Too Much Carrot Tartare

 It's Oscars season, meaning publications I read like the WSJ, Time, and the NY Times will be pushing the best films of 2023 for viewers to catch up on the Oscars buzz.... already some controversy at the Golden Globes with Cilian Murphy winning Best Actor over Bradley Cooper for Maestro, despite Bradley Cooper having dedicated 6 years of his life to prepare himself to play the role of Leonard Bernstein, or so he says. The thing is, I was all pumped up to watch Maestro with MJ when it came out on Netflix.....and then after the laborious first 30 minutes of Cooper playing music and smoking, playing music and smoking......I went to go work out. The problem with these critically acclaimed movies, for a novice like me at least, there's too much nuance, too much symbolism, too much unexpressed emotion and messages below the service, it's like having too much of a good thing all at once, like going to Eleven Madison Park (at one time the best restaurant in the world) and getting too much quality, too many exquisite sauces over fancy made dishes like carrot tartare, too much one-bite food with professional chefs coming out to explain their creations to you......when really I would have been OK with a nice pasta and salad with cashew sauce mix, or curry over bok choi and rice, 2 dishes MJ expertly made this week (with the help of her new subscription meal service, ironically called the Purple Carrot- did the company also enjoy carrot tartare at Eleven Madison?). Like quality is subjective; fashion is subjective; it brings me back to high school English class where I thought some my papers were great, but the collective opinion of writers and literature experts gave the opinion that my paper wasn't good. All of which leads to Past Lives, the movie set in NYC, with more than half of the dialogue in Korean, with an admittedly interesting message about what-could-have-been; it's too slow for me. not enough things happening, not enough characters (just 3 people, a love triangle). Which is what's allowing me to write about it here while watching it at half attention. It's a beautiful movie, but the message is kind of simple: yes, I get it, you had a past life where you loved this man from Korean, you could have been with him, but you chose a different life with a white guy in the U.S. and now you don't know how things would have turned out with the other guy. Welcome to probably everyone in the world who's ever been in love with someone else and looks back fondly and with regret. "We were really babies back then." A line in the movie- yup, all adults feel that way about when they were younger, so many things we would all do differently. Not taking much risks here. 

I read somewhere that the only horror movie ever to win an Oscar for best picture was....Silence of the Lambs? Uh, are people forgetting about Parasite? When the old housekeeper opened up the hidden entrance down to the basement leading down the path of a hell to a horrible underworld? That was horrifying. Still the best Korean movie I've ever seen. 

Today I learned a phrase called "the maintenance phase," the time to keep the weight off after losing a substantial amount of weight. I've never had to worry about that; I've had a standard deviation of 10 pounds or so, give or take, my normal weight for the last 20 years of my life, but I get how hard the maintenance phase is. (Keep it up, MJ!) There was one winter in Chicago with MJ where we both gained substantial amount of weight in the cold harsh winter with a wildly irresponsible diets of Subway sandwiches and roast beef late at night and then sitting all day in the office (at least I was). The retreat back to L.A. helped to take off some of that weight, and the maintenance phase was just eating LESS.... much, much less. Without making too big of a leap, the secret to a maintenance phase might just be getting the best quality food without eating too much of it, like eating only carrot tartare and not junk food; watching only quality films like Past Lives that make us ruminate about our lives in a healthy and introspective way (yes, as I've been writing this post the film has started growing on me) instead of the junk-food equivalent "Trolls World Tour" or "Fast and Furious 10" or whatever iteration they are on..... I guess I'll have to settle into a maintenance phase of watching quality movies from now until the Oscars. 

Laceration (划破, 열상, 裂傷)

 I hurt myself today. But unlike the Johnny Cash song "Hurt," I didn't do it to see if I felt pain, I did it because I stupidly tried to catch a falling bowl near a sink, and when the bowl split into several pieces I was still holding the jagged end, thus allowing for a laceration of the skin right under the skin. It wasn't bad, stung for a little bit but I was fine with the sight of my own blood, whereas MJ the nurse kept making disgusted noises about the blood splurging out, claiming that it was "unexpected" blood so it wasn't like what she's used to at the hospital. Within about 15 minutes of putting on a bandaid, though, the bleeding had stopped, the pain subsided, and I was back to normal. Funny how it works. I didn't know this before, but the bleedings stops because of platelets in the blood, which arrive at the laceration site and clump up to form a clot that helps stop bleeding. Not everyone is as lucky as I am, with my Wolverine-like abilities to heal quickly; lot of people need platelets. (OH NO THIS IS ANOTHER POST WHERE BOBBY BRAGS ABOUT DONATING BLOOD?) Yup, but platelets are actually cool and interesting, and takes quite a while to get out of my system, so I get to boast about it! And also apparently there's the most desperate need right now for platelets, due to winter vacation and lack of donations (I can attest to this, my local Red Cross was totally empty on December 29) but hospitals need the most right now due to surgeries to begin the year right now, no kids in school for blood drives or workers in offices (not that there are many workers in offices right now anyway). 

