https://liamzebedee.com/ Recent content on Liam Zebedee Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/unit-of-intelligence/ Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/unit-of-intelligence/ How much wood does it take to boil a kettle of water? This is a tractable question - we know the equations describing the physical processes of burning wood, how much energy this burning generates, and how much energy we would need to heat up the water. Given 120g of wood, we can produce enough energy to boil a kettle of water. How much work does it take to light a room for an hour? https://liamzebedee.com/culture/articles/the-law-is-beautiful/ Sat, 30 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/culture/articles/the-law-is-beautiful/ Filtering the world, ambiguity of life, and the law. Life, in its raw form, is chaotic. This may not be the case for a large slice of people, the yuppies, employed in larger firms like Deloitte, Google and Canva, with built-in social support for every class of problem (professional, fitness). But for those who are on the edges, the solo travelers, the entrepreneurs, who may not be in a framework which carves out so much variability, life can be an absolute jungle. https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/optimal-piece-size-bittorrrent/ Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/optimal-piece-size-bittorrrent/ There’s a very interesting aspect of BitTorrent which isn’t studied a lot - optimal piece size. A file distributed via torrent is split into fixed-size chunks called pieces. why? because bittorrent is a p2p protocol, we want to authenticate the integrity of the file we download we can hash the entire file and use that, but that means we can’t verify until we download the entire file we can split the file into chunks, and distribute the list of hashes for each chunk. https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/test-time-training-video/ Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/test-time-training-video/ Background reading: Understanding RNN’s, Test time training, video diffusion transformers (DiT’s) Links: website, code Paper: One-Minute Video Generation with Test-Time Training Overview. This was entirely generated by their approach. 1min, reasonably photorealistic video, major coherence. Model. One-Minute Video Generation with Test-Time Training base: CogVideo-X 5B diffusion transformer (DiT) which generates 3s videos modifications: add TTT layers fine-tune extend context from 3s to 1min using long-context scaling dataset: 7 hours of Tom and Jerry clips hand-curated textual descriptions of scenes, with LLM to assist in generation data engineering - slicing videos training: 50 hours on 256 H100s Data pipeline. https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/test-time-training/ Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/test-time-training/ Background reading: Understanding RNN’s Comparing RNN’s and attention. RNN’s and attention are both sequence modelling techniques. Where $N$ is length of the sequence, RNN’s exhibit $O(N)$ cost, and attention is $O(N^2)$ cost (as it multiplies $QK$ to lookup into $V$, where QKV are all projections of x). Through a compression lens, RNN’s compress data differently to attention(?). Whereas attention can “shift back and forth”, RNN’s can only weight the outputs of the previous invocation. https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/understanding-rnns/ Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/understanding-rnns/ Recursive neural networks are neural networks which apply recursion in their structure. Recursion refers to a function which calls itself. The classic example is fibonacci sequences - fib(n) = fib(n-1) + fib(n-2), where fib(0) = 0 and fib(1) = 1. Take fib(3) and let us unroll the recursion stack: fib(3) = (fib(2) + fib(1)) = ((fib(1) + fib(0)) + fib(1)) The definition of the RNN function is the following: Output: y = h * Why + by Function: h = tanh(xt * Wxh + h * Whh + bh) Note the recurrence is in h. https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/articles/how-do-privacy-pools-work/ Fri, 06 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/articles/how-do-privacy-pools-work/ You have assets (DAI, USDC, ETH). Users deposit amounts of these assets into the protocol. Conceptually, asset ownership is hidden. The way this is done is that each asset is deposited into one large anonmity set, and moving your assets is done by proving your ownership of them in zero-knowledge, which effectuates actions on-chain, without linking it back to the original deposit. In order to prove this ownership in ZK, we use a cryptographic construct called an accumulator. https://liamzebedee.com/programming/articles/guide-on-rust/ Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/programming/articles/guide-on-rust/ Foreward. Memory model - values, ownership, references. Ownership. References (borrowing). Lifetimes. Lifetimes - inferred and explicit cases. Lifetimes - inference rules. Lifetimes - why the Rust compiler can infer this. Syntax. Enums Slices. Errors/Result. The ? syntax Panic/Recover. Option<T> match Destructuring. Destructing nested enums Ignoring values. Other aspects. Structs, traits, generics. Structs. Traits. Trait implementations. Generic structs. Generic methods. Generic lifetime annotations. Generic traits and their implementations. Default trait implementations. https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/articles/how-does-tendermint-work/ Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/articles/how-does-tendermint-work/ In this article I’m going to explain my recent efforts in reimplementing Tendermint from scratch. Overview. Tendermint is a byzantine fault tolerant consensus protocol. The network is 3F+1 nodes, with the allowance for F byzantine failures. In the base case of F=1, the network must have 4 nodes. The network decides on a single value via the consensus algorithm, at an interval bounded by a timeout. The network communication cost is $O(N^2)$, as each node in the network must gossip to every other node. https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/notes/how-does-skip-ratchet-work/ Wed, 06 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/notes/how-does-skip-ratchet-work/ You have a system, a list of messages $M$, a dynamic set of participants $P$, and you wish to encrypt each message you send to $P$ In the double ratchet setup used by Signal: Each message cranks the “ratchet” The “ratchet” is a cryptographic gadget used to derive a new key. It’s forward-facing, meaning you can’t derive the previous keys from current messages. What is the hard problem? How do you have an encrypted file system with a dynamic set of participants? https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/articles/comparing-ipfs-and-bittorrent/ Thu, 10 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/articles/comparing-ipfs-and-bittorrent/ How does BitTorrent work? How does IPFS work? Filecoin. Similarities. Differences. We’re going to compare two of the largest P2P file-sharing networks! IPFS and ye olde BitTorrent. This research piece is based on a lot of experience I have with IPFS, namely integrating it into Dappnet. This article is a work-in-progress. My goal is to collect a lot of data (50+ links so far) and simplified explanations that cut through a lot of the obtuse technical gala. https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/articles/taxonomy-cryptonetworks-hubs-p2p/ Mon, 10 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/articles/taxonomy-cryptonetworks-hubs-p2p/ Decentralized networks typically follow one of three network architectures: P2P. BitTorrent1. GUN. IPFS-based databases - OrbitDB / 3Box. Airdrop (unironically tho’ - P2P). Federated hubs. Farcaster. Matrix homeservers. Ceramic. IRC. Cryptonetwork - cryptoeconomic incentives + P2P. Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchains. The Graph. Filecoin, Arweave. 1 BitTorrent pioneered tit-for-tat, arguably the first P2P network with an economic model. It stands out from the rest. Comparing the architectures: Strengths Weaknesses Challenges P2P ”run your own node” - capture-resistant https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/articles/stateless-spv-proofs/ Wed, 01 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/articles/stateless-spv-proofs/ (Originally shared on ethresear.ch). Stateless SPV proofs (original talk and slides) are an interesting solution from James Prestwich of Summa, to the problem of btcrelay’s incentive incompatibility . To quote from the btcrelay repo: “the hurdle is when BTC Relay is generating “revenue”, then relayers will want a piece for it and will continue relaying, but to get “revenue” BTC Relay needs to be current with the Bitcoin blockchain and needs the relayers first" https://liamzebedee.com/draft/john-carmack-deep-thoughts-facebook-talk/analysis/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/john-carmack-deep-thoughts-facebook-talk/analysis/ Analysis: John Carmack at Facebook’s “Deep Thoughts Engineering Speaker Series” Host: Kent Beck Speaker: John Carmack (CTO of Oculus VR at the time) Topic: Ideas and Engineering Executive Summary This talk, hosted by Kent Beck as part of Facebook’s inaugural “Deep Thoughts Engineering Speaker Series,” features John Carmack discussing his philosophy on ideas in engineering. Rather than celebrating the romantic notion of brilliant “eureka moments,” Carmack argues that ideas are vastly overvalued compared to execution, and shares his systematic approach to generating, testing, and deliberately trying to break his own ideas. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/john-carmack-deep-thoughts-facebook-talk/analysis_compressed/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/john-carmack-deep-thoughts-facebook-talk/analysis_compressed/ John Carmack: Ideas & Engineering - Core Ideas (Compressed) The Idea Myth Ideas are vastly overvalued compared to execution “An idea is worth exactly one bottle of scotch” (Heinlein) The “lone inventor with brilliant idea” narrative is mostly false Most “unique ideas” are either obvious to insiders, fatally flawed, or incoherent A good project = hundreds/thousands of good decisions, not one eureka moment How to Think About Ideas Deliberately try to break your own ideas early - make it a game “Pet ideas” are dangerous - untested ideas calcify into defended beliefs Devaluing ideas psychologically helps you generate more of them Be antifragile: enjoy the high of new ideas, but don’t be damaged when they fail “Ride the idea high at the beginning, but it’s a puzzle to figure out how to bust it” Where Ideas Come From Ideas come from “working in the mud” on real problems Creativity can be farmed - don’t wait passively for inspiration Expose yourself to diverse stimuli while keeping your current problem in mind Old ideas resurface in new contexts years/decades later Build prototypes, not patents - physical artifacts beat theoretical claims The 4x Rule Improvements need to be ~4x to meaningfully matter Marginal gains often don’t justify the complexity Focus on substantial wins, not incremental optimization On Learning & Craft Math takes time - even Carmack didn’t fully understand graphics math for a decade Young engineers underestimate how deeply good engineers care (bordering on obsession) “Sometimes the best way to be really smart is to figure out why you don’t have to be really smart” (stupid tricks > elegant complexity) Pragmatism over purity when shipping Tactical Insights Test ideas by “working from outside in” until you find what busts them Iterate through multiple approaches - first attempts usually fail Latency/resources can be “spent” when buying something more valuable Have many ideas - need a dozen before one is great More ideas than time to explore them is the ideal state https://liamzebedee.com/draft/john-carmack-deep-thoughts-facebook-talk/article/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/john-carmack-deep-thoughts-facebook-talk/article/ John Carmack: Ideas and Engineering Facebook Deep Thoughts Engineering Speaker Series (Hosted by Kent Beck) Introduction by Kent Beck Welcome to the inaugural Deep Thoughts Engineering Speaker Series. My name is Kent Beck. I help engineers educate themselves at Facebook in various ways. Just a second about the series. One of the things I noticed in teaching engineers—I do a lot of one-on-one teaching—is young engineers don’t seem to understand just how deeply really good engineers care about what they do. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/john-carmack-deep-thoughts-facebook-talk/raw_transcript/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/john-carmack-deep-thoughts-facebook-talk/raw_transcript/ welcome to the inaugural deep thoughts engineering speaker series my name is Kent Beck I help engineers educate themselves at Facebook in various ways and just a second about the series the one of the things I noticed in teaching engineers I do a lot of one-on-one teaching is young engineers don’t seem to understand just how deeply really good engineers care about what they do so the the theme of the series is to bring people who really care about their work to talk about what they really care about the most and that’s it’s been a theme in my career I mean it borders on obsession and it’s on the wrong side of the border but that’s where really extraordinary results come from so the first lesson for me in setting up this series was asked for exactly what you want you can compromise later I thought well okay if we want to get the best engineers at Facebook to talk who’s number one on that list is Carmack like it’s not even not even a question and so I just emailed him and he said yes go figure so that was you know sometimes not having a sense of shame is a problem but sometimes it comes in handy so thank you very much for making the trek up from from the wilds of Dallas to meet us I always like introductions that are short number one and this will be fairly short but I also like introductions that are that are personal and the lesson that I learned from John is I saw a post that you made at one point where you you described you’d spend two months working on the perfect now I’m gonna forget the details but the perfect implementation of I don’t know sparks flying off a tracer bullet or something like that and there was a there was a really good way to implement that that was perfectly clean and you just couldn’t get a performant implementation of it and so you just said well but there’s this stupid trick so let me just do this stupid trick and it worked just fine it looked look just fine do you remember this ringing any bells okay so the lesson of that for me is that that even if you’re really really smart sometimes the best way to be really really smart is to figure out why you don’t have to be really really smart so I want to thank you for for that lesson and I’ve tried to keep that in mind for the rest of my career and now without any further ado I would like to introduce you to John Carmack okay so I I got the invitation and I do kind of beat myself up for not being more engaged with the broader Facebook engineering community here I do kind of like my little Hermitage down in Dallas but I you know there’s more that I should be doing to try to kind of be a part of the community here so I mean I I thought about it and I wrote down at least a dozen things that I could go and talk for hours about that would be interesting topics to hopefully educational to some degree but what I settled on somewhat topically was this notion of ideas and engineering and this was kind of triggered by before oculus connect I once before last Michael Abrash had sent me an email asking if it was okay to tell one of the stories of the original quake development about how I had gone through all of these different paths for basically visibility calling to get the speed up to a certain way before settling on this one potentially visible set IDM and he did a nice presentation at connect with this the basic idea being that research what I’ve you know what he’s the head of here at oculus is not about these lightbulb brilliant ideas that just strike you out of them you know out of the blue but it’s a whole lot of work that leads to the ideas and I quibbled a little bit and said that there there definitely are lightbulb ideas where you can be sitting there working and something does come to you in a flash that may or may not be a great idea but the core of the lesson is absolutely true that you get the ideas by being down in the mud working on the problems that it’s the hard work that leads you to the insights that are hopefully the great ideas and we have in our culture the broader culture here this sense that everybody loves the idea of the lone inventor that that has the brilliant idea that then they patent it they they get rich afterwards or it’s stolen by some faceless evil company and they’re exploited and these memes run through our culture in different ways and you know over the years as someone with a little bit of notoriety as a game developer or a rocket scientist or whatever I I get emails from a lot of people that are often you know earnest people that believe that they’ve gotten magical idea and usually it’s approached by saying I’ve got a great idea I you to sign an NDA so I can tell you you know my my great idea and you know and then maybe you can work on it with me yeah I they’re usually people that you know think okay this idea is magical I can’t build it but we need to find somebody that can implement this idea and then we’ll all be hugely successful now sometimes I can talk these people down from their you know their patent application and their NDA requests and I can have I you know I can look over the stuff I mean I gave advice for free I’m happy to look like I’m happy to hear your ideas and tell you what I think about them and invariably within these cases we’ll go through the stuff and it’s either something that’s you know obvious to someone that’s kind of a part of the industry that they’re talking about or it’s something that has a fatal flaw or it’s just kind of incoherent or it doesn’t really address things in different ways but I still try to encourage most of these people then you know if you’re thinking about ideas this may be the first time they felt that they had a really great idea and often they’re you know they’re young not always but I am you know I tried to let them know that it’s great to have ideas but you need to have lots of them because lots of your ideas won’t work out very well and the way to go about it of course is to to try to build the things try to build the prototypes and and often it means you know really knocking your ideas down that it turns out that you know you’re your great idea is probably not that great you may need to have a dozen more ideas before you land on something that you know that really is great there’s a there’s a quote by Robert Heinlein the odd science fiction author and he said that an idea is worth exactly one bottle of scotch where for a writer you know someone who’s even more than software in many cases where ideas are the stuff that they build it’s still a matter of execution is much more important than that sort of original core idea and there was another Heinlein story about how one of his friends I was a struggling writer was really down and he just highlights said over a whole page full of ideas like wonderful ideas that could each be turned into some great science fiction story with just they you know we hope that this gets you unstuck that you can follow something off from this and I’ve taken that tack through most of my career trying to say that you know the ideas really aren’t the important thing it’s the execution where a good project is a result of hundreds and hundreds or even thousands of good decisions that are made along the way that you know you could start with a great idea and yet the implementations not good it’s you know it’s gonna fail that good implementation is where you need to focus your efforts on because the ideas they do they come and they go and it’s it hasn’t mattered that much now I us into a lot of the way I think about things this influences in many ways my views on software patents in some of these other areas where you know I don’t think that trying to nail down this high value on a specific idea when the idea is this tiny fraction of the product is a particularly good thing but still there’s this sense that clearly ideas mean something there’s plenty of cases where you have competently executed projects that failed to leave any dent on the world even though they were done with all the right decisions but there was something missing there of maybe there was grand ideas that that were necessary to make the big impacts so I’ve actually been toying with this idea about ideas recently and this is you know what you called sort of a cocktail party theory something that you wouldn’t necessarily defend to the death but it’s worth thinking about a little bit and that’s that ascribing low value to ideas may be helpful in getting more ideas where I see a lot of these people that feel that they’ve gotten this idea and it’s so valuable and they latch on to it and they’ve you know they think that this is something that’s going to be great they won’t necessarily look at it as critically as they might want to as they probably should or they will be jealously guarding of it or different behaviors that I see you know I see in other people and in fact I’ve seen in my earlier days I can remember having early ideas when I was at the age of many of these people that email me and say I am you know it’s like oh this would be this is gonna be a great idea like I can remember on the PC 80 thinking I could hijack the DMA controller to blitz screens and I’m like oh this will be great this will be an enormous speed up it’ll be asynchronous and it’ll be great and I never could get it to work and I was bummed out for days afterwards I was like oh this brilliant idea that I was all kind of hyped up on I just wasn’t gonna work out and so I try to when I’ve got like a timely thing about this was I had already decided on this topic I am you know a few weeks ago and last week I got yet another one of those emails coming in from a young guy that said I’ve invented the holodeck you know I have I you know I’ve come up with this invention and I filed a patent for it and he sent it to me and Michael Abrash and Palmer you know Palmer is probably getting a lot of these things now also and I you know I had to tell him it’s like well first of all I’m sorry but I can’t read your patent application I am but you know I try to be encouraging still I tried to say it’s like alright well if you need to start prototyping things