A Belated Self-Introduction

[adamshalev]

I didn't check the detail, I was told it was buy price in shekels relative to sale price in shekels.
But I will sort things out at the end of the year with an accountant because I still need to pay the 'rich' tax.

אתה תהיה חייב בהגשת דוח שנתי כל שנה מעכשיו (וגם חצי שנתי אבל זה לא נורא מהותי).
העלות של רו״ח מ מתקזז לך עם השכר, אז אם אתה במדרגת מס של 35% למשל, יש לך דפקטו 35% הנחה על כל העלויות של רו״ח.

 

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

דפקטו

דפקטו זו הגרסא הדפוקה של דה-פקטו

 

[EnsilZah]

So, first a short mind-numbing story of general anesthesia.

To set the scene, I developed a few cavities in my teeth and put things off because I guess I was hoping to avoid going around medical centers during the whole COVID thing.
After my clinic's dentist rejected me because of my sensitive gag reflex I was redirected to the Sorezki medical center, where it was suggested that I do the treatment under general anesthesia to pull a fast one on my petulant esophagus, and might as well withdraw a wisdom tooth while they're at it (apparently something I was in excess of).

On the day of the operation I was met by a pair of friendly and competent-seeming medicos, at a moderately hidden basement hallway, who instructed me to don the requisite posterior-exposing attire and I was wheeled into a theater (a generous description, not nearly as impressive as dim memories of the dramatic depictions of Chicago Hope, House, and ER have led me to hope for).
Then there was the obligatory puncturing of blood vessels (I would later find an a extra input/output aperture near my foot which brings to mind interesting circulatory dynamics), and there was the inhaling of unknown gasses (which the resident Morpheus said would make my nose itch. Which it did. Which I was thinking to confirm. Which was the last thing I remember).

And then I woke up in the recovery ward, it was intensely uneventful, none of the disorientation I was told to expect, just a regular wakeup with extra dash of pain, the main obstacle was having to pee in a bottle as a precondition to release, which I was disinclined towards both performatively and hydrostatically, but I was eventually up to the challenge, and my gracious friend Kantor delivered me safely home in his Kantmobile.

So, in conclusion and retrospect:
It's interesting to have experienced the procedure and be aware of its availability and relative ease.
I find it strange, yet understandable, that the body's reaction to losing a previously inseparable member is the meme 'Oh no! Anyway'
Teeth are stupid.



And now some broader plans.
I've decided to quit my job at the end of the year, and bring to a tentative conclusion to nine years of work in my chosen industry.
Though I will probably keep working on my own personal projects, and possibly try occasional freelance work, maybe even come to an agreement with the current employer to keep working one day a week, if there's any advantage to that, or possibly try teaching.
I don't have any concrete plans after that, might try traveling, though I was never particularly attracted to that pursuit, might do another degree, either here or abroad; maybe go back life-painting or try something completely different like dance, if I really want to get outside my confort zone.
But the main goal now is to put any relevant bureaucratic affairs in order, make sure my health is on the right track, move to a less shittily located apartment, and give the employer half a year's notice to ease the transition.​

 

[paskar]

instructed me to don the requisite posterior-exposing attire​

איפה ממוקמות השיניים שלך?

 

[mudale222]

So, first a short mind-numbing story of general anesthesia.

To set the scene, I developed a few cavities in my teeth and put things off because I guess I was hoping to avoid going around medical centers during the whole COVID thing.
After my clinic's dentist rejected me because of my sensitive gag reflex I was redirected to the Sorezki medical center, where it was suggested that I do the treatment under general anesthesia to pull a fast one on my petulant esophagus, and might as well withdraw a wisdom tooth while they're at it (apparently something I was in excess of).

On the day of the operation I was met by a pair of friendly and competent-seeming medicos, at a moderately hidden basement hallway, who instructed me to don the requisite posterior-exposing attire and I was wheeled into a theater (a generous description, not nearly as impressive as dim memories of the dramatic depictions of Chicago Hope, House, and ER have led me to hope for).
Then there was the obligatory puncturing of blood vessels (I would later find an a extra input/output aperture near my foot which brings to mind interesting circulatory dynamics), and there was the inhaling of unknown gasses (which the resident Morpheus said would make my nose itch. Which it did. Which I was thinking to confirm. Which was the last thing I remember).

And then I woke up in the recovery ward, it was intensely uneventful, none of the disorientation I was told to expect, just a regular wakeup with extra dash of pain, the main obstacle was having to pee in a bottle as a precondition to release, which I was disinclined towards both performatively and hydrostatically, but I was eventually up to the challenge, and my gracious friend Kantor delivered me safely home in his Kantmobile.

