Advice which seems obvious to me now but which wasn't and so maybe will help you:
If you ever are talking to someone who is very good at some X relevant to you, and you hit it off, ask them "Who else should I talk to about X?"
They are very, very likely to talk to other people who are good at X (or otherwise professionally involved with the sorts of problems of people who talk to people working on X), likely have a better calibration than you do on who is good at them, and *will often love to be asked*
(In Silicon Valley there is a subtle culture about the difference between "Who should I talk to about X?" and "Who would you introduce me to talk to about X?" Part of me understands; part of me believes that where the difference is material just resample the conversational pool.)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Correspondent: *situation* So how is it that my credit card at A shows a payment has posted but by checking account at B shows it as not withdrawn yet?
Me: That’s usual behavior for U.S. bank transfers. Each is an extension of credit, with various risk controls.
And now I’ll continue this with a character.
X: But the money is in two places at once. It cannot be in two places at once.
Me: Extension of credit creates money, yes.
X: Good thing this only happens for credit cards and not for checking accounts.
Me: Built into every account.
X: But a checking account isn’t a credit product.
Me: Oh no it is.
X: What I didn’t apply for credit.
Me: Try to remember what information was on the form you filled out when you opened it.
X: That was for KYC though.
Me: Also a purpose of that form.
Seems like the SEC finally got around to fining DCG for lying through their teeth repeatedly in 2022.
I think this finally lets me cash in a very old hash. Most is very old news, but there's one discussion topic that is perhaps not public yet.sec.gov/newsroom/press…
So back in November 8th, 2022 I dropped this hash on Twitter.
That is not actually a book, but let’s say there is a very rich subgenre of advice, much of it written by and for very successful people, which says what that book would say, in some cases literally by way of extended D&D metaphors it assumes the audience will grok.
*sigh*
You can tell more than a little bit about me from immediately feeling the need to clarify that that was not an actual book.
I sometimes get asked "Why don't you have a tip cup? I'd like to support you, but don't want to commit to a subscription." My macroed response is that I appreciate the gesture and suggest a donation to a local charity.
I do not take donations because I sell things to businesses.
Businesses do not customarily tip or donate to professionals. When they see someone with a tip cup, they think "Not a professional."
This is not something I want a business to think about me when quoting rates.
From time to time a business has suggested to me that they think my prices are too high. I tell them that they are welcome to their opinions on pricing strategy. Sometimes they then tell me they are confident I would make more if I lowered prices.
Matt Levine has a great entry today about the bank which motivated this tweet thread, which apparently ran afoul of the CFPB. He is… appropriately skeptical of their theory that this is improper in a way which should be illegal.
Two years ago I would have been pleasantly surprised that an LLM could math out what a QSR manager was and provide fictional examples. Today I’m pleasantly surprised one just extrapolated cultural commentary on why PMC values chefs more than QSR managers… without me asking.
Claude 3.5, FWIW. I am very new with Claude and have minimal system prompt or context it could be going on, unless it's cross-connecting with my public corpora.
The setup:
Claude then answers my question with a question of its own. I play along.