I like I should have mentioned that the reason oculus is here today is because Palmer not had a bright idea but built a whole bunch of prototypes that eventually were physical artifacts that could make their way to my hands and could wind up building the things that kind of got us where we are here today so this sense that the idea wasn’t the important thing but you know going iterating on it billing it over and over so I’ve been thinking kind of through that lens though is that well am i ascribing perhaps too little value to some of these things but doing it as a psychological hack where I’m tricking myself into not wasting time or spending time in ways that I you know that are not going to be as productive as if I just say well ideas come ideas go and I like another after I had mentioned to Michael a brash about the original I am my comments on there I said a couple more emails and just like well here’s the idea that I had this week here’s the idea that I had right now and now I look at them and saying well this is kind of interesting this would be awesome if it works out but it probably won’t I almost look at these things now it’s like I’ve been through the idea train enough times now where you look at something and think wow this will be glorious if it works you know and I get the idea hi at beginning but done it enough times now you can say well it probably won’t and it can almost be the puzzle game then to find out how to bust my own idea where I for instance just a couple weeks ago I was discussing with the Microsoft Mo yang developers about Minecraft you know ways to optimize Minecraft for VR and different things and this kind of tiny little topic came up where this is a very very small idea I’m thinking that okay if we optimize sort of everything’s broken up into all of these blocks the world has broken up here and there chunks and they’re rendered you know they’re sorted in the order that you render them but maybe there would be a way that we could optimize the ordering of the indexes that make up all of these individual blocks so that we could guarantee a certain draw order irrespective of where you’re at this would be a minor benefit it would make certain the scenes go you know a few percent faster and I started thinking about there are some cases like there are some classic cases with occlusion and what’s interesting is these thoughts go all the way back to like the times of quake thinking about draw order and the fact that they can come up in topics that are happening you know today 20-something years later is interesting there’s something to be said there for ideas that even didn’t pan out in the old days sometimes come back and can make any impact reality is like that but one of the classic issues with computer graphics is drawing order either you’re drawing back-to-front and painters order or nowadays on modern hardware you’re trying to draw front to back so that you don’t wind up drawing things once you’ve already filled them in so in some cases for simple geometries there are I there are orders statically that you can assign to things where if you had a surface like this and you had back face culling you could say that if you wanted to draw front to back you could always draw this one this one this one and this one because nothing can ever occlude those they would be the topmost thing then you would have to draw these two because if you were over here looking at it this one could include this one and then at the final part you could draw those in stage three so for some things there are static orders this is that you know this is a small thing that I that I looked at back in the days of doom and quake in the early days of graphics technology now there are lots of surfaces lots of orders of geometry then don’t work out like that like a you can make a set of three things that go you know that overlap in a way where there’s no static order that you can draw then draw the triangles in a way that will guarantee that they get I they getting drawn in the right order you have to introduce splits so you know being aware of both of these cases I was at least thinking it’s like okay well minecraft has this interesting characteristic that everything is diced into blocks it’s all just cubes so is it possible to apply a static ordering since you know that nothing would ever have to be split like this because they can’t cross over that would it be possible to make a static ordering this is one of those things that this would be clever it would be no additional memory I it would give us some speed-up in some of the worst cases when you have lots of occlusion and I’m thinking oh this is a great idea aren’t I clever this will be fun and I can start thinking about the implementation but I I look at it like okay I start thinking through how would I build this going kind of from the outside in until eventually I started drawing the pictures of the blocks and figuring out what busts the idea so you have blocks like this with a solid wall here solid wall there a little wall there and there you have a sequence where from over here this one has to include this one from there that one has to include that one but from here this one has to include that one so the idea is busted it doesn’t actually work out seemed like a great idea but there’s a clear failure case and it doesn’t work so this is just the the type of little idea that I I ride the idea high at the beginning I’m like oh this is a great idea this has all these wonderful characteristics but it’s a little puzzle to figure out how to bust the idea and I so the author Nassim Taleb wrote the book black swan fooled by randomness and is more recent one was anti fragile and he espouses the kind of interesting theory that I that I recognize from the way a lot of the way I look at a lot of things and the idea is that your best system is one where you can take great gains from the highs from the winning solutions but you are not damaged much by the lows and that’s the way I approach ideas now where I get an idea I get the lightbulb or the little moment of enlightenment there and joy this is great this is like the best time to be you know doing what I’m doing having a brilliant idea thinking it’s gonna be great but I am already kind of slightly smiling to myself it’s like it’s probably not gonna work out but it’s sure fun while I’m having the idea and then hunting the way that it winds up not working out is I it’s gone about is an effective challenge where that’s the best use of the time where if you’re not trying to bust your own idea you swerve away from the things that may wind up punching holes in it I mean you see this in all sorts of things about how you know people when they’re they’re invested and attached in ion to certain ideas they will look at the things where it looks like the ideas working out but not so much on the things that may punch holes in it or the things that that may challenge it in different ways so now I try to look at these things like okay get the joy out of it but then really try hard to punch holes in my own idea here and that becomes almost an enjoyable task there and I can pat myself on the back when I break my own ideas I’m very happy with showing clearly that this doesn’t work but these wind up coming from you know I could trace they even on the broken idea the depths of these things that went back to graphics work twenty-five years ago and that’s down to again the part about being down there in the mud working with the idea and that’s how you get these moments of enlightenment it’s working through you know farming the ideas and the things that go into it I have this argument or this discussion lecture even with some creative people where I would have some designers that I would talk with that would be in kind of this you know this funk about their they’re not feeling inspired they’re not I you know they’re not getting their creative spark that they’re looking for their muse isn’t with them in some way and I will be brashley telling them it’s like no you can farm your creativity by just working through you know exposing yourself to lots of things always looking at them through the lens of the problem that you’re working on and plowing through not staring at a blank wall which I think our culture somewhat inappropriately does give this vision of the genius that is just staring they’re doing the the thought experiments staring at a blank office wall and that’s how you get your enormous insights and while some that does happen you know works for Einstein in some ways but I think that it’s far more productive to be just trawling through all sorts of stimulus for the different things that you’re looking on looking at it through the lens of your current problem I mean sometimes it pays off and I sometimes like I was recently reading the book the annotated Turing I have a pet Souls book on kind of going through Turing’s old papers and there was talk about it started going through something about how there’s a mapping from the continuum to all points in an in dimensional space and I got hugely excited because there’s all this stuff that I’m working on with our interested in with light fields and some of these other areas that are these high dimensional spaces that are very sparse like oh and some new mapping for this would be a wonderful thing this would be you know great and once i deciphered the mathematical language unfortunately was like oh i already knew that this is kind of just the bit spreading trick where if you have a you know a sequence of bits going off in some way you can just turn that into a two-dimensional space by taking like every second bit here making coordinates out of it like that and you could do that bring any in dimensional space you can spread them out but still it was one of those things where I was reading a book completely unrelated to anything that I was I you know that I was working on and if I hadn’t already known that that would have been a good insight that’s something that’s useful for a lot of cash blocking things and different stuff like that but I had kind of run across on my own but that sense of being out there searching for not so much searching specifically for something but continuously exposing myself to all of these other things and seeing what the current problem that I’m looking at I applies to it and I find myself more and more nowadays seeing this serendipity that seems almost you know almost weird in some ways that I can be learning something in one place and then reading something completely unrelated and finding some reference to it or some tie between that and that’s I know that’s been very interesting but the problems of dying like different things one of them one of the significant problems with virtual reality and this was the first idea that I forwarded to Michael right after he had sent me this I’m you know the original email there one of the things that you’ve probably heard people talk about in VR is that we need 16 K by 16 K displays to kind of really get retina class resolution for reality iein and historically you you look at that say clearly while we could actually build that with like way for scale integration of silicon micro displays I that would be kind of an interesting thing we couldn’t render that in any reasonable system today and really that’s not the direction that things will eventually get it’s not nearly as bad as that seems because the eye only has that resolution in a very very small area so called the fovea and several of us have done research and prototyping where instead of rendering the entire screen at a super high resolution you render the screen at a low resolution and then you render a smaller inset area at a higher resolution this works in is useful even on our systems today because our optics are not great across the entire field of view their clearest in the center and they’re blurry or as you go out so there’s some argument that doing this sort of rendering today is been a good idea and this is one of the reasons we’ve been pushing for the multi-view extension which is a way for us to kind of push all the draw calls for a scene down and then have the driver and the hardware reissue those two make a second stereo eye view and ideally than a second foveal insert and another foveal answer for the other eye so this is something we’ve been kind of pushing on for you know for a while but the the magic screen that we want and there’s work being done on this now would be something that could track your eye and then move this region around to exactly where it needed to go that would be something where you could deliver hopefully this retina class resolution by having that in only this tiny little area no screen like that exists now but we have people that are working on technology that may get us this maybe sooner rather than later so there’s still the question of how you wind up delivering all those bits to it and rendering it a few of us have built systems like this where you render kind of two separate views but we talked about the fovea as if it’s this fixed little region like here’s the fovea region of your eye and it occupies this many degrees of Arc but it’s really not like that at all if you look at the Wikipedia graph picture for it you wind up having a something that looks kind of like this for the resolution with oviya where lots of resolution right here and then a smooth curve going down with like one little gap where you’ve got your blind spot where then the optic nerve kind of goes in and looking at this it occurs to me it’s like well you know the shape of that curve that looks a little bit like I am like a projective like a projective texture mapping curve like you’ve got to divide in there somewhere and I start thinking about this again where if you had this two-step thing then you’re looking at saying we have one image at this resolution and then one image at that resolution and you can sort of take the integral of the difference between there to see how non-optimal that would be for what you’re trying to do it’s still a whole lot better than picking one average sort of across the whole thing especially if you want to get a lot in there but it’s not really what you’d like to have so I start thinking about how else could we address to build some rendering like this and one of the tragic things about the conventional graphics pipeline is the wider you make the feel the view the worst it puts the pixels in where if you have a field of view something like 80 degrees or so each pixel on here it’s not too far off between the angular resolution what you get as it goes over here what’s in the center but the wider you make it the worse it gets if you go and you render 120 degree field of view something where it’s like that at that point the pixels over here at the edge you actually have much more resolution on the outside which is exactly where we don’t want it it’s doing the inverse of what we’d like to have which is what pushes us to saying it’s like well we’ll do the whole broad thing at some low resolution and then we’ll do a tighter inset but started thinking that I projected geometry might be able to help to help us with this and this is something that I I think a lot of people may take some heart from this but a lot of the math the heavy math in projective geometry and uh you know a lot of the higher in math that goes on it took me a long time there were many many years a decade when I was considered this graphics guru genius when I really couldn’t do from scratch a lot of them you know a lot of the mathematics that underpins a lot of that but slowly eventually with a couple decades of experience most of it did eventually sink in on me to to be able to do to formulate some of these things more directly and what I started thinking about was well what if you had if you have a single view that projects instead of projecting normal onto the surface you’re projecting kind of off centered there which you could think about this like well it’s almost like you had the whole screen there but you’re only taking the the end of it where it’s stretching out in the wrong direction that we want they’re making it the right direction and then doing the entire way so you’re looking down sort of at the corner of something it would be rendering once that way and once that way that winds up giving you the direction of the compression of the angles going in the right directions it’s taking what’s doing the opposite of what we want they’re turning it around and making it do what we want there so that winds up getting something that that kind of curves up gives you an increasing curve they’re not an enormous difference you know this here goes is maybe a factor of two off from what you’d like to have but this makes it a factor of two in the right direction which makes it a factor of four or better than what we would have from our conventional rendering and a factor of four is there’s nothing to sneeze at um but then you’d say well what if you wanted this is this goes down by like a factor of a hundred in the total case from the very outside to the very the very top it’s it’s much larger well maybe you could start stretching this out what happens if you I if you stretch it out to something extreme like this you can build any amount of angle that you want out of that so this seemed I like an interesting idea this is one of those ideas that I has direct impact on what we’re doing I may have some real value to getting this this big thing the retina class a Virtual Reality Display I mean the hardware people have to figure out the magic to make it happen and focus but this might be the software side of things listen so I’m it seems like a good enough idea I start I’m so I take the steps to try to bust it I go ahead and I write they you know I write some make some checker boards and render the images there start putting some images on it and it looks really pretty promising looking at the corner of a cube I get tripped up a little bit because the three-dimensional aspect of this is not the same as the two-dimensional we’re looking here it’s clear how everything breaks down but looking in three dimensions you’ve got a degree of anisotropy as you look down into the corner of a cube but still it looks pretty good stretching it out starts to show some issues where the pixels then get very distended and there’s a degree of anisotropy where the core center of it where your fovea would be looking is extremely high pixel density and could get up to very much what you’d like to see like that but on the outside you’ve got these very stretched out pixels and I don’t know whether that’s good or bad or a problem or not that’s something that might not be a problem because that’s inherently what you’re not looking at that’s something that’s only happening at the edges if they’re well filtered maybe that’s a good enough idea but even if it only works out where you don’t just end it you just leave it at the cube there are some GPUs have hardware support already for distributing primitives across cube mostly for rendering environment maps so if you say well we’re gonna take the three sides of a cube here and we’re going to push one stream down it can split them all up that seems almost optimal maybe that’s only a factor of four better than what we’re doing now but factor of four is a pretty wonderful thing in a lot of cases so this is an idea which I’m at least cautious I am about maybe a great idea this may be something that you know that has some real significant wind to it and I I noticed that I feel good when I try to attack the idea early I see this where ideas that I have that I don’t try to engage and grapple with quickly I find myself falling into more of a pet idea side of things where I have this problem a lot now with I’m not actively building rockets but I still think about aerospace stuff I still think about all this stuff when I’m trying to go to sleep some night having rocket systems dreams whatever I am but that’s problematic because I don’t have the shop running where I can go and build and test those things right now so I wind up getting ideas and they sit there and they turn around in my head for awhile and without testing them I get a little bit attached to them they’re like my my pet ideas in some ways and I think that I fall into some of the same traps that I you know the people that wind up emailing me about the things wind up thinking for instance I’m oh one thing just every time I look up at ductwork I see spiral welded ductwork and this is done by you take a strip of metal and you instead of forming it into a cylinder and welding it in different ways you have a machine that winds it and makes a continuous weld and now that’s an exciting thing from like from a rocket engineering standpoint because normally when you make a cylinder you have if it’s a long cylinder you’ve got welds like this and then you have one weld that goes down the side now the problem is is that in a cylinder you’ve got twice as much stress going this way as you have going this way and welding always impacts the strength of things so you have a supercritical well going down there so you get companies like SpaceX that do very nice friction-stir welding to try to make the best possible things but if you spiral weld it then all of the welds are at a small angle like this which is you’ve got twice as much strength going this way so even if the weld D rates by 40 percent you still have a really good solution and plus it’s really cheap which is why they make ducts out of those so I wind up thinking about all these ideas about how okay we should just let’s take some marriage in steel and roll this through here I get that worked out and then you’ve got a great system that can be built inexpensively or perhaps even on-site you can build enormous things like this maybe you can spiral well to saturn v tank on site where you’re going to launch it or on a barge or whatever you need to do with that maybe it’s even possible to to gently adjust the angles to make tapers to be able to make you know actual cone sections from there to make a one-piece monopropellant based I you know launch vehicle tank and this is an idea that I’ve actually been kicking around for a while and I’m probably gonna be years before I wind up getting around to testing this and it’s so that’s not as valuable of an idea in many cases because I haven’t been able to test it I probably won’t I have a fondness for this idea and I get reminded of it every time I wind up looking at exposed infrastructure but then there’s other things like I am you know the way a rocket engine works is I you have a combustion chamber you know you make hot gas up here and it expands mostly through and accelerates and converts then you’re the thermal energy into kinetic energy coming out and there’s all these issues about how I you want a large