The story The Grapes of Wrath follows a family that was kicked off the farm they had worked on for 3 generations. Although fictional, the story talks about a real starvation crisis that affected tenant farmers after manual labor was made obsolete by the tractor in the early 1900s.

These displaced farmers, unsure where to direct their hunger fueled hatred, hated the tractor, its operator, the landowner, the lenders, and its shareholders. But it was of no use, none of them were the monster behind their unemployment.

The monster, as Steinbeck called it, was the bank. In its insatiable need for profit, it caused human suffering along the way. And even though no particular banker wanted to evict the farmers, the need for profit demanded it. The bank was made by man, but man could not control it.

A century later, it’s easy for us to look at their pain and be grateful. It was a price paid for a freedom we enjoy today. This monster was an evolutionary pressure that freed us to work easier and more lucrative jobs as the share of US workers in agriculture fell from 41% to 2% from 1900 to 2000.

But there is no stop button on evolution, and the tractor of 1939 sounds a lot like AI of 2026.

The same monster that ate tenant farming will eat many kinds of jobs. It will be messy, it will be unfair, it will happen fast, and it wont stop. The monster must eat.

People will hate AI, its creators, and the VCs for the labor they replace. But these are the same people would have hated the tractor in 1939, unable to see beyond today, demanding the ever-changing world stay the same.

The great quotes of history didn’t just happen to be great, they were engineered that way.

To understand why, you first have to understand how humans remember things.

The human is an information glutton, constantly consuming and looking for more. But we have limited storage, so we maximize the amount we can know by compressing information using patterns. We pattern match by associating new things we want to remember with old things we already know. Even the world’s best memorizers do this, just much better than us.

Great writers know people use patterns for memorization, so they build pattern into their most important lines, making the reader’s job easy.

The study of patterns in language is called rhetoric, and there are fewer patterns than you might think. Classical English Rhetoric, one of the best-known books on the subject, lists just 22.

My two problems with the existing rhetoric literature are

1. Whoever named the different patterns gave them stupid technical names like Epistrophe and Anaphora. How are people supposed to remember that? Those names are in direct conflict with what the study of rhetoric is all about.

2. They mainly study text that is 300+ years old. This isn’t inherently bad, we just talked differently back then, so it’s less useful for someone trying to utilize rhetoric today.

So I picked a few of my favorite quotes, teased apart the rhetoric tools that make them great, and renamed the tool.

1. The Parallel

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”— Neil Armstrong

Armstrong delivered this line at the pinnacle of humanity’s greatest achievement (walking on the moon), so you might say this line has an unfair boost in notoriety.

But also, no one would quote this if he said, “I’m walking on the moon, this is important for us.” In that way, clarity and conciseness are necessary, but not sufficient, for great communication.

Armstrong gives the two parts of the sentence the same frame. Five words on each side, repeating two and a half of the words.

one small step for man
one giant leap for mankind

Repeating the “man” in “mankind” gives the line a pleasing sense of sameness between the literal man and the conceptual mankind.

The line also delivers a strong metaphor to align pro-gress, as in man moving forward, and prah-gress, as in mankind advancing.

We love repetition, we love metaphors, we love progress, we love this quote.

2. The Reverse

“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
— John F. Kennedy

The reverse is like the parallel but flipped. The same words are repeated on both sides of the sentence, but to point out an error instead of sameness.

your country → you
you → your country

The reverse is helpful for surprising the reader, it works when you’re rejecting something that is generally felt to be true. In this case, people look to the government to provide them things and JFK says, “No, you!”

Charlie Munger often repeated the advice, “Invert, always invert.” (which also uses repetition). That premise is useful when using the reverse.

3. The Arc

“Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.”
— Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History

The arc is perhaps our most familiar pattern.

The beginning, middle, and end
The introduction, body, and conclusion
The birth, life, and death.

The arc follows the rule of three, which is the idea that things presented in groups of three tend to feel more memorable, satisfying, and complete. Three is the smallest number that can create a complete journey. One thing is just a thing, two things is a thing comparison, but three things is a story. And in the quote above, Will and Ariel Durant give us the concise story of all civilizations using 3 words in each of the 3 parts.

4. The Cycle

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.”
— G. Michael Hopf

The cycle is a lot like the arc, except it bends back to the beginning. A good cycle will connect so cleanly that nothing feels unresolved.

Cycles feel familiar because we live them. Day and night, the seasons, the economy, and life all follow cycles. These cycles are just patterns that become more visible when you zoom out.

Hopf combines the cycle pattern with repetition to make this quote memorable. You only need to remember the quote starts with “Hard times,” and logic carries you through the rest, each phrase knocking into the next like a row of dominoes.

5. The Stairs

“I’m a libertarian at the national level, a Republican at the state level, a Democrat at the municipal level, and a socialist at the family level.”— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb shares the surprising idea that someone can be both a libertarian and a socialist. It is surprising because we don’t normally use political labels to describe how someone runs a family. The surprise makes it memorable, but the structure makes it memorizable.

The structure is like a staircase, as the scale of government descends down, his tolerance for control ascends up. Much like the cycle, you only need to remember that Taleb starts at the top of the stairs to follow the pattern of revealing the rest.

There are many more patterns I could explore, perhaps in a future WIBTAL. But one thing feels clear. How you say something is just as important as what you say. Take away the repetition from these quotes, or add a word that breaks the rhythm, and they become immediately less memorable.

It has been 5 years since I moved to New York City. When I think about that guy who took the leap from Tennessee, it’s hard to believe we are the same person.

I wonder what it would be like to get coffee with him. I wonder in what areas he’d be relieved and which disappointed. I wonder what he’d resent me for and what would surpass his wildest dreams.