Due to me signing up for Amazon Prime to get the free shipping for holiday season, MJ and I have started watching a little show that comes up on Jeopardy all the time with Rachel Brosnahan, Tony Shalhoub, and Alex Borstein: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It deserves the hype; MJ likes it for the scenes of Paris, high class New York in the 50's, the upbeat music, (did I mention that it's set in New York, MJ's favorite city?)  It explores what the U.S. was like in the U.S. (seems like it smelled like urine even more than it does now in the big cities), a time before cell phones, internet, and air conditioning in every home; what a time to be alive. In many ways it reminds me that our current society in 2024 is probably the best that humankind has ever had it, despite all the ongoing wars, bedbugs in Paris right ahead of the Olympics, social unrest, Harvard president stepping down for plagiarism, existental environmental risks, social media making everyone stupid, fake news and conspiracies, polarizing leaders, comedians falling flat at the Golden Globes (Jo Koy), and so many others, we would still live in 2024 than the 1950s, or the 1940s, or the 1850s, or the 1500s, or ever. If everyone who ever existed was given all the information about which time in history they'd want to live in up to 2024, I bet most would want to live from 2000-2024, with a parabola rising up from 2000 up to 2024, when everything has become so easy it actually makes life a little worse, because shows like Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are SO accessible (click of a few buttons) that you don't feel compelled to watch it, despite it being one of the best shows on TV (recently cancelled, but not for lack of quality. Also the standup comedy is good, I like rooting for the heroine Mrs. Maisel, and plenty of smart dialogue. 

Yea and that laceration I just got, if I had gotten them earlier in history? Probably my powers of healing would have allowed me to get by, but definitely higher risk of it getting infected, no ready band-aids available (invented 1920), and if I had hemophilia I'd have a big problem, especially since platelet donations weren't available until roughly early 1910's neither. Donate blood and platelets! We have the technology. 

Hitchcock Blondes

 Recently I learned a trope in classic cinema called "The Hitchcock Blondes," which are famous actresses who starred in famous Hitchcock movies who all happened to be blonde. It's a list of who's who in early talkie cinema (talkies being movies that actually had dialogue, as opposed to the silent movies that came before like Charlie Chaplin) and it's a list so important that Jeopardy regularly quizes about them (as well as their corresponding Hitchcok movies, iconic in their own right). What do they have in common? Apparently Hitchcock thought that blondes made the best victims. Tippi Hedren- The Birds, Grace Kelly- Rear Window, Kim Novak- Vertigo, Eve Marie Saint- North By Northwest, Janet Leigh- Psycho. I have seen zero of these movies from start to finish, bits and pieces of Rear Window, and heard about the famous "The Birds" scenes through tours of Universal Studios. These lists are difficult becaue they're not really common knowledge, except for trivia players, in which they're like collectibles, things that you just have to pick up like all the Caribbean Islands (I just learned Guadalupe was an island today) along with St. Kitts & Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Dominica, and the big one that seems to intersect all kinds of trivia questions: St. Lucia. Trivia people love St. Lucia. 

I wonder how many people at an NFL football game would know where St. Lucia is, much less where it was or even what sea it was in. This weekend I went to a NFL football game that reminded me all the reasons why I don't go to NFL games anymore: a.) The home team ALWAYS loses when I go: The cooler curse applies to other sports but there are rare exceptions where the home teams actually win; no exceptions for NFL. b.) The games are usually cold by the time December and January hits, especially in cold weather cities. c.) the stadiums don't have special features like baseball does; most are just a huge bowl without views of the city or the ocean or the river like baseball stadiums can, allowing for less variety. It's just a colisseum built for 100,000 screaming idiots. And that brings me to my last point: d.) the IQ of the average fan is disappointingly low. I walked into the stadium and almost immediately walked into a fight, caused by fans of rival teams cursing at each other. There's always alcohol involved (if fans had decent IQs normally, the alcohol brought that down dramatically by game time), people often get arrested or evacuated due to dumb things done under the influence of alcohol, it's just not worth it. Meanwhile the local orchestra hall playing that night INDOORS at room temperature playing Mozart's Jupiter symphony had almost no one show up; it's a little depressing that football occupies such a big part of this country's attention (and I'm part of the problem! Used to love all sports!) and the bookstores and classical music industries are dying. Taylor Swift, can you just a small percentage of your fans back to classical music? Maybe have the (insert city here) Philharmonic open for one of your concerts. 

