• This one is pure gold. Hearing about Jerry Seinfeld’s writing discipline is just phenomenal. A few takeaways from this:
• He sits down every day, for ~4 hours, with a pen and a “yellow legal notebook”, and forces himself to write. No distractions, nothing else - just him, the notebook and the pen. He is not allowed to do anything else for these 4 hours, and if he cannot write anything, so be it - he still has to stay staring at the notebook for these 4 hours. It’s about the discipline of showing up every day.
• He really thinks about writing in two ways - the creative way, and the disciplined way. He consciously alternates between these two phases. The creative one is just about raw ideas that are super interesting but not thought through, and which shouldn’t be thought through. The second disciplined phase is cleaning up and expanding on the creative phase.
• A good follow up is the excellent review of his methods by David Perell:

• Very cool story - fascinating to hear about how it took years for the idea to come into what it got to.
• Interesting to reflect over the failure of Google to take advantage of this technology - that was built in house.
• A good reminder that a revolution starts from nothing. It only takes a few visionaries. More and more, it only takes a few nerds writing a couple hundred lines of code, and being at the right place at the right time.

• If you don’t know it already, anything this guy writes is just amazing. Subscribe today to his newsletter…
• This one was particularly good. Just straight up extraordinary to think that Federal Judges can do such crazy things, that completely omit the reality - to pass anti-climate bills.

• Author talks about the stress of AI research in recent history - and everything he writes down is spot on accurate.
• I can particularly relate to the “No Role For Scientist” section - it’s so hard today for academic research to have any sort of impact in this field. Engineering at max level of data and compute is what wins. The Bitter Lesson all over again…
• The author unfortunately committed suicide…

• I always find Aella’s writing quite interesting and insightful, and this little vignette is no exception.
• I am part of this “Elite Class”, who learned the language very early on in life - as well as my being Moroccan which made me even more fluent in this “polite plastic bubble around each person that nobody’s really trying to pierce through”.
• Although through my years in Science & Research (where this Elite is rather rare), I have become accustomed to being around people who do not speak this language, but I must admit I rarely reflect over how it must feel for them - especially when they end up being part of such events.
• That reminds me of a funny day where a South American man who had a crazy immigration story ended up at a PhD defense at INI - invited by Linus if I recall correctly. The guy was obviously from a different world, but had his shit together. He was a “axe throwing instructor”. Yep, an axe throwing instructor. Pretty wild. I wonder what it was like for him to be surrounded by academics whose live revolved around Science and Knowledge. Sure, this is not the same as the elite class stuff, but the mismatch was just about the same.

David Perell on the AI boom and existential crisis “Want proof? Scroll back to the beginning of this piece. You’ll notice that I pulled you in by talking about a battle I’m fighting. If you’ve read this far, it’s because you’re interested in my personal crisis. I haven’t thrown any data at you. All I’ve shared is personal experience. The point is that human interest stories aren’t going away. It’s like how computers are already better at playing chess than people, but nobody watches live streams of computers playing chess and Magnus Carlsen is still a huge name. Writing will be the same.”

Aspire to be a great contigency planner - Lloyd Blankfein “I’m in the risk management business, so I don’t take it for granted that I can see 4 inches into the future… What we actually aspire to be is less to see the future, but more be great contigency planners. When you contigency plan really well, you can respond very fast to what’s happening, because you thought through all the possibility. You’re reacting so quickly and well that it seems like you had anticipated completely.”

• I think this is the beginning of something of very significant importance. The first entirely AI generated paper that went through peer-review. That’s like.. huge. I wonder what will happen in a few years when a good chunk of scientific discovery - at least when it comes to AI is driven by… AI. For the rest, like biology where one must do actual wet-lab experiments, it seems that there is still a long way to go. But still, it’s beyond belief to me that we have reached a state where AI can produce knowledge - at the highest level of it. I frankly am growing more and more frightened of this progress. Afraid of humankind’s future in this world. But who knows - maybe this will be besides the point. Maybe AI research will be just like AI chess. A thing humans use to get better, but that no one looks at anymore.