expansion to accelerate it but you can’t do that inside the atmosphere again an unrelated thing comes up I read some statistics about muzzle velocity is a battleship guns and there’s an interesting aspect about that where they can fire at several times the speed of sound even though the charge that’s firing a you know the shell is less than half of the full munition weight there and you run the numbers from the traditional rocket equation and they’re going faster than then they should be if it was a rocket with that amount of propellant of that ISP and it’s for an interesting reason a when you have a gun you have a whole bunch of propellant in here with a rocket engine propellant comes in and it turns into gas kind of immediately it comes in turns into gas here the gas it combust and accelerates with the gun you wind up having something where it starts burning in different cases but instead of burning at the end like if you flipped a show around and lit the end of it it would be a gas generator rather like a rocket but if you’re actually pushing it out the interesting thing is that the burning propellant here is not only pushing the payload but it’s pushing the other propellant so the propellant gets pushed and then it starts burning and you wind up being able to achieve in some cases a higher velocity than you can with a traditional rocket so I spend this time thinking about well how can we make a rocket engine that might have gun barrel type dynamics and I ideally think about this dowel and I’ve got sort of a test plan in mind but it’ll be years before I wind up kind of getting around to spinning something up to him to try this again I am but then there are ideas that are at this middle ground where light fields are an interesting technology this is again something from recent months I so we have in virtual reality we have panoramic videos panoramic photos where you basically you can take the two kinds that we have right now in production are mono scopic panoramic photos which is where you sample the environment around you as if theoretically it was from a single point source realistically there multiple lenses and they have to deal with stitching and warping things around but it’s a sampling of the environment from one source and those are you know easy to make fairly reliably but you don’t have any ability to have depth perception between your eyes or to kind of move around between it at all I am the next step up from that are the stereo panoramas and I am and videos which are an enormous hack I am there they deliver value for us right now but it’s really a mess how their how they’re defined and how they’re created that takes lots more cameras that are somewhat offsets rather than all focusing into the center and you stitch together something that looks kind of right for your two eyes and can deliver stereo when you’re looking at things but the things further away from the center artists right till you look over at them it’s an intermediate step but where we all really want to be going is something close to do Whitefield technology and the idea behind light fields is that if you have iron it’s like our normal systems here you just have rays coming off from one point sampling an environment around you if instead you had some bounding region around you and from each of these regions you had light rays coming off in all the different directions you could in theory then synthesize any view inside here so you could say well I’m gonna view up here I want to make a view this way I’ll take some of the race from here and some of the rays from here and this this actually works you can have if you have enough rays to be able to build this stuff from I am you can synthesize moving around in an area and that’s pretty magical I think that this is what we want from our VR snapshots where you know you can duck down you could look around a corner you can get all of this but a raw light field takes an enormous amount of data you know it’s gigs and gigs and gigs of data and you’re trading off resolution at all times because I in the extreme case you want to have what winds up being one rendering sort of for every millimeter you could take the box that you want to view in if you want a one meter box you in most raw case you want to step every millimeter or two across there and make these thousands and thousands of renders at the full resolution that you want to be using and this is interesting for you know for demos there are some things that have been done in these relatively blurry images the step that people take generally to start making this more practical is to turn it is to not just have raised with directions but include depth so you’ve taken image here and you’ve got a picture but you’ve also got a depth for it and that lets you do much smarter things as light as far as saying well I want a sample array here I’m gonna hit it at that depth and I can say well that’s not exactly the one that I want I probably want something over here in the simplest case if you were inside a beach ball then you could have one panoramic photo with one depth and if it didn’t have I if it didn’t have surfaces that changed a lot in their view as you moved around that would be all the information you needed but in most cases we have a clue to this you know if I’m from here I need to be able to know that what’s behind that occlusion over there so you have surfaces that you have views that are rendered in more k-i from more points of view the depths are tricky to get if it’s synthetic if it’s just a ray traced image then you’ve got the information immediately but if it’s a real-world capture then you start having to apply these computer vision and computational photography things to take your multiple cameras extract depths from them add them to your structure here so that you can start rear end during them but they still take an enormous amount of data you still wind up I if you want to have significant occlusion and like complex structure there you may need dozens of images at these full resolutions that you want that wind up being circles or Hemi cubes or or something along all these things to the point where it’s still stressful on even modern high-end systems so the idea that you know I started thinking about on this and this came as a result of you know getting o toys demos talking with them about their stuff and then you know I I toss the ideas back their their way see what everybody thinks about it but the trick when you do a projection from here if you have an image and say it’s got a room and you’ve got some object inside there so you’ve got big death discontinuities here I’m when you wind up sampling a point on there from array that’s not exactly where this camera came from you have to wind up making an adjustment to the sample that to the position where you get because you could say this would be exactly the right point if I was exactly at this camera point if I’m offset from this then the points actually going to be over here a little bit and you can tell make a calculation based on the depth now interestingly this is exactly the same system for doing what we call depth correct asynchronous or death correct time warping where we have this system that we apply to to the virtual reality renders where you render your scene and then at the very last moment before we show it on the screen we sample the sensors again and we distort that scene in a way that lets it be closer to where you actually are rather than where you were when you started on it normally we only do this for attitude which is a simple projection but if you have all the depth you can do this reprojection so that even if you’re moving just side-to-side you can have it do some of this stuff you’ll wind up with problems at the silhouette edges but it’s interesting that this is a technique that I had been working on years ago just for them I am for the time war pre projection but it’s also directly applicable for all of these light fields so the I’m one of the problems with that is that if you start it you hit this point on the depth if it actually says well you should be over here if that’s on the same surface then that’s really a good it’s a good approximation but if it’s moved off of that surface and it’s on something different then that’s actually going to be pretty wrong and if you look closely at a lot of the if you get a chance to look at light field renderings you’ll often see this on cases where I guess technically we should call these luma graphs if they’ve got depth depth augmented information with them but there’s a lot of confusion about terminology and everybody’s making a light-filled camera now if they’ve got more than one lens just that’s the buzzword to put it but I am you’ll see that in general these things look remarkably good when you have eye surfaces without a lot of occlusion you can look at it and it can be great you can duck down move around look at it from different angles and see changes in specular highlights and everything but there are usually problems there at the edges of things like if we had one a light field here as I’m looking around that occluder there there would be issues where you would see ghosts and double images and some of these other other artifacts for it so my thinking for this is that if you just sample from you you’ve got a grid of light-filled images of images captures here and you can sample between the four of them there you’ve got the four closest images and then you can find the four closest trays on each of those and you can do this I just straight filtering through all of those but you wind up with ghost images my my first thought on this was that well we can actually tell from the initial point and then the final point there we’ve got a depth from that we can tell whether that was close or wildly off for what we were initially looking for so instead of just blindly blending all of those samples back together we should go ahead and look at them and throw out the ones that have clearly gone to another surface so you wind up just just sampling from the ones that are the closest there to get rid of most of the ghosting but then as I started thinking about the samples that we’re looking at here the ones that we’re getting you’re in between four samples there and you’ve got four samples that the Rays gonna be between there’s gonna be sixteen samples at your disposal but what you really want to do is find three of them that bound the sample that you want where you want to be able to say that I have a sample from here a sample from here a sample from here and then here’s where I am and just do the interpolation between those because you may have other samples that are out here and then some of them that are way over here because they actually went to the wrong surface if you can identify the samples there there’s an interesting idea that I that occurred to me that we may be able to save three-quarters of our pixel samples here by saying that we have say we have the four images that are the nearest ones for what we’re doing here they’re all slightly different I similar images they’re very close and you look at that so there’s an enormous amount of waste where it looks like the same wall on each of these it is slightly different they’re slightly different positions so they have slightly different rendering artifacts for them but it’s I you know they’re there’s a lot of commonality now these compressed quite well what you wind up doing if you want to compress these or for transport is you wind up saying you have 64 images or something on here you just wind a spiral out video encode it because it does very much look like these linear moves moving around and it encodes quite well but you need them all decompressed to actually render it them so the idea that I’m excited about that I have not yet proven they’re disproving here is that if instead of making these from exactly the same central render points if we offset them by a pixel each way so that you have a dither interleave of the samples so if you had I know it’s a sample from like this one might have samples from those angles and then the next one over exaggerated scale might have samples from that angle so that they’re sampling different sets of angles now that would mean that the image there would be aliased you couldn’t sample it directly because if stepping over information that you would need for that for the direct referencing but if you gather the potentially 16 samples and it may only need to be done with potentially four samples even you’ve gathered the samples from those different ones throw out the ones that have these kind of off kilter depth values and then you find which ones bound the surface there I think that that can be done where you can get a 4x space savings and again for X for X is actually usually the number where things start mattering and I mentioned that on the resolution side of things and I used to say that about I mean a lot of computer speed stuff where 4x is when you know your computer got a whole lot faster I that would be I you know that would be a great thing and I need to find the time to go and test this it’s you know it’s great when you wind up having more ideas than you get an opportunity to to explore so of course I send some of these things over to Oh toy and I hope they get to go explore them because I’m happy if it if it just works out and it’s possible that this could even be extended more ways where if you can tile by or if you can interleave on a 2 by 2 factor maybe you can interleave on a 3 or a 4 by 4 factor maybe there’s a 16 x factor that you could get that would mean more sampling it would trade a more expensive fragment shader to go and gather all of these and discard them and and do those tests there but it’s a potentially larger impact there if you go too far you wind up getting to the point where some of the changes in visual effects from different angles that you want to get from things like light fields you might not get because you would have something all the way over here contributing samples that go over to it but I’m suspecting it may be good for at least this this kind of factor of four I which is exciting and maybe it’s good for even more another path of an idea in the last month that has that is actually working out extremely well is again on the Minecraft project one of the things that we’ve learned in virtual reality is the simulator sickness that most people associate with VR there’s a lot of different types of discomfort that are issues in VR you know there’s I strain from focus I strain convergence I’m mismatched but what most people associated with is the kind of sick to your stomach queasy feeling of simulator sickness which is mostly a fact a matter of when your brain is seeing an image set that it does so that it accepts well enough and it’s accelerating in some way that’s different from what your vestibular system is telling you that mismatch causes the discomfort so you know if you’ve got something curving up on a roller coaster and virtual reality but your body’s staying still your body is saying it’s like my eyes in my vestibular system are not matching you know you probably ate poison you should throw up and that’s nice you know that’s the kind of general theory behind a lot of this so you know in VR the thing to avoid is acceleration if you assume that your user is seated or standing roughly in place anytime you’re accelerating that’s when the body is going to complain linear motions are generally not a problem you know you can be kind of moving along rocketing along even at speed in a straight direction and if there’s not too much stuff like cluttering up your view that’s usually not a problem but if you slowly accelerate up to a specific point like certain space game launchers that I’m you know kind of rocket you down an area that’s particularly bad news and some people just like I close my eyes for that point because it’s going to you uncomfortable now there’s an interesting aspect about this where if you make changes indiscreet enough chalks then it winds up not being uncomfortable so one of the obvious things that especially affects the PC side of virtual reality is when you’re turning that’s an angular acceleration you know you may be staying motionless but the angular acceleration is really bad news and even people that you know I am far less prone to simulator sickness than not than most people and my theory about that is because I wear multifocal glasses the world is always swimming a little bit so I get it’s trained me to be better at virtual reality but even they’re just sitting there and spinning you know stick turning I call it where you’re going based on a continuous input is pretty bad and you don’t want to do that for very long and some people will be almost instantly sick from it but it’s been found that if you if you break that up and you only do it at say ten Hertz where it’s no longer smooth so it’s this choppy stutter turn it winds up not being uncomfortable now it doesn’t look great because it’s stuttering that way but people can functionally play through things and you know and wind up not being sick now there’s an interesting trade-off there because I it definitely gets you out of that sense of your brains like I’m buying this this is great I’m in this virtual reality but stutter stutter stutter you know that’s okay I did quite buy that but at least I’m not sick but it’s a trade-off that you can make but it’s always better to try to remove them the kind of accelerations as much as possible I mean I advocate for my gear VR playing in a swivel chair because you can just turn around like that wherever you want and that’s the worst offender kind of solved in a more direct way but minecraft is one of these games that is almost the worst possible case for simulator sickness because not only is it rotating around as a major part of it but it’s bounding up and down parabolic arcs are not your friend in virtual reality which is a shame one of our very best games as a jetpack a game Omega agent and a lot of people really can’t play it because it’s lots of arcing around like that even with some remediating steps that they’ve taken but so trying to address the issues in Minecraft has been an interesting challenge obviously I say well just don’t I you know just don’t turn with a stick turn in reality whenever you can and if you need to turn with the stick well we can do the stutter turning that’s been proven out in a few different places and that that largely works but there’s all of these other little things in there the bounding up it’s so much about hopping up blocks falling down blocks and that’s just bad it’s all of these linear and all of these accelerations and there’s all these little things with minecarts and other stuff that do pull you around and even starting and stopping like I’ve tried to argue that games you should be instantaneous start none of this accelerate up and friction ramp down but when it’s something that again it’s a game that you give me play multiplayer you don’t want the VR people behaving in a different way and that becomes a sensitive issue from AI you know especially when it winds up being competitive so the idea occurred to me and it’s like well what if we know stuttering I basically solves the comfort problem I what if I just identified any of the accelerations that are going to cause a problem whether it’s a slow start a friction stop a minecart turn or falling off and I just stuttered it to ten Hertz this would be it’s like oK we’ve identified the root of the problem and here’s a solution for it I you know maybe this solves everything you know implement it and it’s terrible you know it’s completely a jittering all I mean it just looks it doesn’t make people sick but it’s not fun to play because it’s jerking all the time it doesn’t feel good doesn’t feel polished I am so it’s kind of like well there’s something to that thing about identifying there’s all these things that could cause accelerations and maybe there’s a better way to approach it so what I I what I came to after that as the ideas like okay I’m logging the information say you’ve got AI you know a path that goes up like this and if you if you smoothly go through that that’s a set of accelerations it’s going to be uncomfortable but if you were able to go ahead and linearize that and you just made it a linear ramp from there to there that’s no longer uncomfortable there’s one there’s an impulsive change to another slope and another impulsive change when you get off of it so I I logged the positions positions and velocities the same it builds off of the work that I was doing with the the kind of stutter elimination and I kept a little bit of a backlog and I called it lag and linearise where it lags it a few frames back and then turns it into linear steps and it would do a few kind of smarter things about identifying exactly where when you made a transition to jumping up or falling off it could push it there and this worked reasonably well there was I it was a tunable parameter where you could say I at the start minecraft works on 20 Hertz tick so everything went in multiples of that so if you double that and said okay now it’s essentially a 10 Hertz linear step but everything gets interpolated between that helps a little bit then you go to 3 or 4 steps and then it’s clearly doing this linearization thing the the jumps start looking a little bit more like triangles I have you know not being parabolic but getting more comfortable but at the expense of of being adding latency to the gameplay and of course latency is something that I crusade against in almost all other cases it’s strange for me to be saying well we’re gonna add late and see here we’re gonna spend latency to try to make it more comfortable and this had this was having some good benefits it was something it’s hard to test him it’s hard to evaluate I’m you know like how much less comfortable or uncomfortable are you getting from this you have the tests that run up and down the mountains over and over and say it’s like well do I feel more or less sick it’s hard to get back to a baseline and going through the different cases there but I would go and play for an hour at a time and say I this feels better than what it was before but I wish there was a more and more scientific way to make an exact statement about it but some other people were complaining about them the addition of latency my thought was that we’d make this a slider where we’d say it’s and you have to be careful how you word things like this because you don’t want it to be something it’s like you know more comfortable because why would anybody not want to be comfortable you know you have to it’s the the trade-off between responsiveness and comfort and I thought we could have a slider that goes from like one to four from there one is just as it