He’d probably ask what our biggest changes are, expecting to hear how much money we made or places we traveled, but neither would cross my mind. Assuming it wouldn’t change the past, these are the changes I’d tell him he can look forward to:

You Develop a Reverence for Makers

You haven’t yet learned how hard it is to make things. All you know is competing for existing jobs at existing companies managed by people who took your same path. You are playing house in the home a maker built.

Luckily, you get to meet some great makers along the way, but even then, you won’t understand what it takes until you try it for yourself.

Inspired by your maker friends, you will create products and projects of your own. Most will fail, but through failure you develop the eyes to see. Every entrepreneur, regardless of size and success, will earn your respect because they are the ones building the world around you.

You Put The Goal Above the System

I know you love habits, it is true that you they were instrumental in changing you from an undisciplined shirk to someone with focus, but you will take it too far.

Your journal will fill entire pages with all the current health and productivity trends you wish to do daily. Things like: cold showers, gratefulness, affirmations, stretching, and supplements.

These pages contain things that are ‘good’ for you but it irks you when you miss a day and really upsets you when you miss two. You will look at your system and wonder, what is this all for?

Eventually, you admit defeat and accept you can’t do everything. You declare habit bankruptcy and now only keep a few that help support your health and writing.

We Want to Write

One day, you will be at the museum with a few friends, and you will be sooo bored. You will look around and see creations of great skill and dedication, but lament that it’s just not your thing.

The thing you will take away is how your friend Aurora floated around the museum in a state of bliss. She found intricacies in every painting we looked at and you could tell she loved every moment. “How do I get like her?” you will wonder for years.

In your own life you will read books and and excitedly tell people about them. You will see them mentally check out of the conversation. You will bore people with quotes and concepts. But you will realize, good books are your museum.

After this realization, you decide there is no effort as worthy as trying to be a writer yourself, and that being a not-great, broke writer is better than a rich anything else.

Younger Dylan might resist the Maker and System points, certain he knows better than his future self. But when I tell him about becoming a writer, I think he would smile. I have always carried journals and used writing to find clarity, it just felt impractical to treat it as anything more than a private habit. But, luckily for me, becoming a Maker meant not letting practicality determine what I do.

_{Thank you to Slobo, Eve Marsh, and Angelica Ndayiragije for help with this piece.}

My professor designated me the token white guy of my class because I was the only one who fit all 3 criteria of the woke’s unholy trinity: white, straight, and male. Unlike token black guys, they didn’t use pictures of me on the university website to give the appearance of diversity. Rather, they used me as a punching bag.

The course was called “Leadership Studies,” and I took it because I wanted to be a leader, just like my dad. I wasn’t sure how someone attained the ability to lead, so I figured taking a course on it would be the best way to learn. The longer the course went on, however, the less it seemed to have anything to do with its name.

All too often, the professor would bring in politically charged conversations and we’d just talk. “How is this person being a leader?” was a common question which received insultingly obvious responses for a thing you pay money to attend.

One day I remember in particular was the day we discussed cultural appropriation. The conversation centered around the white girl who went viral for wearing a Chinese dress to her prom.

“I don’t see a problem with it, she likes the style,” I said

The girl next to me turned red and her neck veins raged, “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK—ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THIS IS A TEXTBOOK MANIFESTATION OF WHITE PRIVILEGE AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF MARGINALIZED CULTURES. YOU DO NOT GET TO EXTRACT THE LABOR OF AN OPPRESSED PEOPLE, DETACH IT FROM ITS HISTORICAL TRAUMA, AND REPURPOSE IT FOR YOUR OWN PERFORMATIVE SELF-EXPRESSION.”

I sat there while the girl tore into me, spittle flying in my direction. I remember thinking, “Is the professor going to offer me any support here?” But no, she let it go on and on. Then she got the opinion of others in the class, all of which agreed with the girl. White girl after white girl made subtle disses at me as to how my privilege was so great that I couldn’t even see the hardship the rest of the world felt.

I was ashamed of myself. The consensus was clear, the real leaders were the people on social media “educating” the girl on why she should not wear the dress. “Obviously, if I’m the only person who thought this way, I must be wrong” I thought. I even apologized for my ignorance to the whole class. It was a real life Asch conformity experiment and it worked.

Later that year, the professor gave us a packet about Sweatt v. Painter. It was a Supreme Court case where Heman Sweatt, a Black man, was rejected from the all-white University of Texas Law school because of his race.

The professor then said she wanted to role-play the trial. She asked the girl from the dress incident to be Sweatt’s attorney (good guy) and me to be Painter’s attorney (racist piece of shit). No script, just talk as you think these people would.

I knew this was bad news bears from the start but I was too scared of authority to say anything. Again, this was leadership studies, not acting, not history, not law. She was intentionally setting me up for a spanking for being token white guy.

Girl: “Your honor, my client is qualified to attend the University of Texas Law school and was rejected because of his race. This is unjust. I demand that my client be admitted to the institution at once.”

Me: “So the uhh... University of Texas doesn’t think that uh... black people should be allowed here because they... don’t fit in.”

Her: “SO YOUR POSITION IS THAT A QUALIFIED BLACK MAN SHOULD BE EXCLUDED FROM THE SCHOOL BECAUSE WHITE PEOPLE LIKE YOU DON’T WANT HIM SITTING BESIDE THEM?”

Whoa. That seemed personal? Okay just stay in character.

