Real Problems That Web3 Solves - Astukari Newsletter #84
🔨What I’ve Been Making
New writing: I am close, oh so close, to finishing the writing portion of my latest book. Right now I’m just waiting for the right moment to finish it off after this busy week, which I imagine will be sometime either today or tomorrow. After the writing portion is done there will still be some until it releases, but I’ll be working more on the marketing campaign for it at that point. So you’ll be hearing about it a lot more often.
Oh, and before I forget: check out On Culture and My Approach to Investing.
New video/audio: Quite a few new videos are up now on the Youtube channel. I think the only ones I haven’t shared yet on the newsletter are Narrative & Psychology and What is luck, really?. Meanwhile the newest podcast episode is Genetic Obsolescence.
Other projects: You may notice that this episode is missing the little “Hi friends” blurb at the beginning. Right now I’m experimenting with streamlining the newsletter — while the blurb is cute, usually I don’t have anything to say there that I can’t just say in this section, and all the purpose it really serves is as filler before you get into the good stuff. So let’s try this for now.
📚What I’ve Been Reading
Plan, Do, Learn: My admittedly hardcore work routine - This is a very sillily complicated way of doing work that I, naturally, love. I really enjoy the idea of breaking tasks into different time-sized increments — Pomodoro cycles, days, weeks, months, etc. I’m currently in the midst of experimenting with how I “chunk out” my work, and I plan on implementing this strategy in one way or another.
Real Problems that Web3 Solves - I am still what I would call “crypto skeptical”. I’m less against it than I was in the past but I still think it’s too hard to separate the innovation from the bullshit. At best I think where we’re at in the process is the Internet boom right before the 2000 crash. With that being said, the idea this blog post touches on — using crypto as a “unified identity” across all platforms — is admittedly very cool. The recovery and security features described here are pretty terrible (you really think people are gonna be cool with finding 3-5 people to vouch for them over a lost password?), but recovery/security is usually the last thing that gets built out properly and so I can’t really blame them for that.
Meritverse - Speaking of crypto applications, I’ve always been pretty iffy on the idea of credentials (both inside and outside of crypto). Yes having a little badge that says you do thing good is nice, but it doesn’t replace just having a portfolio of work. Here, on the other hand, we have an entirely different approach. Meritverse is a resume website, but it isn’t just any resume website — instead, it tracks your wallet ID across the cryptoverse, and auto-populates your resume with stuff you worked on. For example, if you made X feature for Y blockchain, this website will grab that info and display it on your page. And of course it’s proven, because the change you made is written on said blockchain. Very cool!
Soviet Military Maps of the World - Fun fact: all the maps Soviet spy organizations made back in like, the 60s to 70s, are now fully declassified. It’s an excellent example of just how deep national intelligence goes — these maps are more detailed than most local ones.
Tech Questions for 2022 - 2022 is a critical juncture. There are a lot of ongoing technology and political trends that could really go one way or the other. Crypto, for example, can either be a total sham or the next big thing, and no one (despite what they may claim) really knows which way it’s gonna go. This article goes over all those open questions.