March 13, 2023
News
Ilana and I went on two double dates this week. We are doing a lot more things together since she moved in. Living together has been very easy. Doing more things together has been wonderful. On one double date my friend's new girlfriend said she ate her twin in the womb. That was quite exciting, and prompted some further fact checking after we got home. Sadly, the fact check revealed that this most likely did not happen. On the other my friend informed me of the existence of prosthetic breasts for men to breastfeed their children. This is a major step towards gender equality.
I played pickleball for the first time this week. It's quite fun. I am hoping to get a little team in a league going.
I am enjoying writing this newsletter, and I hope that you are enjoying reading it. I would love to receive an update from all of my friends, and I'm sure all of your friends would appreciate an update. With people moving all over the country, I just feel like getting something in the mail every now and then from a friend is a nice thing. Anyways, I set up a way to write something like this and host it online. It's at friendmail.co and you can read all of the stuff I have written at friendmail.co/user/evnv. If you go to friendmail.co and create an account, you can create a newsletter and set the addresses of the people you want it sent to. You can set up to 20 addresses, and I'll send them out for you. I hope to hear from you, and feel free to text or call me if you have any issues with the website and I'll fix it up.
Business
Work has finally slowed down. I have officially been working my job for a year. Things are making sense at work and I'm feeling comfortable. Sometimes I get pretty frustrated about things at work, but overall I am extremely lucky to have such a great job. A lot of news has been happening around the tech sector the past few months, and likely there will be more in the coming few months. But I feel relatively safe at my job. I think the culture of the company is fantastic and seems to mirror how Jack Dorsey goes about all of his projects.
Jack currently is working on a lot of projects around Bitcoin and Web3, which garners a lot of groans and strong opinions when mentioned. I'm not sure that I have a strong opinion about the space except that the people who do have strong opinions are foolish. Work in this space is still very new and by its nature, its growth and adoption will be much slower than typical internet applications (I think this is generally the case because most web3 applications require buy-in into a new currency type, which is a fairly big leap for most people). There are tons of people working on various web3 implementations and obviously Bitcoin already has massive appeal, so it would be hard for me to bet against SOME blockchain technology eventually becoming ubiquitous (which, one could argue Bitcoin already is, but I can see how this is not totally agreed upon).
Anyways, Jack is doing a lot of work around this space and he always seems to treat his projects with a tremendous amount of thought before making any decision, and always carefully explains his reasoning. This is the opposite from how internet applications have typically been developed ("move fast and break things"), and at first I resisted it but I have slowly come around to it. I don't think that working slowly and deliberately is necessarily the best thing to do in all cases; however, with regards to web3 apps, it certainly is, since these apps typically are based on a developed protocol or contract that by their nature cannot be changed once created. An argument can also be made that working more slowly and deliberately may help typical internet companies. We are currently seeing a lot of big tech companies perform layoffs and face difficult economic situations due to their unprofitability in a time of rising interest rates. It seems like internet companies typically are more concerned with whether they "can" do something than whether they "should" do something. Ethically this is somewhat of a concern, but from the companies' perspective this is more of a concern in regards to profitability and user trust. I can't believe that Amazon has a music streaming service. Yes, it is fairly popular, with about 13% of market share, but Spotify has the highest market share and is not profitable, so I am not sure how Amazon expects this to help their business.
As I said before, there is a lot of news happening around the tech industry and there will likely to continue to be lots more news. I feel lucky to be working for a good company where I can feel somewhat secure but also feel like I am a part of the tech industry as a whole. It's exciting times.
Culture
The newest season of the reality TV show "Married at First Sight" is set in Atlanta. Hell yes. This show is fantastic. It's great to watch all of the couples get married without knowing each other and then watch them get to know each other and form a relationship. They do the show over something like 8 weeks, then they have to decide if they want to get "real" married or get a "divorce". I don't know exactly how the first marriage works but they have a real ceremony and they sign legal papers apparently, but I imagine the legal stuff is similar to a Las Vegas wedding. So it's not as high stakes as a real wedding, but I think it's still somewhat high stakes since they call their relationship a marriage, they live together, and they sign up for the show expecting to be start a marriage that they make work. It's interesting seeing the type of people who decide to go on the show too. Some of them are weirdos, but most of them are generally pretty normal people who for whatever reason decided to get married to a stranger. I always imagine that if I were on that show I would tell everyone about how it's really not that crazy to get married to a stranger and my Dadima did it in India.
Nutrition
I’m stopping coffee again. I either go really hard with coffee, every single day no exceptions, or I completely cut off. I get too addicted. Usually I stop because it will help with anxiety, and I start again because it will help me get more work done. The cycle continues.
I also ordered a month supply of Athletic Greens, the supplement powder every podcaster and their mothers is sponsored by. I actually think it is making me feel better. It could be placebo but I don’t care. Every day I get closer to the image of the one true god, Joe Rogan.
There is an Indian Restaurant down the street that is our place. Ilana and I used to go to Taco Mac with our friends all the time and that was our place. The waiters knew us and we would go at least once a week. But that died off because the employee turnover was so high and the food at Taco Mac is horrible. But we’ve found a new place. It’s an Indian Restaurant. It’s amazing. We usually get takeout but they recognized Ilana one time when she went.