I've been looking into joining @RaidGuild and have been looking up resources on defeating Moloch (human disorganization), and came across this gem of a passage 🧵👇

One day a man came to approach the Goddess and request Her presence for some desperate advice....

(1/6) Shortly afterwards the radio came on by itself, and an ethereal female Voice said YES?

(2/6) "O! Eris! Blessed Mother of Man! Queen of Chaos! Daughter of Discord! Concubine of Confusion! O! 

Exquisite Lady, I beseech You to lift a heavy burden from my heart!"

(3/6) WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL.

(4/6) "I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."

(5/6) WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

"But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it."

(6/6) OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

At which moment She turned herself into an aspirin commercial and left The Polyfather stranded alone with his species.

-Principia Discordia 
http://principiadiscordia.com/book/45.php

Found in this blog post:https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Foray into Discordianism

Last night @J__Cub and @theaknobel sat down at @launchhouse and gave us tips on how to fundraise, with their perspectives from both sides of the equation

Here are the 5 biggest takeaways I had 🧵👇

1) Fundraising is like dating. You've got to:

-Know your worth
-Pick your partners deliberately
-Stand out

This is a relationship you're entering into so don't pick the first one that comes around

2) Do your research:

VCs do hundreds of deals and you've only done a few so there's a huge information asymmetry

Figure out what they care about the most and personalize your pitch to them. Every investor gets stuck somewhere different

3) Be a visionary:

Have a masterplan, inspire, and have them envision you commanding a room of people

If you focus too much on the finer details their logical brain will find ways to counter those details

If you inspire emotion they know you'll figure out no matter the details

4) Mindset is key:

Now is a better time than ever to be a founder because you're the scarce resource

Investors are looking for the next winner, so you have options

Tell yourself that as many times as you need to for you to believe it. It comes across in everything you do

5) Practice sprezzatura:

Sprezzatura - "A certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it"

Or another way of saying it "doing the most but having chill"

If you found this valuable let me know, I'll be sharing more of what I learn during my time at Launch House! 

It's a wealth of knowledge and I'm taking notes 😜

Tips on OPM (Other People's Money)

I've been living at @launchhouse for over a week now and it's been a firehose of valuable information. 

I'm still trying to digest it all by taking notes and reflecting on what the people living and working here have to offer.

Here are 5 of the most valuable gems so far 🧵👇

1) @btcdog_ on Fundraising: 

Expect everything to take 3x as long as you expect it to. 

Have a document you need to draft that you think will take a week? It'll take 3 weeks.

Expect your round to be done in a month? It'll take 3 months.

Lesson: Manage your expectations

2) @_cryptorama on Teamwork: 

Communication is essential to having a working team, and if needed take a moment, hour, or day to let everyone get some perspective and come back when you've had some time.

Lesson: Even when things are moving fast, take the time to slow down

3) @tobydoyhowell on Social Media Growth:

Starting out it's ok to be repetitive while finding your niche. Especially when your follower count is low put content out there and don't worry too much about getting stale.

Lesson: At the beginning, don't overthink it, just create

4) @filmacedo on Marketing:

Identify your target audience and ask yourself these questions:
- How can we get more specific?
- How can we reach them?

Lesson: Knowing your customer avatar is the best way to connect. You can't help them without knowing who and where they are.

5) @JessicaLawson92 on Twitter Threads:

Use a consistent format. Choose a theme and stick to it, people enjoy the consistency because they know what to expect.

Lesson: Consistency is key

Launch House Wisdom

Today's corporate structure sucks. Here's why you should avoid it at all costs

🧵👇

"Even a rat in a Skinner box programmed for a fixed-interval schedule learns that lever presses beyond the required minimum are just a waste of energy"

"Ironically, the '9-5 job' is a preferred way to reward employees in business." @ShaneAParrish

Lesson: Work for yourself, otherwise you're guaranteed to be wasting your time

Be Free

Functionally when it comes to understanding, the difference between stupidity and stubbornness is arbitrary. 

The end result is the same, even though the process is different. Either way you don't understand, and you miss out.

Perhaps the former is more tragic as it seems preventable, but overcoming stubbornness is arguably harder than overcoming sheer ignorace

This is as much a reminder for myself as it is a cautionary tale to others. No one is totally above it, but acknowledging that and being mindful of the consequences is a good first step

Keep an Open Mind

Potent Note from @balajis recent conversation with @tferriss:

(Paraphrased for brevity)
The MSM uses Russell conjugation for "semantic power laundering", to avoid scrutiny on themselves while using language as a weapon to attack their chosen targets.

If you're learning #web3 or are into the crypto space, here are the best resources I've found so far.

🧵👇

@loomnetwork made the best Solidity Tutorial I've ever come across, that makes it fun and easy to work through in a way that's interactive and engaging. 

#CryptoZombies ftw 

@_buildspace helped me launch my first web3 app that I made with a ridiculous r/WSB theme that cracks me up.

Helped me learn how to get the backend working with the front end, launch on @Replit, and have a live project to share while having fun with customization 

http://mirror.xyz is something I haven't played around with yet but have seen some really cool projects come out of, like my friend @AkshajJois social token

Finally for learning and earning I came across http://gitcoin.co which has the benefits of integrating with @github for showing off your work, building a reputation, making money by doing projects, and with lots of great resources for leveling up your game

For any developers looking to get started in #web3 these things are a crash course on practical and immediately applicable skills that I've loved

Web3 Dev Resources

The ability to think well is important, but not as much as what it is you think about.