Anyway, back to ranting about NFL games: I couldn't help but enjoy some of the opening theatrics with fireworks, players entering the field through the ramp, the pumped up music, it's a fun experience. What I can't imagine is slogging through all those for a whole season sitting through traffic, paying for parking, not being allowed to bring an umbrella into an icy rain-downfall game (yup, no umbrellas!) and being gouged for $15 for a cheap domestic beer only to see your second stringers (last game of the regular season, nothing to play for) lose. There's Netflix and any show you want to see at home now, no need to go to a game to see the outcome. Yet people still go and love it. Can't get enough of it. Well, a couple guys could I guess, puking their guts out outside the stadium passed out on the curb as I was leaving at halftime. Good grief. 

Fun fact: British Jeopardy started in 2024! The first few episodes were enjoyable! 

Chess: played the game my whole life (and still not very good at it) and didn't know it originated in India, of all places, Gupta Dynasty, 6th century. Which is interesting that the pieces have bishops and rooks and queens? Also I'm convinced that every single art museum that MJ and I go to has a decorate art set with the pieces as dogs, or pieces as clock accessories, or pieces as oddly-shaped Cubism-inspired objects, etc., etc. Does anyone ever actually PLAY chess on those sets? Or are they just art by sitting there? Hmm. 

Van Cleef & Arpels

 Van Cleef & Arpels is a jewelry company that is apparently more expensive than even Cartier, Rolex, and Hermes, which tells you everything you need to know why I haven't heard of them before, and when on Jeopardy the other day the clue was about a "jeweler who bears the name of a diamond broker and the daughter of a dealer in precious stones," I drew a blank but MJ dug into the back of her mind and thought of the most expensive brand she could.....but was timid and didn't think Jeopardy would even ask about such a highbrow brand that's fitted the likes of Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor. It was like a Voldemort situation, "the brand that shall not be named." In a sort of Baader- Meinhoff Phenomenon, though, I was reading the NY Times for Wednesday, January 3, and there on the back page was a full-page ad for Van Cleef & Arpels, as if they were supplementing their marketing campaign on Jeopardy with getting their name out there on another publication with high-IQ (and likely higher average income) patrons. 

I've noticed for sure that some names are just "stickier" than others; some names just have the right combination of quarkiness and uniqueness and certain letters just fitting together that make them impossible to forget, like the Susquehanna River, or the King Tutankhamen. It's also possible it's because we say those names so often that we get used to them and they just feel right off the tongue, something in our mind likes the physical repetition of saying that name. I can say Imelda Staunton all day, for instance, especially after seeing her performances in Harry Potter and the Crown, but I have a devil of a time remembering her show-husband on the Crown, playing Prince Phillip, Jonathan....Pryce. That's a rough name to stick out in your mind, because there are so many Jonathans in the realm of history and the world, and so many Prices. Could it be Jonathan Majors, the villain in the recent Ant Man: Quantummania? Or Jonathan Rhys Miller, the Irish actor? Or possibly Jonny Lee Miller, former spouse of Angelina Jolie and who portrayed John Major (a Jonny playing a John!) on the Crown, or could it even be Jonathan Lipnicki, the little kid in the Jerry Maguire movie? But there's only one Imelda Staunton. I actually suspect that's what Van Cleef & Arpels and a number of other brands are going for: a strong and prestigious name, but one that hasn't been used before so that it gets confused with something else. Elon Musk understood that: I FINALLY finished his biography by Walter Isaacson and he prided himself on making strong names and also having an "X" in them like Exa Dark Sidareal Musk. Also he once was with Amber Heard. Also he has 11 children (geez), many through IVF; also he can be very angry and upset about something and tell his subordinates to do something, but 3 hours later he'll just forget about it like he never said any of that, so it's better just not to do the thing he said. I can relate to that; I often finish a task and just completely shut it off from my mind. 

