• Tata steel finally started.
• 68,323 fans in attendance at warriors/spurs last night. NBA record.
• 49ers advance to divisional round over seahawks.
• Abstracted the aquarium maintenance doc to gsheets for the tabular portions. Easier to manage now. Also updated alive/dead status. Calculated totals: $1478 consumables, $9877 equipment, $5487 life (only $1839 still alive). $17k total so far.
• SBSC. Took over 10 hours to fix the postseason LB issues today. https://gitlab.com/bmahlstedt/supercontest/-/issues/171
  • Fixed the data corruption for (after week 18, before season end).
  • Made season_start and season_end consistent for all (sept 1 and feb 1).
  • Added proper preseason() and postseason() logic so we’re resilient to this in the future.
  • TONS of logical changes in this one. Not repeating here. Just check ticket. Was a way bigger change than anticipated.
  • I’ll actually copy one over. There’s a HUGE difference between these checks:
    • Is it currently in an active week, or is it the offseason?
    • Did the user request the active week, or a noncurrent (old) season/week?
  • These two distinct cases were blended all over the place in the code. Had to separate and clean/rewrite a LOT.

• SEC now slapping both Gemini and Genesis with charges for pooling user funds: https://blockworks.co/news/genesis-gemini-charged-with-securities-violations-by-sec. Remembers it’s about 340k Earn users missing ~$900M.
• SBF created a substack and made a single post: https://sambf.substack.com/p/ftx-pre-mortem-overview
  • His full testimony (before he was arrested a day prior) is leaked verbatim here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclusive-transcript-the-full-testimony-sbf-planned-to-give-to-congress/?sh=479535b43c47
• I had the same reaction: wolfram|alpha can merge features with chatGPT to bring a ton of the computational wizardry over. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/01/wolframalpha-as-the-way-to-bring-computational-knowledge-superpowers-to-chatgpt/
• Another chapter in Behave, most on endocrinology:
  • Even in the minutes before a decision is made, there’s a multitude of subliminal influence. Colors we see, words we read, smells we smell, sounds we hear. All of these affect our response inclinations drastically, even if we’re (feeling) fully at the driver seat.
  • Endocrine system. Glands secrete hormones. They can have massive impact, just like neurotransmitters, but usually on a larger scale (both physically across more of the body, as well as longer time frame). The precursors are usually simple proteins and cholesterol found in food (similar to neurotransmitter precursor amino acids in food).
  • “Testosterone makes us more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status.” That doesn’t alway mean aggression/dominance. Could be generosity or kindness. Its effect is very context and subject driven.
  • Oxytocin and vasopressin increase partner and offspring bonding.
  • Women experience regular hormone swings to much greater magnitude than men. Estrogen and progesterone move widely during ovulation.
  • The stress response is necessary. Glucocorticoid levels increase. Your body emphasizes everything critical (blood pressure, heart rate, focus, etc). It ignores things that are not essential to save your life immediately (immune system, digestion, etc). This is perfect for acute physical threats, like escaping a lion. This is NOT good for sustained psychological threats, like work stress.
• The costco on jack northrop with the GIGANTIC walk-in freezer was a costco business center, not a costco wholesale. I don’t think they have that large butcher selection here.
• Played with substack. They use magiclinks (email) to login.
• Lots of private work.

