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Here's a number that should make you vomit: IQ explains about 21% of income variation. That's it. Four fifths of why someone makes bank has nothing to do with their brain. Nobel economist James Heckman ran the numbers harder and found IQ accounts for 1-2% of income variance when you factor in everything else. One to two percent. Your SAT score is basically a rounding error on your paycheck.

he's ignoring individual preferences. In the context of a career setting, making a lot of money is conditional on passing the screening and interviews, which are indirectly IQ filters. So people who are smart and whose preferences are aligned towards wealth accumulation are at an advantage. You don't get into Jane Street unless you're smart.


I don't see why it would matter. she could quit math now and still be ahead of the majority of mathematician in terms of contributions. The rest is just formalities. I can see her breezing through the undergrad, quals, etc . It would just be a small delay.

Macs are basically a dead business. The key is somehow creating the AI equivalent of an App Store or something

Dead business?

The Mac is something like 30 billion in revenue per year, and 10 billion in profit.

The entire "generative AI" "industry" is struggling to reach 30 billion in revenue even with their creative accounting (my free Perplexity that comes with Revolut is somehow counted at full price, even though I never paid anything, and I'm sure Revolut doesn't pay full price), and gross profit is deep in the negative.


Undercut the competitors by charging less. Apple can afford to run its product at a loss.

Some problems cannot be fixed with more money (unless to buy a stake , as Microsoft did with open ai). See Microsoft's endless failed efforts to compete with Google search or iPhone. Although looking at the recent stock price since 2020, MSFT stock was the winner anyway.

Because of Azure, Office, Game Pass, Github,....

To detriment of Windows, XBox hardware, .NET team shooting into all directions.


This is considered 'bad' for Figma because they left money on the table

Yeah they left a lot of money on the table if it tripled. Its like selling your house for 1/3 of its value

Yes and No! They didn’t sell of the company.

Well they did sell a portion of It that’s essentially what stocks are supposed to be.

I made a grammar mistake. Sorry. I meant to say they didn’t sell the entire company.

plus the six month lockup period starts now.

Figma employees gotta hope that end of 2026 January sees the stock price at a similar level or higher, or at least high enough to make a profit.


I'd buy some Put options if I was a Figma employee. Buy them out-of-the-money enough that the premiums are relatively inexpensive.

As of right now, it's trading at $138/share, though options aren't available yet, at least on RH. But I'd probably buy a $100 Put option expiring in January. I'd expect that's enough out of the money to balance the premiums versus risk.


I can't speak to their specific policies, but employees are often prohibited from trading in derivatives on company stock (and are regardless subject to open trading windows, which sometimes do not open until after the lockup has expired)

Plus although the finances might balance out, it takes extra care to ensure taxation isn't unbalanced (or other risks).

Typical business model of the extremely rate limited free model and then charging a lot for premium

This is how it is in the US for uncommon disorders, but the amount paid out of pocket is often vastly less. People are typically not writing huge checks for these drugs. It's still daunting though. The pharma company charges a lot to recoup the cost of developing and marketing the drug, which is typically paid by Medicaid. The economics wouldn't make it worthwhile develop the drug if it were too cheap.

I noticed that . Typically after the first post hits the front page and goes viral, someone else will submit a second post, which also hits the front page. It's rare, but I have seen it happen a few times over the years.

It's often something that was mentioned in the first post's comment section. I guess someone found it cool enough to want to share.

Who is he?

A very successful American Football quarterback.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brady


A well-known former NFL player.

I think he put it through GPT?

In this week’s newsletter, I want to give you some personal insight from my own experiences that I think will help explain where true personal satisfaction comes from—it comes from many places, not just one—and how you create it every day, win or lose, by the way you show up in each part of your life.

Note the em dashes.


My friend loves to use em dashes, not hyphens "-" but em dashes "—". He can no longer use them since people would suspect his writing was AI generated otherwise...

The AI learned by reading writing. It's ultimately only as good as the data put in.

I also write using dashes like this. It seems to mimic speech more naturally to me - it seems intuitive. I'm also somewhat on the spectrum and I find myself (and apparently many others) more often than not trying to mimic social and language cues.


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