Ending the first post of 2024 on a bit of a sour note: reading the NY Times also exposed me to the horrors of what happened on October 7, 2023: no matter if you're pro-Israel or pro-Hamas you have to be appalled at what happened to the innocent civilians who were attacked by terrorists, especially the women who were raped and tortured and then killed for the crime of going to a rave that night. Pure evil is often justified by war, one of the worst things about war, that almost anything can be justified as the cost of doing war, but the things done to the women (cutting off breasts, stabbing them before performing sex acts) were all captured on video and shows some of the worst things that humanity can do to each other. It certainly makes me wonder that despite so many good people in the world and genuine acts of kindness that you see, does the human race deserve to exist if it has people like that to stoop to those levels? Elon Musk is trying to save our planet from extinction due to AI and any other number of existential threats....but is that even a worthy battle if people are capable of doing what happened on October 7 to each other? America's greatest tragedies are 9/11 and various other deaths, but I'd argue 10/7/2023 was worse: the kind of torture and brutality and things done to harmless women before they died is beyond just killing a large group of people: it's pure evil. 

Best Movie of 2023- Quiz Lady

 Of all the Top Lists that are published every year, I'm usually most interested in the "This year in search" from Google reminding me of the stories I'd forgotten about (or in some cases, never even learned about in the first place), the Top TV shows of 2023 (I saw The Last of Us, the Bear, final succession of Succession up there), and best single TV episode of 2023 ("The Bear" won that with its iconic "Knives" episode where cousin Richie learned about hopsitality at a fine dining restaurant and ended the episode singing Taylor Swift's "Love Song" in the car), but I'm usually the most interested in the Top movies of 2023, so that I can catch up and see them before the year is over. This year, though, unlike most critics who had "Killers of the Flower Moon," "Past Lives," "Oppenheimer," "Barbie," I submit my own personal entry for 2023: "Quiz Lady." 

"Representation matters" is a trendy phrase right now in the culture wars, and I sometimes agree with it, especially when it comes to seeing the actress Nora Lum, aka Nora from Queens, aka Awkwafina, in movies. In many ways she's like me: grew up in the U.S. so culturally American, both in our mid-30's, both like to goofy but also seemingly hard-working, and she's currently carrying the torch for Asian Americans in Hollywood along with a host of others like Simu Liu (no bigger stage than being Ken in Barbie, and also semifinalist on Celebrity Jeopardy!), Constance Wu, etc. Awkwafina, though, feels like she might have the longest career, now taking on serious roles in addition to the "get paid" roles like Kung Fu Panda or Crazy Rich Asians.....she starred in "The Farewell" in 2019 which was critically acclaimed, and again showed that an Asian American lead can work in "Quiz Lady." Sometimes a film can just be right up one's alley.... and this is about an awkward Asian teenager who grew up watching a quiz show (obviously styled off Jeopardy) and finally getting the chance to go on the show thanks to being kidnapped by her older sister (Sandra Oh) to go on a crazy road trip to......Philadelphia. It's a feel-good, road-trip, buddy comedy (except the buddies are 2 Asian ladies) with trivia involved, and basically spells out the trivia nerd's dream of getting on the favorite national game show. Sandra Oh has also been a representative Asian figure for me since she was in Grey's Anatomy, and she plays someone I always wish I had, a big sister for Awkwafina. It's a movie that could have taken place anytime in the last 30 years, without any political or moral messages to complicate things, deep enduring messages about the human condition, any sci-fi or glimpses of the future, just a good ol' story that warms the heart and has a few laughs. And it's less than 2 hours (looking at you, Oppenheimer), doesn't aggressively push a feminist message (Barbie), doesn't have depressing death and violence (Flowers of the Killer Moon or any Martin Scorcese movie ever), doesn't needlessly have big name actors show up (well, unless you count Paul Reubens), and has cool dogs. "Quiz Lady" is just a perfect movie for what I needed right now at the end of 2023. Streaming on Hulu. 

If there's a "Quiz Lady' version of the best art museum in the U.S., I'd suspect most people wouldn't have Buffalo's AKG Art Museum on the list. Yes, THAT Buffalo, in Upper New York State. As one Google review put it so eloquently, "I didn't feel like I was in Buffalo while at the museum." It has 3 buildings that combines modern building and classical architecture on the outside, has some great collections inside with all the classics Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso. I've been to other parts of Buffalo, New York, and I agree with the sentiments of that Google reviewer: the art museum is the best part of the city. Including if you count Niagara Falls just to the north, which has a pretty cool scene but then the rest of the city has just become a low-grade version of Las Vegas: casinos and glitz. 