Me: Well I mean, black people are uhh... better off in a separate place I think

Her: “YOU’RE LITERALLY DEFENDING SYSTEMIC RACISM! YOUR WHITE PRIVILEGE IS BLINDING YOU FROM THE FACT THAT SEPARATE ACCESS IS NOT EQUAL ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITIES. MY CLIENT WOULD BE DENIED THE SAME ACCESS AS WHITE STUDENTS. YOU CANNOT CLAIM THE RESULT IS EQUAL.”

I looked toward the professor the same way I would look at my dad when I was getting ‘the belt’, begging for it to stop.

Me: Uhh...

Her: “THIS CASE IS NOT ABOUT EDUCATIONAL POLICY. IT IS ABOUT WHITE SUPREMACISTS USING THE LAW TO KEEP BLACK PEOPLE OUT OF WHITE INSTITUTIONS. PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE THE PROBLEM WITH THIS WORLD!!!”

I looked away from the professor and at the girl. Her eyes burned with rage, all of her social justice activism had prepared her for this moment.

Seconds pass and the room gets increasingly tense waiting for my reply. I tell the professor that I’m uncomfortable continuing and she let us stop. The girl’s fury transformed into a smug grin, proud of her victory, as though she just delivered the Emancipation Proclamation and freed the slaves.

I felt heavy for the rest of class, carrying a tremendous amount of shame. As soon as we were dismissed I left without talking to anyone, walking at a fast pace so as to not be seen, head down, defeated.

I only recognized what this was a few years later. A humiliation ritual, with me as the scapegoat, designed to insert guilt into my soul, put on for the enjoyment of those that detested the white man, professor included.

All of this being said, I don’t blame anybody but myself. I could have had an opinion on what a good Leadership Studies class looked like and once that standard had not been met, I could’ve dropped it. Instead, I outsourced my thinking, letting credentials convince me someone knew better.

So in a way, Leadership Studies taught me the most important lesson I would learn in college, the importance of thinking for myself. As with all great lessons, it came with pain. A pain that ensures I won’t forget its importance.

At least now I can laugh. Laugh at the fact that this professor had a PhD, a thing I used to think meant something. Laugh at woke culture, a thing that we used to let dominate what we could and couldn’t say. And laugh at the irony, that these people convinced me a Chinese dress was racist, but that dressing me up in a gimp suit wasn’t.

That distinction forms the basis of what I call the Four Quadrants of Communication.

4 Quadrants of Communication

The quadrants classify individual statements, not people. The colors reflect how I feel when I receive each type from someone that I have an ongoing relationship with and therefore expect a reasonable degree of honesty.

They are not universal moral judgments, rather, it’s just a silly little chart.

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is deliberate and obvious exaggeration used for emphasis, emotion, or humor. It is not intended to be understood as fact.

• “I’m starving”

• “I’ve told you a million times.”

• “This bag weighs a ton.”

While these phrases are literally false, their intended meanings are easy to understand. Mostly harmless, but sometimes annoying, so still think it’s best to be literal. Okay

Truth

I like truth, especially when it is unpleasant. The more someone is willing to tell me unpleasant truthful things, the more pleasant I find our relationship. Good

Lying

I hate lies, especially casual ones. A casual lie signals that you are willing to manipulate another person’s perception, even when the stakes are low. Bad

Strategic Ambiguity

Strategic ambiguity is the deliberate use of multiple possible interpretations, allowing the speaker to later deny one of them.

• “Per my last email” means, “Apparently, you are an idiot and can not read”

• “He’s an interesting guy” means “I don’t like him”

• “Does this dress look okay?” means “Please reassure me that I am attractive”

The ambiguity is strategic because it allows the sender to claim a different intention depending on response.

• Email sender can claim they were just pointing you in the right direction, even though they metaphorically spit on you

• Commenter can claim they never said anything bad about the guy because they used a positive sounding word

• Girl can claim to herself that she was just wondering about the dress because directly asking for a compliment devalues it

Strategic ambiguity transfers the risk of communication from the speaker to the listener. The speaker gets to imply something without owning it while the listener has to decide what was really meant.

These statements are not inherently bad, but repeated strategic ambiguity signals a low-trust relationship where the speaker is continually placing the burden of interpretation on the listener. Ideally, a relationship should trend towards less and less ambiguity over time. Bad.

October’s pleasant autumn air stood in stark contrast to the dread I felt working in public accounting. Every morning, I woke up feeling as though another piece of my soul had been eaten by the corporate-interest machine. My life wasn’t all bad, I got to live in New York City after all, but I needed to escape if I wanted to maintain my sanity.

My firm had just kicked me off an important banking client and demoted me to a team that audited regional gas stations. I wanted to be good, but I couldn’t help it, I was bored as fuck and it showed in my work.

On top of being bad at my job, “Busy Season” was only a few months away, it was the time of year when 12-hour days were expected. I absolutely loathed working 8 hours, so 12 seemed unbearable. But I was broke and in student debt, so I needed another job to jump to if I was going to avoid this giant rolling boulder Indiana Jones-style.

I must have been at the top of LinkedIn’s filter for burned-out and desperate because my inbox was flooded with recruiters. Unfortunately, their spam DMs offered only slightly less terrible versions of the same job I already had.

I worried that if I took one and left after only a few months, the rat-race gods would press a scalding-hot iron into my forehead and brand me JOB HOPPER, forever banishing me to corporate hell where my only remaining career path would be Costco greeter.

So I copy-pasted a response to all of them that said:

“Not interested in this job, but if you have anything in crypto let me know”

Crypto was the only thing that could hold my attention. My naïveté about the world, crypto’s rapid rise, and my urge to bet it all combined into the perfect dopamine cocktail for my 24-year-old male brain.

Of the hundred recruiters I messaged, only 2 replied. Pickings were slim, so I knew I’d have to interview well.

