Capitalogix

Here's to Rebirth and Spring Cleaning

Happy Holidays!  I hope you had a great weekend.

For Christians, today is Easter Sunday - the holiday celebrating the Resurrection. 

For Jews, it's still  Passover - the holiday recounting the Exodus from Egypt. 

The overlap can be seen in DaVinci's Last Supper, a Passover Seder, and last meal Jesus ate before his crucifixion.  

For both, it's a holy and family-centric time. A reminder to appreciate what we have, and how we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. 

One of the memorable phrases from Exodus is when Moses says "Let my people go!"  For generations, people assumed he was talking to the Pharoh about his people's freedom. After a week of eating clogging matzoh, matzoh balls, and even fried matzoh ... for many Jews "Let my people go" takes on a different meaning.

For Jews, a notable part of the ritual Seder dinner is naming each of the 10 plagues that rained over Egypt and saying "never again".

Perhaps, this year, COVID-19 gets added the list? 

Yet, just like the Jews making it through slavery, the plagues, and 40 years wandering through the wilderness and desert before entering the Promised Land ... we too will make it through this. 

With that said, some of what happened is good.  Mine your experience for the things you want to keep doing (or continue not doing) once things go back to "normal".  In addition, some of those close to me continue to remind me that being sheltered-in-place is a great excuse to do both a physical and mental spring cleaning. 

Hope you had a great weekend. 

Onwards!

Coronavirus Tracker

Fears around the Coronavirus continue to mount. Quarantine of the superbug has been tough ... the disease shows up in more countries every week, and the death toll is likely being underreported in China. 

That being said, the death toll compared to the "recovered" toll should give you hope that if you're relatively healthy and get proper treatment, your survivability rate is very high.

Here is an interactive tracker if you're curious to see a visual representation of it's spread.

 

1hakr via Visualist.io

Keeping yourself at a low risk of contraction is pretty simple. You know what you need to do to avoid it, but, as a reminder: wash your hands, don't share food/drinks with strangers, avoid touching your face, and don't go to China till you believe the "all clear."

How do you believe this will affect the markets and economy?

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading, February 23rd, 2020

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• What It Means to Be Human in the Age of AI. (CNet)
• Mommy Can't Talk Right Now She's Dopamine Fasting. (TheCut)
• I Went to a High-End Psychedelic Retreat to Address My Anxiety. (Vice)
• Inside the World of High-End Coffee | Annals of Obsession | the New Yorker. (YouTube)
• Most Dietary Supplements Don't Do Anything. Why Do We Spend $35 Billion a Year on Them? (WashPost)

 

Trading Links:

• Why Cryptocurrency Markets Defy the Laws of Economics. (BU)
• Michael Bloomberg Has Taken Andrew Yang's Place as the Cryptocurrency Candidate. (TechReview)
• It Has Never Been Easier to Launch a New Brand. (Economist)
• Elon Musk's SpaceX to Raise $250 Million, Valuing It at $36 Billion. (Uk)
• Elon Musk Says He'll Put a Million People on Mars by 2050. (Futurism)

Spicing Up Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is coming up. 

Does it matter?  Could it? 

Are you at least planning on having a little fun?

 

 

Love is an interesting concept. It can be a noun (a "thing") or a verb (an "action").  Perhaps it can be both ...  an emotion that you act on? 

Likewise, the words "I love you" can be a declaration of how you feel to someone ... or a command to yourself to treat a person with love.

On a practical note, I found a gift that really worked for me.  It's called "Lovebox" ... and, no, it's not a sex toy. 

via GIPHY

Lovebox is a tool to deepen emotional connections.  It consists of a lidded wooden box with a heart attached to the front and a phone app for you to use to compose your messages.  Inside the Lovebox is a screen, a wifi connection, and a little motor.  When you send the box a message, the heart spins to notify the recipient that they have a message.

 

The Lovebox gives me an opportunity to send special messages to my wife whether I'm home or away. I know that she loves seeing the heart spinning (and I believe that it makes us a bit closer each time she lifts the lid to see her message).  Lovebox creates anticipation.

I was unsure how my wife would respond  ... But she LOVES it ... and looks forward to receiving messages (and reminds me if I forget or seem to be running late with them). 

