Bo Kane

we’re still early, anon

@painbuiltt @cremedupepe yeah so for someone looking to build functional strength I would say that means there is something wrong with the smith machine

@realBoKane @cremedupepe well yes of course a fixed vertical rail providing built in stability is going to activate stabiliser muscles less

Chest Workout (Heavy Week) 3x Chest Fly 3x Flat Press 3x Incline Press

@painbuiltt @cremedupepe smith machine forces your arms to go straight following the bar instead of a natural J curve which is bad for joints. this also makes it less effective at activating stabilizers, which is worse for overall functional strength.

@realBoKane @cremedupepe there is absolutely nothing wrong with the smith machine

@Octop3s there should be an S+ tier just for @lava_xyz

just drop any crypto card, neobank, or stablecoin-related app. i’m bored. i’ll rate them accordingly. 👀

@TW1NKD3STR0YER type of white guys who fish in prospect park (@harptheflarp)

when you walk from bed stuy to crown heights you start seeing types of white people youve never seen before

@johnloeber (32) on Infinite Jest - you must read White Noise by DeLillo. Prophetic in a number of ways - our response to COVID, Dylar as SSRIs/GLP1s, Instagram reality

Saturday at last. 37 recent thoughts: 1. Coffee shops will play music. Bars will sometimes play sports games, or even TV or movies. But I've never been to any establishment that plays a podcast. 2. The 2005-onwards "fuel efficiency" era of cars has resulted in incredibly ugly vehicles. Regulatory standards and pressure for aerodynamics have turned everything on four wheels into giant bloblike hatchbacks. Take a good look at one of these things. Horrendous. Once we get electric power + EVs at scale, we can go back to having vehicles that look good. 3. I often think of J Robert Oppenheimer's retreat to St John's in the US Virgin Islands in the 1950s. Imagine you're the most important nuclear physicist on earth, you've gone through staggering political drama, and then you peace out to a little pre-industrial island with no telephone or radio and sit on the beach for a couple weeks or months at a time. Talk about a detox. 4. I saw an old clip of the Simpsons, where they visit a lawyer to execute a will. It's in-person in an office. Sign of the times: today this would be done over Zoom and DocuSign. (The more valuable the profession by the hour, the more it is done virtually!) Modern media struggles to capture a world in which your entire life happens on a screen. 5. It would be good for everyone to spend a few days working in construction, tilling a field, cleaning streets, or manufacturing garments to appreciate (1) what goes on in our economy and (2) the benefits of modern technology. People do not know how good they have it. (There are a lot of anti-capitalists romanticizing pre-industrial life; people need to be inoculated against these illusions.) The biggest item is to spend a week washing clothes by hand; you will never look at a washing machine the same way again. 6. Many places are named after some heritage (e.g. New York), a landmark, or a person. But a lot of places are just named after money. It's uncommon in English, but if you start translating, it's everywhere: Puerto Rico? Rich Port! 7. I suspect that a lot of AI applications are already subtly Infinite Jest machines, encouraging the user to use them more and more, hooking them on the *feeling of productivity* more so than on actual productivity. There's a big bill and rude awakening coming to some of these users. If you didn't like social media because it maximizes engagement, you've seen nothing yet. The true engagement-maximizer, vastly smarter than you, billed by the token, is just in its infancy now. 8. Demographic differences from one airport to the next are just crazy. I flew through Minneapolis recently and half the men looked like Will Stancil. (I'll let you guess about the other half.) Flying from SFO to Chicago-Midway was like teleporting into a higher-BMI parallel universe. 9. Nice hotels are like real-life Pinterest boards. At some point you're not paying for amenities but for curation and inspiration. Like paying an interior designer for a few hours to sample a fully executed vision for a feeling of living. 10. Reviews for nice hotels are funny because people are so religious about them. I was recently picking between a 1Hotel and an Edition and looking at the reviews on Reddit: half of them are "1Hotel sucks, Edition is the only way to go" and the other half is the exact opposite. As far as I can tell, these hotels are basically the same. The tyranny of small differences! 11. Cookie popups are so dumb. This is a real policy-meets-technology failure. Your cookie settings should be sent as a default browser header. But maybe that didn't get implemented because it'd make it too easy to reject them all. Economic-political forces at work... 12. I've tried reading the Odyssey a few times. I've always struggled with classical verse, I lose concentration too easily with it. I'm now listening to the Odyssey as an audiobook, and it's working a lot better. Perhaps unsurprisingly: the old epics are meant to be read aloud! 13. Hacker News has always been known for its negativity, but it's had a real uptick in anti-American and anti-corporate sentiment. Some of these threads feel like Reddit at this point. 14. There's nothing more annoying than motorized trunk hatches on cars. I want to throw in my bags and shut the trunk -- and so I put my hand on the license plate, and push -- it resists, starts beeping, and then the world's slowest motor begins whirring, it opens back up, i have to click some dumb small button with a hatch/door icon on it, and then it begins closing with a speed of maybe one inch per second. Pathetic. I have to stand there, waiting to make sure the damn thing is closing, feeling the seconds of my life leave my body 15. It is continuously amusing to me that the Bush family consists of the biggest WASPs there ever were, truly New Englanders incarnate, and then they decided to remake themselves as humble Texans 16. Sam Kriss is a talented writer but he's just so mean. I can't read his work. I'm already cynical enough, I don't need more of it injected into me 17. Looking back, it's interesting how "thin" the machine learning skill tree is now. LSTMs, Random Forests, SVMs, etc. etc. have turned out to be ~irrelevant. Depth along one particularly powerful set of techniques beats all breadth. 