Nick Alexander 📚

“I can’t say that I’m a winner, I haven’t won on any level.” - Jimmy Butler. That’s quite the statement from one of the NBAs best players. Jimmy has a winners resume. He just doesn’t have an NBA Championship. • 6× NBA All-Star (2015–2018, 2020, 2022) • NBA Eastern Conference Finals MVP (2023) • All-NBA Second Team (2023) • 4× All-NBA Third Team (2017, 2018, 2020, 2021) • 5× NBA All-Defensive Second Team (2014–2016, 2018, 2021) • NBA Most Improved Player (2015) • NBA steals leader (2021) • Olympic Gold Medal (2016) Jimmy Butler is so competitive that he doesn’t consider himself a winner without a championship. No wonder Pat Riley loves him. This is a mindset that cannot be taught. The clip below is a fascinating look inside the mind of one of the most fierce competitors in sports. Winning is measured in Championships for Jimmy Butler. Jimmy Butler and the @MiamiHEAT have lost 2 of the last 4 NBA Championships. It’s time to see if they can learn from that failure and get over the hump. Each year brings its own variables, but Jimmy and the Miami Heat still have some time left on their clock.

His band deserves just as much credit. On the fly they did everything they could to back Lewis up. True artistry around every note.  There will never be another night like this at Red Rocks. Only the people there last night will ever see that performance.  Once in a lifetime.

A piano tech issue leads to one of the greatest Red Rocks shows of all time. Lewis Capaldi, April 29th 2026, Red Rocks night 2.  The theater goes dark, the band takes their places and the music begins.

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Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.

@FoundersPodcast Finsihed this recently. Absolutely could not put it down!

This book was as good as everyone says it is. The opening of the episode is wild. Will be out later today:

@_willcompton @NESpower We’re going through it. Hang in there!

17 zip codes in Nashville are estimated to be without power until February 8th Two full weeks. That’s fucking absurd @NESpower

Brilliant

This data is SO cool.

@Falliblemusings @naval Such a timely post. Currently reading Sapiens and Beginning of Infinity is on deck 😆

I used to think Sapiens was a great book. Sweeping, provocative, the kind of book that makes you feel like you finally understand the big picture of human history. It's on every CEO's bookshelf, assigned in universities, praised as a masterwork of synthesis. Yuval Noah Harari is treated as one of the serious thinkers of our time. But something nagged at me. Some passages felt off. Claims that human rights are just figments of our collective imagination, not real things, just stories we tell ourselves. That nations, laws, money, justice, doesn't exist outside our heads. That meaning itself is a delusion we've invented to cope. That we're far more powerful than ever before but not happier. That hunter-gatherers had it better because they had no dishes to wash, no carpets to vacuum, no nappies to change, no bills to pay. That sounded depressing to me, but was perhaps just the realistic scientific worldview? What it meant to see the world clearly, without comforting illusions. Then I read The Beginning of Infinity by @DavidDeutschOxf. Deutsch has a concept he calls 'bad philosophy.' Not philosophy that's merely false, but philosophy that actively prevents the growth of knowledge. Ideas that close doors rather than open them. That makes problems seem unsolvable by design. After soaking in Deutsch's framework (it's dense, a bit like digesting a delicious whale), it becomes clear: Harari's books are riddled with bad philosophy. They're smuggling nihilism in under the guise of scientific objectivity. Some examples: On meaning: "Human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose... any meaning that people inscribe to their lives is just a delusion." On human rights: "There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings." On free will: "Humans are now hackable animals. The idea that humans have this soul or spirit and they have free will, that's over." On progress: "We thought we were saving time; instead we revved up the treadmill of life to ten times its former speed." The Agricultural Revolution? "History's biggest fraud." We didn't domesticate wheat, "it domesticated us." On our cosmic significance: "If planet Earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. Human subjectivity would not be missed." On the future: "Those who fail in the struggle against irrelevance would constitute a new 'useless class.'" Homo sapiens will likely "disappear in a century or two." This is bad philosophy. It tells us our problems are cosmically insignificant, our solutions are illusions, and that progress is neither desirable nor within our control. It's also perfect nonsense. No one would ever go back to being hunter-gatherers. Would you rather worry about your kid spending too much time on Roblox, or face the 50% chance she won't reach puberty? And our so-called "fictions"? They ended slavery. They gave women equal rights. They solved hunger. They eradicated smallpox. They turned sand into computer chips. They got us to the moon, and hopefully soon, to Mars and beyond. These "fictions" are already reshaping the universe, and over time they may become the most potent force in it. Now compare Deutsch: "Humans, people and knowledge are not only objectively significant: they are by far the most significant phenomena in nature." "Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow." "Problems are soluble, and each particular evil is a problem that can be solved." "We are only just scratching the surface, and shall never be doing anything else. If unlimited progress really is going to happen, not only are we now at almost the very beginning of it, we always shall be." Where Harari sees a species of deluded apes stumbling toward obsolescence, Deutsch sees universal explainers, the only entities we know of capable of creating explanatory knowledge, solving problems, and potentially seeding the universe with intelligence. The difference isn't academic. Ideas shape action. If you believe life is meaningless, progress is a trap, and humans are hackable animals with no free will, how does that affect what you build? What you fight for? What you teach your children? Harari's books sell because they flatter a fashionable pessimism. They let readers feel sophisticated for seeing through the "delusions" everyone else lives by. That smug cynicism is corrosive. And it's everywhere: in schools, in media, in bestselling books. More than half of young adults now say they feel little to no purpose or meaning in life. This is what happens when you teach an entire generation bad philosophy. Less progress, less health, less wealth. Less flourishing. And ultimately, a higher chance that civilization and consciousness go extinct. Fortunately, there's another equally well-written, but much truer, account of homo sapiens, appropriately titled 'The Beginning of Infinity'. And this one smuggles no despair in by the backdoor. But let's give Harari credit where it's due. He is right about one thing: if planet Earth blew up tomorrow, we wouldn't be missed. Because there'd be no one left to miss us, just a careless universe, blindly obeying physical laws. We are the only ones who can miss, but we're not going to. We're going to aim, hit, and keep going. Full credit for the amazing meme to @Ben__Jeff

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@bryan_johnson Insane stat

There’s 15% more car crashes the day before Thanksgiving. Be vigilant and careful.

@Jake_Joseph It’s really top notch

I have switched over entirely to Gemini. What an absolutely epic comeback from Google.