down. That makes sense. But it also, it goes down proportionally by the amount of people who are off. So like when more people are off and you're with your friends more and family, like people take, or like take less antidepressants from the pharmacist or whatever. It's like, that's super interesting. And just thinking about like, you know, I get PTO now. Like, do I want to take PTO just to use it for myself to go on walks or do I want to do it and save it up and go somewhere with my girlfriend or friends or something like, obviously like, you know, I want to, yeah. Save it up, you know? Yeah. I don't know. Something I've been thinking about a lot.

Yeah. I, uh, It's, it's interesting. I mean, yeah, I think like having, I mean, going back to what you said of having the community and, um, real, real, like having close friends is essential, I think, you know?

Yeah. Bali though. Um, there's a huge digital nomad and like, um, like tech scene there. So that, like, if you're going somewhere that has that, that, that makes sense.

Um, you know, that's, I think there's a level too of like, you know, I, I guess what I'm looking for too is, uh, is a bit of a retreat. You know, I still, you know, like, you know, in the harsh year in New York, you're constantly with people. I still want to work, you know, but I think there's a level of, you know, a total change of scene for 2 months. I don't see myself leaving New York, but getting out for January, February, where it's already kind of gloomy, you know, the kind of seasonal depression kicks in, you get, you get the the Bali experience for 2 months and then you come back and it's starting to get warm in New York again and the community's still there. But I think a bit of a location sabbatical is, it could be, could be good.

No, it sounds nice. I, yeah, yeah. I gotta, if I'm gonna do that, it's, it's US-based either Austin or somewhere in Florida, like Miami would be fun. Yeah. That'd be really fun actually. Good weather. Yeah. Yeah, I'm like trying to go to as many crypto conferences as I physically can in the next year.

So that's all to just meet people, to write about the—

yeah, I mean, meet founders, find— get alpha, like find out what's going on in space, um, you know, get articles accomplished, and, um, yeah, just know as much as possible.

That's awesome. Um, Yeah, any alpha to share here on the pod?

Ah, no, not really, honestly. Like, I wish I, I wish I did. I guess there was a study that came out recently that, um, the only NFT collections that are really making money, um, are like the top 5 blue chip ones. So there's a huge line going up for that, and then every other collection under that is just going down. And so I was wasting time a couple weeks ago buying like 0.05 ETH ones and 0.1 or whatever, just like a few hundred bucks. It's still a good amount of money for a JPEG, but now I'm saving up for a real JPEG so I could actually hop in on— What are you thinking?

What are your eye on?

I'm still thinking. Yeah, I like doodles. The artwork's cool, but not really. I don't know. I also, I kind of want to like buy a place one day. Like, so I want like, hopefully in New York, which is obviously expensive AF. So I was like, I could, you know, just start saving my Ethereum instead of spending it. That was a crazy revolutionary idea.

Yeah. Well, I mean, isn't the whole point to buy like that it is some sort of an investment? That you would buy tools in it.

But I'm just like, not that good at it.

I think it's risky. I mean, and who knows what happens with, with the market. And, you know, I mean, as soon as there's a recession, right, like how— and there's like a serious recession, I think the first thing you sell is your JPEG, right? Maybe I'm totally wrong on there. Yeah, I mean, for some people, they'll hold it till they die. But it feels like if you're not a diehard NFT, but you've got an NFT worth a lot of money, and all of a sudden your mortgages are— I mean, if everything's getting fucked up, you're selling your NFT. I think that's for sure.

[Speaker:JASON_LEVIN] Yeah, it's definitely a luxury good for the ultra rich right now. Actually, you know what? I do have one in mind, Crypto Citizens. They host art galleries. They own art galleries in New York and London and a few places. I think I'm going to get it for myself as a gift when I move to New York. Um, but they have ones called a Crypto New Yorker. Um, I was like, yes, if I'm going to be a New Yorker, I have to have an NFT that says I'm a New Yorker. Yeah, otherwise you're not a New Yorker, obviously.

Um, that's— yeah, but that, that's, that's cool. Um, I wanted to ask you, how— what do you think of the, uh, Elon and Twitter situation?

Oh, um, I'm very, very bullish on Elon improving Twitter. Um, I'm a huge Elon fan. He's brilliant. And I think like Sahil Bloom said, it'll attract the best engineers now. And the engineers that were going to choose Web3 or even SpaceX or Tesla or something are now going to choose Twitter. If you have the option to work under Elon potentially or on his— way under him still, it's like, you know, that's a, that's a big opportunity.

Yeah.

100%. Yeah. What are your thoughts?

I think, yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm totally with, with you. I'm, I'm really excited to see what, what he does. I mean, and also just kind of, you know, we're building Reckless is very intertwined with Twitter and like, you know, what we're building. And look, if Elon opens up the Twitter API, You know, we're, we're gonna be even more set, uh, to build, you know, really powerful tools with—

wait, wait, go on, explain.