18. History is a strong quality filter for media: Herodotus, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc. were the best of their time, most other stuff simply didn't survive because it had to be manually replicated, and that's a high bar. Now we have a non-stop explosion of new cultural artifacts, not just due to AI, but internet-era connectedness in the first place. I wonder if (1) it's possible to measure the outputs on a relative scale, e.g. every year we produce more cultural media than we have remaining from 2000BC to 1900AD combined, and (2) if there's a similar filter in the modern day -- like, there's so much ephemeral output that the act of reviewing, recommending, or replicating something carries a huge amount of weight. 19. With respect to the Midjourney scanner, a lot of people were commenting on the danger of "False Positives" in medical science. This seems incorrect to me: false positives just need better science. They should be a forcing function for more accurate diagnostics. It seems foolish to say that we shouldn't test because of the danger of false positives -- no, we should develop better tests and apply them more frequently. 20. Some people obtain US citizenship by birth ("anchor babies") but grow up abroad, moving to the US only as adults. There was a lot of recent debate about this and other aspects of birthright citizenship. Question: are these people paying taxes? US citizens living abroad are required to pay taxes; not filing them is a crime. If you are worried about abuse of anchor baby dynamics, then you may want to start by just enforcing the tax code. 21. If you're sending an email to ask someone for something, the probability of getting a reply is far-and-away maximized if you only ask for one thing as clearly as possible. 22. I would like to stop hearing about taste. Enough. 23. I keep a lot of notes on things to write about, but it feels like many of them are rapidly becoming irrelevant under changes due to AI. Just as parents often raise their children for the prior generation, writers publish for a world that has already disappeared. It takes great discipline to write for the present or the future. 24. I loved Wisprflow, and it taught me that dictation can be really effective -- speedy and lowering barrier to entry for outputting lots of thought. But Apple makes it inconvenient to use Wisprflow on mobile -- so I've resulted to using Apple's voice dictation, which I never would've used previously. Turns out it's good enough. (Just barely.) There's an interesting corporate-competitive dynamic here, where you start with the better, third-party tool, it teaches you the pattern, and then you use the worse, but more accessible built-in tool because you've learned the value of the pattern. Distribution is everything. 25. It appears that PPT slideshows and PDF decks are going away, in favor of AI-generated HTML websites. Just as good to present, and way more flexible. Interesting how AI means more centralization on the most common standards. 26. What exactly is "affordable healthcare"? What standard of care are we really talking about? All the politics and debate, and I'm not sure if people even agree on a definition here. 27. The great challenge with dentistry is that any operation removes all evidence that the procedure was necessary. You can see how this creates misaligned incentives. 28. Graham Platner and Palestine: if the contemporary Democrats weren't enthralled by antisemitism, they might not have not run the Guy With The Nazi Tattoo. But they are, and they did, and the non-stop cavalcade of failure and embarrassment was entirely deserved. 29. All things considered, it is surprising that the Nazis picked a Buddhist symbol as their flag. 30. Nvidia is only up ~50% since late '24. Given all the discourse, you would've expected it to be more. It's interesting how this was a great AI exposure derivative early on and appears more saturated now -- and most critically, hasn't kept up with the latest boom in frontier lab valuations. (Memory has been the new exposure trade.) 31. Sometimes I wonder about the difference between history and fiction. In many cases, our understanding of past events is probably way off. Does it matter? Being able to tell a grand narrative of humanity is important to our sense of identity and philosophical self-actualization, but to what extent is truth important to that narrative? It matters if we want to use the narrative to understand ourselves today. But beyond that, I want to say that there is intrinsic value in truth, but I struggle to make a really persuasive case to myself. 32. DFW writing Infinite Jest in response to (fundamentally) cable television of the '80s and '90s -- stuff that we would consider simply dull today -- is just incredible. To him this was already a colossally overwhelming force of entertainment, shaking the very foundations of what it means to be a human being. If he could see what we have today... 33. Under Trump's second term, the concept of a "First Lady" has almost entirely disappeared. 34. I continue to think that Bitcoin and LLMs feel like they were switched in the order in which they should have arisen: AI provides abundance, eliminating scarcity. What's scarce, and thereby valuable, in that AI era? Well, Bitcoin provides one thing: provable scarcity. Perhaps it arriving fifteen-plus years before its time and then languishing is like the 2010s all over again. There may come to be a rhyme to this history. 35. Sometimes I think about the 100 Prisoners Problem. This really blew my mind when I encountered it over a decade ago: it feels magical that there can be mathematical order like this in the world, that you wouldn't see at all unless you have the training. Like a secret hidden in plain sight. 36. Honor Codes That Work always feel remarkable to me, like a pinnacle of civilization. There is great comfort in being able to trust the honesty of others, that people will do what they say they're going to do. This may be a big part of our story: humans have been successful in part because they bias toward cooperation, even when defecting might be more rational. Conversely, I feel great unease when I see these honor/trust-systems weakened, and I suspect there is much more loss there than appears at first glance. 37. I am continuously surprised that restaurants don't copy each other better. For example, why do cafes serve bad sandwiches? It's easy to learn how to make a good sandwich! And ingredients are obviously a readily available commodity. "Efficient Markets" hypothesis blown out