So as 2024 rolls in, just something for future Robert to remember in the new year: Give some new stuff a chance; you never know when scrolling through Hulu (my 3rd favorite streaming service to scroll through) what might pop up (life's like a box of chocolates) and when looking for art museums to visit, don't just look at the biggest cities......Buffalo, 6 hours away from civilization, might pop up. 

My Own Biggest Critic (自己最大的批评者, 自分自身の最大の批評家, 자신의 가장 큰 비평가)

 I've been really critical about other people recently. Given the spirit of Christmas, let's change that: I'm going to be critical of myself in this post. Given that Elon Musk (I'm reading his juicy book full of big-picture issues of his business life and various personal relationships but also small little intricacies like turning left at a "do not turn left sign," accusing a man on Twitter of being a pedophile, etc.) thinks that it's very possible we're all just avatars in a simulation being run by unknown greater Beings, this is a list of things in the video game of life that would be warnings before you selected the "Robert Yan" character (ranigng from the mild faults and tendencies to major flaws that fundamentally hold me back from my goals and signify general lackings as a person). 

Self-criticism No. 1:) I bite my nails. I've done this since I was a kid; I was often nervous as a child and developed this nervous tick, that I've been unable to get rid of as an adult. It's not as bad as some other compulsions like smoking or cutting oneself, but it can also annoy others. I sometimes do without even noticing I'm doing it, but I've noticed I do it more when I'm in a stressed environment or have a deadline coming up. 

Self-criticims No. 2) I have problems making up my mind. Sometimes I'll wait until the last second to make a spontaneous decision because I'm stuck between 2 choices that change in attractiveness and vacillate drastically until the second until I have the make the decision. Sometimes this manifests in driving on the highway, approaching a fork, and swerving at the last second to take the other fork. 

3.) I'm too nice. This may seem like a humble brag, but it's actually detrimental in our society today and I wish I could overcome it. Just today I saw a man knocking on the door to our apartment building looking a little suspicious (I've never seen him before around the building and he had his pants hanging halfway down his butt). But being that it was Christmas and he was looking directly at me asking me to open the door, I complied, at least remembering to ask him what he was there for, but he marched right past me and said "waiting for his peoples." I instantly regretted being so nice and letting him in as the building had warned of a package thief entering, so I had to follow this guy around the building to make sure he didn't steal anything, and sure enough, after realizing I was tailing him, the guy strolled around for a bit, never waited for "his peoples" to arrive, and walked out the front door. The world has just as many bad people as good people, if not more; I need to be more discerning and not be so naively nice. 

4.) I internalize my anger too much. This is the root of a lot of arguments I have with my parents, my wife, my sister, basically everyone who's close to me. I let the anger build up just like in "Anger Management" a VERY on-point movie for me about anger management, I should watch it again to build some lessons and I get very unpleasant when it boils over, to the extent it's not worth it to suppress that anger beforehand and avoid mini-drama, I should just deal with those issues piecemeal instead of letting it boil; but then again I don't like confrontation (see Self-criticism No. 5). There will be times I'm just sitting down not doing anything and a negative thought hits my brain and triggers me to get really upset and throw something. Not a great way to deal with anger. 

5.) I don't like confrontation (yet ironically, I get into quite a lot of arguments with those closest to me). I think a lot of people share the general rule of trying to stay cordial, which means even if I disagree with someone, I'll just let it slide or avoid the topic. Sometimes I do this because I don't want to upset the person I'm talking to at the moment, knowing that it will be unpleasant; this is doubly so when I'm talking to my mom or MJ; I know that if I confront there will be an argument and it will lead to an argument. But sometimes this confrontation is necessary, as long as I do it in a calm and measured way, I've learned. As for strangers, I'm starting to alter my behavior to want to say something nicely about a concern; need to find a middle level between staying silent (level 0) and getting upset right away (rarely reach this, but happens when in road rage at traffic or being told I was in the wrong line at Costco). I need to find level 2-5, a moderate level and start there to let some of the steam out. 