is normally and four would be the more linearized that you could about the most that you could tolerate before really hating the latency and we leave it up to users but after beating on the problem a little bit more and trying some of these tricks about like well identifying exactly when you just start to jump so I could start the linearization there but I started looking more closely at the actual data of what I what all these transitions were and it should have been obvious again at the beginning but there’s a 20 Hertz tick and everything is deterministic a jump always has the same set of I of changes where it was I think 9 something like went up to 99 frames to go all the way to the top and land on like the next the next one up or 12 if you wind up coming all the way down to the ground so there were basically three important cases that happened here there was jumping up landing on the next block there was jumping up and landing on the same level and then there was walking off and falling down to the level below and it turned out that there are I a small table of like 20 values that I would take from position and velocity offsets so I could tell what I wanted when you jump from here up to there is not this parabolic arc I wanted this perfect linear arc that just take your linear line that just takes you directly up there and then from here one that just takes you straight down now these were twelve ticks this is far more than I would ever try to put in with a lag and linearize approach you know that would be you’re just far too much I am Lag to be comfortably playable but if I could just make this transition from saying alright I know that if you are at this offset from a tile then you were at the beginning of a jump and I could map all of these two points along the linearized line and this works magically this is one of these I I amazing this is one of the idea really turns out right and it’s clearly that this came from this was three steps along the way where you know initial ideas and struggles working through then the different things and then winding up here with something where now you’re running around and even if you’ve got Auto jump on you bump into the next block and if slide you straight up like it’s on a ramp you go over there and you slide down and this has been spectacular so I’m still arguing about whether I need to keep thee I keep the Lagon linearize and all these there’s still all these other things there’s the slow starts and the friction stops this kills dead the problem of single block step ups and steps down and it works really great but there are still enough other things where the lag and linearize may still wind up having some I you know some utility for that as well like there’s another I’m another aspect of comfort with especially with gear VR in navigation games the problem is that we only have a sense that where your head mount is the tracker that we’ve got is on the headset so we know where you’re looking we have to assume that you want to move in the direction that you’re looking so I you know when you’re going forward you’re going in the direction of the head now now that causes a snake walking where if you’re looking around while you’re walking there instead of walking straight looking around kind of like you want on a linear path that would be comfortable you’re you’re weaving as you go through it and that’s not comfortable and the more you look around with your head the more that happen so Laggan linearize helps that a little bit where instead of instead of taking a you know a path like this you wind up taking here you’re more of a linearized path i but it’s still probably not really what you want so the other thing that’s being I at least experimented with as a direction there is that maybe we need to have some offsets between allowing you to look around for some amount of time before changing your actual direction of body movement now what I’d really like to have argue for this a regular basis if we had a controller that also had the IMU inside it so that we could at least track up yalll between it then you could clearly say well the controller determines what direction you’re going when you turn in your swivel chair the controller changes your body direction your turn direction and you could turn your head and if completely independently from that I am you know maybe we get that at some point I don’t think it’s in that the cards right now so hacking something around for like anti-snake walking maybe as an aspect of lag and linearized maybe something different I but it was still this was and this is all again mostly stuff that’s happened in the last month or two different ideas that come on they track kind of continuously about all the different things that are going there’s stuff that I’d love to get back to with some of the vision research work for inside out tracking where there’s that hazard again there where if I get something that I think is a good idea and I don’t get to beat on it soon enough it starts perhaps solidifying into a pet idea in some way where I maybe won’t be as harsh on it when I do finally get around to working on it so I worry about that I just wish again that there was more time to be doing all the different things that you know that I want to be investigating and you know then there’s even things that when I go even further afield and start thinking about you know Fusion Energi or other things like that then I get ideas for that that I’d like to be trying but probably are not going to be again happening in the real near future but the big takeaway that I want to leave about this is by looking at the ideas they’re about taking the joy in the in the having of the idea and cultivating that and making that one of the things that you really look for but challenging them and not feeling it all bad when they get knocked down because usually the process winds up leading to at least a better insight about things or a better way of looking at things or techniques that lead to better techniques that solve the problems even better so I we have any time for any questions or anything this [Applause] https://liamzebedee.com/draft/kenny-werner-jazz-masterclass/analysis/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/kenny-werner-jazz-masterclass/analysis/ Comprehensive Analysis: Kenny Werner’s Master Class in Jazz Performance and Creativity A multi-dimensional analysis of the core ideas, methodologies, and philosophical frameworks presented in this masterclass. Table of Contents Core Performance Philosophy Practicing Methodology Mind Mastery and Mental Control Honest Self-Assessment and Growth Transformation and Teaching Authenticity and Success Synthesis and Key Takeaways 1. Core Performance Philosophy The Concept of “The Zone” Kenny Werner defines the zone as a state of carte blanche acceptance—a mental space where music flows without interference from the critical mind. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/kenny-werner-jazz-masterclass/analysis_compressed/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/kenny-werner-jazz-masterclass/analysis_compressed/ Kenny Werner Jazz Masterclass: Core Ideas Compressed The Zone & Performance The zone is created by not criticizing yourself during performance Performance is about not being careful - your safety net is internal Self-criticism breaks the groove; your reaction to notes disrupts flow Practice loving every sound aggressively before you have time to evaluate “Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Deli—doesn’t matter” - cultivate healthy detachment Care deeply off-stage; be indifferent on-stage Personal power of the musician makes notes right (Monk example) The Paradox of Caring When you desperately want to play well, you play worse When you don’t care, it flows Peak experiences fade because excitement about the experience breaks it Don’t notice how you sound; notice how it feels Walk off stage as if the performance never happened Practice vs. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/kenny-werner-jazz-masterclass/article/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/kenny-werner-jazz-masterclass/article/ A Master Class in Jazz Performance and Creativity with Pianist Kenny Werner A transcript from ArtistsHouseMusic Opening: The Invitation to Dialogue I’m going to throw it open if you have a question on anything involving anything in the world—I can answer it, you know. Nuclear Physics, transportation in the 19th century, trade with China… Do you know anything about the Yankees? Yeah, they won the war. Anyway, so you can formulate something you want, or we can just begin. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/kenny-werner-jazz-masterclass/raw_transcript/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/kenny-werner-jazz-masterclass/raw_transcript/ I’m going to throw it open if you have a question on anything involving anything in the world I can answer it you know Nuclear Physics um transportation in the 19th century uh trade with China you know do you know anything about the Yankees yeah they won the war anyway okay so you can if you don’t know you can formulate something you want or you can you know we can just begin yes you inconsistency of Performing inconsistency of Performing performing on a level of feeling like you just not that you Tred to play great but you just sort of connected to your thoughts and what youing you mean inconsistency is to when you’re in the zone so to speak just being in control well there’s a couple issues there one is you have to learn to play what is within your control because what happens is the Mind sends messages uh that like you know you should be playing you should be more burning or it should be more modern or it should be more authentic traditional you know whatever the mind has always got possible criticisms and when you try to respond to those criticisms you actually move out of your comfort zone into a place that you’re not familiar with you see because that’s that’s sort of the ego the ego wants you or that that we’ll just use that as the word the ego wants you to go for things that you haven’t practiced and shouldn’t be there anyway so what you have to learn to do is play Within what’s it’s very hard when you’re in school because you’re always learning new things so you get into a sort of a disease State of Mind where anything you play with easily can’t be worth much you know because people are so busy trying to learn new things that the stuff that you already own oh that’s nothing it’s this stuff I I got to learn this stuff you know and yet performance is always about playing well within that comfort zone see because you want what you play to resonate and it won’t resonate if you’re not in control of the information now how do you do that how do you resist the mind’s propensity for bringing up issues and messing up your groove basically your groove is messed up in the mind or a lack of technique you know I mean it’s always two reasons why a performance doesn’t go one is you’re you’re not releasing yourself to the zone of just playing and that and just for a moment what does that mean the zone is created by not criticizing yourself in performance you cannot afford to criticize yourself in performance that breaks the the zone that breaks the groove but of course you may hear notes that you don’t like but don’t key in on that a matter of fact in my book there’s an exercise in the Second Step where you practice a sort of a brainwashing thing you brainwash yourself to like every sound you make not to Flinch from any sound you make that is the closest thing to Enlightenment in music loving absolutely every sound you make no matter where it is see already you’re halfway there people are intrigued with that because they don’t accept themselves on that level so when they see a musician accepting everything they’re doing with love that’s half of the attraction the music being the other half and that takes practice so the first thing you need to do is learn how to touch your instrument without thought that way you stand a better chance of not thinking on the gig that’s a long process the first thing that happens is you learn how to touch the instrument and not react now that may sound strange but it’s your reaction that gets in the way of the groove if you go like this you know you’re already trying to impose yourself on the groove here’s the groove there’s one note there’s another see they all have equal value if you don’t judge them can you feel that I’m not this is no plan but whatever I play Just feels perfect unless I try to you know create it plan it or something you know imitate that then you’ll hear it won’t Groove somehow notes will sound wrong when I try to F place the notes too carefully so performance is about not being careful at all but to not be careful where’s your safety net you know your safety net is in you the other words it’s not in the fact that the audience will understand because you read a book effortless Mastery and it said that it’s okay to make mistakes so hopefully all the audience read the book you know the the the safety net is never in the world the safety net resides in you for example if you are always worried about having enough money right the safety net is not in having enough money because if you have enough money the next thing you’ll be worried about is losing that money because the mind thinks that’s what the Mind does if you give into the mind if you are totally controlled by your mind then you’re always in a firestorm of mental activity you know and and I guess 25 to 50 years of therapy would do something for that I I’m not an expert on therapy but I tell you there’s another way where you just focus on something else other than your mind and when it happens it happens immediately happens all at once and suddenly like wow I’m just playing cuz my hands are playing you know and that’s always exactly the right stuff in fact that’s the right formula for living there is a place for thinking but it’s not in performance now just knowing that is not enough you need to have a practice so that eventually the trigger of playing the instrument well I was about to describe the uh the sequence first you learn how to touch your instrument without thinking or I don’t know if it’s a singer here making a sound without thinking making a sound without thinking is this a jazz sound or is this the right sound or is it pretty enough or you know what I mean that that the rough thing about school is you’re trying to educate yourself and it’s awfully hard not to fall in the hole of always criticizing yourself education stimulates criticism and how to keep learning without falling in a hole of self-criticism so deep that you know you can’t do anything anymore you know and so this is a practice of hearing a sound not just accepting it but even aggressively loving it now in the beginning it’s like you have to fake it because you hear a sound and you just don’t love it so from not not becoming to becoming you have to fake it in other words if I do this then before I have a chance to think I go ah Ah that’s the most beautiful sound I ever heard isn’t that you know in other words I convince myself I don’t want to wait and do you know can you feel what I was doing evaluating this sound no I want to jam that frequency by wow it actually doesn’t sound beautiful see what happens I thought so anyway what happens is what you’re aiming for happens after you affirm it if you’re waiting for proof that you sound good then it’s like a dog chasing its tail you never quite get there so what you do is you affirm that what you’re playing is beautiful and it becomes beautiful because as you accept it it starts to Glow with your own acceptance so I would actually meet that this is one of the practices learning to touch the instrument without thinking then learning to love every sound that comes out of the instrument then you go to gigs and it’s uneven because you can’t ignore your attachments to that gig you know you want to sound good you want the rest of the band to like you you want the club owner to give you the gig again you want hopefully a record producer to like you you hope there’s a Critic there and he’s writing good things which he never is there he occasionally writes good things but he’s never actually there you know um so these things are attachments which make it difficult to let go like you were letting go just in these practices but as you keep practicing letting go of your thoughts becomes less difficult to do and more natural eventually you set up a program in your mind where to touch your instrument is to let go when you touch your instrument you go into a mental balance that you don’t even own the rest of the day that can be programmed I mean the the good news is that that can be programmed as you program that the inconsistencies in your performance will disappear see because you’re looking for something to happen on the gig but the prep the mental preparation for that has to happen way off the gig you understand what I’m saying does that answer it or do you have a follow-up question from that yeah that consistency has to be practiced and it’s practiced not by hoping that you’re going to play something better but by loving everything you play now that naturally brings up the question well then how do you get better because you’re going to love everything you play right don’t you need to be unsatisfied you don’t need to be unsatisfied in order to be motivated to go on go go beyond that because there are two functions in the brain you know there’s the left brain and the right brain and I think the left brain is the more um intellectual you know the side that takes care of business practicing is taking care of business you know practicing should not be sitting there for an hour just playing and and enjoying yourself that’s playing practicing is the study of that which you do not know or that which you haven’t gotten control of yet and that’s it efficient practicing means only dealing with things that you’re not comfortable with yet not sitting there and playing for an hour why sometimes does a practice session start as a practice session and involves into just playing doesn’t that happen often you start with a specific idea but in a minute you’re just playing does that ever happen to you does it ever happen to you okay thank you for saying yes no she said oh say yes what the hell the video is running you know no no I mean you start with something specific and that specific thing gets diluted you start to cover more stuff as you’re practicing and eventually you just start playing Tunes you just start playing them over and over again the problem with that is in real time you can never get to any new stuff you will not upgrade your language in real time you’ve got to take spots and you’ve got to upgrade through variation in other words if there’s two or three chords in a in a chord progression you don’t play well you go right to those chords you don’t play the tune over and over again and on those chords you don’t find one way of playing through them but perhaps 20 ways 20 good ways and you get them under your fingers enough so that key or that scale or those changes start to feel more natural now when are you done practicing those changes the next time you play the tune and there was no more thought in your mind at that point of the tune than there was any other point then you’re done see you practice things until they bear fruit if I’m working on a spot of a tune I will play variations on that the kind of stuff I wish I could play in real time that’s what you do when you practice you make models of the music you wish you could play and of course it’s always going to be Beyond where you’re at but if you keep doing that those models start to sink into your thinking they become not patterns of music that you play but patterns of thought you know like learning to play on changes is very tricky especially for adults because adults don’t have the proper patience that it takes to become natural with something as highly it’s like a new motor skill as you start as an adult it’s difficult not because an adult can’t learn a new motor skill but because an adult is always questioning themselves how am I doing today how am I doing tomorrow I should have learned this by now you know an adult is always judging when they should have or should not have learned something so let’s say you’ve been studying how to play on changes and you go to do a gig and you can’t play on the changes the adult goes and the ego of the adult says oh man I suck you know I’ll never get this you know you make a bunch of grandiose statements that don’t help and they’re not true the truth is that you’ve been practicing playing on changes for say three months and it wasn’t ready to happen yet you know they have a saying in the various programs you know AA and all that they say don’t quit um a day before the miracle happens and that could very well apply to your practicing if you’re trying to learn to play in five or you’re trying to learn to play in a weird key or you’re trying to learn to play better lines than you play don’t quit a day before the miracle happens your mind messes up more than one flow it messes up the flow of playing but it also messes up the flow of practicing there are two different flows the flow of playing is the cart blanch acceptance of everything that’s coming through you no time to to Jud no centurions at the gate so to speak there’s no room there’s no time for them to gate check everything that’s coming through you just got to let it come through and the thing that makes it sound good this sounds like Harold Hill from music man but I swear it’s true the thing that makes it sound good is your love and acceptance of it how do you think monk played these notes you know and every like what was that that’s impossible that’s all wrong or it’s corny and it was the most wonderful thing I ever heard in my life see the personal power of the musician makes those notes right I’m not saying that monk planned to do this to us he simply didn’t have any discretionary Powers when he played I mean he didn’t block anything he was playing so if he went it was okay and so the musicologist in the audience that day might have gone wait a minute I just told my class today that you can’t do this and that was and what he just played changed my life so wait I have to reconsider this so new theory is made by free Souls who play the music by not having too much respect for the present Theory new stuff is created by people who are genuinely bored with what’s happening now and are not afraid to go into those areas what they have that they never talk about is a blank accept a blanket acceptance of everything they do that’s how they have the audacity to venture into these other areas so what breaks the flow of playing