With that said, she made it clear she didn't want me pre-writing messages and having the app drip them to her like a marketing campaign.  So, of course, my next message was "A robot wrote this."

We've been using Lovebox for over six months and it still seems fresh and fun.  Another example of how technology can improve human lives.

Hope you  (and your special someone) have a Happy Valentine's Day.

Sickcare vs. Healthcare

WARNING ... the next picture is potentially NSFW. You've been warned!

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Are you mentally ready?

Sorry for the shock! It's a picture of me getting tested at APEX, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden's concierge medical wellness practice. 

Apex treatment plands are individually tailored to optimize your health, human performance, and longevity. They begin with a deep dive into your underlying genetic, physiologic & biochemical makeup, and then benchmark neurocognitive function, body composition, cardiovascular performance, hormonal status and much more. Ultimately, they help you rethink your concepts of aging and decline. Think about it, how many more decades of being healthy, fit, and vital do you want?

Over the past couple of weeks I have shared multiple articles on fitness: 

• Part 1,  Finding A Way
• Part 2, Measuring Normalized Behavior 
• Part 3, Getting Used To A New Normal

It got me thinking about the difference between the way we view healthcare and what healthcare really should be. Healthcare takes care of you once you're sick, but it should really help you stay healthier for longer. 

Many of my friends now believe that with technology and a sustained focus on health & longevity, they can live past 100. They're paying attention to genetic, physiologic & biochemical makeup, cognitive function, body composition, cardiovascular performance, hormonal status and much more. 

And whether they're going to live past 100 or not, I can see the daily results in the quality of their life, and the way they look. 

I fully intend on being here for a long time ... So, I'm building the habits to keep me healthy. I'm investing in wellness care so I don't have to invest in healthcare. 

I encourage you to ask yourself how you can do the same. Ask yourself  "how good can I be?" and "how long can I sustain that?"

What a great investment.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - September 15th, 2019

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

 

• New Blood Test Accurately Predicts When People Will Die within 5-10 Years. (BigThink)
• What Brain Supplements Can and Can't Do, According to a Neuroscientist. (FastCompany)
• The No. 1 University in America Now Comes with a Total Sticker Price of Over $293,000. (MarketWatch)
• Tim Cook Used a Specific Communication Strategy in Apple's iPhone Keynote. Here's Why Every Public Speaker Should Too. (Inc)

 

Trading Links:

• Counting on a Black Swan Event? There's an ETF for That. (Bloomberg)
• Jack Ma Ends 20-Year Reign at Alibaba with $41.8 Billion Net Worth. (Fortune)
• China's New Digital Currency Could Encourage Worldwide Use of the Yuan, Says CEO. (CNBC)
• The US Deficit Topped $1 Trillion. the Year's Not Even over Yet. (CNN)
• Trashing Fed 'Boneheads,' Trump Calls for Central Bank to Cut Interest Rates to 'ZERO'. (Politico)

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - August 4th, 2019

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Being and Drunkenness: How to Party Like an Existentialist. (Aeon)
• When Navy Sailors & Marines Share a Ship, Karaoke Night Gets Complicated. (WSJ)
• Fewer American Women are Working Than Two Decades Ago. (Economist)
• Now Calling Balls and Strikes: Robot Umpires. (Wall Street Journal)
• The State of AI in 2019: Breakthroughs in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Games, and Knowledge Graphs. (ZDNet)

 

Trading Links:

• This VC Firm Just Raised More Than $1 Billion to Invest in Moonshots: Term Sheet. (Fortune)
• Pentagon Puts $10B Contract on Hold After Trump Swipe at Amazon. (Politico)
• The Two Times in History Stocks Have Been this Expensive: 1929 and 2000. (Fortune)
• Stocks Plunge After Fed Cuts Rates for First Time since 2008. (CNBC)
• Opinion: This Highly Accurate Stock-Market Predictor Just Hit Its Most Bearish Level since the Internet Bubble. (MarketWatch)

Living Longer, Healthier, and Better

Each year I get a little bit more focused on what I can be doing to get more out of my time and to increase the quantity of time left.

Even with a renewed focus on health, it isn't always easier. As my friend Ben Hardy says, Willpower Doesn't Work - you have to identify goals that are bigger than yourself, create consequences and rewards for achieving or failing to achieve those goals, and change your environment to make success easy.  