• Lately, I found myself more and more drawn into the world of investing, and I found these two podcasts incredibly inspiring. Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger (Mark Leonard is from this same school of through I believe) are venerated for their wisdom, with thousands of different quotes attributed to them etc… But it seems that the entirety of their “wisdom” is that they have managed to master two arts: patience, and focus. Focus allows them to get to the real depth of a matter, and not divert themselves with noise. Patience allows them to collect the fruits of the initial efforts that they put into making good initial decision. Of course, there are lessons about hiring, about how to judge business about X and Y and Z - but it really seems that this is the essence of what they did, and what made them so much better than everyone else. And it’s not so hard to believe, as humans (even very smart ones) consistenty fall in the trap of distractions and impatience.

• “She hadn’t done anything - she was just pretty. But they took her, and they raped her to make sure she wouldn’t go to paradise when they’d kill her.”

  I can only imagine how special this film must have been for all the cast involved. Of course, all actresses are of Iranian descent, but either are born of parents who fled after the revolution, or fled themselves. This is one of the things I take away from this movie - the Iranian intellectual culture and heritage still vibrates, particularly outside of Iran. It’s a form a counterculture to the reality of (or what I imagine of) life in Tehran - longing of pre-revolution times.

  The violence of the revolution for women and intellectuals is poignantly depicted in the movie. It is so painful to see these women, full of dreams and passions, having their existence shattered from one day to the other due to the oppressive regime. The dialogues in the classroom were particulary shocking - where we could see men proudly advocating despicable views of the world. But women are also shown to be complicit to the horror - and that’s also hard to see. The endoctrination is of such strength… While it has given place to a lot of extraordinary (engaged) artwork, it certainly has caused unmeasurable suffering, and killed - the dreams, souls and the actual lives - of so many Iranians.

  Louisa noted a very interesting idea - the two books that we hear of the most in the movie are The Great Gatsby, and Lolita. Before the revolution, the movie evokes the great Gatsby - with Daisy incarnating the powerful woman, which the man desperately pursues. Post revolution, we hear of Lolita, which, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, pictures a female character completely subject to a narcissistic, pervert and abusive man. One wonders what this narcissistic, pervert and abusive man can be assimilated to, and what this poor girl should do of her life after experiencing this abuse.

• I rewatched with Louisa Casablanca at the Cinema. It must have been 10 years I hadn’t seen it - probably since High School. For some reason, I don’t remember enjoying it so much when I first watched it - and obviously, I could only really remember the love story between the Rick and Ilsa. Well obviously, this movie is so much more than the love story. My favourite scene was the last one, where Rick surprises Ilsa and tells her that she’ll go with Victor, against her will. “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon — and for the rest of your life”. He just knows what’s right. This is the perfect response to Ilsa’s “Oh I don’t know what’s right any longer… You have to think for the both of us”. What a true demonstration of power, maturity, and manhood than to do what’s right when it goes against one’s own interest… Beautiful. Magical. Inspiring.

• Ok I have TOO MUCH to write about this. Will try to find the time… This show… David Lynch… Waw.

• [Israeli soldier to a Palestinian father - in front of his young son] “Tell your son that his mom is a whore. Say it louder. Louder!”

A poignant, touching, and inspiring tale of Palestinian suffering - from 1948 to modern days. The movie told the story of a family which has been, through the major historical events of the conflict, significantly damaged - humiliated. Humiliation really is the right word to describe what the film felt like - repeated, humiliation and dehumanization of the Palestinian people. I found particularly powerful the symbolism of two Palestinian parents, after having lost their son to a bullet in the brain from Israeli Army, being asked whether they wanted to donate their son’s organs - and ultimately accepting. The heart of their son goes to an Israeli young man - the Israeli man carries the heart of a Palestinian. I always find particularly alienating and uncomfortable to be watching such scenes of suffering and violence from the comfort of a cinema chair. Of course, I more than ever believe in the power and impact that art can have to convey messages and make things move in unexpected ways, but as this is not a war I am in any way fighting, it just makes me feel like a naive, ignorant coward. But no one - including myself in this instnce - should care about how it makes me feel.