Welcome!

Welcome to thirty-two eleven (”3211”). This newsletter will entail: 3 Reads, 2 Rabbit Holes, 1 Watch, and 1 Listen — 3/2/1/1. Detailing what I have been up to, on the internet.

introduction:

Happy Holidays! Most of the reads this week revolve around the end of 2023. Looking forward to a happy, healthy, productive 2024.

3 reads:

1 - A recent podcast I listened to noted they think air quality will be a hot trend in the coming years, I believe them. Lahore is the capital and largest city of the Pakistani province of Punjab. It is the second largest city in Pakistan, after Karachi, and 26th largest in the world, with a population of over 13 million. Lahore is one of the world’s most polluted cities.

To combat the pollution, The United Arab Emirates “gifted” the city artificial rain. Planes flew over clouds “seeding” them with silver iodide, a yellowish salt, this is then burned in the clouds in a compound with acetone to encourage condensation to form as rain.. In result, a drizzle came across 9 miles of the city. Smog towers – large-scale air purifiers designed to capture pollution – will also installed in the coming weeks.

2 - Meta’s AI Rayban Glasses is one of the first IRL personal AI products on the shelf. Very interesting to see them being put to use.

3 - Mark Steed, investment chief of the Arizona’s police and firefighter pension system went out of the box when investing the pension system’s money. It looks like he hit big, buying the low level English soccer club Ipswich Town. Ipswich Town is now on track for promotion to the English Premier League, the richest, most prestigious soccer league in the world. The club, which the fund bought for less than $30 million in 2021, has likely at least doubled in value. One fun addition, Ed Sheeran is from right nearby Ipswich and has been a lifelong superfan.

2 rabbit holes:

1 - Sam Altmann (founder of OpenAI), details what he wishes someone had told him. My favorite - 16. Get back up and keep going.

2 - The biggest and weirdest auctions of 2023.

1 watch:

1 - Best of GoPro 2023.

1 listen:

1 - Ayokay - Clocks (Coldplay Remix)

Bonus:

Dickie Bush, former Princeton football player, has created an impressive online presence advocating for making writing a daily practice. His bio online:

Here's a quick rundown of how I've spent my last 5 years:

1. Studied math and played football at Princeton. I graduated in 2018 with a degree in financial engineering and played center for the Tigers. In college, I was a 280-pound offensive lineman, so for the last 5 years, I've had to completely rewrite my personal operating system on the health & fitness front. I currently weigh 185 pounds and have learned a lot along the way!

2. Graduated and immediately started working for BlackRock in New York City. I worked as a junior hedge fund trader for 4 years, focusing on global macro markets. This was my dream job and the only corporate job I've ever had. In fact, it's the only job interview I've ever had (since I interned there as a junior in college).

3. Realized working for someone else was not going to be the long-term path for me. 12 months into working on Wall Street, I saw someone in their mid-40s ask their boss for permission to go to their son's Little League game. At that moment I realized I wasn't cut out to take directions or instructions from other people for very long.

4. Started to write on my old blog, then on Twitter. Rather than quit immediately, I started to passively explore other opportunities by writing online, starting out on my old blog (which no one knew existed), then transitioning to Twitter in July of 2020.

5. Changed my trajectory with a 30-day writing challenge, which led me to start Ship 30 for 30. In September 2020 I was ready to give up writing entirely. But I gave it one more shot, this time moving from a weekly blog post to a daily Twitter thread. The challenge was a huge success. It took me 9 months to reach 100 followers and 1 month to go from 100 to 2,000. And that personal writing challenge turned into the foundation of Ship 30 for 30, which started as nothing but a Slack accountability group to help people publish consistently.

6. Scaled Ship 30 while working remotely for all of 2021. I built and scaled Ship 30 with Nicolas Cole to over 2,000 students in 2021—all while continuing to work full-time (remotely) for BlackRock. But towards the end of 2021, Ship 30 hit an inflection point and it no longer made financial sense for me to continue working on Wall Street.

7. Left BlackRock in March of 2022 to write and build on my own. After weeks of weighing the pros and cons and trying to project my path forward, I made the decision to leave BlackRock and chart my own path. 15 months into making that decision and I'm confident it's the best one I've ever made.

He made a year end review document and shared it online, helping prepare for 2024 - found below.

Cheers,