novitas weekly #14

Market Up After Correction, BROCKHAMPTON, ETHEREUM Trends, NFT, Butt Workout

It’s almost spring time in NY. As the weather warms up, I’ve settled in a new routine consists of workout, cooking, reading, and writing. This week I’ve tried out a healthy chicken parm recipe and also made honey garlic salmon bowl. I’m slowly figuring out my travel plan for Apr/May — will likely go on a trip to Savannah/Atlanta/Mammoth again w friends. I want to visit national parks in CA/AZ/UT this year too, and also go to Hawaii at some point. There are a lot of things to figure out for career and visa, but one step at a time. I’ll just enjoy the moment and resolve issues as they come up. Feel like I’ve matured a lot emotionally and psychologically in the past 4 months.

what’s happening on the market —

Last week market trends down about 6/7%, the biggest correction since the market crash in March last year. The All-In gang had an episode commenting on what has happened. The most credible explanation is a combination of institutions short-selling stocks & bonds to reduce risk exposure (e.g. like the Bloomberg article on VaR has suggested), also investors had (slightly irrational) inflation fears as the 1.9B stimulus bill passing & economy recovers. The All-In episode also talked about how much of the funding in the bill was used to support non Covid related projects that seem total BS, and how poorly & unorganized the governments are when it comes to rolling out vaccines and reopening. With bureaucracy and politicking nothing moves.

This week the market has bounced back with DOW reaching a historical high of 32000. The lesson — following a big correction always comes with a bigger recovery. Buy the dip.

music of the week —

I’ve been re-listening to some BROCKHAMPTON lately. I listened to SATURATION back in 2017, but I never realized it is a group instead of a single person. Their music ranges from some playful/light hip-hop/rap to sad-boi/mellow r&b. My favorite tracks include, STAR (best namedrop track i’ve heard), BLEACH (a beautiful emo track), and BOYS (reminder that they are a boy group, but not ur average one-direction type).

Another thing I discovered is that a lot of my all time fav tracks are produced by the same producers, though these are for different artists/projects. For example, Jon Brion produced a lot of tracks in Blonde, Swimming and Kanye’s early work, and DJ Dahi produced for KDot, Mac Miller, and Childish Gambino.

podcast of the week —

Navel interviewed Vitalik Buterin on Ethereum Trends. A very good listen, digging into both the technical of ether blockchain/protocol, use cases/applications and implications. It talks about smart contracts, PoW vs PoS model, scaling eth2 with channels/rollups/sharding, crypto exchanges like uni/sushi swaps, zero-knowledge proof and how it empowers applications like ZK-Rollup, ZCash. More interesting and broader conversation on Quadratic Funding and how it can better financing the public good (e.g. science research, open source projects, etc) and avoid the tragedy of the commons, and how crypto will impact income inequality/financial freedom. A lot of great inspo and ideas in this episode.

Here is Vitalik’s paper on Quadratic Funding for Philanthropic Causes.

new readings and ideas —

a) on financial independence: Related to the 4-hour workweek book I’ve been reading, an recurring idea around wealth accumulation is to own capital/equity so money can do the work itself. Navel Ravikant stated the same idea again in his tweets:

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

b) on understanding the world: The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch. The book starts with a bold idea — a 4-strand theory of everything, and the four strands are quantum physics, computation theory, Darwinian revolutionary theory, and epistemology. The concept is powerful — that these theories are the fundamentals of all human knowledge.

c) on the future of art: NFT is so hyped up right now, a digital art by Beeple was auctioned 69M at Christie’s. This is the first digital only art auctioned by Christie’s and also made the auction house the first major institution for NFT art. The trend of digitalizing art in on a feverish rise and seems inevitable. Last week, a Banksy’s piece was burnt and digitalized as NFT by some crypto enthusiasts in Brooklyn. Some has warned against the danger of the trend: soon there will be an overflow of trashy digital works on the internet sold as NFTs with “bubble” written all over it, the further demise of high-culture and the champion of contemporary pop/meme culture.

Yet the movement is unstoppable, creators/investors will chase NFTs and trade them like any other consumer goods. The crafts and content of art will be further diminished by the monetary values/means of transactions.

new *butt workout routine for growing a shelf ass —

I’ve switched up my workout to focus on growing butts. Here is a good article that explains the basics and the science both holistically and in-details. I’m also incorporating some exercises from the Tammy Hembrow’s 8–week program. Essentially, I’m now doing 3 leg/glute day per week (Mo/Tu/Fr) and with more glute focused movements (hip thrust, good mornings, back extension etc). The workouts cover all variations of horizontal/vertical/rotational movements, and use different weight ranges (50/70/85 1RM) and reps (e.g. 8/12/25).