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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Writing the Contraptions newsletter. Exploring protocols at protocol-institute.org. Substack is currently the best public place to find me.
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contraptions.venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007
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  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Aug 4, 2018
    Just hit me that at say $3/gallon and say 40mpg, it would be cheaper for a self-driving gasoline car to just circle around than park anywhere at more than $3/hr. At say $0.5/mile fully loaded operating cost it’s not worth parking above $20/h. The loitering car cloud is coming.
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Apr 11, 2022
    This feels like some sort of Midwit Matrix.
    user avatar
    Art of Life 🦋
    @Art0fLife_
    Apr 10, 2022
    20 books to read in your 20s = thread =
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Nov 19, 2022
    This is basically the tweet of the decade. Younger GenX/older millennials are the low interest rate generation. Everything we think is true is suspect in a higher interest rate world.
    user avatar
    Drew Austin
    @kneelingbus
    Jun 17, 2022
    what if you discovered that your whole personality depended on low interest rates
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Jan 22, 2022
    If you don’t switch to hard mode by 35, life switches to impossible mode for you by 45. Middle-class privilege + mediocre intelligence + decent strategic thinking = incentives are heavily loaded in favor of getting addicted to playing in easy mode by like 19
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Jun 30, 2020
    Grifts are undertheorized, and too often conflated with long cons, scams, frauds and other more blatant soft crimes. Lemme offer a definition. A grift is a scheme that profits from the existence of a real problem without actually addressing it.
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Nov 7, 2021
    Gonna make a thread of my ongoing slow journey (emigration? perhaps…) to Web3, along with my covered wagon full of Web1 and Web2 stuff. Including NFTs, DAOs etc. So if those topics annoy you, you can mute this thread.
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Dec 25, 2017
    Surprisingly cogent meditation on probabilistic thinking in the NYT. Takeaways: 1. People round probabilities up to 100% or down to 0%. 2. People call probability “wrong” if <50% events happen 3. People need a story to take <50% scenarios seriously
    Opinion | What I Was Wrong About This Year (Published 2017)
    From nytimes.com
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Oct 4, 2018
    1/ Lemme do a 1-slide presentation since I'm feeling job sick. Title: How to Actually Manage Attention Without Smashing Your Phone and Retreating to a Log Cabin
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Oct 4, 2022
    The fewer risks you take, the easier it is to be judgmental.
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Jul 4, 2020
    The older I get the more it sinks in that 90% of effectiveness is just taking a thing seriously enough. That translates to just wanting the thing itself rather than adjacent things that may or may not happen as a side effect. Most things sort themselves out if you’re serious.
    user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Jul 4, 2020
    Motivations Wanting the thing Wanting to be seen to want the thing Wanting to do the things needed to do the thing Wanting to be seen to do the things needed to do the thing Wanting to want the thing Wanting to want to do the thing Wanting to have done the thing
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    May 9, 2020
    Weird how people are letting their guard down. My guard level is steadily trending higher. Risk seems to be increasing steadily rather than decreasing to me.
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Jan 25, 2021
    Scenario Z: Covid is never brought under control, mutates too much every season to be managed like the flu, and goes endemic with higher base fatality rate and is too costly to chase with vaccines. Joins the top-3 ranks of steady modern killers alongside heart disease and cancer.
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Mar 26, 2020
    Tech is getting insufficient credit for the current situation response. This entire social distancing protocol made possible by social media, zoom, video games. Also streaming TV, movies. Everything you thought was bad for you is now saving lives. You’re welcome.
  • user avatar
    Venkatesh Rao ☀️
    @vgr
    Aug 28, 2022
    Oh shit. The symbol shapes make so much more sense now.
    user avatar
    Sumerian and Hittite Language (Hasan Türk)
    @SumerianHittite
    Aug 25, 2022
    Cuneiform script
    00:00