I got on a phone call with one recruiter and after a few pleasantries, he asked, “Say, are you related to Martin Brodeur?”

I got this question a lot, especially from late-20s white guys in the Northeast like this recruiter. Martin Brodeur was a Hall of Fame goalie for the New Jersey Devils. When hockey fans learned my last name is also Brodeur, they were quick to ask.

“Haha, yeah. You mean Uncle Marty?” I joked, despite having no relation to the man whatsoever.

His eyes went wide.

“Oh my God. Dude, that’s insane!”

This is the point I usually tell the recipient that I’m kidding, but this guy was so enthusiastic about, that I didn’t have a chance.

“I had his jersey growing up. His poster was on my wall. I watched every Devils game with my dad.”

I opened my mouth to tell him it was a joke, but he barreled through me.

“Brodeur is literally the reason I played goalie, he was my favorite player.”

Now I felt bad, this guy wasn’t even stopping to breathe and I needed to tell him the truth pronto.

“I can’t wait to tell my dad I met Marty Brodeur’s nephew.”

Shit. Too late.

“hah, yeah,” I said. “...pretty crazy!”

I got on this call wanting a job but now I would have given anything to get off it.

I listened to the recruiter tell me about opportunities I wouldn’t consider for a second out of fear that my parasitic lie would transfer to the people working there. I was stern in expressing my disinterest to justify ghosting him later.

The call went on and I could feel the words to tell him the truth in my chest, but like a 7th grade boy at the school dance, I couldn’t muster the courage to say anything.

“I’ve got this one job over by where your Uncle lives, you ever go over there?”

“Yeah we do Sunday dinners sometimes.” I shot my hand through my hair and grabbed a fist full of it, silently mouthing the words WHAT THE FUCK to tell myself I was mad at me for telling a 2nd lie.

I got off the call as soon as I could and felt some relief. No harm no foul, right?

The next day, my phone buzzed over and over with his calls and texts. I expected a follow-up but this was next level. He really wanted to help Martin Brodeur’s nephew get a job.

A number I didn’t recognize calls and I pick up.

“Hey Dylan, this is So-and-so, I’m the CEO of the recruiting company” My heart sinks, “I heard your story, super awesome that you’re related to Martin Brodeur. How are you doing?”

His seasoned voice intimidated me, never before had important business people wanted to talk to me, “Hah.... yeah.. Doing pretty well.”

“Well hey listen I just got off the phone with a friend, the Chief Accounting Officer at Coinbase. She’s excited about you, I think we can get you a job there with a salary bump and equity.”

My gut did a somersault. Coinbase was the best company I could’ve asked for, an oasis compared to the barren hellscape I was working in. But under no circumstances could I take this job. Surely this was divine punishment for my fabrication.

“Just shoot your resume over and we’ll get you that interview”

“Sure thing”

click

“FUUUUUUUUUCK.”

I lay on my hardwood floor, staring at the ceiling for so long that I began to feel the Earth rotating beneath me. I ruminated for hours on how I could somehow thread the needle between “Sorry I lied” and “Can I still get that job?”

The next day, texts poured in from the CEO. I ignored them, silently begging the devil to free me from his temptation.

I could have told him the truth. I played it out in my head repeatedly. Even if it killed my chance at the Coinbase job, at least my conscience would be clear and I could prevent any future misunderstanding.

Instead, I employed a 3rd lie to end my suffering. I texted him that I would be taking an offer from another company. An offer that, like Uncle Marty, did not exist.

I still wonder what would have happened had I found the strength to call the CEO and tell him the truth. Maybe he would have rightfully felt manipulated. Maybe he would have laughed.

Instead, I kept the lie alive because I felt I couldn’t endure a few minutes of awkwardness. I chose to lie to two men I’d never speak to again in order to protect their opinion of me.

Fortunately, I eventually got a different job in crypto, one that was great to me and opened many doors. I got it through the other recruiter who responded to me on that first day.

Ironically, he also asked me if I was related to Martin Brodeur. Perhaps I hadn’t learned my lesson because I still made my dumb Uncle Marty joke. But this time, after hearing his voice perk up, I quickly cut him off and told him the truth.

Ray Rice, a former star running back for the Baltimore Ravens, was arrested in February 2014 after he punched his fiancée unconscious in an elevator.

The NFL conducted an investigation and, with all of the relevant information, decided that a 2-game suspension was appropriate. The suspension would cost him over $500k in missed games and fines.

For the months following, things were normal. Rice continued to practice with the team in preparation of the 3rd game of the season. However, in September 2014, the full video of Rice knocking her out surfaced. The Ravens immediately cut him, the NFL increased his suspension, and he would never play again.

There was nothing in the video that wasn’t in the investigation, but our experience of the facts changed. Watching her head jolt to the right and seeing her body smack against the handrail made the world respond differently than it had to the words.

Vision is our most visceral sense. We experience what we see more intensely than what we hear or read, that intensity changes what we believe. Videos of bombings on the news will incite people more than reading the newspaper description of it. Also, I can tell you about an injury to a pro athlete without issue, but you might turn away when the slow motion replay comes on.

This matters because if we only react strongly to things when we see them, we will miss important facts, even when they can save lives.

In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis noticed that mothers were dying far more often when doctors delivered babies than when midwives did. He ordered doctors to wash their hands after autopsies and deaths during labor fell from 18% to 2%.

Armed with data, he took his finding to the hospitals, journals, and medical societies of Europe, excited to save lives of mothers everywhere. But doctors mostly rejected his idea. In the 18 years that Semmelweis yelled and screamed to wash your hands people never listened. They couldn’t see the germs that were killing mothers, so they didn’t believe they were real.

