some phrases i heard/read today

• seek curiosity in sadness. seek curiosity in joy. be everseeking. everfeeling.
• we ignore truth for temporary happiness
• Manufacture serendipity
• It’s easy to mistake activity for action
• “Heroin is like a warm hug from God”
• don't believe in your anxiety
• focus on what you want, not what you don't have

9zero event notes

I need to have good generalizable questions to ask when someone says what their company does. I can only think of the following:

• why does your company exist?
• how does it work?
• who are your customers?
• who are your competitors? What makes you unique?

Because how good your question is or how you respond is an indicator of how well you know about the field, and if you have nothing interesting to contribute, you're not a good person to talk to. it's also an indicator of how knowledgable you are. if you're someone who can have a conversation with anyone, it shows how well-read you are, how often you talk to different kinds of people.

i theorize that people who are great at socializing and at telling stories are just people who's done it a lot of times. their training iteration is higher, their gradient descent reached a global minimum, the error function being the NOs in conversations, their accuracy rate of the other person enjoying the conversation is high, they've had more samples to finetune and learn from, learning the patterns and nuances of human communication. they're not underfitting on the model of socializing, and not overfitting on past experiences. they can adapt. they are charismatic. they are responsive.

remember. humans love responsiveness. give more energy than what people bid for.

Sasha on how to be liked:

It takes attention and openness, and the confidence to present your character like it’s a fun mask you’re wearing rather than a lesson you’re desperate to teach someone. If you have that, it’s simple: when people put energy into you, attune to it, and give them harmonious energy backs

BioForceTech corporation - Valentino Villa

• providing sustainable and advanced biosolids management systems
• Biosolids: residue from wastewater treatment plants
• They are used as fertilizers which contain forever chemicals or PFAs
• Buy organics to avoid biosolids
• The BFT system
• Biodrying: sludge has 20% solid and 80% water, to extract value from this, you need to dry them. It uses as much as MWs to dry each ton. Instead of fossil fuel and electricity, they use bacteria that are naturally present in the biosolids to do the drying process without energy from the outside. It goes from 20% to 85-90
• Pyrolysis: high temp reaction with dried biosolids to lock its carbon in place. The extra heat goes back to drying biosolids
• No waste. Waste is transformed to fixed carbons. Energy neutral process.
• Can only work with smaller communities 50k to 250k
• OurCarbon their product that was made from waste, used for inks and plastics, and even in making concrete
• The hardest thing as an Italian founder in the US was missing la dolce vita, “the good life, the sweet life

Lessons from him

• there are always problems, but there are always solutions
• believe in your product
• work on yourself, believe in yourself
• identify your mission and specific markets
• love what you do

some things i learned

• Everbright: solar panel financing. No fees for installment. Pay by energy use (Royalty)
• climate hard tech: Mini generator for cyclings to power facilities. No payment for generator, pay for how much energy you produce
• magnesium is the future to replace aluminum, it is much lighter than aluminum, key is to improve the process (from 1940s) and make it cheaper. extracting magnesium from brine (desalination process)