Well, I mean, a lot of curation is already happening in Twitter, right? Like the people, the way we're able to compile the list right now is just like, how do we engage? Like all these people are engaging with so much content, they're sharing content, but it's still kind of all over the place. It's, um, It's really disorganized. And I mean, the whole, whole mission of what we're trying to do is like organize a bit, right? Give you the signal of the noise of, of Twitter specifically in this case. And, uh, you know, as soon as, you know, there's a Twitter API that's open, um, it really opens up the possibilities, uh, that we can do, uh, to even to bring it to a new level, um, of just building, building a curation layer on top of Twitter. Um, and so we'll have to see. I mean, look, I think the deal's not closed yet. Um, we'll see what happens, but either way, you know, we're prepared to— we already are building a curation layer on Twitter. Um, but if he opens up the API, we're going to be in a great position even more so.

Um, so yeah, nice, nice. No, it's, it's all super exciting stuff. Um, I, yeah, very bullish on it and I hope it happens.

I know, me too.

Yeah. I was talking to some Web3 friends yesterday in Jersey about it and just the idea that Elon feels like your friend. He has that brand image about him where it's like, oh, he's just that dude who memes on Twitter. He's a funny friend. Whereas somebody like Chamath or Bill Gates certainly does not, like, and that's why everyone loves Elon because like, he literally just like, you feel like, you know, the guy, he's just so open and vulnerable and goofy, you know?

Yeah. I mean, if anything, he's, well, he's, he's built an amazing, a very approachable brand on the internet, you know, in ways that Bill Gates hasn't. Uh, Chamath, I would say, I mean, at least on the All In Pod, if you listen to it week over week, I think you feel a level of, you become besties with the besties, you know, a bit more. Um, but look, to be authentic on Twitter is hard. I think no matter what, like, it's a fucking skill to like be yourself on the internet. Um, and it's something that— it's a muscle, you know? And it's something that like where people are gonna have to get better at. Uh, but, but Elon does a good job, right?

He—

I mean, he tweeted the fucking Bill Gates, like, lose your boner meme.

Yeah, he just tweeted at AOC yesterday. You see that?

Oh yeah, and then she replied, she replied, she's like, I was talking about Zuckerberg.

But oh shit, yeah, bullshit, bullshit. She's— yeah, she's fucking lying right there. I can't believe she has 12 million.

I'll also give it to AOC because AOC, like, if you're like— if she— if you're in that situation, you have Twitter beef with this guy who just bought Twitter, like, it's not a terrible comeback. Like, she— so I do give her props that she's able to be a bit she's able to do Twitter pretty well, um, as well. But, you know, there's, there's beef, there's beef. And, uh, but it's just, it's funny seeing like, like fucking, like Twitter beef between these two individuals. And I think there's only more and more of that we're gonna see. It's just like this idea that there's like adults in the room that have to be all polite and, you know, keep every— like, that's out the window. Like people are posting me— like, the dude's richest man, like, who just bought Twitter for $44 billion, he's posting memes. Um, yeah, no, it's getting into arguments with senators.

Yeah, he's so genuine. And I mean, I think I retweeted this tweet by John Hillis earlier, which is like, I can't wait to walk around college towns after the universities fall. I was like, yes. You know, it's the same thing with politicians and stuff. Like, say, say Balaji's vision comes true I can't wait to see the Capitol building like when it's empty, you know, like, or, or whatever. Like maybe that's not the full vision is, you know, it's still, there is still America or whatever, but politics is dead, man. It's like, who the hell goes into politics? The idiots that they can't figure out how to do tech or do anything else. Like, I don't know.

Look, I think, I think I agree. I also think it's pretty scary. Like, I think it's not necessarily like We don't have like a guiding institution. We don't, we don't have institutions we can trust.

Oh, we have the Disinformation Ministry. Didn't you hear about that? That's insane. What? They started like a, uh, disinformation board, like some Nazi shit.

Oh yeah, well, exactly. It's crazy. And so, um, yeah, I don't even know, like, I just think it's, uh There's a lot of— we live in a crazy time. I mean, it's just, who knows what's going to happen? And I think, I mean, all you can really do is just try to find, uh, listen to the— listen to the people you trust, right?

Yeah, I mean, Disinformation Governance Board. Yeah, insane. That's terrifying. A week after Elon buys or says he's buying Twitter, they started Disinformation Governance Board. Also, this is written by the Washington Post, so keep that in mind. That is, uh, yeah, that's business, boys. Dude, I could do this all day, but, uh, I— yeah, I'm getting tired. I gotta walk around after like the 45-minute mark. My butt falls asleep. I'm just like, I gotta explore.

But this— I mean, look, this is fun. I'm, uh, I'm super happy, uh, happy to join in and, uh, brain blast with you.

Of course, man. Of course. Thanks for, uh, thanks for coming on and I'll, I'll end it real quick and stay on for a moment. Okay.