Semmelweis never lived to see his vindication, but in 1864, Louis Pasteur showed microscopic life caused disease. He left two flasks of broth open to the air, one shielded from microbes and one exposed. The exposed spoiled while the shielded stayed clear. This was evidence of germs that people could see. Soon after, Pasteur’s findings were applied to surgery and by the 1870s, handwashing was a standard medical practice.

So in both cases with Ray Rice’s domestic abuse punishment and Semmelweis’ call for handwashing, it was seeing that changed people’s perspectives.

We all know the idioms “Seeing is believing” and “A picture is worth a thousand words,” but I don’t think they are quite right.

“Seeing is believing” describes most, but not all. Semmelweis believed the numbers with no picture to go on.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is wrong too. No number of words describing the Rice incident would have the impact that the video did. In this way, a picture/video is worth more than words can buy.

So what does this mean for our lives?

1. Our eyes can lie to us, so we should think like scientists
If you only believe what you can see, you’ll continually misjudge the world. You’ll overvalue anecdotes and viral videos while undervaluing statistics, trends, and invisible forces. You will miss the germ theory like the mother killing doctors.

2. Facts aren’t persuasive, so we should communicate like storytellers
Semmelweis died in an insane asylum because he was yelling at people instead of telling them a story. If he has done the work around finding the underlying reasons of the death and shown people germs, he would have been much more persuasive and successful.

Our kind has to wait for darkness to explore and find food because the giants persecute us on site. You see, the giants are bigots, picking and choosing the species they want to live and die on whim. We unfortunately catch the latter.

The fish however, get a glass palace where they are fed straight into their mouths. Spending their days philosophizing while we have to hide in the walls and under the floor in a constant state of war and famine.

We tried diplomacy. My own father, a popular social justice activist in the colony, organized a crawl for the cause. Roach Lives Matter, he called it. While the giants ate, he and 22 others crawled in protest of the giants cruelty.

They crawled from the chewed-out floorboard in the sparsely used mop closet onto the open plain of off-white tile. A thin sticky film coated the ground and one-by-one marched over it into the dining area.

My dad was the bravest roach I’ve ever known, but what he possessed in courage he lacked in judgement. He presumed their numbers would help the giants perceive the error of their ways. Their presence was met with a piercing screech, a war call, prompting the entire staff to attack and end the peaceful protest.

I watched from the small split in the door frame of the mop closet. Everyone on the floor scattered in different directions but my eyes were fixated on my dad. I wanted to scream as I saw a rather unfashionable black non-slip sneaker come crashing down on him.

SMACK! His flat oval shape body absorbed much of the contact, as he was still alive when the shoe lifted. The look in his eyes immediately shifted from “panicked” to “freaking the fuck out”.

WHAM! He’s hit again. The shoe rose but he was still going, this time slower than before. The bonk broke his left antennae and with it, his instinct to survive. You could tell at this point he wasn’t sure where he was anymore.

The giant warrior’s final blow was slow and deliberate. He planted the sole of his sketcher squarely on the my father’s head and twisted. A sharp crunch echoed through the room as his exoskeleton gave way and he was smeared across the cold tile floor.

The room calmed but my gaze hadn’t shifted. My dad’s legs twitched in the air fueling my disbelief that he was dead. Impossible, I thought, as a broom swept him away and with it my boyhood belief that he was invincible.

3 out of the 23 made it back alive, but it would prove pointless to count the death toll as the massacre was only beginning.

The next day a big white vehicle with an image of an upside down roach and lightning bolts striking on it parked outside. What a silly image, I thought, we hardly go outside so why would we get struck by lightning.

A giant who was shorter than most hopped down from his booster seat and unloaded his weapons of mass destruction from the back before entering.

A menacing grin appeared on his face that could only come from the fulfillment of a perverted desire. His smile displayed rotting teeth and slightly lifted his black mustache that was no wider than his nose. He covered his grin with a mask that protected himself from the pain he inflicted on us.

Deadly gas filled The Premium Chinese Buffet, all around me I watched my friends and family lose coordination and stand paralyzed against their will. The fumes hijacked their minds and when I touched antennas with them, could tell their souls had been stolen, leaving behind hollow husks suspended mid-step.

More than two-thirds of us succumbed to the gas. Those of us who survived appeared to possess a resistance to the poison that had inflicted such agony on the colony.

I should feel lucky, but I can’t help wish I died with them. My father got to die a martyr but I live with the consequences.

Everyone turns away when they see me coming. No one will touch antennas with me. They look at me with disgust as if I was the one who gassed their family.

I’m so alone.

Thailand’s monks would make killer startup founders.

I recently went on a group tour to visit different Buddhist temples and look at sun-beaten statues of their gods. Some had elephant trunks for noses, others had 10 arms, but each one was hundreds of feet tall.

In front of every statue was a donation box. The monks stressed the importance of giving to each one because the gods had different powers. Give to this one for good sex. Give to that one to lose weight.

The gods must really know their target market because those boxes were full of cash from all over the world. The West sells you drugs to help you look and fuck better but the monks sell divine intervention. Same base desires, just different solutions.

If the gods were unworthy of your hard-earned dollars, you could always buy goods from the monk run trinket shops outside the temples. Here you could find things such as weed grinders that say “I Phucking Love Thailand” and penis shaped bottle openers. Their product choice likely informed by demand rather than Buddhist principles.

In the van on our way back, a young European on the tour says to me that he was uncomfortable with so many monks prompting him for money. “Aren’t these supposed to be holy places?” he said, suggesting that the sacred way to ask for money is passing a felt-lined wicker basket up and down pews.

