A person with charisma can make a friend quickly. A person with character can keep a friend for a lifetime. -Stoic Emperor
Time is clearly our most precious resource. Itâs non-renewable and finite, and depending how we allocate it, our results in life can vary quite a lot (whoeverâs doing great things in the world right now also only has 24 hours a day). Things that save or reclaim time have great value.
So one of the most valuable things Iâve done in recent years was getting used to listening to podcasts, audiobooks, and Youtube videos of talks/presentations/interviews at more than 1x.
Now many of you are probably already doing that and going âduhâ, but I want to talk to the other group here, because I remember what it sounds like before you get used to it.
It sounds like that âspeed readingâ stuff that has never worked for me, or that has made my comprehension and retention drop so much every time I tried it that the net effect was negativeâŠ
Usually when people hear about it, they put their podcast player to 2x and everybody sounds ridiculous, like chipmunks, and they think, âpeople are just pretending that it sounds fine to them, this is crazyâŠâ and then they immediately give up.
It reminds me of the first time a friend of mine tried Scotch Whisky (neat). All he could taste was the alcohol, so he later admitted that he secretly thought we were BSâing him when we talked about all the different flavors we could taste in it. But he stuck with it, got used to 40% ABV, and after a while he stopped tasting the alcohol and started tasting the rainbow. It just takes a bit of time for your brain to rewire itself.
Itâs the exact same with audio speeds. The rate at which we think thoughts, or even read, is much faster than the rate at which most people speak, so weâre fine with ingesting data at that rate. Itâs not about pushing things above the redline, itâs about bringing audio throughput to the rate of other input methods.
So hereâs my recommendation: Start with the smallest increment, and stick to it for many days until it sounds normal to you. In fact, if you go back to regular speed, it should sound like people are drunk. Then you go up one more notch and stick to it for a while. At some point youâll plateau and reach the speed at which your brain is comfortable thinking (it can be different for different people â itâs not a competition, if all you can get comfortable is 1.25x, thatâs fine, youâre still saving tons of time).
Iâve been doing this for years, listening to things at speeds of between 1.5x and 2.5x depending on what it is (very different to listen to a casual conversation with low information density than a technical talk on a topic youâre not familiar with, or to Marc Andreessen who naturally speaks at 1.75x, or to Jocko Willink who speaks at 0.75x).
My podcast player of choice is Overcast. It has a feature that dynamically shortens the silences between words, so it can basically give you about 0.25x in boost without really speeding up the audio. Just that feature alone has saved me over 500 hours since Iâve been using Overcast (it keeps track). Add to that the linear speed increase, and Iâve no doubt saved 1,000s of hours â or said another way, Iâve listened to 1,000s of extra hours of interviews and conversations than I would otherwise have. Thatâs real value!
YouTube also has a speed option if you click the âgearâ icon. Many interviews and presentations can be listened to at 1.5x or 2x without a problem, and over the years, thatâs no doubt hundreds if not thousands of extra hours too. Same for most audiobook apps.
Keep doing that for decades, and it adds up.
I know some of you have been skeptical of this for a long time. It sounds like one of these âguru life hacksâ thatâs not for you, like micro-dosing or whatever. But give it a try over a few weeks with my method.
Worst case, not much will have happened, but the upside can be a big chunk of your life back, or a lot of extra knowledge and entertainment (donât look down on entertainment â itâs one of the things that makes life worth living).
Investing & Business
âChina's new AI export curbs threaten TikTok's US saleâ
Someday Iâll stop writing about TikTok... but not today.
Beijing has added several artificial intelligence technologies to its export control list, casting a shadow over the pending U.S. sale of the hugely popular streaming app TikTok by China's ByteDance.
On Friday night, the Ministry of Commerce released an updated export control list including "personalized content recommendations based on data analysis" and several other technologies under the category of dual use, implying they could potentially have both civilian and military use and that their sale overseas will be restricted.
Itâs not clear what Chinaâs goal is here, but if this ends up being applied to TikTok, it leaves the Bytedance app between a rock and a hard place. If the White House bans it for natsec reasons and China prevents the âexportâ/sale of the part of the company where a lot of the value resides, is TikTok just left sitting in between two chairs? Doesnât that destroy most of the value there and hurt Bytedance the most? Is Beijing thinking âIf I canât have you, no one willâ?
Via Jerry Capital.
âTikTok Housesâ
Speaking of TikTok, this Reuters piece (check out the video above) about a Los Angeles mansion where young TikTok âinfluencersâ live and create content for the platform is kind of amazing. It reminds me a lot of the e-sports team houses in South-Korea (and now around the world) where a bunch of people all live together and practice Starcraft or League of Legends or Counter-Strike all day.