is questioning yourself what breaks the flow of practicing is questioning yourself but they’re different questions you’re asking how am I doing or why haven’t I learned to do this yet you know question that tend to break you down or you know or or just injecting impatience into the process if you could practice with the Detachment and consistency that you say brush your teeth now think about that brush your teeth every day once or twice a day or if you’re a sax player maybe after every meal so you don’t get it in the mouthpiece or although Birds they said bird had sandwiches and beer in his mouthpiece and didn’t seem to hang him up you know but think about how you brush your teeth you don’t brush your teeth and say wow we’re we’re really getting somewhere here you know I really feel like I’m getting to a new level of of white teeth you know you don’t think of it progressively you just do it and you know you’re going to have to do it again doesn’t matter how it goes boy that was an outstanding toothbrushing session but you know what it’s not going to change anything you still got to brush them tonight or the next day right if you thought of your in like that you could attain anything you want it doesn’t take talent to upgrade your playing it takes patience it really does we don’t give ourselves again we don’t give ourselves the generosity if we don’t get it in the time we think we should get it we think we’re not going to get it and that is the be the Genesis of the negative attitude I’m not going to get this all is happened is you haven’t gotten it yet but you see the ego takes that it runs with it oh I can’t do this and in fact every limitation in our life is from these presumptions that aren’t true you know like um you know I can’t swing I’m Danish or I’m a woman I can’t really put I mean you may not have ever thought that but subconsciously it could hold you back this is a this is a man’s world this Jazz thing you you may never have said it out loud but you may have thought it and then passed on that thought these thoughts are limiting and more importantly they’re totally false the person that doesn’t listen to those thoughts they go very far so this propensity for thinking breaks the groove of practicing and breaks the groove of playing there are two different grooves the practicing is done from the left brain in other words you really take stock when you’re practicing what can I do what can I do and that’s not as easy as it sounds right again why because if you’re ego it hurts you to admit something you can’t do rather than seeing it as an an inventory which will help you figure out what to practice you look at it as a weakness or proof that you’re not really talented or you know in other words you make more of a than it is so if it hurts you to realize that you don’t have very good Rhythm let’s just say some people here don’t have very good Rhythm the way you gloss over that is by remembering one gig where you had good Rhythm and then because of that gig when someone ask you how’s your Rhythm you go my rhythm is fine it’s just that all those other gigs were flukes that one gig that’s really the way I play see that’s not actually the best way for you to look at it if you unless you have to save yourself emotionally but if you’re not attached then you can look clearly at what you don’t do well and what you do do well and then it’s easier to upgrade you know but if it hurts you to admit that you’re not I mean this is how I rate myself whatever my worst gig is that’s how I play whatever my worst G with things I did oh man I lost the time I but it was you know could never happen again again it happened because I had a cold it happened because I didn’t get enough sleep last night you know it happened because uh I had a headache whatever you know no it happened because you haven’t mastered the form if you mess up the form it’s because you haven’t mastered form if you lose one it’s because you haven’t mastered meter if you can only be rhythmic occasionally then it’s better to say I’m not rhythmic yet as long as you don’t go into the depression over it but you say this means I’m going to practice a lot of Rhythm see I’m just using Rhythm as an example because you are honest with yourself you know what to practice but if it hurts whenever you realize that you can’t do something then what you’re going to do is rationalize you’re going to gloss over subjects because you remember hearing yourself play it well once or twice so you don’t think you need to work on that and you’re going to skip on to something else those parts of your game that have not been adequately worked they will plague you for the rest of your life they never get better just because you get older for example if you have bad time it’s not going to get better unless you admit it and you do certain exercises to work on it if you have if you’re not good with changes then every tune is going to be like an adventure and not the adventure that you were looking for so there’s a some institutional or fundamental things that have to be learned for improvisers improvisers have to have an easy if not effortless relationship with rhythm with time with linear manifestations of chord changes if that all comes easy then just throw the music in front of the guy or the woman and they’re just going to play it you can throw tunes by them and they’re just going to you know as soon soon as they see it because the elements of what go into that have been learned you see what I mean there’s foundational stuff in order to play a tune and so when you play a tune with difficulty there may be something in your foundation that’s missing if you you have to be honest with yourself to find out what that is to be honest with yourself you have to stop taking it as a measure of how valuable you are you know the reason this thing gets to be an emotional thing music is because we don’t just evaluate our playing we evaluate ourselves you know on a day that you play very badly maybe in front of people where it was important you don’t feel as worthy that day now maybe there may be exceptions here but generally you don’t feel as worthy as a human being that day as you do the day that you really played great and a few people complimented you right do you find true that your self-esteem goes up and down with your playing does that chapen to everybody here does that not happen to anybody it’s okay I’d like to know well that’s an unhealthy linkage you know your value as a human being is not to be tied into how good you play for two reasons one spiritually it’s not true you know if you take the broader implication of what a life is then it’s so much more than a solo or how you play an instrument I mean that is just taking this broad broad thing and subjecting it to the most shallowest of of definitions I’m a good player therefore I am a valuable person spiritually that’s wrong that could be even thought of as a sin to me to devalue yourself that much is very ungodly the second reason is you won’t play as well if you are going to go up and down with how good you play then it’s going to become very important that you never go down you always have to play good there’s pressure on you to play good and it’s just being put on by you because if you don’t play good you’re going to feel bad you know what I mean now what is that a bad thing it is a bad thing because there’s a paradox here a lot of times I start clinics by saying think about a time that you really needed to sound good because of who was there and what you needed to do what you wanted to show them or a jury you know you were a jury you know think about that time how did you play when all everything was I got to really do well tonight how did you play was that your best performance or was it your worst performance or somewhere in between did you not play better when you were just fooling around in the practice room the previous Tuesday and then you get on this gig and everything feels like you’re fighting through a paper bag or something did you ever have that experience and it’s just the time when you so wanted to play well and then when you don’t care so much it all flows so I adopted a philosophy about 30 years ago of not caring and it’s going well it’s going really well it doesn’t I mean it doesn’t do me any good if I’m going to play in Carnegie Hall tonight it doesn’t really do me any good to sit there going wow I’m playing in Carnegie Hall that does not help my performance therefore Carnegie Hall Carnegie Deli doesn’t matter doesn’t matter you have to have that sort of attit in order to be consistent wherever you play in order to get to you you have to not be impressed by the externals you know in a way it’s a healthy way of not caring when you play of course you care you wouldn’t be in this school spending so much of somebody’s money trying to learn to play if you didn’t care right but it doesn’t help you to be aware of your caring when you play it helps to not care when you play that gets it flowing that’s another way of getting it flowing all these things take practice you know you could agree with it but then you can’t do it I get a lot of calls from people that say you know I read your book and for three months like like you were even saying I had a great recording session I said well you have to be concerned whether it lasts it’s not it’s not that the reason it won’t last is because when you start to play well that becomes your new attachment oh wow I tried this approach of detaching myself and I played great and I keep thinking about that gig where I played so great next thing you know it sets up an attachment for the next gig and the next gig goes very poorly because you have an A A an expectation that you didn’t have on the first gig that’s the only reason that you were able to let go on the first gig for some reason you didn’t have an expectation you know I can’t tell you how many gigs you travel with people and you’re on a very long you know 30 hours on a train and one guy’s got the runs and another guy’s got pneumonia and they don’t and they’re pissed off that they had to travel all that way just to play this one damn concert and I don’t care about this gig and this promoter can’t treat us this way we’ll show him we don’t give a about this gig and you know what happens Unfortunately they play their asses off because they go in there like I don’t care about this promoter and I don’t care about this audience and I’m so pissed off at being on the train for 30 hours and all that sets up such Freedom that’s the best gig I remember gigs like that then you play there the second night now you’re well rested you took a shower you’ve been in a nice hotel you’ve meditated whatever you’ve had a good meal and that gig doesn’t go as well so it’s a funny Paradox that pretty much is endemic to all uh humans it’s like human nature developing that Detachment creates a consistency in your performance developing a Detachment to your practice creates a consistency in your practicing see not not saying things to yourself like wow I’ve really got to get better by tomorrow you know or next year or ain’t getting any younger you know all these kind of thoughts they just push to practicing they put pressure on the practicing and what does that pressure do it causes you to practice more things because you want to get better faster but you see your concentration should be the thing that decides how much you can practice you should practice as much as your concentration will allow if it’s one thing that you can examine but you can examine it so well that you can begin to own it that will have a better effect on your playing that if you practice 10 things and you run through them because that’s your program but you never notice you practice that way but you playing doesn’t change my playing changes all the time I only practice one thing at a time I mean I may have three or four things but in my mind it’s one thing until I’m done with that then there’s the next thing or I might break it up into three sections and do a rhythmic practice a harmonic practice but I will not give myself like a program of 12 things to do and and you’re just doing well just to get through it because you’re not getting any better that way and it’s another way that the ego sabotages your practicing by taking on too big a load now of course the natural question is while I’m in school I’m getting way too much that’s true everywhere I I almost anticipate that question how do I discriminate and and learn how to Fashion a practice that honors me a practice that I can control that I can relax and focus on how do I do that in school well the answer is that life is never going to arrange itself to make these things easy you have to leave a little space in your life for your inner practice you know meditation is an inner practice for example when you do that practice the world is not going to slow down for you to meditate you have to stake out five minutes 10 minutes 20 minutes half an hour whatever it doesn’t have to be long and in that space is where you practice the Zen of practicing you’re connected to what you’re working on here and you don’t go there until you get done with this and then you drift over to here and you work on that and you work very very thorough with great care and with great concentration and how long should you practice when that practicing starts to get diluted by adding you know just by losing your patience it’s better to walk away because sometimes you can undo the good work you were doing by practicing something specifically clearly Clarity and all these things it’s the mind and the pressure it puts on your life because your life’s not good enough you know whatever’s going on it’s not enough that’s sort of the pressure it exerts I’m not a good enough player therefore there’s a great pressure on my practicing to improve me if that pressure helped then I would Advocate it but it doesn’t it hurts because it takes you out of focus and it doesn’t allow you to really fully own some of the important foundational stuff of Music own Rhythm as far as I’m concerned you should be practicing I don’t even know you’re playing but everybody should be practicing some Rhythm thing against time for the rest of their life because Rhythm can always get better and the the more natural you the more effortless your Rhythm becomes the Freer you become over form you know you know the easier it comes to you the Freer you’re going to be so I mean that pretty much all came out of your question we have another question that we could that we could work with yeah um how much should should you balance uh practicing practicing on specific things um and uh also practicing your performing I mean you know well I mean to me I don’t find it good to practice performing because sometimes all my best stuff comes out in the practicing of Performing you know and I mean I have so many stories of where we were rehearsing the day of and it was going so well and we should have stopped because that night it wasn’t as easy as it was I think the question is how do you about how much playing versus how much practicing and I think there’s no formula play anytime you feel like you want to play and as long as you want to to your heart’s content but don’t neglect the very focused Act of practicing playing good back to that right brain left brain thing playing is completely right brain now you’re not going to run your life with your right brain cuz you need to get paid you need to get places on time you need to catch Subways you need to whatever you need to do that’s left brain with your right brain you’re going to be late for everywhere and you’re not going to go anywhere okay so you can’t do that stuff in right brain but right brain when that’s light when I get on stage it’s all right brain yes yes yes yes oh I love that yes yes yes more do it to me you know and that’s it that’s the only message I want in my brain until the light goes off and then I walk off the stage as if it never happened because I don’t want to be attached to that performance so that the next one could be good too I don’t think it’s a question of balance because one should never not play when one feels like playing that goes against one’s own nature but a lot of times people who play a lot don’t have the p Pati to practice they also don’t have the method to practi they don’t know what to practice that is the biggest thing I find with people trying to get better they just don’t know what to practice so that starts with getting a good diagnosis of how you’re playing not just criticism but I mean really a diagnosis you know your Rhythm could be this your allines are very limited to that you’re you know sent to the for you know and then be given exercises to correct them a lot of times you do a clinic and there’s a great player there not necessarily a great teacher but a great player he goes oh man you’re not swinging you next week I want you to swing you know come back still not swinging man yeah well don’t just criticize give somebody an idea what to do about it that’s swinging I don’t know what to do about it either because that’s an esoteric idea of Swing but playing on changes sure there are things you can do playing better Rhythm sure there’s things you can do getting better intonation there’s things you can do you know whatever it is you’re trying to do and don’t neglect it don’t be afraid of it look at it as just like brushing your teeth and then what will happen is you’ll get the joy of not boring yourself to death because I don’t know about you but when I find myself playing the same things over and over again I start to wish that I could see something else and that’s what breaks a groove of a performance wishing you didn’t play that voicing again you know for example but it’s better to love that voicing every time you’re going to play it but then take care of it in you’re practicing and you’re practicing actually investigate another voicing then it might just come out so that’s really the answer that it’s not at all any kind of formula just make sure I mean actually you know it can’t just say make sure that you practice consistently because there’s always a pre step to all this make sure that you always play freely and never question yourself make sure that you practice absolutely consistently and only focus on things you know the how do you do that you need to learn to control your mind when your mind makes you in a hurry and you practicing walk away teach your mind it’s like teaching your teaching a dog you know if the dog say sit and the dog comes no you know we we have a dog that just loves to go as a puppy to go out so much it’s hard to get him to sit once you open the door now that’s a drag cuz if you’re walking in with groceries boom this dog runs out you know this dog’s got to sit you open the door and when you say go you say go every time he he moves and I didn’t tell him to move I close the door again until he realizes that if he doesn’t sit he’s not going to get to go out well I would sort of tell you the musician and you the same thing if I am going to be anxious and self- pressuring and self-defeating I will walk away until you see how I’m looking at you right now and I see great balance in you right at this moment and the reason is because you’re listening to what I’m saying I don’t mean because of what I’m saying I mean you’re not thinking about yourself whenever you are that’s why television is so attractive you know what is it it’s a vacation from thinking about yourself I mean it’s nothing of any value there but you know all the political discourse on the radio and television nobody gives a about that they just don’t want silence so they think that they’re politically concerned but they’re not they just can’t handle silence it’s a lack of being able to control your mind tame your mind but when you’re interested in something else you’re balanced because balance is when you get out of the way so when you’re listening to me you’re not thinking about yourself you’re in Perfect Balance just the way you are feeling that’s the way you approach your instrument and you practice from there and when that’s broken you walk away and what happens is the length of time that you can stay that focused grows see if you let that practice Morphin to just oh you know I just got to play you know then it gets fuzzy what happens is it’s a dilution of this perfect Focus you had but if you stop as soon as you lose the focus and you walk away now that you’ve made markings of what the length of time you can focus is that length begins to grow because you don’t just dissolve it into broad General stuff that doesn’t make you play better so here’s it’s like an assembly line you work on things and you’re practicing and you work on them until you hear them in your PR in you’re playing and you’re not looking for them everything I practice I never ever care if I ever hear my playing or not and when it starts to come out I know that I’ve been getting somewhere with what I’m practicing you see what I mean the playing if you got it set up right the playing gives you an idea idea of how far along you are in a particular study if you want to I always use time signatures because it’s a very Stark example if you want to be able to play freely in five you practice models of ideas in five you don’t just play you know because that all that is is an inferior way of playing Five it’s playing Five that counts it out for you that was okay when American musicians first started to play five but but that’s not going to go anywhere so you practice the way you wish you could play in five how long should you do it until somebody calls something in five and you feel as free as you did before each practice is like a a journey each thing you decide to practice be prepared to stay with it think well of what it is you’re going to work on next and try to make it the thing that you’re playing is missing most often other words don’t think about playing in five when you’re not yet making sense in four because four is the dominant time signature of western music and you can be employed you could play great in five and not not play good in four and you’re not and you’re not going to play anywhere you know whereas you could play great and four and not be able to play five at all and you’re going to play everywhere so to jump to five this is just another gross example to give you an idea taking things out of sequence will also sabotage you’re playing if you’re working on five and you really haven’t achieved anything in four yet then the best you’ll get in five is the level that you achieved in four do you understand what I just said you got to create a standard in yourself so you stay with something until it gets to a very high level of ease and then every new thing you compare it to that like here that was very easy now and you play Giant Steps of 13 which I’m not about to do is it as easy as is when it is you can make a career just going around the world playing Giant Steps and third cuz people will be amazed at how natural it feels that’s my whole setup I I keep working on increasingly complex things but they don’t come out of the oven until they just spill out of me that’s why people could say wow you I don’t know what that form was but it all felt so natural CU I don’t reach for something that I don’t have yet that’s like the dog with the you know the Fable the dog with the bone in its mouth he looks in the water he sees a dog with a bone in his mouth he drops his bone and jumps in the water I don’t drop something to chase after nothing which makes me lose my balance you see what I mean but I work on creating more somethings am I practicing another question anybody yes what’s a song what’s a song Yeah song is uh a determined amount of bars usually song refers to words so uh uh a shanong as a shanong and L of what you’re talking about like that’s something that kind of stays over time like do you access a song or does a song access you to play it or you access a song first and then as you familiarize yourself yourself with it you and the song become one and the most natural thing you could do is play that song like for me I probably have that relationship with Stella By Starlight I could be on my deathbed now the reason I’m playing that so well is because that key is comfortable most of those chords are comfortable and I don’t have to be too interesting in my lines because the chord progression of Stella is so interesting so but whatever that’s like being home playing C Starlight so it starts with you and and now my question is when I start with a new tune I will work on that tune until it starts to feel like that tune because that’s when my voice starts to come out on the song my voice your voice won’t come out on material you’re not familiar with so for example here’s a very good strategy if you’re going to do your recording your CD and everybody will not that the world needs it but you will anyway there’s already too many damn CDs in the world but but some point you’re going to want to do a CD it’s going to be some kind of valid of all this money that was spent okay now it would be a mistake to record the things you’re working on record the things you know see because we don’t want to know what you’re working on we want to be enlightened we want to be you know enlivened we want to be Charmed we want to be lifted up you know once you get out of school that’s it for projects that you know play things that you don’t have control of you better go out there and have total control it’s funny when I think of a singer I think of one of the most compelling amazing performances I ever witnessed was I only saw Carmen McCrae one time but it must have been like what it was like to see John C train because I mean it was such presence that as soon as you she got up on stage you were already like I mean this woman was so in her body and so in the moment and in such control of the material she was about to do that her presence was a concert these are the Higher Goals of concerts not to show people what you can do or what you’re working on how did we get that question I oh the song yeah I think the people that are successful meaning people tune into their music yeah or music is or music has played well yeah well that’s a little broader I don’t know say I would say that everybody that you would say the music they they’re successful because of the way the music comes out another way of saying is that they are in complete control of the material they’re playing that or that maybe their music was a different branch that needed to be explored well sometimes but not always sometimes someone marks out a space for themselves because there’s a sound that they find that they really connect to by the way if that Discovery is not sincere if it’s a strategy it usually doesn’t work out but if it’s really what you’re attracted to and you find yourself in if not Virgin Territory at least territory that hasn’t been too well traveled that’s sometimes how people stake a claim I think of people like John mlin who definitely went places that still people can’t go and he’s you know he would have famous for other things but or I think of uh chick Korea you know the level of attainment of chick Korea is truly amazing you know uh or Keith Jarrett who just by playing sounds that he so loved actually took us into some sounds that you take for granted today but those sounds were not to be found in jazz music before Keith Jarrett like that funky was not played in jazz before Keith Jarrett I mean was was here obviously but it wasn’t played in jazz so sometimes it’s that it could be the most conventional music there’s a lot of ways of getting over and there’s a lot of ways of being successful the strategy that I’ve been following is to connect so deeply with what I’m playing that I don’t have any definition of it but it’s just one attraction after another see successful playing and let’s assume let’s assume let’s get off the mastering of langu anguage subject let’s assume you’ve mastered the language that doesn’t make you a successful player there are people that can play the language very easily and they’re totally uninspiring there’s people that may not even play that language as well and they can be inspiring you ever noticed that phenomenon why anybody know why yeah what passion passion yeah how deeply that person means that particular music is really much more resonant with an audience than how well you play you know so that’s my strategy my strategy was you know I I I always noticed that you know like Brazilian percussionists were thought of as such you know High free spirits and percussion you know like people from like different ethnicities and that a a a guy from Brooklyn or from Long Island shouldn’t expect of him s The Poetry of life that say someone from the rainforest you know and then I realized everybody’s got everything inside them you just have to develop it I became special in my own way for being from Long Island I what I had to do is continually go deeper and deeper into what that is go so deep that as soon as I start to play I start to go into a trance from what I’m playing and by learning to do that I have joined the other spirits who I’ve seen who I normally wouldn’t have thought felt part of because the secret of these Spirits is How Deeply they love what they’re doing that’s a strategy another strategy is to adopt a music that can be universally popular with much less but then that’s like the stock market you know if you get lucky you know does that answer your question because I I think it almost it was something else yeah it does answer um well also uh if if all musicians with the high level of attainment uh you’re speaking of like technically not even technically but just or musically um well I I you mean rhythm Harmony and melody or you mean high level of attainment in terms of the wisdom of what they play um well you said karma M has the presence and that she that was that’s a high attainment of human terms okay that and that’s what gra is the music yeah like you’re talking about Sha but they both sound different like phrasing they sound different absolutely um how do you feel about phrasing and improvisation well you see there’s no one standard for phrasing but the phrasings that sound right are the phrasings that are natural extensions of people who play and go on automatic pilot they go in the zone they go as I said in the book in the space these are the phrases that there’s no one universal language that will come out if you go into space and now everybody will sound like that do you feel like people’s phrasings are different because they’re different individuals they’re awfully really well yes for example uh it is clear that CH Korea played Latin music it’s not so clear that Keith Jared played Latin music well I can hear that’s one of the reasons his phrasing is different you know what I mean so influences I mean you know on a tangible level influences will affect your phrasing for example if you grew up listening to pop music you started playing jazz at 19 if you ignored the pop music you would be not playing to your strength you’d be trying to be somebody else and so you would be weaker for it so a real phrase It’s not again it’s like uh your question about what’s the balance of uh practicing and playing there is there is none what’s you know the difference in phrasing is difference in people’s Anatomy you know how how big the hands are or how much breath control they have uh in their upbringing their emotional makeup if somebody is angry then they should play angry because otherwise they’re avoiding Their Own Strength your strength is in what’s really happening with you not who you’d like to be you know although you can certainly practice upgrading things about yourself but basically if you ignore the things that you are presently about that’s your playing lacks strength and attraction because we’re attracted to people who are not afraid to be who they are you know does that answer that okay another question I have a question but I don’t know how to phrase it um like while you’re practicing as an in individuals practicing in the daytoday things are going on so you’re sitting there and you’re practicing your scales whatever and then you start thinking about oh I got to do the dishes oh I got to call the phone company or you know just how do you manage the daytoday things okay during practice like the scenes come up you you have to learn to manage your mind I mean maybe not we all to deal with this present society that we’re in and probably was never any different from this for example we have all this technology now it’s supposed to save us time right you could be on the plane and you have your whole office with you or you know uh you can get all these now there’s no when you travel you’re not away from home you’re not away from your business or your office or anything and so what have humans done with that have they used this upgrading technology to create more space in their life no they used it to get busier this is what human beings do they clutter their life first with thoughts then with what the thoughts are saying so you see what you just said I got to pay the phone bill I got to do this those were first and foremost thoughts and how does that mess you up it’s true you have to pay the phone bill but do you have to think about paying the phone bill if you’re about to practice no that means subdividing what you’re doing at what moment and that takes mental control so when a person needs to get organized in their life I always recom men that they start by trying to learn how to organize their thinking because you could practice while the coffee is perking but if a thought you have is that well it doesn’t do any good unless I practice for at least an hour well if you have that thought then you’re going to miss all these five and 10 minute opportunities I mean we waste more time if we borrow 10 minutes from the time we waste we’ll be practicing all you have to do is not have too much of an agenda and you’re practicing otherwise you’re always waiting for an opportunity to begin in the day the second thing is if you could pay that bill 3 o’clock you can pay that bill at four o00 so you say for this 20 minutes and it’s always good to to sort of reverse psychology if you if you say I’m going to practice for two hours you don’t practice at all because you’re waiting for two hours to come up if you say I’m going to practice for 5 minutes you’ll practice a lot and every time you start for five minutes before you know it it was 45 minutes so then you start to expect 45 minutes and you’re not practicing again this is part of the what we do reverse psychology so if you start saying there are many five minute opportunities in my life let me Focus what I’m going to practice so much that in five minutes I can go to something and start working on it for one thing it’ll feel good because you’ll start finally start to feel that you’re not a hostage to the external events in your life like when think and I mean you’re not alone when we all empower the environment to affect us and it always will but how much it affects us is up to how we train ourselves so if I say uh you know I’ll have a student that say well I didn’t practice last week I I lost my girlfriend or my mother died I say well then you forgot what we talked about instead of not practicing at all why didn’t you practice five minutes five minutes is always your way in so if you say say I’m too emotionally upset to practice these days instead of not practicing practice 5 minutes and you will be amazed and pleased with yourself that now these things that come up are not blocking something you got going something you got started you have to really come up strategy slip it in there and slip it in there and every time you do it that five minutes usually is 10 or 15 and so you are functioning even in the face of resistance in the form of the world that’s how you do it so it’s easy for me to say to you don’t think about paying the bills when you’re practicing but how you going to do it it comes down to some mind control there are many modes of study for mind control there’s meditation there’s running there’s mountain climbing there’s Zen there’s there’s uh EST there’s Scientology I mean all these things wouldn’t have any attraction if people weren’t personally conducting their lives with more power so it doesn’t matter but what a musician does too often is underestimate how their mind is screwing everything up they say well if I just play good I’ll all take care of it you know but if you realize how many ways you’re sabotaging yourself every day all of us then you realize you’re trying to walk uphill and you you know like is it Prometheus no he was tied to the Rock who’s the guy that always had to push the boulder up the hill one of those guys we we’ll get the information for the next video um you know it’s it’s a Greek character you know God he’s always pushing this thing up that’s the way we lead our lives and this bundle is a bundle of thoughts so how do you feel good right now in this body in this moment it’s the absence of thoughts that instantly feels good find a mode of study that will help you have more and more times where you’re not thinking uh but it just it just adds so much power and and organizational ability you know I used to have I catch you a second I used to have I think I ruined much of my life up to this point uh worrying about things that actually never happened and I heard this once someone said you know 95 99% of things I worry about never happen so I’m going to keep worrying you know as if he was joking but as if the worrying was what was keeping them H you’re wasting your time worrying about things that aren’t happening today and I started to adapt a phrase that was very helpful to me I’m not going to ask questions today that don’t have answers today in other words if I ask a question like should I stay in New York uh I don’t know there’s no data today I’m not going to spend the rest of the day going back and forth well I should move oh no I better stay here you know have you done you know what I mean an important decision you go when the answer’s not there stop asking the question cuz you’re ruining time that could be potentially applied to the moment moment something that can be done and you may be able to order yourself I mean I when I share my experience I have to say that my mental processes never got any better until I actually took a course here or there you know I actually had to do something there is strength in numbers there’s a power in a group you know from everything from getting sober to exercising to you know if you put me in a group of people are exercising every day I will actually start exercising miracle though that might may be because I’m susceptible to a group I’m spending time with a group and that’s what everybody in the group is doing so if everybody in the group is learning how to master their mind I’m spending at least an hour a week on that study and musicians would do well to add that to their work because it will maybe facilitate the rest of what you’re doing yeah you got a question oh sure it was kind of an afterthought but um a lot of what you’ve been talking about is sort of uh preparing the setting the table to release this kind of stored up knowledge thought process whatever you want to call it um do you think that this is a process or do you think that this transformation of Consciousness can happen instantaneously that’s a great question a very important question because the answer is both it is a process and yes it can happen instantaneously so how is that possible I’ll explain it does happen instantaneously when you change Consciousness it’s like wh whoa but it doesn’t stay you can’t hold it let’s say you experienc complete freedom in your playing but for how long before you start getting bound up again so the process we all have an epiphany or a PE Peak experience where I bet everybody here has had an experience where for whatever reason they broke through and it was the best playing they ever did the best singing they ever did and they felt like they weren’t even doing it because that’s what that experience feels like by the way you feel like someone’s doing it for you you know but it hasn’t happened again or it hasn’t happened often and it can happen when you choose to make it happen so the answer is breaking into that Consciousness can be instantaneous learning to hold it to be able to choose to go into it like when the performance is important and say I’m going to go into that space and I’m going to let myself be a vehicle for this sound and it’s going to pour through me to be able to say with certainty I can do this whenever I want to in other words be able to establish yourself in this very pristine space that is the process learning to stay there for longer periods of time the process is basically anything that brings you into that space so let’s say you do take a course and that course is once a week for an hour while you’re there you’re going to make contact and if you didn’t take that course you wouldn’t it would have been connected to the rest of the craziness of your life so by setting something up institutionally in your life you have to revisit it every time it comes up that’s one of the values of taking it seriously enough to actually find something to do you know something to do to master your mind and practicing staying in that space the more familiar you get with that space the more you can go okay I’m there and not get all excited about it because what the reason we can’t hold it is because we get excited about it as soon as you get excited about it it’s gone go wow I’m really swinging uh oh where’ it go you know almost as soon as you acknowledge how good you’re playing you noticed that it starts to tank on you so the practice is in not really noticing I don’t really notice how I sound I notice how it feels for example from not judging myself emotionally I have connected with the world of sensuality what it feels like to play the instrument the greatest singers are reveling in the sensuality of how their throat makes sound they’re actually enjoying the feeling of the notes coming out now if you’re trying to educate you know become a more you know know musicians singer like they like to say which I really say it could happen but don’t aim for it because you’re aiming for something the musicians are never going to give it up anyway and then the people don’t get you because you again you abandoned something for nothing you abandoned the emotion of the words you abandoned the bitter sweetness of the melody and you abandoned the sensuality of what it feels like to make sound in order to try to scat sing now if you can SK what’s that or yeah like that you know but you know sound like like just just say sound like once you try to sound like you’re already away from the the natural act see this is above all it’s like I’m pushing buttons that I’m I’m in tune with pushing the buttons you know what I mean I’m just feeling that I’m feeling it sensationally so when you get past the world of thinking you fall into the world of feeling you know um and then you jump right back into the world of thinking because you say this is not me I’m not comfortable you know if you’re a person that thinks too much if you have a moment where you’re not thinking you’re going to get so excited that you’re going to start thinking again so the practice is in learning to stay there longer and longer until this is who you are to make that who you are is a process to experience it is instantaneous these Concepts apply to teaching U particularly younger students high school students actually going back to theing swinging you know well yeah I mean I haven’t had a lot of experience with preol people I have had some and you know you could take it all the way down to Little Children the first thing a person learns when they play an instrument is a drag you know trying to learn to read or you know and they may never have made that sensual connection with the instrument who here had a teacher that said oh just fool around how’s that feel what’s it feel like you know immediately they were into now you have to do this put it there Meanwhile your parents are giving this really inspiring message well you got to practice so for a kid playing music feels like homework work that they don’t get graded on and what do they need with this and that’s why as soon as they can they stop but then they are always sorry they stop because they see the gift of music but they see it in other people some people had such a karmic Destiny to play music or whatever you want to call it that even the educational system couldn’t ruin them and as a result they became musicians you know now when you get to high school I I did a high school group one day it was a hybrid High School uh and junior high and I was trying to illustrate to them how to play un changes so we took one chord and we said what the scale is now I said to this trone player now just play any notes from that scale and he was so timid see if you know that scale and you’re not going to change the chord then the excuse is not I don’t know what to play you’re just afraid to play it so I said to him just close your eyes and you know what the kid said he had never closed his eyes and played before because obviously he’s been in band concert orchestra concert band he’s been reading music since day one you know I said close your eyes and pick any note from that scale and the only thing I want to say is play it for sure play it definitely you know and he started to do that and I tell you in the beginning he a trone player he was