I’m often asked by college students for reading recommendations to help them learn more about investing. I feel like I change my answers, at least a bit, all the time depending on what I’m reading and what’s on my mind at any given time, but here’s my current list….

On December 25 Mr Pool retweeted August 16 message about the Phoenix and that the worst was still on the horizon to come. 1/*

Maybe now we can assume that November 3 message meant "FUD" nor "FUN". Putting the word in capital letters seems to indicate the aspect the word fud has in our space, FUD. 2/*

Brad started it on December 22 (1/3 posts (Don't say? Sure) = 13 = Plan B). 3/*

And immediately the SEC followed dropping the bomb (1.3 billions (Don't say? Sure) = 13 = Plan B). 4/*

FUD materializes, Bitstamp is one of the first that haltes XRP trading and so on. 5/*

1 There's a chasm between an NLP technology that works well in the research lab and something that works for applications that real people use. This was eye-opening when I started my career, and every time I talk to an NLP engineer at @textio, it continues to strike me even now.

2 Research conditions are theoretical and/or idealized. A huge problem for so-called NLP or AI startups with highly credentialed academic founders is that they bring limited knowledge of what it takes to build real products outside the lab.

3 A product is ultimately a thing that people pay for - not just cool technology or user experience. But I’m not even talking about knowledge gaps in go-to-market work. I'm talking purely technical gaps: how you go from science project to performant + delightful user experience.

4 Most commoditized NLP packages solve well-understood problems in standard ways that sacrifice either precision or performance. In a research lab, this is not usually a hard trade-off; in general, no one is using what you make, so performance is less important than precision.

5 In software, when you’re making something for real people to use, these tradeoffs are a big deal. Especially if you’re asking those people to pay for what you’ve made (can’t get away from that pesky GTM thinking). They expect quality, which includes precision AND performance.

Thats a gg, Satan

THREAD

I get asked for writing tips a lot. Of all the ones I’ve given, here are a few of the ones that seem to hold true and remain somewhat universal or at least mostly unobjectionable:

#amwriting #writingtips

1. If you are a fast writer (i.e., if you compose first drafts very quickly) then you absolutely must become a slow editor. Much of what I call “writing” is really, for me, editing.

2. If you don’t read you cannot write a lot or well. Sure, maybe you can read like a maniac for a decade and then read less after that, but without some large volume of intake, there will never be a meaningful output.

2.1 I sometimes say that I feel like writing without reading is like trying to run a marathan on a cracker. And sadly I see many students struggling to write when they have simply never read enough to fuel that demand of the task at hand.

3. All writing is writing if one decides to treat it that way. If one takes some degree of intentional will when sending emails, posting on social media and writing notes and marginalia, then all of that can count as meaningful daily writing.