As long as the pension is asset/liability matched it should be modeled as a fixed income sleeve without exposure to duration or rate risk IMO. A lot of working people don’t appreciate retiring with a full salary pension (or two! if you stack 2x20yr services obligations in one 40yr career) is more or less like retiring with a several million dollar bond portfolio

@awealthofcs I'm curious. Hw are pensions treated in terms of measuring someone's net worth? So someone who didn't have much discretionary stock allocation personally, but who had a pension funded in part from equity investments. Do you treat that as an equity asset for planning purposes?

Amazing chart from today's episode: It's not just that US household exposure to equities is at a record high, but that the stock market is a SIGNIFICANTLY greater component of total household net worth than real estate now, which blows my mind. The stock market is the economy.

@jeazous none of these - try @lava_xyz

I’m curious, what’s the best stablecoin card for paying a bill of 400 euros?

@TheAnnaGat what did he reject?

I got the absolutely most beautiful rejection letter from Douglas Hofstadter. You could tell he was so happy!

If anything the Manhattan Project and Apollo comparisons justify doubt. What, maybe 5-10% of electricity consumption comes from nuclear almost 100 years after the Manhattan Project? And most people no longer worry about the existence of nuclear weapons. And the Apollo Program certainly wasn’t a necessary condition for the space products used on a regular basis today (mapping, GPS, etc)

I think people doubt earth-shaking AI predictions partly because they don't realize we're spending like 1% of GDP on development and buildout. "The world will change because we're doing a Manhattan Project + Apollo Program to change it" is just a much more plausible proposition.

@DKokotajlo @thlarsen @romeovdean @eli_lifland this needs a QT review from @curl_justin

The AI 2040 scenario: ai-2040.com/?r=tw Plan A is our current best guess, but hopefully a better plan will exist before it's too late. We hope that the best ideas from Plan A will be adopted and the worst ideas discarded. Written with @thlarsen, @romeovdean, @eli_lifland, and @RyanGreenblatt

In AI 2027, we predicted that AI would take over the world or irreversibly concentrate power. In AI 2040: Plan A, we've laid out our positive vision for what should happen instead.

@momilio @ether_fi @lava_xyz -lowest borrow rate on BTC in the market -more stables and chains supported than EtherFi -no FX fees on *any* currency -much slicker UX -can make bank transfers from app (EtherFi forces you to go to web) -much cheaper on/offramp fees

@realBoKane @ether_fi @lava_xyz Sell me on it with a few sentences and I’ll try it out

