Notices by JA Westenberg (daojoan@mastodon.social), page 2

"Greatness" is not a personality trait.

It's closer to accumulated evidence.

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/nobody-is-destined-for-greatness/

The thing nobody warns you about therapy is that it gives you a new vocabulary, not a new self, and far too may people stop at the vocabulary.

Why do you care?

The opposite of a popular truth is the actual truth.

The thing about most people who write posts about what “most people” don’t do - is that they don’t do any actual research about most people.

Railways.

Electricity.

Mainframes.

Telecom.

Shale.

Each cycle had a real innovation + a defensible thesis for why the dominant provider would compound forever.

And each ended with that provider returning less than Treasuries for a decade.

NVIDIA, I’m told, will be different.

https://www.selfonomics.com/p/nvidia-goes-to-zero

New from me in Capital Brief:

The founders of AI companies have repeatedly told the public their product could replace them - or worse.

Now they seem baffled when people take them at their word…

https://www.capitalbrief.com/article/ai-leaders-cant-sell-doom-and-expect-applause-ff530750-70d1-421c-a71d-68e78650a81a/?gift=922aa23c-37a3-4325-9e73-87ce3784a993

There was a time when adults could feel something without screaming at you about it.

We could disagree, hard, in a meeting and walk out with our faces still attached. Bad news arrived at the dinner table and the meal finished anyway.

Call it discipline: the capacity to feel a thing in full and still choose what to do next…

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/emotional-regulation-is-a-dying-art/

the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and starting a podcast

We built an entire civilisation around the idea that more information would make us wiser.

We have more information than any humans who ever lived.

We are not wiser.

Sydney is the only city on Earth where you can pay $9 for a flat white, $11 for a beer, and $1.8 million for a studio apartment, and still have people write op-eds asking why young people won’t have kids.

My hottest of hot takes: the only people who should run companies that make things are people who deeply give a fuck about those things. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.

A healthy civilisation draws a line around the sacred and refuses to price what's inside it. The line moves, but the line exists.

A civilisation in decay erases that line.

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/why-prediction-markets-are-a-sure-sign-that-our-civilisation-is-in-decay/

On balance, and given the choice, I’d go back to a pre-internet world in a heartbeat.

Don’t tempt me with a good time

Peter Thiel: the only man who read The Lord of the Rings and deeply identified with Sauron

An American in Sydney told me a flat white is just a latte with less foam. Mate. I don’t come to your country and tell you your pancakes are sad crepes. There are rules about this kind of thing.

I have developed a foolproof system for inbox zero. it’s called “a separate email address I never check” and I feel fucking great about it buy my course.

Whenever someone says “the future is Thing” you can be sure of 2 things:

1. The future is absolutely not Thing
2. They are over invested in Thing

Australians have a word for people who take themselves too seriously. It’s “mate” but with a specific intonation and if you don’t get it you’re not in the club