Sublime Collection, Forging a Picasso and Rich Decisions

• What does Sublime actually do? - The key word in the quote below is slowly. I want to give my ideas more time and space to breathe. Sublime is an interesting product, but the philosophy is what draws me in most. Like Arc, this team is rethinking what the internet could be.

When I create a collection, I’m setting an intention for something I want to explore – a concept, idea, or question that I want to slowly organize my thoughts around.

• U.S. Court Rules That Police Can Force a Suspect to Unlock Phone With Thumbprint - I feel like a dad recommending this article, but I take Daring Fireball seriously. Learning this is easy and can save you a whole world of trouble when it comes in handy.

My advice is to internalize the shortcut to hard-lock an iPhone, which temporarily disables Face/Touch ID and requires the passcode to unlock: squeeze the side button and either of the volume buttons for a second or so. I wrote an entire article about this two years ago. Don’t just learn this shortcut, internalize it, so that you don’t have to think about it under duress.

• Museum of Forgeries Picasso Edition - 6MSCHF blows my mind. One of the most creative, subversive organizations I follow. The ability to make thoughtful, nuanced statements via what is effectively protest art is a sight to see.

By forging Poisson en masse, we obliterate the trail of provenance for the artwork. Though physically undamaged, we destroy any future confidence in the veracity of the work. By burying a needle in a needlestack, we render the original as much a forgery as any of our replications.

• How Muslim Chefs Handle Fasting During Ramadan - There is incredible richness in the intersection of fields. Here we see religion, food, and the restaurant business crash together. A favorite concept of mine is latent commonality, similarities between seemingly disparate things. The article discusses one such commonality, a restaurant that opens 10 PM - 4 AM and caters to both the devout and the high.

“There was a lot of talk back and forth of should we close or stay open,” Shafi said of discussing the solution with his three-person staff. “Ultimately it is a privilege to do what I do, and I can give up one month out of the year.”

• The Worst Climate Disaster You Haven’t Heard Of Just Got More Deadly - Complex systems fail in unpredictable ways. The world is nothing if not complex and here is a perfect example of the surprising (and devastating) impacts climate change is driving. The huge internal migration is a canary in the coal mine for similar changes coming across the world.

Combined with what spews from the smokestacks of the city’s coal-fired power plants, the resulting air pollution has rendered Ulaanbaatar the most dangerous capital in the world to breathe.

Some Thoughts About Useful Information for Decisions

I am thinking a lot about decisions of late. What information matters? Where do you find it?

So far the two qualities that appear to matter most are richness and redundancy. You want information that is at the nexus of many angles of the problem and you want to see the same part of the problem from many angles.

Richness is a quality of a single piece of information while redundancy is a quality of a host of information. Richness is all about the number of dimensions a piece of information reveals. Redundancy is the overlap of different pieces of information across dimensions.

What does this look like in a particular example? I’m thinking about this through the lens of cities, so we will start here. When I’m thinking about a city, I use a few pieces of information as a proxy for the dimensions I care about. Two big ones, full of richness and redundant, are the quality of coffee shops and the quality of the local dog shelter.

These are weird things to judge a city on and they are particular to me. These are not necessarily rich and redundant sources of information for anyone else. But for me, these 2 get to the heart of what matters in a city. In a city, I love a life of the mind and a spirit of weirdness. Coffee shops bleed both these (in general) and the more the better.

What do dogs have to do with it? After living in Los Angeles, I found myself missing seasonality. I want a city with four seasons and a city that is walkable, yet spacious. The local dog shelter is a surprisingly good proxy for seasonality, walk ability and spaciousness. The more space in a city, the more big dog breeds you see. The more walkable, the more likely people are to own dogs (read high turnover in the shelter). Finally, you don’t see the dogs I love in places without four seasons. I’m a huge fan of high energy herding dogs with double coats. You don’t find those in Alabama, but you do find them in Michigan, Colorado and Oregon.

Where is the redundancy here? Notice that the presence of coffee shops and quality dog shelters both speak to walk ability and to a lesser degree, seasonality. You don’t see many boutique coffee shops in a car dominated place. You see more drive throughs and pop up shops.

In general, we avoid redundancy like the plague. But when it comes to complex decisions, it can be the redundancy we avoid that gives us the confidence to make a decision (like where to live).