Credit where credit is due. I've been deep in the crypto neobank trenches since Jan and tried every product out there. Vis a vis, @ether_fi is squarely sitting at the pole position here's why 1) Borrow Mode It's an actual credit card. You can borrow against your assets and make purchases without selling your crypto at a fixed 4% borrowing rate. Depositing assets in vaults earns 5-7% APY, so you can capture the spread. Great if your spending is low or your vault balance is large 2) Setting Spend Priority & Spending directly from your "savings account" You can also opt to use it as a debit card and choose which assets should be spent first (EURC vs. USDC vs. liquid versions!) Earn feature is table stakes, but with most other products you can't directly spend from your "savings acc". If you deposit into vaults to earn yield, you're forced to withdraw those assets first before they're spendable. With etherfi, you can simply deposit stables in a vault of your choice, earn 5-7% APY, and spend with the liquid versions 3) No FX Fees on EUR txns Not table stakes, this is a feature you typically don't unlock until you climb to one of the higher tiers. Hidden fees, especially on FX, are where users get rinsed. Etherfi applies no markup. You get 0 FX fees on EUR spend from the start. And it doesn't matter if you hold EURC or USDC in your wallet. Other perks I really like: - ability to deposit from a CEX account (and not just wallet address and bank accs) - actually non-custodial: platform never owns your assets - Cashback tiers are more sustainable: you get to enjoy your % longer > comps often demote you to 2% or 1% in cashback as soon as your first $1k is spent - with vaults, your assets are allocated across curated positions rather than a single pool. You take on exposure to more smart contracts, but no single exploit can wipe out your whole balance Room for improvement: - Mobile app UI sucks for the most part & certain features are only available on the webapp (i.e. bank transfers). h/t to @Plasma here, best UI in the game - Kraken not supported under CEX deposit methods - EtherFi Trade puts this on the roadmap, but until users can trade tokenized stocks, RWAs, and a broad suite of crypto assets in-app, a key piece of the full-stack asset mgmt platform is still missing. Also, there are four major things on my mental wish list that are missing across the board in the crypto neobank space: 1) undercollateralized lending / unsecured credit lines (the holy grail) 2) insurance products around vault deposits 3) less dependency on third-party sponsors (i.e. working with Visa directly vs. renting access through Rain) 4) ability to download true "bank statements" (with letterhead, logo, stamp, address etc.) from either the virtual accs directly or the spending accounts themselves, not a generic csv file. Would make it finally viable to use these for real life stuff (renting, visa apps, mortgages / loans, proof of funds / assets, etc) 1 & 2 are the lynchpins, solving those means the product will cross the chasm into true neobank TAM TLDR: Etherfi currently has the best product hooks. Hard to see them not continue to win market share unless they botch the Etherfi Trade launch or fk up the value accrual revamp around the ethereum:0xfe0c30065b384f05761f15d0cc899d4f9f9cc0eb token

@Defi_Warhol @0xVishnya @oobit @KASTxyz @Plasma @RedotPay @lava_xyz doesn’t charge fees either

Hidden fees suck, especially when two cards look similar until you actually use them. Here's the list ranked by extra cost vs the best observed rate, based on experiments from @0xVishnya ↓ Highest @oobit | ~5.4% @KASTxyz | ~2.7%–3.3% Medium @Plasma | ~1.8% @RedotPay | ~1.5% @wirexapp | ~1.4% @xplaceapp | ~1.0% Lowest @useTria | ~0.6% @krak | ~0.1% @coca_card | ~0.0% @avici | ~0.0% @ether_fi | ~0.0% You can also use ranked.plus as a go-to tool for checking whether a specific crypto card is available in your country, anon ;)

@wizaj certainly not at @lava_xyz

Wait what?’ Is this the standard for crypto cards?

@defyneric @realBoKane

thinking about starting my own podcast called: Fintech First. @ some people I should bring on.

@b3paystax @KASTxyz @ether_fi @Plasma Gotta try @lava_xyz

I’ve been a neobank user for a fair amount of time now, I’d say longer than most. @KASTxyz & @ether_fi both suck @Plasma is the one I can actually use daily with everything I need in it

@raagulanpathy @Revolut @Wise @slashapp @RedotPay @itstuyo @ether_fi @arq_finance @koshmoney @avici @useTria @xapobankapp @wirexapp @Nexo @Gemini @altitude @JupiterExchange @conkarta @phantom great list just missing @lava_xyz 💳

If you ask me, you should try all the apps. @Revolut @Wise @slashapp @RedotPay @itstuyo @ether_fi @arq_finance @koshmoney @avici @useTria @xapobankapp @wirexapp @Nexo @Gemini @altitude @JupiterExchange @conkarta @phantom And all the exchanges and wallets. F*ck if I had ref codes for all of them, I’d put them right here so I get clip 😂 We are in the very early stages of a trillions sector. Of course I believe @KASTxyz will win, because of our velocity. But if you go and use all of these others and come and give us direct feedback on where we are lacking, then it just goes on my STF “Sh*t That’s F*cked” list and then we fix it / ship it. The way this game works, is that both users and the best employees will flock to the winners, and so my interest is perfectly aligned with more “competition” and moving my flywheel quicker. Also, I can confidently say pretty much all the founders of these companies are well intentioned people busting ass (even the occasional SDE guy😜). Remember JP Morgan has $4.9T in Assets, and US banks alone over $25T. NuBank and Revolut, each only have 1/100th of a JPM. So stay focussed on the big prize, we have decades ahead of us.

@tasshinfogleman hey! wanna go on a walk sometime? I have the friendliest Bernese you’ll ever meet

i spent so long being discreet about where I was, not sharing my location. felt good to be private and considered. but now it's clear and out in the open. i live in Brooklyn