• Another brain chapter in Behave.
  • Hypothalamus controls the autonomic nervous system, the limbic system. Our behavioral and emotional responses. Sympathetic nervous system usually epinephrine and parasympathetic usually acetylcholine.
  • The cortex does all our analysis. Frontal/parietal/temporal/occipital lobes. “The frontal cortex makes you do the harder thing when it’s the right thing to do.” Isn’t fully developed until midtwenties, wow.
  • Amygdala controls aggression. And fear and anxiety.
  • Dopamine, the reward system. But note that dopamine spikes at the ANTICIPATION of the reward equal or higher than the rewarding itself.
• Broadway week next week, buy 1 ticket get 1 free. I’ve seen a handful on the list already but the remainders I’m most interested in: Hadestown, Wicked, MJ.
  • Ended up getting Hadestown.
• Robinhood now offers IRAs lol. And they match 1%.
• As of right now, there are 57 valid aws access keys in packages on pypi: https://tomforb.es/i-scanned-every-package-on-pypi-and-found-57-live-aws-keys/
• Gaia (mother earth, Terra, Earth) was the first. Bore everything. Her son Caelus (sky/heavens, Uranus) was her main partner and they had the titans, 6 male and 6 female. Primary couple was Cronus (father time, Saturn) and Rhea. The only other titan you probably know is Hyperion, who fathered Helios (both representing Sun). Cronus and Rhea had the first 6 of 12 olympians: Zeus (thunder, Jupiter), Hades (underworld, technically not an olympian, Pluto), Poseidon (sea, Neptune), Hestia, Demeter, Hera. Zeus and Hera then had the other olympians: Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares (Mars), Aphrodite (Venus), Hermes (Mercury), Hephaestus.
• CPI dropped 0.1% in december. Inflation slowed a little bit.
• Tons of private work.
• SBSC.
  • Will do the league stuff (diff league per season to retain paid player specificity, user-created leagues, etc) when I convert the full app to ts/react (or maybe just the frontend). It will be a SPA with proper filter components, rather than hardcoded url subroutes.
  • Changed the home route to the lb (instead of current-week-matchups).
  • Updated the rules text for graceful handling of daylight savings.
  • Updated the banner with the winner.
  • The leaderboard issue, which I thought was going to be a quick fix, was not. The app believed it was week 1 of the 2022 season, and tried to pull lines/scores, etc. I don’t really know what happened, but the week18 data is gone. I’ll have to manually add some back. And the preseason/postseason checking logic needs to be rewritten. And airtight. If you’re not in an active week, no picks/lines/scores should ever be written. Will do tomorrow.

• SBSC.
  • Added a few more people to the paid league.
  • Payout distributions. Has to be discrete (obviously), not a continuous distribution.
  • Like a probability mass function, but instead of all values (to infinity) adding up to 1, only the first n (the top players getting paid out). The probabilities representing the percentage of the purse received. Any tail at the end (since we’re going to n payouts, not inf) will go to the first place purse.
  • Example discrete PMFs:
  • 
  • Geometric = reduced by a constant factor every step.
  • Logarithmic = reduces logarithmically every step (greater drops at first, flatter later).
  • Added some rules about ending the logseries not at the top 25% of players, but rather where the minimum payout is equal to the buyin. Better.
  • Wrote the pseudocode for the roundings to the nearest $10.
  • Settled on a discrete logseries with p=0.9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithmic_distribution
• CNY paperless, sent invites (diff set than friendsgiving for variety!) – christine/levi, josh/kati, harner, sarah, hannah, katie.
• Went to NYC Space Happy Hour!
• Varda is the queen of the stars in LOTR. Palantir is a seeing-stone (like the ones used by Saruman and Sauron) in LOTR.

• Gemini terminated the master loan agreement between Gemini Earn customers and Genesis. Doesn’t change much – the program is done and Genesis still owes the customers money, and that is still being pursued.
• Finished the fidelity citadel 401k rollover to MS IRA. $25 transfer fee. I still had a bit of employer match that was unvested. This stops vesting when you leave the company (does not continue vesting if you just leave it in the 401k). Total transfer took about 6min. The money lands in about a week and then can be positioned however you’d like.
  • Added MS account to mint. You have to enable third party data sharing in MS.
• Behave primer on neuroscience.
  • Neurons and action (+) and resting (-) potential.
  • To communicate across synapses, neurotransmitter chemicals are released.
  • You can increase the effect of something by (1) increasing neurotransmitter release (2) increasing neurotransmitter receptors (3) reducing uptake (the cleanup mechanism that unbinds) or (4) reduce the degradative enzyme (which washes the unbound).
  • SSRIs do #3, like Prozac for seratonin.
  • Drugs (recreational) usually do #1 (either by adding the precursor or increasing the synthesis of the precursor into the neurotransmitter).
• Winklevoss asks the DCG board to fire Barry Silbert: https://twitter.com/cameron/status/1612806661508567042. Alleges that he lied his way out of the 3AC loss.
• OpenAI potentially getting valuated at 29B.
• Fixed the shelf and dowels in kitchen.
• Lots of private work.
• Installed python3-tk into my wsl for matplotlib GUI capability.