Faith may be free but church is a business. I respond that they have to make money somehow. The monk’s directness comes from a deep understanding of their customers. They know they’ll never see us again, that we have more money than the locals, and that we feel guilty for how fortunate we are to not be them. The slow, no-pressure approach his hometown church uses is just a method for a different kind of customer. One better suited for people you’ll keep seeing on Sundays.

I continue sharing my analysis on the business model of temple tourism, using jargon like “diversifying revenue” and “customer churn”. His eyes glaze over and I can feel his desire to exit our conversation in favor of silence among exhausted strangers.

I turn and press my forehead to the moist van window and think about my day. I didn’t know what to expect from the monks, but I left convinced they’re hardcore, living the principles so many entrepreneurs only talk about. They’d never use the fancy words I did to describe their business, but they live them better than I ever have.

As my eyes start adjusting to the abrupt return of light I’m reminded how filthy it is in here, I’m surprised that the feeders partake in their own eating here after seeing our pond has to be indicative of how their kitchen looks.

The highlight of every day is when the feeders bless us with food. Every day they give us these delicious hard brown dusty pellets retrieved from the red box. The feeder will insert a coin into the box and spin the handle. click crrrk crrrk tap tap tap tap tap, its a sweet sound that can be heard above all the clatter of a restaurant, kind of like how you can hear your name over the noise of a crowded room. The delicious sustenance hits the tray and collects in the palm of the feeder who usually tosses the goods one at a time to watch us fight for it.

We jump for this food like savages. I am not proud of it but we don’t have the same luxuries of food availability as the feeders do. My brothers and sisters climb over my back and I climb over theirs. Unlucky for me, I am one of the smaller ones. Often I will be right there, mouth open wide in a big “O” to give the feeder a target. The feeder will toss it to me and at the last second a big stupid ugly koi will snatch it out of the air and land on me, plunging me down to the murky bottom.

Outside our brawl for food, the pond is a pretty calm place. In my free time I observe the feeders eat. They usually come in groups, though not always. If a spot isn’t open the visiting feeders will wait with urgency, making sure to be ready the absolute second their name is called.

When the feeders make their first plate, they attack the buffet with bulging eyes and great enthusiasm, kind of how we fight over pellets. They return to their table with an amalgamation of cuisines piled into a heap that seems to defy the laws of physics.

Their second plate is lighter and more selective, a quiet acknowledgment of an overly ambitious start.

Plates three through six get dark. Feeders appear defeated, yet they continue to return to the trough. If hunger brought them to the Premium Chinese Buffet, it is no longer what keeps them here. Some deeper instinct has taken control.

When the feeders finally leave, the enthusiasm and play they entered with has vanished. They have traded their smiles for exhausted sighs as they cradle the undersides of their swollen bellies. It appears their anticipation was more enjoyable than the act of the feast.

For a species with such abundance, one that discards food by the pound, they eat as though there will never be enough. As though the memory of scarcity lingers somewhere beneath the surface and that this meal will be their last opportunity to eat.

I have watched thousands of feeders pass by this pond from every walk of life, but regardless of who they are or why they come, the ritual remains the same. Whatever teaches a feeder to eat this way must happen long before they arrive at the Premium Chinese Buffet.

Group by group the feeders slunk out the door. Chairs are stacked. Blinds are let down. The clatter fades before a final flick and the world returns to darkness.

Part 2 below!

Don't trust book recommendations. Mine included.

The same book teaches two people completely different things. And a second read can feel like a totally different book. You are not the first person you were the first time around.

We learn from books as we are, not as they are.

And when you come to a book hungry for answers to your life's questions, your brain goes foraging in the words. It doesn't matter much which book, it matters that you are looking.

I firmly believe if you have a problem, you can take a good book, read a random page with intention, and you'll be closer to your solution.

So when non-readers ask me what to read, my answer is just read what sounds interesting to you. Your insights are in the act of reading rather than in the text.

Yuval Harari says that if you fight a chimp it'll eat your face off. But if 100v100 and the humans can coordinate a way to win. He uses this as an example to show that working in large numbers is what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom

So we humans make groups like families, neighborhoods, and companies because our collective is stronger than the individual parts. Naturally, we want to be a part of the best groups we can because the better our group, the more that is afforded to us.

My friend Ben once said to me that the best communities are the ones where everybody feels in debt to each other, but no one is keeping score. Communities like this lend each other money at no interest, host each other for free meals, and step up to provide when someone needs help.

Everyone wants to belong to these great communities, but it seems like there aren't many of them, so what makes them great and how do you create them?

The best communities are not those that can provide, but those that can exclude.

Harvard doesn't teach better physics than a community college, it sells a filter. They exclude who they find to be the dumb and poor so that when you say "I went to Harvard" people can infer a level of competency and/or wealth. If Harvard let anyone in, even if the quality of education stayed the same, the value of the degree would plummet.

All real groups have a process for keeping out undesirables, colleges call it admissions, countries call it borders, sports teams call it cuts. Whatever the name, successful groups understand that membership cannot be unlimited because the unqualified can asymmetrically tank the value of the community.

Imagine a basketball team that allowed one random person onto the roster. The team’s average talent would decline, but more importantly, the players who earned their spot would place less value on being part of the team. As Steve Jobs famously observed, "A" players want to work with "A" players. Once a group lowers its standards, its best members begin to leave, and the quality of the group deteriorates.

So you need an enforced opinionated standard.

I use the word enforced because those with the least to offer often have the most to gain from being affiliated with a high-status group. The weakest graduate from medical school is still a doctor and benefits from the reputation of the profession. This creates a constant incentive for people to join groups whose standards they have not earned. Without enforcement, the quality of the group falls toward the quality of its least qualified members.

