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I really wanted to be a founder of a successful startup (where successful to me means the company can pay its own bills, and pay employees well). However the reality hasn’t matched my ambition and I’ve decided to find a job like a regular chump. I assumed that with work ethic, skills, persistence, and plenty of trial and error I could eventually find success. That hasn’t happened, and I’m nowhere close to making that happen. Being good at computers and working hard doesn’t cut it.

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed an increase in commercial real estate vacancies around Manhattan, especially ground level retail. Tonight on my walk, I took some photos around Flatiron, NoMad, and Union Square. A few of these places were vacant before the pandemic began, such as the Belgian beer spot, but many are recent casualties.

We’re living in some interesting times, and I’ve been wondering how psychology plays into the current doomsday phenomenon. It’s fun to study history about previous events related to mass panic and hysteria. Understanding Mass Hysteria # Mass hysteria, also called collective obsessional behavior, occurs when large groups of people experience similar physical or psychological symptoms that spread rapidly through social suggestion. These events often emerge during times of social stress or uncertainty, which might explain why they’ve appeared throughout human history.

Doge loves snow. At Bethesda Fountain. Such a joy, the holidays. Long car rides, waiting around airports, packed flights, family squabbles. Cold, short, dark days with nothing to do. And yet, people still get excited about the holidays.

Starting any company is hard. Startups are even harder. If you want to start a company but don’t have a business idea, then the first step is figuring out what to build. Is this…a startup idea?

The ISOC recently sold the .org TLD registry to a private equity firm for $1.1b. What this means, in the grand scheme of things, remains to be seen, but many people around the web have expressed disapproval. Doge contemplating the Internet, and squirrels

It’s hard to maintain privacy these days, ever since we started carrying around the ultimate Internet connected surveillance device in our pockets. So what can you do about it? Here’s a brief guide. My pup cares about privacy. This photo has nothing to do with this post.

Recycling has become a bit of a crutch these days. It’s a way for people to feel good about what they’re doing (“saving the planet”) without changing their behavior. It gives people a free pass on generating waste; it allows them to save face. Mountain of trash generated by my apartment building. Where does it go? No one knows.

I’ve never been great at talking to people, especially strangers, but I’m much better than I used to be. In this post I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned in my quest to be a better human. It’s good to have friends

Dopamine is a chemical in our brains associated with good feelings and reward. Jonathan Haidt discusses this connection in his book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”, drawing on pages 102-103: All animal brains are designed to create flashes of pleasure when the animal does something important for its survival, and small pulses of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the ventral striatum (and a few other places) are where these good feelings are manufactured. Heroin and cocaine are addictive because they artificially trigger this dopamine response. Rats who can press a button to deliver electrical stimulation to their reward centers will continue pressing until they collapse from starvation.