6.) I'm apparently not good at keeping friends. For some reason I've just been unable to keep friends as an adult, whether it's not being assertive enough to follow up or not keeping a friendship by writing Christmas cards, or doing someething that ticked off the other person (I'm pretty sure this is what drove people away early in my adult life, but in recent years it's just been the natural flow of life that people drift away from me). It led me to be pretty depressed this Christmas weekend, and I definitely felt the sting of Facebook and social media making my depression worse, all these so-called Facebook "friends" who I can't really message in real life but I'm getting jealous of their seemingly wonderful lives of being with large groups of family, wearing matching Christmas sweaters, cooking something that seems to give them so much joy, or the biggest whammy of them all, enjoying life with their children. I guess the adjustable thing to do here is just not to go on social media, but that's difficult when I'm sitting at home alone on Christmas weekend wishing someone would call me and just talk for awhile (am I already a 75-year-old grandpa without grandkids waiting by the phone) to make me feel a part of the world, to feel wanted, to feel thought about. Christmas is family time, I get it; I sometimes also wish I had some other family to call, more couins and relatives who I maintained solid relationships to call. 

7.) I'm sensitive. I get super sensitive about perceived insults. 

8.) I'm argumentative and the natural instinct is to "win" every argument when I instinctively know form my experience of hundreds of arguments that there is no "winning" arguments with people close to you. 

9.) I can't just pause in the middle of an argument and just let it go. I get angrier and angrier and let the beast inside me win. The logical person inside me telling me "just calm down for 2 minutes and you'll avoid a bunch of unnecessary conflict" gets drowned out and the anger (is this the higher Being pressing down on the "GET ANGRY" button causing me to do this?) takes over. That's the one I've never learned to conquer but is the one that's most likely to cause my downfall. 

Effective Altruism

 Effective altruism- a uniquely 21st term that sounds ideal and worth pursuing from its mission statement of helping people as much as possible by choosing jobs that maximize the positive impact. Unfortunately the philosophy was espoused by one of the most notorious people in the news nowadays, SBF Sam Bankman Fried himself (who was also a vegan, but not a good look for veganism now) in that he wanted to use his massive wealth to help people (and then let FTX collapse without being able to pay their investors back, and was convicted of fraud and now sits in maximum-security prison), and the philosophy featured prominently in the book "Going Infinite" about SBF. Seems like a lot of people on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the top rungs of society espouse this theory to try to help society, but based on some of the justifications in the book (people theorized that it might be better to make as much money as possible as a lawyer/Wall Street person than spend that time as a lawyer in a third-world country saving as many people as possible because the lawyer/ Wall Street trader could use the money he/she accumulated and hire ten doctors to save even more people, or so the argument goes) there seem to be some flaws in the philosophy, as well as the problem of people just falsely taking up that philosophy to justify making as money as possible, or in the case of SBF when he was building up his bitcoin exchange and asking rich people for money, easy to mask his need for money with a catchy term like "altruism." 

Perhaps not coincidentally, at the same time I'm reading "Going Infinite" about SBF I'm also reading "Elon Musk" by Walter Jacobson. Both are extremely good biographies (I've apparently moved on from famous people telling their own life story through their narrow world views to excellent writers who pick the correct anecdotes, conversations, and bits to create a better narrative arc) but also they're about guys who were just different, for lack of a better word. Both Elon and SBF lacked social skills, had trouble dealing with others, were reluctant bosses, could be extremely stubborn, had no problem embarrasing other people and making them feel stupid, didn't finish school, and another thing they had in common: had the skills/genetic makeup/ ability to take risks to go from relatively poor to multi-millionaires in just a couple years, by finding a niche in an industry. Just like generational baseball players or talented singers, Musk and SBF were born in the right time in history and had exactly the right set of skills at the right: ability to program/understand niches in markets and be smart in the ways that mattered: know how internet payment systems work before others knew it would catch on, and know seeing the business opportunity in cryptocurrency and trading before others catch on. Reading both biographies, I can't help but see myself in those stories: like what was I doing in 2013, 2014 when SBF worked at Jane Street Capital, a hedge fund, and making millions for the firm exploiting financial discrepancies? My mom used to tell me when I turned 18 and started college, go out in the world and take chances, take risks, because you're so young and afford to mess up. I guess I took some risks to go to law school and carve out my career, but not nearly as big of risks as Musk and SBF to play with millions of dollars and change the way entire industries operated. At some level I understand that I don't have those special talents those guys had to be able to study at MIT, hang with Silicon Valley people and understand how complex computer and financial systems worked, for example (that's a pretty big part of it), but still I'm still kicking myself that I'm stuck in a pretty ordinary life of middle class without any prospect of doing anything earth-shattering. I guess I'm also glad, I suppose, that with the genius that Musk/SBF had, I didn't also carry the personality flaws that caused them to have so many haters/ and in SBF's case, end up in prison. I guess leading an ordinary life can have some advantages.