Personal Interests
Here are some things I like doing in my spare time
Current
Paddleboarding, Swimming and Being on the Water - Are great social activities for health & longveity. I like to swim for low-impact cardio fitness and paddleboarding is a great way to build strength while being in nature. After a long and stressful day there’s nothing more healing than spending time in or on the water.
Permaculture, Gardening, Ecology & Land Stewardship - I like knowing my farmer and eating fresh nutrient-dense food. A few years back I planted some perennial blackberries. Now I’ve got a wall of large, fruit bearing bushes. I’m trying to turn as much of my yard into an organic garden as I can. There’s nothing better than fresh tomatoes in the summer. Gardens bring people together, nourish the body & save the pocketbook. On a broader scale, I appreciate people who are preserving and restoring land for the benefit of future generations.
Computing I grew up building PC’s. Ever since I first saw a Sega Genesis boot up & load Sonic the Hedgehog I was interested in games and the machines that ran them. In college I was a research assistant using computers to simulate the behavior of nanoscale clusters of gold atoms. Lately I’ve had a lot of fun learning about open source projects & AI-assisted coding tools.
Dogs My girlfriend brought a dog into my life. She’s one of the smartest and most empathetic non-human creatures I’ve met. She brings me joy every day and I’m happy to spend time doing activities with her.
Previous
Martial Arts – I liked action movies so much that I started training martial arts. I have a 5th-degree black belt and instructor credential in Taekwondo and have trained in Systema, Tai Chi, Hapkido, Korean Weapons, Kali, Boxing, Muay Thai, Tang Soo Do, Brazillian Jiuhitsu and Aiki Jiujitsu. I had the privelage of teaching hundreds of students in my late teens and early 20’s. Now I practice and teach occasionally.
Physical Training – Trying to be fit without injuries. Lately I’ve been trying to do a few hours of zone 2 cardio per week alongside functional strength training to stay healthy. In the past I’ve done swimming, distance running, bouldering, and weight lifting.
Games, Comics, Movies, and Entertainment – I grew up playing Sega Genesis and know the pain of being on the wrong side of history. Games, comics and movies are some of the places where artists pushed the boundaries on what was possible when I was growing up. I recently watched the Sopranos in its entirety, somehow without spoilers, and it was totally worth it.
Travel – Experiencing other cultures and being in new places is one of the best ways to expand your mind. I always like the funny stories, cultural mishaps, and discoveries that people make on the road.
Books – The next best way to expand your mind outside of lived experience. Eventually I’ll get around to uploading my reading list & library. Recommendations always welcome.
Philosophy – Or how to use the practice of virtue to live better. Outside of ‘serious’ thinkers I believe comedians like George Carlin and Diogenes have an important role in pointing out the absurdity of our world.
Dancing & Music – I love dance parties and weddings as a chance to celebrate life and all forms of music, including electronic music as an art form.
Medicine & Longevity – When I was young my cousin died of a rare form of cancer. I happen to have a lot of friends who are doctors, scientists and medical researchers & I’m excited about what I see on the horizon. As biological computation becomes more accessible & the rich become more interested in living forever, I believe that there will be many breakthroughs on preventing and curing complex disease states.
The Circular Economy – How do we outsmart waste? How do we reuse resources infinitely? How do we build the infrastructure to enable more sharing? Planned obsolescence is a moral failure and should be ended immediately. I am starting to see companies form to address this by selling clothing, furniture and tires for EV’s according to a more eco-friendly, circular economy model. Rheaply is a fantastic example of a company that’s using software to actually build a circular economy.
Better Food Supply Chains – 40% + of food gets wasted before it gets used. Food waste cumulatively in the USA alone is a $400B / year problem. Methane from cattle production, pesticide & herbicide use, runoff, and massive inefficiencies across the food supply chain lead to all sorts of negative effects. I am in favor of the low-tech solution of buying from your local farmer. Supply chains as they are, represent a massive business opportunity for improvement. Noteworthy solutions include Hazel Technologies, Forgotten Harvest, Spoiler Alert, Thought for Food, and Imperfect Produce.
BioTechnology, BioReactors, and Microbes – I became obsessed by practical applications of bacteria and microbes after reading ‘I Contain Multitudes‘. There’s a case study in that book where a hospital eliminated MRSA infections by simply opening the windows occasionally. It turns out that bacteria from outside can out-compete superbugs for resources. MColin Lennox is building a company called EcoIslands inspired by wetland ecology. AI-Powered Biotech companies are excited to make novel molecules, but the world already has billions of biological species with novel applications. I’m interested in organizations that are using biomimicry and metabolic pathways found in nature.
Mycology, Mushrooms, & Fungi – There are exciting nutritional, psychiatric, immunological and microbiological applications that we are just beginning to discover. Paul Stamets has many interesting thoughts based on his primary research applications. Fungi created the first internet millions of years ago to communicate with plants and animals using chemical signals. Mushrooms may also be useful in providing low cost, scalable bioremediation as well. Mushrooms could even be used to feed the world in case of a nuclear winter!
Net Zero Buildings and #ElectrifyEverything – In 2016 I stumbled upon an academic journal article concluding that homes in the UK could cut their fossil fuel consumption substantially by insulating and sealing their homes better. How can this be? It turns out that most homes, particularly older ones leak heating and cooling. I later learned from The Zero Energy Project and The Thousand Homes Challenge that the payback period for doing low energy retrofits is fast (3-7 years), because the insulation is so cheap and houses are so leaky. Retrofitting homes represent work opportunities for millions of Americans, emissions reductions, and cost savings for homeowners. Then you can run a house electrically, using home-scale solar + storage.�?Retrofits represent an opportunity for contractors, homeowners, equipment manufacturing companies and startups.
Renewable Energy, Smart Grids and The Internet of Energy – The electrical grid is dumb. Here’s why. Coal or Natural gas is burned and covered to electricity. For every lump of coal, you get .35 lumps worth of useful energy out. Then you transmit that .35 lumps across high tension wires where you lose 30-50%. Then it gets transformed multiple times, carried to your home, and finally used by you. Plants have to run 24/7 because they are too big to rev up and down, and excess electricity does not get stored or used. The grid is connected has little capacity for routing, storage, or redundancy. Innovations to make the grid better are: locally installed solar panels, battery backups, ‘routers’ for the electrical grid, ‘grid-scale storage’, smart metering, nuclear power, and predictive generation. These problems are unsexy but important. Carbon pollution aside, there are massive negative externalities associated with the extraction of oil, coal, and natural gas. Coal in particular releases more radioactive waste than a nuclear accident since it turns out that there are traces of radioactive metals in coal. It appears that the cost of installing new solar infrastructure is cheaper than buying coal, but we can’t wait for market forces alone to scuttle coal plants.
Healthy Environments – Industrial chemicals are in everything. I am always on the lookout for companies that make products without anything harmful in them. In general artisanal soaps, and personal care products, clothes, and products made with simple ingredients are great. If you know of any companies that make products without shelf stabilizers, vitamin enrichments, flame retardants, phthalates, teflon, etc in them I’m interested.
MIDS, Guilds, Consumer Unions, and Engineering Co-Ops – Kevin Kelly & Jaron Lanier make compelling arguments in favor of digital co-operatives getting paid revenue streams or equity for their work. What if digital collectives granted members a share economic value? The concept of a consumer union would work similarly, but would unite asset holders or customers so that they could vote with their purchasing power towards changing company behavior.