I use the word opinionated because if you try to accommodate everyone, you stand for nothing. My ideal workout community is one where everyone wakes up early, pushes hard, and talks trash. Planet Fitness takes the opposite approach, installing a “lunk alarm” that goes off if you make a noise that could be seen as intimidating. Neither approach is objectively correct, but both create a clear culture that attracts people who want the same thing. If a gym tries to appeal equally to both ends of the intensity spectrum, it ends up appealing to neither.

I think most friendships are unintentional, formed through circumstance, proximity, or obligation. Great communities are different. They are built on mutual admiration and a willingness to give more than you take. They are difficult to create, but, as I have learned living away from home for the past five months, life is nothing without great people to experience it with. Building community is the highest-return investment a person can make.

Making your own stuff used to be a sign you were poor, now only the rich can afford it.

When a family built their own furniture, sewed their own clothes, and cooked every meal from scratch, it was generally because they couldn't afford to pay someone who did it better. But with mass manufacturing, scale slashed the price of almost everything.

As the scarce becomes abundant, a new scarcity takes its place. It moved from the function of the object to the form of it. Rich people don't just want a table anymore, they want a table with a story.

Walk into the house of the poor and the home of the rich and you'll find the same objects. The couch, the table, the chairs. The difference is the poor bought their furniture from Ikea, and the rich made it with their dad.

Of course real skill takes years to build. Time is generally what the poor can't spare. So the status of making your own stuff flipped. It went from the thing you did because you had no option to the thing you do because you have all the options.

I was working on a blog post called "Pick One" but ended up trashing it.

The premise was you should pick one priority for your life at any given point in time. This is important when your desires conflict, because often times splitting your efforts reduces your chances of success. Having one priority makes it easy to choose the best action.

For example, someone who wants to be both a writer and a content creator might benefit their content goals from scrolling social media to find ideas and engage with other creators. But these actions likely directly hinder their ability to write.

I thought this was solid advice but I couldn't square the fact that Elon Musk has 12 children, 5 incredibly successful companies, and posts 10k times a year on X. So who am I to say anything?

There's a popular logical fallacy called "Reductio ad Hitlerum" that says if you compare someone to Hitler, you've lost the argument. Leo Strauss coined this term because allusions to Hitler kept happening in debates. It would shut down constructive dialogue and was never a fair allusion.

As much as Hitler is evil, Elon is productive. They are exceptions. Because of this, they can't be used to explain normal people.

So I propose a new logical fallacy called The Musk Exception:

"If Elon is your only counterexample to a point, the point holds."

I am surprised every week by a new AI capability. It massively changes what I can accomplish, but everything feels... the same?

I would've thought new capabilities would give me a feeling of deep satisfaction and that I'd have endless drive to execute my backlog of ideas. But I was wrong, the backlog was never the problem. The problem was figuring out which idea was worth doing, why, and whether I actually wanted it.

I think our deepest problems are internal and, as of right now, AI is lacking context about what goes on inside of our brains. So asking AI questions like 'what makes me happy?', and 'what do I want?' will give you frustratingly bland and ordinary results. Probably regurgitating a list of unrelated facts it has memorized about you arranged to look like insight.

So AI thinking will multiply your ability to execute. But only thinking for yourself will change how you feel about it.

Growing up in the US, China was a country that was mentioned a lot but I knew nothing about it. The gold oval "Made in China" sticker on every product in the 2000s always made me curious. What were they doing over there that allowed them to make so much stuff?

This past week I got to see China with my own eyes. From Shenzhen through Guilin to Chongqing. Here are ten things I noticed.

1. Robots are doing work

I didn't see any robots that the US doesn't have, but China has certainly adopted robots more than in the US. In each of the hotels I stayed at, they had these rectangular robots that ride the elevator and deliver stuff to your door. Also, in Shenzen, a drone delivered my coffee order. Getting adoption for these robots in the US is more of a regulation problem than a tech problem.

2. Electric cars are everywhere

I sampled electric vs gas cars in Shenzen and found 85% of cars on the road were electric. Lots of brands I'd never heard of and hardly any gas stations.

3. Safe, clean, no homeless

It felt safe enough that I could leave my laptop out in public and it wouldn't get stolen. It felt safe in spite of lack of presence of enforcement. I never heard a single siren and barely saw any police. That doesn't mean enforcement doesn't exist, but I didn't see it physically.

4. Ride hailing is 80% cheaper than New York

Didi (The Uber of China) drivers are in uniform and the car is always clean and nice, it's like the Uber Black experience at a fraction of the cost. Food and clothes felt about 60% cheaper. The quality-per-dollar is not close.

5. AI images are everywhere

Most of the images in the Shenzhen Science & Technology Museum, and in ads from big companies like Pepsi, were obviously AI-generated. If a US company did the same, it'd be called cheap and low quality.

That gap says something about each country's appetite for new tech. In this way, the US feels old. Like an old man, it rejects what's new.

6. US tech is boxed out

Apps that are foundational to living in the US are completely blocked by the China Firewall. China's "everything apps," replace them and do it well. Even as a foreigner I used them to order transport, pay for things, and translate and they worked surprisingly well.

7. Little flaunting of wealth

I saw little luxury fashion or flashy cars. What's strange is the Chinese international students I've known in the past are the opposite, head to toe in designer, begging you to know how rich they are. I guess the parents with wealth send their kids to the US to flex because they don't want them doing it in China.

8. No workout culture

I didn't see a single gym outside of the hotels I stayed at.

9. The food was bad

Every Chinese place seemingly sold the same oil slop noodle bowls. It felt like the food a poor country would eat, which makes sense because it wasn't long ago that they were poor.