I don't just want to be healthier to increase my time on earth, but to better support my family, my business, and to create a positive impact on those around me. 

When you have a vision of who you want to be, and what you want to accomplish, achieving your goals becomes a lot easier. 

When the goal is health, there are definitely some decisions that are proven to help. You can click to see the image in full-size. 

via informationisbeautiful

 

On top of the science, here are some of my anecdotal opinions on living longer, healthier, and better:

• Losing weight is as simple as calories in, calories out. It doesn't matter if you're on keto or eating only twinkies if you can keep your calories ingested below your calories burned
• In life, and in diets, shortcuts end up hurting you long-term more than they help you short-term
• Living "right" doesn't mean you can't let loose, it means that it's the exception instead of the rule. If your lifestyle doesn't let you have fun with your friends or family, it's probably not the healthiest lifestyle. Mental health is just as important as physical health

 

I'd love to hear your favorite "trick" to living better. Feel free to send me an e-mail. 

Thanks! Live Long and Prosper!

Biohacking Gone Wild

Dave Asprey is perhaps the most well-known biohacker (he's even referenced in Merriam-Webster's definition of biohacker) and the founder of Bulletproof. For those that don't know, a biohacker is someone who uses drugs and technology to make their body/mind function better. 

Dave and I shot a video where he discusses life and provides an interesting take on algorithms. 

 

 

It's not surprising that biohacking has become as popular as it has. In a society that encourages (maybe even necessitates) an impossible balance between work, responsibilities, and self-care - it makes sense to want to increase efficiency. 

Biohacking helps you do more with less. Biohacking is popular because you're trying to get peak performance via the path of less resistance.

Having trouble with sleep, but don't want to stop using your phone before bed? Wear blue-light blocking glasses. 

Not getting enough results at the gym? Work out "smarter" not harder, by using cryotechnology and intelligent lifting machines. 

While biohacking started as tricks like that - nootropics to help your mind, light and sound machines to decrease stress - it's becoming increasingly tech-centric and augmentation based. 

Several months ago, I shared Gartner's hype cycle for 2018. Do-It-Yourself Biohacking was one of 5 encompassing trends for the year. 

The future is bringing implants to extend humans past their perceived limits and increase our understanding of our bodies; biochips with the potential to detect diseases, synthetic muscles, and neural implants. - Howard Getson

It's estimated that over 100,000 people already have various types of implants. In Sweden, thousands of Swedes are inserting chips under their skin to speed up their daily routines. They use chips to open locked doors, to store contact information, and to get on to the train. Currently, chips are limited to simple tasks like unlocking doors, holding personal data, and tracking simple to record data.

Longterm, it's likely you'll see it moving toward exoskeletons, AR/XR experiences, and unsurprisingly to sex toys. It's also being used to create artificial organs and counteract memory loss.  The two companies that are leading this movement are Neuralink,  Biohax International and Digiwell. While it's currently being adopted primarily by fast-movers and technocrats, it's pragmatic to think there will be more widely-adopted versions of this as technology gets standardized and protections are put in place. 

For all the excitement, it's necessary to remain skeptical and patient. DIY biohacking raises various ethical issues, especially around data protection and cybersecurity. As a reminder, when it comes to cybersecurity, you "the user" are the biggest weakness.

There's no stopping this train, but there is time to make sure it stays on tracks!

Onwards!

by the way, I highly recommend the Bulletproof product line!

Let My People Go!

It's a special weekend. 

For Jews, it's Passover - the holiday honoring our exodus from Egypt. 

For Christians, it's Easter - the holiday honoring Jesus's resurrection. 

The overlap can be seen in DaVinci's Last Supper, a Passover Seder, and Jesus's last meal before his crucifixion.  

For both, it's a holy and family-centric time. A reminder to appreciate what we have, and how we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. 

One of the memorable phrases from Exodus is when Moses says "Let my people go!"  For generations, people assumed he was talking to the Pharoh about his people's freedom. After a week of eating clogging matzoh, matzoh balls, and even fried matzoh ... for many Jews "Let my people go" takes on a different meaning.

Hope you celebrated with family, food, and a reverence for all the blessings around you.