I know that Youtube creators also have a similar ecosystem where people end up slaves to the algorithm and get so little per impression and competition is so fierce that theyâre on the treadmill of constant production and have to constantly increase production values to stand out⊠Instagram producers are not doubt facing similar dynamics.
TikTok was greenfield for a lot of people (as Vine and Musical.ly were before), and at first normal kids in their bedrooms could become stars through sheer talent and/or luck. But as time goes on, these virtual places become more competitive, and the green field turns into a village and then a city, with a lot more competition, established power law winners, etc. It becomes a lot more difficult for an ordinary creator to break through, though TikTok with its algorithm-based recommendations (as opposed to # of followers) is probably the most meritocratic of the platforms.
Via Terminal Value
âïž Rise of the Data Cloud Podcast âïž
Those of you interested in learning about Snowflake (I had a look at their S-1 IPO filing) may enjoy this interview with current CEO Frank Slootman.
The company actually has its own podcast, which is mostly interviews with Snowflake customers that has them talking about things like âthe data economyâ and âETLâ. Iâve listened to 4-5 episodes so you donât have to, and the verdict is that itâs a little boring, but gives a flavor for what the use of data is evolving towards in companies. But many episodes feel âcorporate advertorialâ, so donât expect Invest Like the Best.
Buffett Turns 90
Itâs good to have friends that care about you.
Amazon Orders 1,800 Electric Delivery Vans from Mercedes-Benz
A majority of the electric vehicles from Daimler AGâs (DAIGn.DE) car and vans division will go into service this year, the company said, adding that it had ordered 1,200 of Mercedes-Benzâs larger eSprinter models and 600 of the midsize eVitos.
The order is the largest for Mercedes-Benzâs electric vehicles to date and includes 800 vans for Germany and 500 for the United Kingdom. (Source)
Thatâs nice to see. The electrification of transportation is a trend Iâve been following for 20 years, and itâs been happening way slower than it should. Mostly because thereâs so much inertia in the system because all the legacy automakers have such large investments into the old tech that they are dragging their feet as much as possible.
Iâve mostly followed the space out of interest for the tech, not to invest, though I probably shouldâve invested in Tesla at IPO, since I had been following them since they only had prototypes of the first Roadster in 2006 or 2007 and it was clear they were on a different level than the competition. I remember Jason Calacanis live-streaming his first ride in his Roadster on his Nokia phone (iirc) in super low resolution, probably on Justin.tv or some other platform of the era, and I met Elon Musk and had a brief chat with him (mostly to joke about Falcon rockets) in late 2009 or early 2010âŠ
Anyway, good to see deep-pocketed companies like Amazon move the needle for EV manufacturers with large orders and investments (last year they ordered 100,000 EV trucks from Rivian, and invested in the company).
Science & Technology
Most Popular Internet Browsers 1994 - 2019
European Countries by Forest Cover
Finland and Sweden, alright! Source.
Microsoft Flight Simulator Mania Continues
Iâm trying to keep the streak of posting about a game Iâve never played going a little longer. Itâs not hard when thereâs all this amazing stuff:
This truly is stuff that wouldâve blown the mind of 12-year-old me. Any of the screenshots above or below, I couldnât have believed this was a computer game that was interactive and rendered in real-time.
The Arts
âThe Innocence Filesâ (2020, Netflix)
Iâve seen all but the last episode of âThe Innocence Filesâ, a documentary mini-series based on various cases from The Innocence Project, and I highly recommend it.
They break things down by themes too, with some focus on bad forensics science (you gotta see the bite mark âexpertâ to believe it... he would definitely be played by John Goodman in a Coens brothers movie), the limits of eye-witness testimony (both when it comes to ways in which is can be manipulated or coerced, and on the limitations of human memory even with good faith witnesses and victims), corruption within the justice system (keep exculpatory evidence hidden, not pursuing other leads once theyâve decided it had to be person X, etc).
I wish this was shown in schools. We should learn what the justice system is supposed to be, but should also learn how and why it sometimes fails. The clichĂ© about sunlight being the best disinfectant (not literally true, by the way) applies, and you canât expect reform without first making the problems known and dragging the bad actors out of the shadows where they hide.
This Shot from 1940âs Pinocchio Was Animated by HandâŠ
Amazing. How could they do this? Hereâs the innovation of multi-plane cameras, explained by Walt Disney himself: