• 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.

• NFL officially cancelled the bills/bengals week 17 game. Not rescheduling. In sbsc, 9 people picked that game. I’ll wipe their score to 4 picks in week 17 and give them a 6th pick in week 18. The app is designed to handle 5 picks only so I’ll just backfill week 17 pick 5 with a matching cover/noncover from the result of the 6th week 18 pick. If someone doesn’t email me a 6th week 18 pick, they’ll retain the 0.5pts of week 17 pick 5.
• Amazon laying off 18k.
• The FTC submitted a proposal to ban noncompetes.
• This is such a bad article: https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm “If NASA is Amtrak in space, then SpaceX is the Fyre Festival with rockets”
• Dragonflies have four wheel drive. Each independent. Move birds/insects have indirect flight muscles. Dragonflies also have nearly 360deg vision.
• Continued the process of rolling the citadel 401k over to the MS IRA. Client info collection and account creation then phone approval and rollover/deposit next week. Remember it’s FXAIX/MEIKX/FCNKX (all large cap index funds) and -17.47% overall in 2022. The 2 fidelity funds did bad. MEIKX was +3.12%.
• Lots of private work.
• 90min deep tissue massage.
• Money Transmitter License. Issued by the state. Much less work than a Lender License. Both handled in NY by the DFS, department of financial services. Application for either is $3k. https://mortgage.nationwidelicensingsystem.org/slr/Pages/DynamicLicenses.aspx?StateID=ny
• Commercial lending vs consumer lending. Commercial is bank -> business. Consumer is bank -> individual. The latter is way harder, more regulation.

• Madoff.
  • Once chairman of NASDAQ. Ran a shop BLMIS (bernie L madoff investment securities) which had the two halves, market making and asset management. Turned the latter into a ponzi. Defrauded investors.
  • Never registered as an investment advisor. Did BD.
  • Reported fake losses.
  • The trading side was legitimate. Used computers during the 70s to have a speed edge. Helped create PFOF.
  • Ran a few floors of the lipstick building with the legitimate practices and had a whole separate floor for the shady stuff.
  • The AM side would just take investor money and not invest it. They would report fake trades and fake P&L. Unlike the standard 2% carry fees and 20% perf fees, Madoff charged no fees – just commissions on every trade.
  • I still don’t understand how investors didn’t notice anything fishy though? Or, more simply – why did placing your money with Madoff seem flashy at all? He was basically putting all of it into a bank with very low/steady returns, rather than investing it. How did no one probe the lackluster perf?
  • Moved money between the market side and the investment side secretly. Just like ftx/alameda.
  • Still appreciate the irony of the name Madoff.
  • Auditors finally found that (1) the claimed trade histories did not match actuality on the exchanges (2) there was no counterparty documentation to confirm anything (3) totals were impossible (eg “purchased X options” but only X/2 options existed) etc etc.
  • Sentenced to 150yrs in 2009 (life). Died in 2021, kidneys.
  • Employed his whole family: wife Ruth (attempted suicide), sons Mark (hung himself) and Andrew (died lymphoma), brother Peter (prison) and niece Shana.
  • Finished the netflix series. Overall just ok. Andrew Sorkin of NYT gives a lot of interviews. My old lex citadel office got a ton of screen time.
• The enron scandal was similar to FTX. Glaring accounting errors (in airquotes, because they were intentional), passed audits (that should have absolutely failed), fraud, etc. They were an energy company in Texas.
• Occupy Wall Street was 2011. This is the same as the 1% conversation. Protesting economic inequality.
• Lots of private work.
• Silvergate crypto bank down HUGE after 8.1b withdrawals.
• Psycopg is named for the expected – psychotic postgres adapter.
• I know every player in the top 30 live fide rankings except Vitiugov. Tata steel starts a week from saturday.
• ctrl-shift-p to open the vscode command palette. Then select whatever python interpreter you want. This gives syntax highlighting, pkg/env verification, etc. And then you can go to jupyter/ipykernel and select that exact python to use for notebooks as well.
• Remember that with poetry you don’t need a setup.py file. It will package your project. You still have to litter __init__.py into subpackages where necessary. You still have to define the setup.py params but in pyproject.toml. It installs your project into the env editably.

• Wyre is done: https://blockworks.co/news/from-1-5-billion-to-0-crypto-payments-platform-wyre-shuts-down
• Over 60deg and sunny blue in nyc today. January 4th.
• Cleaned my boar’s hair brush and denham brush. Originally thought to clean them independently but they clean each other perfectly. Rigid denham pins clean the thicker boar much better than a comb. Scrub them face to face dry. Remove gunk. Soak face down in hot water with a little shampoo for 10min. Cold water rinse then air dry.
• Preferred stock.
  • While common stock still provides a vote, preferred stock can do a lot more: board seats and board control, vote ratios, getting bought out first (even before founders, in the case of VCs sometimes), antidilution (can’t issue more without approval), guaranteeing the same % ownership in subsequent rounds (pro-rata), more.
• Titles.
  • Remember that “founder” isn’t a title critical to the law.
  • The titles that actually have legal implication and their associated processes are: Shareholders vote in the board (Directors) -> the board elects a CEO -> the CEO hires the executive team -> the executive team runs the business.
  • Shareholders -> Directors -> Executives.
  • When 2 people found the company, they’re both playing all 3 of those roles. But “founder” means nothing.
• Received fresh. Made 15 smoothies. Calculated all macros.
  • Summary: each smoothie is around 400cal, 10g fat, 50g carbs, 40g protein.
    • 
• And then did the same for my homemade peanut butter protein bars.
  • Summary: each bar is around 500cal, 40g fat, 20g carbs, 30g protein.
  • 
• Committed lines and submitted sbsc picks.
• Lots of private work.

• Remember pipx installs packages (usually applications) but provides environment isolation as well. https://github.com/pypa/pipx
• Got the following error: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'virtualenv.seed.via_app_data'
  • This is due to have two virtualenv installations. One on the system level (apt) and one on the python level (pip). I uninstalled both and force reinstalled with pip, their preferred mechanism.
  • All you need to install venv is a python interpreter. So you can do it with pipx (isolated, many, whatever) – or you can do it with the global python (global pip).
• Installed poetry and migrated a few of my packages to it. Added to bash completions.
• Reperformed on mac, zsh configuration, poetry installer needed path addition, fought multiple system pythons so coerced with pyenv (just like nvm or nodeenv, manages multiple system versions) to 3.8.
• Winglevoss getting mad at Silbert (gemini vs genesis) for stalling: https://twitter.com/cameron/status/1609913051427524608. DCG owes genesis $1.675B, and genesis owes gemini. Basically claiming that genesis took user funds and used it for: buybacks, ventures, and NAV trades. Just took that AUM and was risky with, ghosted, then stalled. Tale as old as time.
• Updated sbsc banner. Sent note to league about points for the bills/bengals tragedy. Scored as push for now.
  • If rescheduled, we’ll just retain the original picks. Easy.
  • If ultimately cancelled, then we have 2 options: leave it as push or move the wager to a future event.
    • If this happened week 18, we’d have no future events, so we’d have to do the former and leave it as a push (certainly fairer than 0 points, an explicit penalty in a 50/50 game).
    • But since it happened in week 17, we can allow the bills/bengals pickers to leave the 4 in week 17 and submit 6 in week 18 while the rest of the league does the usual 5 in both.
• Tons of private work.
• The general sentiment of “don’t share the hamlin video” on twitter is nonsensical.
  • Imagine we all live in a town.
  • If my best friend died of gout and someone else published a case study about it, it would make me sick to read about it. Yep.
  • So I won’t read about it.
  • Maybe I avoid the town square for a little bit.
  • Others can still write about it. With or without my permission.
  • Others can still read about it. Some for curiosity. Some for research. Some for no reason. Some to literally collect detailed minutia about what happened so that they can have context clues and/or springboards to reduce its likelihood from happening to others in the future.
  • Ok, but I’m seeing the book cover all the time and it hurts? I’m not seeking it but still getting blindsided? I’m stumbling upon it when searching for other books in the library? Understandable. That’s a filtering problem. Avoid the library if you see it frequently there. Stop talking to the blabbermouth John until your wound is better healed (or forever).
  • Our records (memories, media, whatever) are the charter of what has happened. Literally what has happened. That’s it. Holding this charter is not going to change the events that have already transpired. You can’t change that.
  • So I’d argue: it’s not just neutral and benign to get mad at others for sharing the video. It’s detrimental in the attempt to maximize the probability of understanding the tragedy and prevent it from happening again.
  • Keep sharing the video. In corners where it’s least likely to be stumbled on, in order to respect the wanderers who would hurt in seeing it again. Classify it as best you can. And learn from it. Use it as motivation to cherish your loved ones. Use it to equip your daily life with gratitude. Use it to avoid contexts of similar risk. Use it to gain respect for those you witnessed in service of the incident and its victims. Use it.