So, in conclusion and retrospect:
It's interesting to have experienced the procedure and be aware of its availability and relative ease.
I find it strange, yet understandable, that the body's reaction to losing a previously inseparable member is the meme 'Oh no! Anyway'
Teeth are stupid.



And now some broader plans.
I've decided to quit my job at the end of the year, and bring to a tentative conclusion to nine years of work in my chosen industry.
Though I will probably keep working on my own personal projects, and possibly try occasional freelance work, maybe even come to an agreement with the current employer to keep working one day a week, if there's any advantage to that, or possibly try teaching.
I don't have any concrete plans after that, might try traveling, though I was never particularly attracted to that pursuit, might do another degree, either here or abroad; maybe go back life-painting or try something completely different like dance, if I really want to get outside my confort zone.
But the main goal now is to put any relevant bureaucratic affairs in order, make sure my health is on the right track, move to a less shittily located apartment, and give the employer half a year's notice to ease the transition.​

רפואה שלמה
בקשר לעזיבת העבודה, ממליץ בחום לקבוע ולהיסגר על עצמך בדיוק מה תעשה אחרי שתעזוב את העבודה אפילו ברמת הימים והשעות.
בקורונה מצאתי את עצמי גם בלי עבודה ויצא שבזבזתי די הרבה זמן בכמה חודשים הראשונים וחבל.
סה טו, בהצלחה בעתיד

 

[EnsilZah]

איפה ממוקמות השיניים שלך?

More or less the usual place, excluding the one that was removed, of course, the location of which is unknown to me at this time.
Presumably just standard procedure for hygiene and easy access for any unforeseen (or possibly foreseen) eventualities.

בקשר לעזיבת העבודה, ממליץ בחום לקבוע ולהיסגר על עצמך בדיוק מה תעשה אחרי שתעזוב את העבודה אפילו ברמת הימים והשעות.

I've never been very good at making those sorts of plans, but I guess I can afford to waste a few months, or all of them for that matter.

 

[mudale222]

More or less the usual place, excluding the one that was removed, of course, the location of which is unknown to me at this time.
Presumably just standard procedure for hygiene and easy access for any unforeseen (or possibly foreseen) eventualities.



I've never been very good at making those sorts of plans, but I guess I can afford to waste a few months, or all of them for that matter.

It's not about what u can afford... it's about how u will feel about it.
At least for me, wasting time, make me feel bad.​

 

[EnsilZah]

Some midnight thoughts.


So I'm watching JRE (I generally stopped following him since the move, but I check occasionally for people like Eric Weinstein or Hamilton Morris) with Brian Greene talking about quantum computation and how tic-tac-toe doesn't allow for creativity because the number of states is so limited it's possible for a human to play the perfect move every time.
With chess the number of permutations is beyond the scope of the brain so creativity comes into play, less so for a computer, depending on how you see it.

Which makes me want to define 'creativity' more clearly to better understand it.
So, I guess, 'creativity' is a process for reaching into a bag of a practically infinite set of answers to some question and extracting a locally optimal answer while expending a relatively low amount of resources, which is generally referred to as heuristics in computing, a cheap but good enough answer rather than an expensive perfect one.
That is, going by brute-force changing every pixel in an image until we achieve the Mona Lisa, is not creativity, and even if you did that you'd need some form of it to recognize when to stop.

As an aside, I often find that in programming it's much easier to find an imperfect but working answer because the results are testable, and then when the whole thing is complete it's a lot easier to optimize the parts.
In art and design it's more difficult because it's a lot more difficult to test the emotional and cognitive effect, and also to consider the parts individually.

So creativity is a set of successful heuristics imbued in us in the hardware and firmware granted by evolution and chance, and software entrained by our lived experiences, and the interactions between them.
In design and art the question is how to achieve some desired mental state in a set of fellow humans, with a lot of hidden variables, but many at least hinted at by shared experience.


Which brings me back to a quote spoken by a Technomage in Babylon 5:
“Elric: We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocation of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things.

John Sheridan: Such as?

Elric: The true secrets, the important things. Fourteen words to make someone fall in love with you forever. Seven words to make them go without pain. How to say good-bye to a friend who is dying. How to be poor. How to be rich. How to rediscover dreams when the world has stolen them..."


Which always made me wonder, what profound knowledge can be found in a minimal amount of letters.
Would 'E=MC^2' have meant anything to a physicist without the context of Einstein's work reaching it?
Is it possible to know with good confidence how a sequence of words will reverberate through the world once they're uttered?​

 

[paskar]

I guess, 'creativity' is a process for reaching into a bag of a practically infinite set of answers to some question and extracting a locally optimal answer while expending a relatively low amount of resources​

לא חושב שיעילות היא דרישה.
נניח, קרייטון התחיל לכתוב את הספר Sphere ב-1967, ובסוף הוא יצא ב-1987. לא יודע אם הוא כתב אקטיבית במשך 20 השנה, אבל זה לא נשמע הכי יעיל.
האם אין בזה יצירתיות?

 

[EnsilZah]

נניח, קרייטון התחיל לכתוב את הספר Sphere ב-1967, ובסוף הוא יצא ב-1987. לא יודע אם הוא כתב אקטיבית במשך 20 השנה, אבל זה לא נשמע הכי יעיל.
האם אין בזה יצירתיות?

Looks like he published around 14 books in that time period, so I'd say he was pretty prolific.
And I wouldn't say time from start to publishing date is particularly indicative of efficiency.

But seems like you're just comparing the time it took him to publish to maybe some expectation of what it might take an average author to publish an average novel, which is not what I was talking about at all.

 

[אוגורן]

and might as well withdraw a wisdom tooth while they're at it (apparently something I was in excess of).

לא משכו גם כמה מניות של טסלה באותה הזדמנות?

 

[EnsilZah]

So I gave HR notice that I'll be quitting at the end of the year.
They thanked me for the long heads-up.
I promised a co-worker a while back that I'd buy some fancy sushi for the studio's happy hour if the Tesla thing worked out for me and I retired, so I'm on the hook for that.
We got this really nice project for a big content producer that I helped with some content and technical stuff during the pitch, and looks like I might be playing around with some new tech to help with the production before I leave, so that might be fun.

I've been trying to decide what to do next, and my main idea was doing a degree focused on concept design, with the main candidates being schools in Texas and in Australia, ranging somewhere around 200-400k shekels in expenses (including living).
One school I looked at seemed to cost around $500K for the duration of the degree, the American higher education system is quite detached from reality.
Definitely puts the 12k or so a year tuition in Israel.
I flirted with the idea of doing a degree here, a Masters at Bezalel, or maybe something completely different like economics or psychology, but I'm not sure about that either.

And then recently I started reading a book that involves some characters arriving in Japan (Idoru by William Gibson) and it made me think that it might be interesting to go to Japan for a year, study the language and the culture.
It actually doesn't seem that expensive, looks like Tokyo is about as expensive as Tel-Aviv, and there are scholarships.
So I signed up for a beginners Japanese class here, so I have some sort of foundation.
Might actually go for this.

Other than that, contacted some places specializing in retirement to sort out everything when I quit, but my case is a bit unique, and also they're asking for handling fees around 3-5k so I haven't made any decisions yet.

Still using up my vacation days which should keep me working 3 days a week until the end of the year.
That's about it for now.​

 

[guesto]

נתקלתי בדף שאולי תאהב: Barefoot Is Legal.

 

[RustyJ]

נתקלתי בדף שאולי תאהב: Barefoot Is Legal.

Legal או לא, זרקו אותי פעם מהקולנוע כי הייתי יחף...

 

[EnsilZah]

Time for an update.

So I moved into a rooftop apartment, paying a bit more than I was planning because it was difficult to find a place in Tel-Aviv when I was looking and time was running out.
But overall I'm happy with the decision, It's nice to have the fresh air, and the balcony is actually larger than the apartment itself, so I sort of have a back yard for working out, entertaining friends etc.

I'm doing a Japanese course in a classroom, in addition to practicing on Duolingo, definitely feels like a challenge at times.
Still not 100% sure about actually moving to Japan, but I think I still have about a year before they open the country up so I'll see then.

I have about a month and a half before I retire.
At that point I guess I'll need to find some new hobbies to keep me occupied and socialized, would appreciate suggestions.
I was thinking of maybe trying something completely outside my comfort zone, something that I'd probably hate like dancing or acting, just for the hell of it.

And then at the end of the year I'll need to handle any remaining taxes, and figure out what to do about my various obligations toward the government in my new status.


Current composition of portfolio:

Main reasoning behind the individual companies is I have some degree of confidence they could 5x-10x within a few years.​

 

[adamshalev]

תודה על העדכון.
בטוח שתמצא דברים חדשים ומעניינים לעשות. אנשים לרוב לא סובלים לשבת בחוסר מעש יותר מזמן קצר, ככה שכל דבר שהוא לא ״כלום״ הוא ״משהו״

אשמח לשמוע מחשבות שלך על PLTR, U, RKLB.

