Degens and Degenettes,

Welcome to your weekly dose of The Radical Moderate - a smorgasbord of the ideas we’ve been discussing, the money moves we’re making, and fun things that’re going on in the community. Share with a buddy if you want :)

Take Of The Week

Gotta go with Stephen on this one. During the latest episode we spent a significant chunk of time finding ways to bait Stephen with some good ole fashion pronoun wars.

Morale of the take is just because an idea is new or progressive, doesn’t inherently make it a good idea.
And honestly, the vast majority of ideas people have had over the centuries have been absolutely terrible.

Ideas tend to have a “survivorship bias”. The good ones prosper and the bad ones fail.

For example, we used to do bloodletting to cure viruses and do lobotomies to cure mental illness.

Both proven to be pretty shitty ideas.

So when thinking about the conversations about gender, which ideas will stick and which will die? In 10 years will it be normal for Arman to be able to identify as Xe/Xim/Xir one day, then they/them the next?

Shill Of The Week

Quartr. Shoutout to Wrektem for this one. This tool was introduced by one of our community members and it’s fricking awesome. Essentially it’s an app that unlocks financial data, pulls earnings calls, transcripts and other data that people who dig investing and looking at squiggly lines care about. I’ve used the free version and it’s been a big unlock.

What We’re Reading This Week

Life is Short by Paul Graham.

Paul is the OG and there’s no better person to look to when thinking about how to live a fulfilling life. The guy creates a programming language, sells a startup to Yahoo for 8 figures, launches Y-Combinator, then fucks off back to the woods in the UK to raise a family. Legend.

He does an incredible job of quantifying exactly how much time, or lack of time, we actually have in life. You only get 52 weekends with your two year old. If Christmas is this magical experience for your kids from ages 3-10, you only get to experience it 8 times.

He goes on to explain how, if life is short, what the hell can we do about it?

The answer is to cut bullshit out of your life, but I’ll let him tell it in a more poetic way than that.

“When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is "bullshit." I realize that answer is somewhat tautological. It's almost the definition of bullshit that it's the stuff that life is too short for. And yet bullshit does have a distinctive character. There's something fake about it. It's the junk food of experience.” - Paul Graham

Tweet Of The Week

Thanks for joining us on this journey!

Love you all,

Alfalfa boys