It's a fact that Chinese people are getting taller because they are incorporating more protein in their diet. I would bet this trend continues.

10. The towns haven't caught up

I took bullet trains between cities, and I could see the way people were living in between our destinations. There were lots of rice farmers doing things manually and buildings without AC. It felt as if those towns were stuck in the 1900s.

I'd still rather live in the US. But if I had to bet on which country looks more like the future in twenty years, it's not a close call. It seems like it's a good time to be China.

I find it to be a bit of a faux pas to share just a single line from a novel. Fiction doesn’t work like non-fiction, where every paragraph should be built to stand alone. A great line in fiction is like a keystone in an arch, dependent on all the stones around it to stand. Remove it and it loses the support that makes it special.

But there's a line in the book Hopscotch that has been stuck in my head for awhile. Sharing it feels a bit like ripping a baby away from its mother's embracing arms and throwing it into a freezing river of no context. That being said, I'm going to do it anyway.

For light context: the line belongs to a character named La Maga. She's a woman who lives by pure instinct. She believes everything that happens is fate and finds no use in thinking about how things could have been under different circumstances. She is delivering a well-meaning criticism to the main character, her lover Horacio Oliveira. He is an analytical over-thinker who believes that if you can name the gears of a thing, you understand it. He longs to live like La Maga but can't seem to get out of his own way.

She says to him, "You're like a witness. You're the one who goes to the museum and looks at the paintings. I mean the paintings are there and you're in the museum too, near and far away at the same time. I'm a painting. [...] You think that you're in the room but you're not. You're looking at the room, you're not in the room."

When I read this, I felt it was the 1960s literary equivalent of a rap battle mic drop where the opponent can't even respond because he's been so owned. But it was more than just a creative diss.

A great fiction book talks to you through its characters. As I spent the previous pages finding common ground with Oliveira, I felt the diss was levied against me as well as him. Now I'm considering: how many rooms have I stood in, describing the paintings, while thinking I was inside them? Where have I narrated instead of lived? What would La Maga say to me?

Getting you to think instead of telling you what to think is how great fiction teaches wisdom. It helps you find your answer rather than giving you one. In other words, non-fiction describes the painting while fiction helps you paint, and I think La Maga would approve.

"I want power" is a statement that carries negative connotation. But I don't think it should.

I want power because it sucks to be the guy without any.

In the book The Godfather, people come to Don Corleone when the system has failed them. They ask him to exercise his power to rectify situations where they themselves are powerless.

One man comes to the Don after buying a house’s worth of furniture for his new home. Shortly afterward, the furniture company goes bankrupt. The owner knowingly took the buyer’s money despite having no intention of delivering the goods.

Legally, the buyer’s only recourse was to join a lawsuit that would take months or years and likely return pennies on the dollar. He had clearly been wronged, yet the official system offered no meaningful justice.

So the Godfather sends a man to talk to the owner. This talk implies that the owner needs to make right on the deal or bad things will happen. Of course, the furniture arrives the next day.

While I disagree on the method of power through violence, I like the principle! The owner was trying to fuck over the buyer and power was needed to change the outcome. The buyer, through the proxy of Don Corleone, had enough leverage to prevent the injustice.

So I don’t want power for its own sake. I want it because I don’t want to live at the mercy of other people’s rules. I don’t want to get shafted when I’ve done nothing wrong. I’d rather live by my own principles and be sovereign.

But you still have to live within a system. Total sovereignty is impossible. Power determines how much freedom you actually have inside that system. And as we've seen with the lack of people in jail over the Epstein Files, sometimes having power means the rules don't apply to you at all.

It is an overlooked privilege to be raised a native English speaker in modern times. English is the language spoken by a lot of people with money. And money is leverage that the rest of the world accommodates to. Being raised an English speaker means you inherit this leverage without needing any money yourself.

You can travel practically anywhere in the world knowing only English. Walk through a foreign airport and the signs are translated for you. International brands like Sony, Uniqlo, and Samsung ditch their native language's characters to sound better to you. And chances are you've never watched a dubbed movie, because most films worth watching are made in English from the start.

There are a bunch of little examples like this but the pattern is the same. The world warps itself to serve the English speaker.

I'm noticing this because I've been in Malaysia for 3 months and I haven't learned a single Malay word. Malaysian businesses hire english speakers so that people like me get to stroll in and stay ignorant because of the financial incentive to do so.

So thank you mom and dad for the English lessons. You may not have even realized it at the time or had any alternative, but it was a wonderful gift.

Bashing government is popular because it's painfully relatable. Everyone has had a bad experience at the DMV, in a permit office, or with a tax form. I too enjoy a good bash as one of my recent WIBTALs was a government complaint. But like most complaining, it's fixating on the part that sucks while ignoring everything else.

It's like the "If only I had X, I'd be happy" trap we fall in to with wanting more in our own lives. It ignores that you have two working legs, eat three meals a day, and can read. Without conscious effort, these things are taken for granted. Same thing with government. Nobody cares about the trash getting picked up, the streets getting plowed, or the water being drinkable. These massive logistical feats are invisible until they stop working. Strangers built all of it, for other strangers, organized by government.

For most of human history, strangers were threats. You trusted your tribe and killed outsiders. You couldn't use anything beyond what your clan could build with their hands. For better or for worse, government issued money is the current technology that lets strangers trust each other.

Strangers trusting each other is important because it makes us all richer. It lets us build things no tribe could build alone: highways, power grids, the internet, vaccines, satellites. Things that need millions of hands and decades of coordination.

So while government is bloated, slow, and full of people I'd never hire, I love it anyway. Not the politicians or the parties, but the boring machinery underneath that keeps us from killing each other over water.