• SBSC.
• Created ticket to add the alltime leaderboard view: https://gitlab.com/bmahlstedt/supercontest/-/issues/170. Best pick percentages over 5 seasons:

supercontest=# select avg(picks.points), users.email from picks join users on picks.user_id = users.id group by users.email having sum(picks.points) > 100 order by avg(picks.points) desc limit 10;
        avg         |            email            
--------------------+------------------------------
  0.543424317617866 | mbpetty@gmail.com
 0.5271604938271605 | gjm112@gmail.com
 0.5259259259259259 | charner4@gmail.com
 0.5209876543209877 | buckeyes64@hotmail.com
 0.5161691542288557 | grdich@gmail.com
 0.5107692307692308 | william.st.hilaire@gmail.com
 0.5068027210884354 | omar.mc93@gmail.com
 0.5063829787234042 | andrewwhite175@gmail.com
 0.5017857142857143 | lynne.defilippo@gmail.com
  0.501269035532995 | rajarshi692@gmail.com

• Added a bunch of users to the paid table. insert into league_user_association values (2, <user.id>);
• Still missing a bunch of people who haven’t paid yet (and very high on the lb).

• Some compilations of salary ranges across positions and companies, now that NY and CA law requires it in job postings: https://www.comprehensive.io/explorer/companies
• Remember for NFL: 7 teams from each conference make the playoffs. It’s the 1st place of each of the 4 divisions, and then the 3 next best records (first tiebreaker is head-to-head). Then the #1 from each conference gets a bye. The other 6 play 3 matchups, 2-7, 3-6, 4-5, with the better team getting homefield advantage. Then there’s 4 teams left in each conference. Divisional round, then conference round. Again, better rank getting homefield, and lowest playing highest seed then working in. Finally superbowl, in neutral location.
  • If all goes according to endseason seeds, the niners’ path to victory is seahawks -> vikings -> eagles -> chiefs.
• Lots of private work. Mostly meetings today.
• Tiger Global, VC, just showing up at unicorns with term sheets to invest.
• I placed 2nd overall in the supercontest. 28 paid players, I believe. Plus a 3-week buildup of the $10 perfect 5 prize, split with one other person, so $15.
• Created a supercontest ticket to show the realtime payouts (all season) on the leaderboard, since we already have the info. Just need to confirm Petty’s formulation. Details on https://gitlab.com/bmahlstedt/supercontest/-/issues/169.
• Consumer lending vs commercial lending.
• SPACs often trade up (at least during their boom). The public investors would come to an agreement with the private target at a valuation that is less than the target’s actual valuation. So the SPAC shareholders get a larger percentage of the new company post merge.
• Section 4(a)(2) is an exemption in the Securities Act (1933). Every security offering/sale must be registered with SEC or qualify for an exemption. Reg D and Section 4(a)(2) are probably the most popular exemptions for private securities (remember Reg A for public). 4(a)(2) is for a private placement. You can sell or offer private shares without a public offering or SEC registration. The buyers must meet certain criteria. Cannot resell. It’s a single-time event, not a license for multiple private placements.
• Reg W. Affiliate Transactions.
  • Limitations on the ways that banks and their affiliates can transact.
  • A common example: a bank of america lending arm can’t give you an asset-backed loan, which you then go and use to pledge the liquidity as collateral for margin investing on merrill edge brokerage.
• Citadel building a 51-story skyscraper in Manhattan at 350 park, and planning to occupy more than half of it. At 1350ft, it would be the 6th tallest building in Manhattan (right now). It’s planned to finish construction in 2032. Miami obviously getting one as well.

• Full day yesterday and today on private work. Super productive weekend.
• Two-way players are signed to the NBA and the G league. Didn’t get drafted, so do a split. 16th and 17th men on a roster. They can play a max of 50 regular season games. Cannot play playoffs. Jerome and Lamb for us.
• Resolved all supercontest backpicks for the cancelled bills/bengals week 17 game and the 6th week 18 picks to compensate.
• Reading Sapolsky’s Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.