FAN reviews thread

"what would the highest and best version of myself do?"

I'm surprised by the unreasonable effectiveness of giving people a small amount of money. When I launched the "Fast Biology" microgrants, people told me that: 1. You can't do anything in science with $1,000. 2. Nobody would submit good ideas, because good ideas are worth much more than $1,000. #1 is mostly true, and #2 is partially true, but neither is absolute. I did get many excellent ideas, especially from people who are too time-constrained to work on them. In some cases, $1,000 was enough to build an entire prototype (especially in hardware.) There seem to be a few benefits in giving microgrants, though: 1. They can subtly nudge people toward working on problems they normally wouldn't (and this can, in rare circumstances, take them down strange rabbitholes that then change the course of their whole life.) 2. They act as a vote of confidence, making it easier to raise additional funds from other sources. People tend to just follow the examples of others; VCs often copy investments made by other VCs, for example, and giving someone even a fake, made-up award seems to elevate their "prestige" in a tangible way. 3. They allow the funder to find interesting people. Giving out these grants connected me with ~6 super intelligent people who I was not familiar with ahead of time. Small amounts of money are a mechanism to surface talent. I continue to meet people who are working on super important or beautiful problems, and yet who struggle to raise even $10,000 for their ideas, simply because they are a) bad at explaining their ideas or b) not working on a problem that is clearly VC- or philanthropically-fundable. I'd like to support as many projects as possible. Therefore, in the next week or so, I'll open up another ~$100K in microgrant funding. (When this goes live, you'll hear about it at my new microgrant website, tinybio[dot]org. More people with wealth should consider giving microgrants. If you'd like to do this for biology, but don't have time to allocate funds, I'd be glad to support or advise directly. My email is nsmccarty3 [at] gmail [dot] com.

You get emails every day from happy people

the history of the web has all kinds of crazy stories but this one might be my new favourite

Feeling very moved today by this account of @jim_rutt’s generosity from @lydialaurenson. What an admirable life he lived.

Sourdough #1 (top) vs. sourdough #100 (bottom) Do 100 things

storytime!!! a friend sent me a reel a few weeks ago, with hundreds of thousands of likes, and I realize it has a photo from my sketchbook that i showed a stranger 6 years ago it was a loose sketch of a dad and daughter by a lake. his daughter complimented my hair, and i showed them my drawing of them the video blew up. i've gotten so many messages from strangers asking for paintings because of this, and i can't help but think, the best things i've done for my career have not been the obvious things, the ads and the marketing campaigns, it has been the art i've made with no expectation or specific purpose attached, because in the end, the decision to create what we're uniquely called to create is the most powerful thing we can do

i read somewhere once that ~99% of people online are lurkers who never post which is interesting, because posting can completely change your experience of the internet, and sometimes your whole life. it has changed my relationships, career, and sense of what is possible, and i’ve watched the same thing happen for many of my friends these platforms can be antisocial or deeply social depending on how you use them. every post is a small bid for connection i like thinking of social media less as a place to consume or “build a brand”, and more as a personal web of interest, a place to think out loud and leave little signals for the people looking for the same things you are

I’ve done this non-stop for a whole year now and it has completely changed my life and the lives of many people around me. It works and it works really quickly. My social life is completely unrecognisable from a year ago.

you're not making new friends because you > leave every conversation at surface level > rarely get vulnerable or real > assume they're too busy > unwilling to try new experiences > forget about your own agency > rarely smile at strangers > accidentally give out unfriendly energy > expect it to just happen naturally > stopped saying yes to random things > cancel when you're tired we're in a loneliness crisis we need to remember real friendship takes time and effort put in those reps to start living a social life that feels FULL! you got this!!!

The purpose of lectures is to furnish your mind with beautiful, unforgettable experiences from which you generate intuition for the rest of your life.

there is incredible incredible alpha in re-explaining things that are blatantly obvious to you and which you feel certain others have already sufficiently expressed

New blog post! Wrote a review of @visakanv's excellent essay collection e-book, "FRIENDLY AMBITIOUS NERD". If that title sounds like it describes you even a little bit, I would highly recommend it! (Link in replies)

this whole thread is highly relevant re: the extent to which thinking is not about some lone supergenius in their shed but takes place in a social context, as a social interaction, that has lineages x.com/QiaochuYuan/status/164…

Told a grumpy gym employee who never smiles that i liked his shaved head. He said “thanks, I shave it every year to honor my son who died of cancer” Normally this would throw me off and I would awkwardly apologize for bringing it up, but I thought of the grieving parents on here who have said over and over that they enjoy talking about their kids, so I asked about his son. He absolutely lit up and told me all about what a wonderful man he grew into, obviously just happy to share his memory. So thanks, everyone, for sharing. It makes a difference irl

Neuroplasticity as a spiritual discipline

In 1929, Albert Hofmann published his doctoral thesis outlining a discovery that chitin is chemically analogous to cellulose. I wanted to read it (primarily because he used the gastric stomach acids of a snail to enzymatically decompose chitin, so I was curious how that was done) but the thesis is written in German, so I found a scan and had my AI OCR it and translate it to English. Albert Hofmann is otherwise known as the creator of LSD. This thesis has no relation to LSD but it is an interesting and surprisingly accessible read: it also shows how scientific papers used to be written: like narrative documentation of a scientific investigation, with enough details for another practitioner to reproduce the steps. This is definitely one of those "I don't know who needs to hear this" posts, i.e. I have no idea who would be interested in this obscure thing, but I trust the algorithm and search indexes will surface it to the people who care. Anyhow, here is a link to the English translation of Albert Hofmann's 1929 doctoral thesis - for whoever the next person who thinks "oh hey, that thesis sounds cool, I wonder if I can find it somewhere to read [in English]" - here it is: ywong137.github.io/hoffman-c…

I'm very much with @GPrime85 on this. If you have too much money, FIND SOME ART YOU LIKE AND FUND IT James Joyce was able to write like he did b/c he had a patron and we are culturally richer because of it Pay for art, you philistines!

Never write for the general public, their interests and tastes are too varied and you’d have to lowest common denominator it. Write for your best nerdy crew of 15 homies

Who do you want to encourage to keep doing what they’re doing because it quietly matters a lot?