just ordered four lee kuan yew books that i am excited to read

watching the national day parade was a real trigger

- the singapore story
- one man's view of the world
- the wit & wisdom of lee kuan yew
- from third world to first

my new dopamine source is actually clearing my booklist or books that i have bought

increasing reliance on AI

https://fxtwitter.com/_opencv_/status/1955047027433410999

Status Quo Bias

people disproportionately do nothing or maintain their current or previous position, often when an easily assessable alternative would be superior

from my current read "Maxims for Thinking Analytically"

sounds very similar to region beta paradox which I've covered here: https://news.1rj.ru/str/humblespace/67

Maxim 8:
Good decisions sometimes have poor outcomes
Bad decisions sometimes have good outcomes

separate the quality of the decision from the outcome at all times to avoid resulting (aka outcome bias)

some people don't find themselves until their mid-30s or 40s

everyone runs their own race and discovers themselves in their own time

if you've managed to discover yourself early, you're lucky!

life is journey

one more book to be shipped :-)

Been thinkin a lot about youth culture's shared history with music, and why this is no longer the base case.

In the past, music was the primary youth identity marker. your genre was your tribe (punk vs hip hop heads, ravers vs grunge kids).

Post 2010, social media, gaming, politics and meme culture have taken over as identity centers.

Music is often just a soundtrack for TikTok rather than the driver of the cultural narrative.

So even if something is huge (like K-pop or reggaeton), it often spreads as part of a larger content ecosystem rather than standing alone as a cultural movement.

There is also a shorter cultural half-life due to the speed of information transmission on the internet. A boom bap rap wave in the ’90s could last 5 years, whereas a viral genre today might peak in 5 months.

There’s no time to build shared mythology like a 'Enter the 36 Chambers' equivalent, before the next microtrend rolls in.

The 1960s–2000s were an anomaly in human history where mass media could create unified global “movements.” Now, music culture is permanently fractured. This in turn has removed incentives to create great music, as the economics no longer allow for it.

This is also why we have no great artists coming out of youth culture. There is no Elvis, MJ, Tupac or Robert Plant.

I think the last remaining great artist of the 1960s-2000s era is probably Kanye West, and that nigga pushing 50.

I think i just feel bad for the youth of today as they will only experience these cultures through mimickery of a "great era" vs creating something new.

If i were to extrapolate the closest thing to youth identity markers of the past and juxtapose it onto today. the closest comparison wouldnt even be in music, it would be something like these micro far right youth political movements (groypers etc) , which is kind of dark if you think about it lol.

in math, once you know the trick to prove a theorem, you move onwards; there is beauty in coming up with the algorithm, there is minimal in executing it. when everything is trivial and can be “solved” in our heads, every action and its subsequent can be mapped out, it is a trivial pursuit. life is lived on the knife’s edge riding stochasticity, the second your outcome space becomes deterministic, what is the point of being alive?

There is a narrow line between being fully in the zone and completely checked out and the price for crossing the spread is your sanity.

Context switching between total focus and cruise control is a cost too high to pay.

iq

good for thrift shop or carousel hagglers (like me)

https://x.com/RhysSullivan/status/1956590445011591585

find where capital needs to go and then make sure to become relevant in that space