מחזיק את פלנטיר ישירות בסכום קטן (פרומיל), ומכיר כמה אנשים שבטוחים שהחברה הזאת הולכת להיות גדולה פי 20, אבל לא מצליח להבין את המקור לבטחון הזה לאור העבודה שיש הרבה דברים לא שקופים בחברה ושהגידול שלה תלוי ביכולת לסגור חוזים חדשים. אם יש לך מודל כלשהו לתמחור שלה 5-10 שנים מהיום אשמח לראות.

את יוניטי אני אוהב, אבל לא רואה צורך להחזיק ישירות יותר ממה שיש לי דרך קרנות ארק. הבעיה העיקרית שלהם היא שהם מחלצים מעט מאד רווח לעצמם מגודל התעשיה שהם מאפשרים ויש תחרות גדלה מכל הכיוונים, גם מנועים וגם שירותים, וגם פלטפורמות UGC ליצירת משחקים.

רוקטלאב החזקתי לזמן קצר כשהיו ספאק, אבל לא מבין בהם מספיק. וקצת קשה לשים הרבה על מישהו כזה קטן בזמן שהמשיח בכבודו ובעצמו בונה את אימפריית החלל הכי גדולה אי פעם, ואפילו הרוסים נשברו ומתחילים להשתמש בספייסאקס.

 

[sogi]

שהמשיח בכבודו ובעצמו בונה את אימפריית החלל הכי גדולה אי פעם, ואפילו הרוסים נשברו ומתחילים להשתמש בספייסאקס

טיעון טוב.

אבל אנשים נואשים מכך שספייסאקס לא מנפיקים ואין שום דרך להחזיק את החברה שככל הנראה תהיה החברה החשובה ביותר במאה ה-21.

אז הם קונים חיקויים של הדבר האמיתי.

 

[EnsilZah]

אשמח לשמוע מחשבות שלך על PLTR, U, RKLB.

Sure, I don't have any numerical models, I just go by my general impression.

PLTR
Yeah, it's pretty opaque, it just seems they provide a valuable product to companies and governments, they seem to be growing at a good rate.
There's that whole sort of venture-capital side of their business where they invest in startups that use their product, businesses that they're intimately familiar with.
There's the recent crypto news, I don't think it's that correlated to actual crypto-based profits, but there's a connection, and there's the work they're doing for the SEC.
Overall it seems like they're attracting top talent.
And there's a lot you can say about Peter Thiel, but he's no fool, and I can get behind at least some of his ideology.

U
It's basically only them and Unreal as far as game engines are concerned, and I wouldn't mind owning Unreal too, but they're not public.
I work in animation and there's a big push toward real time game engines recently, for virtual production, motion capture, even rendering, so while Unreal has a lead in visuals, Unity is good enough for some of the projects we're working on, though I'm not sure what the monetization plans are for these tools right now.
As far as I know Unity is the engine of choice for the more indie, casual side of things, and they recently announced a bunch of tools for analytics, monetization, player acquisition, etc.
I think they might also have potential in making their own game store, and making more money off selling assets to hobbyists.

RKLB
I don't think they'll ever compete head to head with SpaceX, but I think they have a potential to be a solid number 2.
They're developing their own booster reuse tech, they're developing a Falcon-9 sized rocket to launch satellite constellations for customers that don't want to fund their competitor directly, they have the whole satellite thing where they can help build custom satellites for clients, which SpaceX isn't really doing, and they're capable of launching from outside they US.
They're valued at fraction of the price of SpaceX right now, so I think there's plenty of room to grow, with the space sector potentially taking off in the near future.
I think the traditional space launch companies are too slow to develop reusability, except for maybe China, so I don't think there's going to be much real competition.

 

[fongeme]

יש בצפון אמריקה (אני מדבר מניסיון בקנדה) הרבה מכללות קיקיוניות עם תארים פיקטיביים שכל המטרה שלהן זה למצוץ כסף מפראיירים, ואם הם מציעים לימודים אונליין אז זה עוד יותר מפוקפק. אף צכללה שמכבדת את עצמה לא תיתן לימודים אונליין

הארוורד, MIT וסטאנפורד כולן מציעות תארים מתקדמים אונליין(ואני מניח שעוד הרבה, ועוד מהIvy league)

 

[EnsilZah]

Last day at work, figure it would be fitting to write this post from work before I clear the remaining vestiges of personal files form the computer.
I promised a coworker a few years ago that if this whole Tesla thing works out for me and I leave, I'd buy a party tray of sushi from one of the better sushi places we sometimes went to.