What overall life advice do you have for young people?

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step-by-step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day, and at the end of the day—if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve

Life and its various passages can be hard, brutally hard. The three things I have found helpful in coping with its challenges are: 1. Have low expectations. 2. Have a sense of humor. 3. Surround yourself with the love of friends and family.

Above all, live with change and adapt to it. If the world didn't change, I'd still have a 12 handicap.

Charlie Munger

woke up from a traumatic dream where nurses repeatedly attempted to insert thin tubes/needles into my blood veins, probably remnant memories from my hospital visits in malaysia. felt so sore and tired, i didn't want to get out of the bed (floor). eventually crawled out and went to mission. had a unique experience picking up trash around manny's with other usf undergrad students. saw needles and alcohol pads on the streets for the first time. it was the closest ive been in contact with the homeless. i thought a lot about their circumstances and challenges, and my position of privilege, and how my problems pale in comparison with theirs.

i sometimes experience deep cynicism, where i feel there's no point in talking to other people, building relationships and having conversations, and learning new ideas and working towards a big goal is pointless because it all ends anyways. i experienced it today, it was paired with a deep sense of tiredness, it might have been the close exposure to the failure of the city and the system which engendered issues like homelessness and crime. i though about why we pick up trash, if there will always be people dumping them around, more homeless people around, and the conditions will be the same again the next week. but i forget that there will always be good people around to help clean up the city, and even though its a cycle, there are people around to help keep and restore the balance. things will never be perfect, but we will always try to make it better, and that's enough.

a few ideas i discovered from the commons rabbithole by kasra

• prospera: a startup city project in Honduras
• Gather AI: a bunch of DJI drones programmed for inventory management
• Skydio: american drone company with defense contract

i need to learn the skill of storytelling. to define good storytelling, i would say its a mix of charisma, confidence, deep understanding and intuition, and empathy.

you need charisma and confidence to get people to listen to you. you have to capitalize the attention of individuals who has every reason to be distracted by their own thoughts, and capture their interests even though what you're talking about is the most boring topic in the world. you need to spread excitement like its a viral disease, make it a problem that they should care about, and give solutions, something they can take away from. every word holds a lot of weight. filler words hurt your credibility and trustworthiness. humor adds personality and charisma.

deep understanding and intuition is needed to translate the graph of ideas into a narrative that people can connect with. if you don't really understand the material, you can only tread the surface level, the iceberg. when questioned, you should have most, if not all of the answers. you should be able to go deeper. when being presented opposing opinions, you should be able to make your case, but hold your opinions lightly, because you should always challenge your own assumptions. As Feynman has advised that the first principle of science is you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

you need empathy to put yourself in another person's shoes. to realize that you're not the center of the universe. that the people in front of you have vastly different backgrounds and experiences, who live in different worlds, speaking a different language.

its hard to communicate ideas well. its even harder to connect with people on the same ideas. but when connection happens, its like magic.