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Weekly Retro (2024)

  • People to follow up with from Gwern meetup:
    • Kyle Schiller: reads Rachel’s substack, my post on SBF
    • Alexey: Looking to restart New Science. Broke.
    • Gwern
    • Asara

@August 9, 2024

  • Work: 7/10
    • Quadratic funding pool with Anton is happening!
      • Nice to see the moral support and comments after posting the proposal around Manifund locations
    • Talking with Matt Clifford of EF & def/acc — maybe 4-8 week London cohort??
      • Thought logistically complicated but maybe solveable
      • Kinda looking for a change of pace, some more adventure
    • Not much work on buni, to busy ughing on the writeup I guess
    • Manifold
      • James is pretty manic on Manicode, applying to AI Grant. Definitely feels like lack of momentum on his side
      • Stephen switching up the lawyers in hopes of getting a faster opinion
      • Maybe might hire Joseph?
      • Team still seems to be pretty aimless, idk
  • Relationships: 7/10
    • Last Friday: coworking at Lighthaven, then Valinor for a baby shabbath
      • Always weird how these people just end up being “normal folks”: Scott, Kelsey, Ajeya, Clara, etc. The baby especially does this a lot. If everyone passed babies around, there would be world peace.
    • Taco Tuesday Drinks Night was pretty good. Best part: getting people to clean up!
    • Matt Gasda play!
      • Play itself was a bit underwhelming — and we didn’t host amazingly.
        • More appreciative of Bet on Love now
      • But still good to have a bunch of Anthropic folks arrive and hang out, good to chat briefly with Avital & Leopold and demo our baby. Also hearing Alex talk about Claude was very sweet, love the “demo on my phone” vibe.
    • Mom came by and we had beef noodle soup together, that was nice
    • Ada at 1 month
      • Settling into a reasonable routine. Mom comes over to help during the day, I do a share of attending at night with bottle feedings and diaper changes
      • Not very hard to take care of an infant but pretty attention-demanding while caring
      • Seeing if we can outsource more of this; a few folks expressed interest in babysitting at Taco Tuesday
        • Maybe we should also invite people/friends over for dinner where we cook together and people take turns caring for her
  • Health: 7/10
    • Exercise: Missed a few days of jogging, oops.
    • Diet: Putting on a bit of weight, I think?
    • Sleep: Pretty interrupted, some amounts of low sleep thanks to baby.
    • Focus:
      • Pretty good modafinil day!
      • Generally office days are still kind of meh, end up very low energy and surfing internet instead of pursuing anything.
        • Dragged my feet a lot on getting the announcement written — had scheduled for Monday but then extended all the way to Th night.
          • Getting over ugh fields still super important!
  • MTG: Realizing I’m actually doing pretty good, with 65%~ win rates overall and showing up on the trophy leaderboards for MH3 and BLB
    • Did another class with Sam, though got less out of it (he seems less invested in BLB)
    • Nice to jam games while wearing Ada in a sling, or at night
    • Trying to study more (17lands). Maybe listen to lords of limited or lrcast?
    • 6am Qualifier Weekend tomorrow

@July 29, 2024

  • Work: 7/10
    • Paid out charity payouts (most of them)
    • Bit more work with buni — got the react compilation together
    • Manifold: IMO Gold market blew up, got a Q&A with Eliezer
    • Inbounds from Beth (retro patio11) and Anton (quadratic funding pool?), outbounds to patio11 on regranting
  • Relationships: 6/10
    • Nate’s demo day on Sunday
      • Overall, a lot of awesome people, fast-talking folks excited about technical details ranging from Taiwanese lang to 3d printed trees (below) to sfdata to cryptography
        • Slightly different than classic EA crowd (but also had ML people around). Much more tinkerer/hacker spirit, convos about base reality instead of referencing ideas
      • Purchased 3d printed stuff from Jamie — is my role more and more “financier” and “connector”??
      • Didn’t demo anything :(
    • Maddy birthday party — nice to hang out and see the fam in the park
    • Avital reached out for Matt Gasda play
    • Taco Tuesday: ~50 people! on a last minute board games thing
    • Rachel relationship check in:
      • Rachel thinking a bit about how to outsource, chatting with Ella to come in and help
        • Hard to ask people to do things — how do I get better at this?
        • Overall, might want more systems to offload/share responsibility
      • Rachel’s okay to start on something like Manifest AI — try selling Leopold and Dwarkesh on this?
        • But doesn’t want to feel obligated into doing something, can maybe contribute a few hours a day
      • Also wanting more time to herself or with me? Described an ideal birthday as waking up, walking to coffeeshop. How do we make this happen more?
  • Health: 7/10
    • Exercise: A bit more jogging, really the bare minimum to qualify
      • Feeling like muscles have atrophied, maybe want a gym membership
    • Diet: Going out to eat at nice restaurants a lot for having a new baby. Not much cooking since.
    • Sleep: Hardest part — esp on nights when I’m responsible.
      • Hard to balance between sleepiness/work/MTG/social
    • Focus:
      • Overall feeling better moodwise: more projects coming, I’m driving a few things (buni and MTG), got the SFF grant, Manifold on upswing?
      • MTG: Seriously trying for MTG top 250 mythic for qualifiers now. Got to Mythic yesterday, still some ways to go
        • Annoying that MTG actually takes up intellectual focus, to do well — competes against work for high horsepower
        • Also competes in terms of “shower thoughts”, so very dangerous. Maybe running is healthier to just, run
  • Musings
  • Goals this week:
    • 3h/day focus time on buni
    • 3 MH3 drafts a day til season close
    • Delegate out these 3
      • House Dinner
      • Taco Tuesday
      • Baby (Adasitting)