What I think about tends to be informed by past experiences, since those shaped my priorities

Sometimes it's good to take a step back and examine what shaped your priorities to see if they're still serving you, or are getting in your way

It helps to know what you want, which is its own challenge, but also to know how to get that

What to do to get something can be learnt from people who've done it themselves, but only you can determine what it is you actually want

I think pretty much the only way to determine what you want is to experiment, and see what you keep doing and note why you do it.

That's because we're mostly a mystery to ourselves, and what you find can often be surprising

Introspection is Necessary for Quality Thinking

On my 21st birthday I took 150ug of LSD that changed my life forever. 

I learned that everyone is born clueless, we're all trying to figure it out as we go, and following other people's paths is the only sure way not to realize your full potential.

Here's the story:

(1/x) When I went off to University of Illinois I was your stereotypical awkward nerd. Graphic tees, bad haircut, wireframe glasses, and pretty much no self-esteem whatsoever. 

But I had a friend who was a Computer Engineering major who seemed to defy these stereotypes.

(2/x) He was smart and hard working, but also charismatic and seemed to know something no one else did. For more than a year after I had met him how he claimed to not know what he was doing, yet still do it with so much confidence was still a mystery to me.

Until my birthday...

(3/x) We planned to spend the day together tripping and a friend of mine from high school came to join us. 

The kind of guy who didn't need the LSD to participate in and enjoy esoteric conversations on the nature of reality and our place in it, and a self-proclaimed anarchist.

(4/x) CE major and I had taken 150ug each and all 3 of us had decided the arboretum on campus would be a great place to spend some time, and we were walking along in a field that had white lines painted on the grass (I think the running team used them for their training route)

(5/x) I was walking in between the lines and my anarchist friend turned to me and quipped "stop walking in the lines, you're embarrassing me" and I retorted with "your actions are dictated by the lines just as much as mine are since you choose to walk outside of them

(6/x) Then I looked off in the distance and saw CE major ignoring the lines completely, walking along taking his own path and at that moment I understood him a way I never had before. 

How he was able to be so confident yet claim he didn't know what he was doing?

The answer:

(7/x) Nobody knows! I was suddenly able to visualize 7 billion lines being born into a world full of darkness, none of them able to see anything but the ones that were there before them.

(8/x) What my friend realized that I had failed to until then is there's no reason to think anyone else knows more than you do on how to live your life. 

You could choose to see these lines and follow the crowd, doing what the most popular paths were because they were obvious.

(9/x) Or you could listen to authority figures that stopped you from doing this or that because "you can't do that" or "nobody does it this way" or "trust me I've tried, you're going to fail". 

But all that advice gets you to is where everyone else is.

(10/x) So the only reasonable way to approach life is:

(11/x)
1. Choose an arbitrary point out in the distance, some goal you want to achieve
2. Start moving towards it and ignore the lines that try to stop you by telling you to turn away
3. If you hit what seems to be a real obstacle, adjust course and keep going

(12/x) When you do this you end up having a line that points and moves more decisively and linearly than nearly everyone other one, and so the other lines see that and think "they must know something I don't" and begin to follow you.

(13/x) This is what I'd observed with my friend, why he was so charismatic, why he seemed to know something no one else did despite claiming he was just as ignorant as the rest of us, and why he accomplished things that other people thought were impossible.

(14/14) He just chose what some goal and went after it, and didn't let anybody's opinion stop him. 

Luckily for me, now I didn't either.

If you liked this content, follow me for more thoughts on business, blockchain and life as informed by my experiences with the magical substances known as psychedelics.

-The Business Hippie

The Lines - How LSD Changed my Life

Saw Peter Thiel talk last night on a wide variety of topics from politics to crypto to investing at @JoinLincoln in Miami. Here are my main takeaways:

A 🧵

On geopolitics:

The healthiest way to think about American democracy vs CCP totalitarianism is not as futile or nothing to worry about. Both dissuade action, we need to look at it realistically and do everything we can to protect democracy.

On artificial intelligence fears:

AGI (artificial general intelligence) isn't the scary part. AI focused on surveillance that enables totalitarianism, and is a necessary pathway to AGI is what we need to worry about

On his *lack of* an investing strategy (1/2):

Investing in amazing companies is like the opposite of the Anna Karenina quote about all bad families being uniquely dysfunctional and all good families being similarly happy.

Investing (2/2):

All bad companies are similarly 1 of x and aren't doing anything special, and all great companies have some unique factor that sets them apart, so there can't be a formula

On innovation hubs:

It's often helpful to think of the negative case instead of the positive. The question isn't "which city should I move to for startups" it's that there shouldnt be hubs with a monopoly on opportunity and should all be distributed digitally instead

On inflation:

The simplest way to hedge against the Fed's poor monetary policy is to buy #BTC

And on politics (1/2):

Being a Catholic in protestant England 100s of years ago was great because Catholic countries at the time were dysfunctional but the Catholic church had its benefits so you got the best of both worlds. However the relationship is parasitic and didn't last.

On politics (2/2) 

Analogously people from the bay area who are liberal minded and successful because theyre open minded, benefit from being in conservative areas where they have the freedom to act on their ideas, but it also won't last as the politics change with the people.

That's all for now! If you liked this thread give me a follow and I'll be sharing more of what I learn in the world of startups and tech

@JoinLincoln just posted the video to their YouTube if you'd like to see the full talk

https://youtu.be/fDB1CsfUjys