@July 23, 2024 (megacatchup)

  • Work: 6/10
    • Playing a bit with buni (Bun-powered react hosting/generation)
      • Nice to sink into technical work; had one or two days of deep deep work; plus motivated to set up home office for ergonomics
    • Manifold: weekend Biden Outage, with corresponding traffic spikes!
      • Plus: Elon Musk, Matt Yglesias, Nate Silver, Patio11 shoutouts. Conor Sen?
  • Relationships: 8/10
    • Took baby into hospital, actually nice to have some 1:1 time and do parental work
    • Baby overall:
      • Been saying, haven’t felt that different to be responsible for a baby, since we’ve been responsible for a bunch of people before. Aka not a huge imposition
    • Also, Rachel’s been doing much more of the parenting. Plus Meg.
      • Maybe a bit of tension? I want her to get back to working, and outsource childcare where we can. Eg night doulas.
      • I’m feeling a bit sad that she spends so much time watching TV now, seems like a red flag. But I’m playing a bunch of Magic and browsing internet, so…
      • Sleeping in separate beds for the last few weeks: I think I’m pretty okay with this; makes the cuddles together more valuable, but I can also have a different late night cycle, which I like.
  • Health: 7/10
    • Exercise:
      • Jogging a bit now; took Ada out once.
    • Diet:
      • Eh — think I’ve been putting on a bit of weight? Possible eating too much sugar or carbs. Been easy to get good food thanks to Meg and people coming over.
        • Might be interesting to switch to a soylent diet for like a week
    • Sleep:
      • Interrupted a bit with Ada, now also sleeping random long sessions during the day. (though, don’t really mind). Nice to have a very flexible schedule.
      • Dreaming more (one esp vivid/complex one of “metahells”)
    • Focus:
      • Some deep work on buni; been pretty good. Still a bit scatterbrained on other days, checking a lot of Twitter, Discord, email.
        • Trying Moda day on Wednesday. Maybe schedule these more?
      • Playing a bunch more Magic/MH3 draft! On the weekend, randomly qualified for Arena Open day 2 (though then didn’t get farther); booked a class with Sam Black. Thinking of trying to get into the next Qualifier Weekend…?
  • Musings:
    • Things have felt a bit slow, I haven’t been driving that much since the end of Manifest. Opposite of mania.
      • Feels a bit lonely; like nobody to work with, nobody really paying attention to my work. Feel the siren call of Manifold Discord; do spend a bunch of time reading that still; feels like my current online community, instead of Taco Tuesday or Manifund.
    • Some things looking up now:
      • Some expressions of interest in funding from SFF speculation grants (though, may have fallen through); also $40k check from unknown DAF
      • Ross on the Manifund board; maybe we don’t need to return the money
      • Silly, but back-to-back Magic wins (5 trophies in a row)
  • Lots of tentative ideas, but not much conviction to go ham in one direction. Next steps if I wanted to dive deep:
    • buni — launch v0, apply to YC?
    • Manifest x AI — see if Leopold and Dwarkesh are in?
    • celeb regrantors — pitch Patio11 and Elizer? Maybe 1 more?
    • Manifund DAF — schedule a bunch of user interviews with donors?
    • SF Constellation — check in with Barrel House Brewery

Catching up week by week Saturdays

  • June 15
    • End of Manifest, 4-day vacation with Rachel to swimming pool
  • June 22
    • Guardian article, EA forum drama…
    • Campfire party TT — rambunctious, fire spilled, Joel and Lisa
  • June 29
    • Prep for baby? Don’t remember much…
    • Chatted with Caleb again about processing backend ops
  • July 6
    • July 4th hackathon plus fireworks afterwards
      • Maybe the “SF Constellation” is kind of viable?
    • Then: Baby born!
      • Birth process: first 24h quite harrowing; Morgan kinda gave up and swapped; then the
      • Entire of Rachel’s family around
      • Lots of visits from my family too, Madeline and Alex especially
  • Jul 13
    • Baby first week
      • More visits to doctors; stroller trip, learnings on dealing with baby
      • Taco Tuesday with showing
    • Some hacking, eg setting up manifund.org/finances
  • Jul 20
    • Board of directors meeting: onboarded Ross
    • Having Derik around as a guest for a week — pretty fun, engaging convo on spending vs saving for EA efforts, Constellation, looking into the Lucerne Castle
    • Baby second week?
      • Meg has been super helpful

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