down in the middle register where you don’t have to commit and after once he got this it was like a a sail with the winds he started playing the upper register and all this stuff on that scale and then I told the other people I see I was just playing a vamp on the one chord support him with this lick uh you know then now support him with that lick they went da da you know whatever you know and it was a support but because they were thinking were supporting him they just naturally took a dynamic underneath what he was doing and he felt them supporting him and when he opened his eyes he said it was the greatest experience he had had in his life so here are kids in high school already and he never really had the real experience of music you know so I think it’s important and I don’t know exact there’s no patented method to do this to establish the joy of playing first even if you get them in high school let’s say you get them in high school they’ve already been ruined several times over but they’re not irretrievable in every way show them the joy of being able to do this and listening to it you know and then if there are issues to be taught they’re going to be have so much more energy for for learning it you know when it comes to phrasing I don’t know what to say about phrasing because phrasing is the depending on your instrument it’s a natural extension of one’s breath you know phrasing is not the same for for for two different people I you know you could point out how other people did it but always try to point to the connection of how their lives live led to that you know look he was this kind of person so when he put the horn in his mouth it was an extension of that you know I I think that’s what’s important about the biography not where they studied and what year they wrote this piece and what year they died but what kind of personality do they have what what were their Tendencies and then you listen to their music realizing that that was the sound of that personality I just think and the other quick answer to every teacher is learn this deep connection yourself and then all you have to do is walk into the room and it’s just going to happen if you embody that Liberation music is a liberating factor I mean it’s a liberating thing the the reason we don’t think it is because you have to learn forms in order to be liberated it’s like Yoga Yoga you take you do these twisting things but the idea is to create a Liberation while you’re in the most pretzel likee shape you’re actually breathing and you’re actually more comfortable if you’re a master at yoga that person that looks like they just stuck their big toe in their ear that person is more comfortable than the guy lying on the couch Liberation through form is such a great attainment that it’s the greatest feeling of Liberation I once heard a u a rebi hiic rabbi say the problem with the 60s was everybody wanted freedom from not freedom to that’s beautiful that says it all you know in other words people you know dropped out to be free and well I don’t have to do that my parents did that but that’s Square you know and so what they did was they dropped out from everything and what they found there was decadence and boredom You Want to Be Free by mastering the form and learning that on that level you can do no wrong every Instinct you have is right there in that form that kind of freedom is that important it’s a game human beings are here we’re here we got to do something I mean person doesn’t have to do it but we have this ability to master ideas and forms and then transcend them it’s a great way to spend the life it’s a lot better than just flipping through TV Guide you know now somehow you communicate that but that’s what you embody I could teach I do feel I could teach any class and within a short time they would share my excitement for the subject and I think it’s important to get them on board that way more important than teaching them anything because what’s the point of teaching somebody something about phrasing when basically they’ve never experienced why they’re even playing that’s the biggest question why are you playing you know there was a part in my book why do we play you know it starts with an attraction you hit a not you went wow that is amaz you know but after a while it gets to be about all these sort of lesser things like well I started I can’t stop now I got to be a success or he plays next door and I you know but ultimately getting back I try to get back to that Wonder like the first time every time I just get engrossed in something and I say it’s better than anything else I do so it’s so I mean I guess I would the class I would work on them seeing first you know have that vision of what music really is so I guess my class would be purely philosophic until I felt like they caught the the bug listening listening yeah yeah no I mean yeah but um they you know some may still not get it maybe it’s what you explain I I had a teacher I never liked Opera but in junior high school I had a teacher Who Loved Opera and he put this one Opera I can still remember all the Aras IL trator in fact the only Opera I can remember the name to because this guy put the record on and he acted all the parts like that he was so into it that we were enthralled and then we went to see IL tror and for one Opera for one year in my life I loved Opera see seeing it Through The Eyes of someone who loved Opera so I guess you know Let Your Love Of The Music yourself just shine through and that may be the reason we had another teacher who was our theater teacher and he made so many people for so many people that came through his class or his you know experience of knowing him that was the most special thing that they ever had in the whole 12 years of public school many of them went on to be uh actors it was the Charisma of this guy what is the Charisma made of it’s made of his genuine love for theater you know I think that’s the easiest way for students to piggy back on a teacher say hey look I already know how beautiful this is get on my back and I’ll show you you know e w oh https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-branson-ted-life-at-30000-feet/analysis/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-branson-ted-life-at-30000-feet/analysis/ Analysis: Richard Branson - “Life at 30,000 Feet” TED Talk A comprehensive analysis of Richard Branson’s TED interview with Chris Anderson Executive Summary This TED talk, conducted when Branson was 56 years old, covers his business philosophy, personal adventures, challenges with dyslexia, legal troubles, family values, and his evolving views on philanthropy. At its core, the talk reveals a man who has built a £25 billion empire with 55,000 employees by embracing risk, treating people well, and maintaining an insatiable curiosity about how industries can be improved. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-branson-ted-life-at-30000-feet/analysis_compressed/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-branson-ted-life-at-30000-feet/analysis_compressed/ Richard Branson: “Life at 30,000 Feet” - Core Ideas Business Philosophy If you can run one company, you can run any company Companies are about finding the right people, inspiring them, and drawing out their best Reputation is everything - “it’s a very small world” Treating people well creates sustainable competitive advantage The ruthless business stereotype doesn’t actually work Disruption Mindset Love taking on the status quo and turning it upside down Life is one long learning process When you see a poor experience, ask: could I create something better? https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-branson-ted-life-at-30000-feet/article/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-branson-ted-life-at-30000-feet/article/ Life at 30,000 Feet: A Conversation with Richard Branson A TED Talk Interview by Chris Anderson Introduction Chris Anderson: Welcome to TED. Richard Branson: Thank you very much. The first TED has been great. CA: Have you met anyone interesting? RB: Well, the nice thing about TED is everybody’s interesting. I was very glad to see Goldie Hawn, because I had an apology to make to her. I’d had dinner with her about two years ago and she had this big wedding ring and I put it on my finger and I couldn’t get it off. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-branson-ted-life-at-30000-feet/raw_transcript/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-branson-ted-life-at-30000-feet/raw_transcript/ Chris Anderson: Welcome to TED. Richard Branson: Thank you very much. The first TED has been great. CA: Have you met anyone interesting? RB: Well, the nice thing about TED is everybody’s interesting. I was very glad to see Goldie Hawn, because I had an apology to make to her. I’d had dinner with her about two years ago and I’d – she had this big wedding ring and I put it on my finger and I couldn’t get it off. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-feynman-fun-to-imagine/analysis/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-feynman-fun-to-imagine/analysis/ Analysis: Richard Feynman’s “Fun to Imagine” A comprehensive analysis of the core ideas, teaching methods, and insights from Feynman’s legendary physics discussions. Executive Summary “Fun to Imagine” represents Richard Feynman at his pedagogical best—transforming complex physics into accessible, wonder-filled explanations. The transcript covers topics ranging from atomic motion and heat to quantum mechanics, from electromagnetic forces to black holes. Throughout, Feynman demonstrates his unique ability to make the invisible visible through analogy while maintaining intellectual honesty about the limits of human understanding. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-feynman-fun-to-imagine/analysis_compressed/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-feynman-fun-to-imagine/analysis_compressed/ Core Ideas: Feynman’s “Fun to Imagine” (Compressed) Physics Concepts Heat & Thermodynamics Heat = atomic vibration speed; faster atoms = higher temperature Heat transfer = momentum exchange via atomic collisions Energy is conserved but transforms: ordered motion → disordered thermal motion Atoms are perfectly elastic (never lose energy); macroscopic objects are not Surface Tension Water molecules attract each other, want maximum “companions” Surface molecules only have neighbors on one side → pull inward Result: droplets minimize surface area → spherical shape Fire & Combustion Activation energy: atoms must overcome energy barrier to bond Chain reaction: released heat accelerates other atoms past barrier Trees store solar energy; burning = releasing stored sunlight Photosynthesis separates O from C; fire recombines them States of Matter Solid: atoms locked in lattice, can only vibrate in place Liquid: atoms can roll past each other but stay together Gas: atoms move too fast to hold on, bounce off each other Compressing gas heats it (atoms hit faster-moving piston, gain speed) Expanding gas cools it (atoms lose energy to retreating piston) Electromagnetic Forces Electric force ~10^38-40 times stronger than gravity Chair pushing back on your hand = electromagnetic force (same as magnets) Matter appears neutral because + and - charges precisely cancel Long-range “mysterious” forces = slight charge imbalances Rubber Bands Most elasticity = energy-driven (atomic attraction) Rubber = entropy-driven (thermal motion twists stretched chains back) Heating rubber makes it CONTRACT (opposite of most materials) Test: stretch rubber on lips = feels hot; compress = feels cool Light & EM Spectrum Light = electromagnetic wave (3D version of water ripples) All EM radiation is same phenomenon: radio, infrared, visible, X-rays, gamma Difference is only wavelength/frequency Radio waves always present; we only notice when receiver is on Pit vipers “see” infrared to hunt warm prey Philosophy of Science The “Why” Problem Every “why” answer generates another “why” (infinite regress) Must accept some things as fundamental starting points Magnetism cannot be explained by “more familiar” things—it IS fundamental “I cannot explain it using anything you’re more familiar with—because I don’t understand it that way myself” Limits of Visualization Quantum behavior defies all analogies: not wave, not particle, not cloud Mathematics describes it perfectly; pictures fail “We know how to calculate, but we cannot picture this car” Nature’s imagination exceeds human imagination Cognitive Differences People think in radically different ways (visual vs auditory counting) Successful communication = translation between incompatible mental systems What seems obvious to one person may be opaque to another Teaching Philosophy Anyone Can Learn “There are no miraculous people” Scientists = ordinary people who got interested and studied hard No special talent required—only interest + effort + time “If you find an ordinary person willing to invest time studying, thinking, calculating—they become a scientist” Joy of Understanding Physics thinking = pleasure comparable to runner’s high “I can’t stop, I could go on forever” Understanding should be playful, not anxious about being tested The process of imagining IS the reward Intellectual Honesty Refuse false explanations (don’t use rubber bands to explain magnetism) Acknowledge what we don’t/can’t know Distinguish fundamental principles from derived explanations Accept that some things simply ARE, without deeper “why” Elegant Solutions Train Wheels Common answer (flanges) is wrong—flanges are backup safety only Real answer: wheels are conical (thicker on inside) When train veers, outer wheel rolls on larger radius → naturally self-corrects No differential needed—pure geometry solves two problems at once Mirror Puzzle Mirrors don’t flip left-right—they flip FRONT-BACK East stays east, west stays west, up stays up We interpret image as “person who rotated 180°” (psychological, not optical) Solving requires recognizing our unconscious assumptions Cosmic Perspective Scale Atom:apple = apple:Earth (proportional thinking) Counting Milky Way stars at 1/second = 3,000 years Don’t try to truly visualize extreme scales—use ratios Humans exist at middle scale: huge vs atoms, tiny vs galaxies Astrophysics Imagination Neutron stars: predicted decades before discovery (pulsars confirmed) Black holes: logical consequence of Einstein’s equations pushed to extreme “Creative imagination”: using known laws to predict unknown phenomena Theoretical physics = disciplined imagination, not wild speculation Key Quotes “This atomic picture is extremely beautiful. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-feynman-fun-to-imagine/article/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-feynman-fun-to-imagine/article/ Fun to Imagine - Richard Feynman A transcript of the legendary physicist Richard Feynman discussing physics, imagination, and the nature of reality. Part 1: The Joy of Science and Imagination 有趣的是，有些人觉得科学很简单，而有些人觉得它枯燥又困难。尤其是小孩，有些小孩只是照单全收。我不知道为什么，也许所有学科都一样。比如说很多人喜欢音乐，而我却永远跟不上调，我也因此失去了很多乐趣。 同样我认为，那些觉得科学枯燥的人也失去了很多乐趣。 就科学而言，我认为使得它很困难的原因之一就是——科学需要丰富的想象力。很难想象出所有这些离奇的物体本来的面目。 Part 2: Heat, Cold, and Atomic Motion 任何事物都不是它看起来那么简单，比如我们熟悉的冷热。 冷和热取决于原子振动的速度。 原子振动越快，对应就越热，反之越慢就越冷。 如果你有一大堆原子，比如说一杯咖啡啥的，放在桌上——杯里的原子振动很厉害，不停地撞击杯子内壁。杯子受到了振动，于是杯子本身的原子也加强振动。它们相互撞击，杯子就被加热了，周围的东西都被加热了。 然后热的东西仅通过接触就把热量传播给其他的东西。因为热的物体中原子振动更剧烈，使得冷的物体里不活跃的原子跟着振动起来。因此热量进入冷的物体，热量传递开来。 但传递的只是振动，一种无规则的运动，这是很容易理解的。 完美弹性的原子 这引出了另一件有趣的事：当我说物体振动时，你想象的是小球的跳动。你知道这种跳动会逐渐减缓，一段时间后会停下来。 但我们必须想象原子具有完美的弹性，它们不会失去任何能量。 它们不停撞击，始终在撞击但不会失去任何能量。它们是在永恒地运动。 而那些会损失能量的物体运动——比如小球在地板上跳动——它把振动无规则地传给了地板上的一些原子。当小球弹起后，留下了一堆更快运动的原子不停振动。 因此随着小球跳动，它把它多余的能量、多余的运动传递给地板上的原子，每次它反弹时它都损失一点热量。直到它停下来，这时我们说它下落运动结束。但遗留下来的就是地板上的原子振动比之前更剧烈了，以及小球里的原子也振动更剧烈了。 原本小球中所有的原子以下落的方式有序运动，还有平静的地板，现在变成了一个停在地板上的小球。但所有的运动依然以动能的形式存在。地板里原子的振动使得地板有一点变热，难以置信！ 但那些经常锤东西的人知道这是真的。如果你敲击一个东西，敲了很多下，你就能感受到温度升高了，它有点热了。被敲物体变热仅仅是因为你在让它振动。 这种原子图景是极具美感的。 你可以一直用这种方式来观察各种事物。 Part 3: Surface Tension and the Dance of Atoms 你观察一小滴水，很小一滴。原子相互吸引，它们喜欢靠在一起，它们想有尽可能多的同伴。 而现在在水滴表面的那些原子只有一侧有同伴，另一侧是空气，于是它们想要钻进来。 你可以想象有一堆人，所有人都快速移动，都想要尽可能多的同伴。在边缘的人很不高兴，非常紧张，他们不断地冲击，试图冲进来，这就构成一个紧密的球，而不是摊开成一个面。 这就是表面张力。 有时候你看到一个水滴像球一样立在桌面上时，你就会开始想象为什么它会这样——因为每个原子都想进入到水里去。在试着进入的同时，也有原子正离开表面，于是水滴就慢慢消失了。 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-feynman-fun-to-imagine/raw_transcript/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/richard-feynman-fun-to-imagine/raw_transcript/ 有趣的是，有些人觉得科学很简单 而有些人觉得它枯燥又困难 尤其是小孩，有些小孩只是照单全收 我不知道为什么，也许所有学科都一样 比如说很多人喜欢音乐，而我却永远跟不上调 我也因此失去了很多乐趣 同样我认为，那些觉得科学枯燥的人也失去了很多乐趣 就科学而言，我认为使得它很困难的原因之一就是 科学需要丰富的想象力 很难想象出所有这些离奇的物体本来的面目 任何事物都不是它看起来那么简单，比如我们熟悉的冷热 冷和热取决于原子振动的速度 原子振动越快，对应就越热，反之越慢就越冷 如果你有一大堆原子，比如说一杯咖啡啥的，放在桌上 杯里的原子振动很厉害，不停地撞击杯子内壁 杯子受到了振动，于是杯子本身的原子也加强振动 它们相互撞击，杯子就被加热了，周围的东西都被加热了 然后热的东西仅通过接触就把热量传播给其他的东西 因为热的物体中原子振动更剧烈 使得冷的物体里不活跃的原子跟着振动起来 因此热量进入冷的物体，热量传递开来 但传递的只是振动，一种无规则的运动，这是很容易理解的 这引出了另一件有趣的事: 当我说物体振动时，你想象的是小球的跳动 你知道这种跳动会逐渐减缓，一段时间后会停下来 但我们必须想象原子具有完美的弹性，它们不会失去任何能量 它们不停撞击，始终在撞击但不会失去任何能量 它们是在永恒地运动 而那些会损失能量的物体运动 比如小球在地板上跳动 它把振动无规则地传给了地板上的一些原子 当小球弹起后，留下了一堆更快运动的原子不停振动 因此随着小球跳动，它把它多余的能量，多余的运动 传递给地板上的原子，每次它反弹时它都损失一点热量 直到它停下来，这时我们说它下落运动结束 但遗留下来的就是地板上的原子振动比之前更剧烈了 以及小球里的原子也振动更剧烈了 原本小球中所有的原子以下落的方式有序运动 还有平静的地板，现在变成了一个停在地板上的小球 但所有的运动依然以动能的形式存在 地板里原子的振动使得地板有一点变热，难以置信！ 但那些经常锤东西的人知道这是真的 如果你敲击一个东西，敲了很多下 你就能感受到温度升高了，它有点热了 被敲物体变热仅仅是因为你在让它振动 这种原子图景是极具美感的 你可以一直用这种方式来观察各种事物 你观察一小滴水，很小一滴 原子相互吸引，它们喜欢靠在一起 它们想有尽可能多的同伴 而现在在水滴表面的那些原子只有一侧有同伴 另一侧是空气，于是它们想要钻进来 你可以想象有一堆人，所有人都快速移动 都想要尽可能多的同伴 在边缘的人很不高兴，非常紧张，他们不断地冲击 试图冲进来，这就构成一个紧密的球，而不是摊开成一个面 这就是表面张力 有时候你看到一个水滴像球一样立在桌面上时 你就会开始想象为什么它会这样 因为每个原子都想进入到水里去 在试着进入的同时，也有原子正离开表面 于是水滴就慢慢消失了 我发现自己一直在试着想象所有这些现象 我从想象中得到乐趣，就像跑步者从出汗中得到乐趣一样 我从对这些现象的思考中获得快乐 我停不下来，我可以一直说下去 如果你能把水冷却 那么原子振动越来越少，振动得越来越慢 那么原子就会被限制在一个区域，它们喜欢和同伴在一起 有吸引力存在，它们就会挤在一起 它们不会互相挤压，会形成很漂亮的图案 就像橘子在果箱里整齐排列，每一个只能在固定位置晃动 但没有足够的动能来摆脱自身受限的位置 去破坏这个结构 我所描述的就是固态，即冰，它具有一个结构 如果你把原子放在一个特定的位置 那么其余的原子都是一字排开 最终形成固体 而如果你持续地加热 然后他们就开始失去束缚，互相滚动 这就是液态 而如果你还要用力加热，那么它们就会跳动得更剧烈 它们就会相互撞击并弹开 于是它们成了单个的 虽然我说的原子，其实它们是原子的组合，分子 分子飞来撞去 虽然它们倾向于待在一起，但它们移动太快 通���来讲，在它们迎面相遇时，它们的“手”抓不住 于是又飞远了，这种气态就是我们所说的“蒸汽” 你会对各种现象有所理解 在我小时候，我一直都对“空气”感兴趣 我注意到当我给自行车的轮胎打气时 （有一辆自行车你可以学到很多东西） 我给轮胎打气，打气筒会变热 这其实很好理解，随着气筒活塞往下压 原子撞向它后反弹，但活塞是往下运动 原子撞击活塞反弹后的速度要大于撞击之前 因此随着活塞继续往下，原子每撞击一次 它的速度增加 所以当你压缩气体时它们会变热 而当你把活塞往外拉 速度很快的原子撞上活塞后 付出了一些动能，所以原子能量减少了 这就像一拳打到棉花上，陷了进去，“嘭嘭” 损失了能量，当你把活塞往外拉 原子撞上去速度就会减少，于是温度就降低了 所以当气体膨胀时温度降低 有趣之处在于，你在这世界上观察到的所有现象 比如你气体压缩就会升温，膨胀就会冷却 或者如果不给水杯加盖，里面的水就会蒸发 所有这些现象都可以用简单的原子图景来加以理解 这样去思考就会很有趣 我不想把这种思考看的太严肃 我认为我们应该快乐地想象，而不用有所顾虑 不会有老师在最后来提问 否则这就是个令人讨厌的学科 不同原子间想要靠在一起的程度是不同的 例如，空气中的氧原子想要紧挨着碳原子 如果它们靠得太近，它们激烈地结合在一起 如果它们靠得不是很近，它们会相互排斥，然后分开 所以它们不知道它们可以结合在一起 这就好像有一个球试着往山上爬 前方有一个洞，它可以钻进去，就像火山口一样 很深的洞口，这个球只是绕着它转，并不掉进去 因为当球开始爬坡时，接着就会滚回来 但如果你让它走得够快越过临界点，它就会掉进洞里 所以如果有木头之类的物体与氧气接触 树木里有碳原子 氧原子过来撞击碳原子，但温度不够高 氧原子又跑掉了，空气总是来了又去，无事发生 如果你用某种方式加热氧原子使它变快 一开始让少数原子加速，也就是让它们能越过临界点 它们足够接近碳原子，然后两者激烈地结合 这就会产生更多剧烈地振动，可能会撞击其他原子 使它们运动得更快，这样它们就能越过临界点，撞击其他的碳原子 它们不停振动导致其他原子一起振动，就会发生可怕的灾难 一个接一个的原子振动得越来越快 激烈地结合，一切都改变了 这种“灾难”就是火 这就是描述“火”的一种方式 这种撞击一直在发生，永不停歇 一旦开始就持续不停 产生的热量使得其他原子有能力去撞击 产生更多的热量，使更多的原子产生相同的行为 所以这种激烈地结合会引发很多地振动 如果我把那些缺乏活力的原子放到那边 好比我把一杯冷咖啡放到一堆正在燃烧的木头旁边 咖啡里的原子就会发生激烈地振动，这就是火的热量 当然就会有… 看吧，当你开始思考时就会这样，完全停不下来 就想知道这是如何开始的 为什么木头一直和氧气呆在一起，之前却没有出现“火” 这个热量是从哪儿来的？ 其实它来源于树 树的实体是碳，那碳又从哪里来的? https://liamzebedee.com/draft/victor-vescovo-five-deeps-expedition/analysis/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/victor-vescovo-five-deeps-expedition/analysis/ Analysis: Reaching the Five Deeps with Victor Vescovo A comprehensive analysis of the key themes, insights, and lessons from Victor Vescovo’s conversation at the Adventurers’ Club of Los Angeles about the Five Deeps Expedition. 1. Risk Management Philosophy Victor Vescovo articulates a sophisticated approach to risk management that bridges his military intelligence background, business acumen, and extreme exploration. The 90/10 Principle Vescovo accepts a 90% confidence threshold for first-time ventures into the unknown. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/victor-vescovo-five-deeps-expedition/analysis_compressed/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/victor-vescovo-five-deeps-expedition/analysis_compressed/ Core Ideas: Victor Vescovo’s Five Deeps Expedition Risk Management Accept 90% confidence for first attempts at the unknown—10% failure risk is acceptable for breakthrough ventures Confidence intervals improve with each iteration; the first attempt is always the most dangerous The line between adventurous and reckless is “being an absolute expert at risk management” Design for passive safety: “The laws of physics would have to be violated for me not to come back” “I believe in two things: mathematics and titanium” Engineering Philosophy Design for the primary requirement (going down), not convention (submarines look like torpedoes) Non-traditional expertise often produces better results than formal credentials Titanium over steel: strength-to-weight ratio enables human capacity at practical size Test components individually when full-system testing is impossible; trust mathematical models Real-world testing reveals vulnerabilities that theory cannot predict Private Sector Advantage 15-minute decisions vs. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/victor-vescovo-five-deeps-expedition/article/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/victor-vescovo-five-deeps-expedition/article/ Reaching the Five Deeps with Victor Vescovo A conversation at the Adventurers’ Club of Los Angeles Introduction Rich Mayfield: Welcome to the Adventurers’ Club of Los Angeles. My name is Rich Mayfield, member 1211. I’m here tonight with Victor Vescovo. Victor, thank you so much for coming. We appreciate you coming out. We’re here tonight to talk about your Five Deeps Expedition, but I want to start by getting to know who you are first and how you got to this point. https://liamzebedee.com/draft/victor-vescovo-five-deeps-expedition/raw_transcript/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/draft/victor-vescovo-five-deeps-expedition/raw_transcript/ all right welcome to the adventures club of Los Angeles my name is Rich Mayfield member 1211 I’m here tonight with Victor vovo now Victor thank you so much for coming we appreciate you coming out um we’re here tonight to talk about your five deeps Expedition but I want to start I want to kind of get to know who you are first and and how you got to this point so get we always like to bring it back to the beginning what gave you the bug to be an Explorer or an adventure like what was the what was the first thing that you did as a as a human being I was born I think it’s genetic I there are some interesting discussions during our Expedition we had some Expedition doctors and uh there is some literature out there saying that human beings fall on the spectrum of how adventurous frankly they are there are some people that are very very conservative in how they live and then there are the ones that want to know what’s on the other side of that hill and the one after and the one after and you know maybe we’re the Expendable ones that push us forward a bit but I think I was born with all the copies of that Gene so I think the most dangerous thing that happened to me when I was young was my parents giving me my first bicycle when I was six and uh and that’s the last they saw of me for a while so I think you just took off and you know you came back at dinner time maybe yeah and I was born and raised in Texas I’m a proud Texan apologies to all the Californians here but uh being nice and flat allowed me to go for quite a distance that’s interesting so you you bring up an interesting point not everybody is into adventure and everybody’s on the Spectrum what how many people do you think are are on the spectrum of Adventure at your level in the world at my level God help them I would say a fraction of a percent because there’s the other issue of you know there’s a there’s an axis of risk-taking there’s a very very fine line between being really adventurous and being a successful Explorer or Adventurer and being Reckless uh probably the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done in my life life was high altitude mountaineering for several decades and it’s a very very fine line between having a good Summit day and not coming back and one of the key elements of Adventure and exploring is being an absolute expert of risk management many people in this room I’m sure can appreciate that if you don’t do that correctly you’re just playing Russian roulette and that’s why I always come back so so I think your resume kind of started with your Navy career did you join the Navy immedi after college or high school was it the Navy thing kind of happened on the side I was uh heavily involved into mountain climbing which is what I was primarily kind of doing my adventuring in my 20s and 30s I was actually approached to join the Navy when I was in business school in Boston and I I speak a couple of languages I’d done some mathematical simulations of Warfare when I was at MIT and the Navy contacted me and said hey we have this interesting program for guys like you and uh would you like to get a commission and be an intelligence officer in the reserve I went okay uh sounds interesting and 20 years later I had been in the Navy for 20 years first 10 years I was a targeting officer I was involved in the war in Kosovo and in uh in in Iraq I was with carrier airwing N9 off the nits and then 911 happened and so for the next 10 years especially because one of my languages is Arabic I went into counterterrorism interesting so so the Navy was kind of a side career for you what was your what was your primary career my primary career was business so I studed I started as a Management Consultant and then eventually really rapidly I went into private equity and took other people’s money and tried to make more of it by doing heavy industrial Investments my first big achievement was in of course being in Texas was an oil and gas company and that did very well but we also did a lot of basic industry type stuff and that allowed me to found with another individual a private Equity Firm and we did very very well and that allowed me to pursue my other passion which I’d been developing from mountaineering which was more intensive Explorations because when you start getting really really high-end Explorations particularly in the ocean it gets really expensive really fast so so you did the Explorers Grand Slam yeah so you so you hiked Every Mountain on every continent and and ski to the North and South Pole yes at that point were you looking for a new Venture ADV Venture yeah in a way I was and there’s also you know mountaineering when you do it a lot I mean I got invited to go to K2 and that’s when you have to start going okay am I a professional or not and what is the risk that I’m willing to take and I was getting older and mountain climbing in some respects is a Young Person’s game it it starts getting dangerous and you can think you’re going to be you know Immortal and live forever but in the ultimate high altitude mountains it gets really really dangerous especially when your body starts to not be quite the same that it was in its late 20s and early 30s so I said what’s a different adventure maybe that I could do a complete 180 one might say and what you know what’s kind of symmetrical going up high oh I could go down low and then I heard about Richard Branson who actually had what he called the five Dives project to go to the bottom of all five of the world’s oceans but the technology that he chose was not really appropriate it wouldn’t work it was carbon fiber it was a quartz crystal canopy and the project was abandoned but I was sitting at my home in Dallas one day and I kind of studied it that’s what I do when I’m bored and uh I said we have the technology to go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench the triest did it in 1960 in James camera did in 2012 we could we could do this why isn’t it being done and so I got a spreadsheet together I talked to some people I did some research and I said this is actually doable but you have to build a new submersible and you’d have to fund it but fortunately I had the means to do that and so I made the decision I just made the commitment I said you know if not me who no government’s even trying to do this and it’s about time we went to the bottom of four of our world’s five oceans so so is the issue that that the submersibles weren’t reusable in a sense like okay it it went down let’s talk about Challenger Deep that is one of the most brutal points on the planet you’re talking 16,000 lbs per square inch it’s like four automobiles on your fingernail on every single surface of the submersible freezing temperatures corrosive saltwater whenever you go down really deep the environment is literally using God’s Own Hammer to try and Destroy whatever vehicle you can go into space and with enough oxygen supplies you can stay in space for years you cannot stay at the bottom of the ocean more than about 6 or 12 hours it is slowly destroying the craft that’s why the triest only went down once Challenger Deep Sea Challenger went down once so we were trying to develop a submersible that could do it repeatedly and safely which would allow us to go anywhere in the world I really I’m motivated by technology I like to push technology forward I really wanted to build a door so that human beings could go anywhere on the sea floor repeatedly and safely that was the real drive for me was to do it and I’m a pilot so I wanted to Pilot the damn thing I can’t believe that Elon Musk and Jeff bezo Stone go up well Jeff did go up in their own rocket right I’d be the first one on it but anyway that’s me so that’s interesting because you know these other submersibles one off one shot how how do you even get to the point where you can say this is safe enough for for man travel when it’s never been down there before math I and you just really have to trust the math I was interviewed by a reporter once he said you know are are you a really religious person Victor did you have religious Transformations on your experiences and I said not really I said I really believe in two things mathematics and titanium and and that’s what allowed me to do the finite element analysis the mathematical simulation of materials and structures under stress in silica that allowed us to have a very high confidence that it would survive because the first time my submersible the limiting factor Dove to the bottom of Challenger Deep that was the first time it had ever been fully assembled and Dove to that depth there is no pressure chamber on Earth large enough to test the full system we had to test all the components but not all together and that in some respects is the real trick and I was in it but I was in it because I trusted the math and I trusted the engineers and I also knew we had a lot of backups that’s interesting cuz engineer I’m the exact opposite I don’t trust the math I want to see it show show all right and do it again okay now it’s safe right I mean you can’t do that for everything right well no but that’s you can’t otherwise you’re never going to get out of bed in the morning I mean you can’t test everything to Perfection you test enough and repeatedly enough that you get a certain degree of confidence another question I got asked once was okay so what is your degree of confidence that you have to have to do something like that that’s that dangerous and I said 90% And they said so let me get this straight so you’re willing to take like a one and 10 risk that you like not come back and you would say okay and I said yeah that’s but you sound like a guy that’s taken more than 10 shots though correct but it’s the first one where it’s 9010 once it had done it and once we got to know the character once it came back you know we tore it apart looked at it you know what went right what went wrong the confidence interval goes up just like an aircraft the first time you fly an experimental aircraft is the most dangerous time to fly that aircraft after you’ve done it 10 or 12 times it’s not as dangerous so it’s the same principle so you you had a picture in here I want to advance to a couple slides of of the actual uh I would call it a schematic yeah there’s the submersible to limiting factor so it started with two brilliant British designers John Ramsay and Tom blades and they designed it so that it could go up and down in the water efficiently that’s why it looks the way it does it doesn’t look like a conventional sub submarine but it was able to go laterally you know in a reasonable amount but it was primarily designed to do one thing and that was to survive repeated Journeys to the bottom of the ocean wherever it may be that’s interesting cuz you know we’ve seen pictures of like Alvin right it’s a famous one and it it looks like a a sub correct that’s meant to go forward right but it well that’s a brilliant example of human nature where designers design things that they’re familiar with the two individuals that designed the limiting factor did not have a formal education in submarine design but they did have an incredible background in materials science and electronic systems so they just took what are the requirements that I gave them and from the requirements they designed the optimal design and the fundamental requirement is it is going down correct it’s not a torpedo correct like every sub I’ve ever seen is a torpedo right and just think about the design it’s actually has a perfect center of gravity it’s not weighted heavily on one end with the pressure Capsule that’s really heavy and you have to balance it on the other end it’s inherently stable right so it’s interesting you named this limiting factor which is totally an Engineers thing so what was the limiting factor in this whole project the limiting factor was simply how to design systems that could survive the beating it took at the ultimate depth the gaskets the small interfaces those are always the weak points and that pressure over time will find the weakest point in that submersible if you have a thousand points of vulnerability on a submersible like this nature will immediately go to the weakest one and just start pounding it but the name the limiting factor actually comes from the name of a Starship in my favorite science fiction series the culture by Scottish author Ian Banks if any of you are familiar with him so it’s a it’s an omage to him actually the the ships that Elon Musk lands the Falcon 9 rockets on are also named from the same Series so there it’s some real deep nerd stuff right there I love it so in the center is this titanium sphere correct that you had built that two person yeah the first submarine that went down was a two person sphere but it was made out of steel which is why the triest was enormous it was actually using gasoline as its buoyancy because gasoline is lighter than salt water but it was really heavy but it really couldn’t move so when Don went down to the bottom of the ocean and he was good friend of mine they went down they were only down there for like 10 or 15 minutes and came right back up they didn’t maneuver at all it was just too unwieldly to maneuver that massive craft it had to be towed out to the Marana trench James Cameron had the deep sea Challenger that was also a steel material it’s cheaper it’s highly characterized we know how it operates but it had to be small so Jim actually was like this you know for the entire Journey up and down because they couldn’t make it much bigger it would have been too heavy they couldn’t have carried on the back I really wanted to have a pilot and a scientist on board and that was one of my design requirements they said well that’s going to be a lot harder you won’t be able to use steel it would be enormous you’d have to tow it and that holds has a whole lot of problems and we settled on titanium the biggest issue with titanium it is really really hard to machine that takes time but most of all it’s incredibly expensive so I wrote the check so I kind of want to know about that check so just the most people do just the U titanium sphere there how much was that tiny titanium sphere it was about 12 million and what was the total cost of the submersible 35 so a little bit less than half that just just and what did they deliver you just a sphere with nothing no no they’ve developed a fully machine sphere and probably the most complex part of the entire submersible which were the three windows and we had huge arguments over how many windows to have because the triest and the deep sea Challenger only had one because that is the that is a key vulnerability the submersible you don’t go poking holes in the pressure hole they wanted three and they being Triton they said no you need one to look down and you need one for the passenger and one for the pilot I went okay but we figured out how to do it so when they delivered the titanium sphere it had six penetrations it had the three Windows it had two for the electrical conduits which were frankly easier to develop than the than the viewports and then the hatch the triest had a hatch deep seat Challenger didn’t have a hatch they bolted Jim into it I wasn’t going to have that and uh you wanted to be able to pop the hatch which I could and that was an emergency scenario if anything had gone terribly wrong I would have been able to get to the surface pop the hatch and get out and have a GPS you know telephone and get to get me out of there so it’s just a different Evolution did you get push back on that requirement that’s an interesting requirement to I want to be able to pop the hatch no actually they insisted because this was the first submersible that could go to the bottom of the ocean that was commercially certified by DMV the German Norwegian firm that actually makes something commercially safe like an airliner and they said no you need to be able to get out you can’t be bolted into something that’s commercially certified so we’re very and that added another 6 months or 10 months to the design and certification and probably added another 30% to the cost to make it that safe that’s why Prince Albert of Monaco went in the sub with me to the bottom of the Mediterranean that’s why Kathy Sullivan the first woman to the bottom got in it with very few questions this was a commercially certified tested device that was inherently safe in fact the third dive to the bottom of the ocean in this submersible was done by Patrick Ley the guy who designed and built it and the German lead engineer for submersibles from Germany that was one of their requirements was that one of their guys had to go down in it and test it he wanted to it wasn’t put a gun to his head yeah he put a gun to his head so how many times has it been down the limiting factor has been down to the bottom of the ocean I believe 202 times and do you do you guys have um some math that that predicts its lifespan or how many how many cycles it the titanium sphere the pressure hle is designed to withstand up to 10,000 Dives interesting but we basically had to replace certain components of it after every five dies every every 10 what’s really here’s a little funny story dnv that certified the submersible they said yeah after every Deep dive you have to log it and when you get to about 25 you have to tear it apart check everything and then put it back together Etc that’s one of our requirements I said okay but what counts as a deep dive and they thought about it they said about 4,000 meters went okay so all of our Dives to the Titanic they didn’t even count because it wasn’t deep enough that’s easy that’s kind kind of cool so so what kind of you you did some testing on the titanium sphere to start right yeah there’s only one place in the world we could pressure test the pressure vessel which was the biggest component of the sub and that was at the krylo Institute in St Petersburg Russia okay and that was at a sketchy time and so we actually put the pressure vessel in a container in Poland we drove it to Poland on a Friday we paid in cash and we tested it on a Saturday and got it out on a Sunday were you worried that like if it passed they we were extremely worried that they were going to keep it or that they were going to put a million dollar export tax on it we didn’t know we had the pressure vessel back until they cracked open the container in Florida and there it was we thought it could have been a lot of bricks huh yeah welcome to Russia so so there there’s a facility in you said St Petersburg uh no actually it was uh the production facility in Sebastian Florida where Triton is based so no where the where the test facility oh St Petersburg Russia yeah so so there’s a test facility how how deep was that able to test it it was able to test it to 20% greater than about 14,000 meters in fact there was so much energy in the system when they tested the the pressure vessel to that depth that they said if there had been a catastrophic failure in the mechanism it would have leveled the entire building so it was very it was the deepest they had ever tested anything and we’re talking Russia well I got to ask how much that test cost did you have to have insurance on it are you serious this was so non-ins insurable it was ridiculous this was all cash on a weekend when it was the last time you got insured for something like that so you’re taking this to this this building full of scientist and you’re saying testest totally on the down low this was a bunch of Russian guys that were trying to make money to pay the light bill and they didn’t want their own authorities finding out about it so yeah so basically if it had have imploded or something I mean we’re talking yeah can we come yes you come yeah you can come we can test it you have cash like yeah yeah we got cash it’s like okay can we come up on a Friday and be out by Sunday yes yes we can make this work do you have cash you know so if it goes bad just everybody walks away yeah pretty much nothing happen yeah and they’re like yeah you know who who’s going to come you know is Victor going to come no no don’t bring Victor no this is not good we just come very quiet you know so you had it tested so you know that your sphere and and when you tested it did it have all the through Hall penetrations like yep so that’s your test to give you confidence yep that at least you’re safe the other key design requirement that I gave the designers was the laws of physics would have to be violated for me not to come back and I know that’s a incredible but they kind of had that in mind so literally I had to struggle to figure out ways for the submersible to fail so that I could not come back the most dangerous dive I probably did was at the Titanic and people go why it’s not that deep the most risky thing that can happen in submersible is entanglement okay and at the Titanic you have two you have a really bad com three bad combinations the currents can be very strong stronger than the maximum power output of the submersible so you’re no longer in control if you get caught in a really you got this big pillow number two right number two the wreck is big it is a really big wreck which means there’s a lot of potential areas where you can get impaled or something else number three it has a lot of cables ropes and you’re always trying to get closer to get the best possible video for Discovery Channel so there were times when I was near the railing where actually the currents would just come out of nowhere and kind of push you towards or even into the wreck that happened once and if you ever got entangled that’s a really bad day because the submersible was designed according to dnvgl where everything had to be able to be ejectable if it could have been come entangled the thrusters the manipulator arm if this and that but if that happened your life depends on a single switch working and you never want to put yourself in that position so it was a it was a and I it was a mistake probably to dive the Titanic solo because you you need two pairs of eyes one set of eyes inside looking at the sonar looking at where you are another set of eyes looking at the wreck looking at the hazards and doing both in a strong current was incredibly stressful I never did it again and it was really sketchy so I I think I heard something there did did you hit the Titanic okay according have you touched the Titan that’s another way but I mean they made it sound they made it sound like I sank it again okay but when you dive in the Titanic you need to get a permit from the federal government because they passed a congressional law saying you need to it’s an it’s a British wreck in international waters why do I need an American permit but that’s just the rules one of the rules is you don’t touch the wreck unless you have authorization I and they said you can survey it but you can’t touch it so I mean I’m going around the rack I’m right next to it and this that and the other yeah current and I I bumped a railing and it was on video and I had to download my whole report I had to give Noah and the FEDS the video oh my God he touched the wreck oh my Lord I was hauled into federal court in Norfolk Virginia before a judge to explain myself of why we allowed the submersible to hit the wreck so the only time I’ve ever been prosecuted for a moving violation was when I hit the Titanic with my submersible well done how exactly and the and the judge was like really that’s it that’s all you did and like yes judge you’re dismissed so did he just ask to shake your hand and you be on your way she just looked disgusted and went really why did I’ve got better stuff to deal with yeah so traffic cour um a submarine version of it yeah I did how exactly does the US have any sort of jurisdiction over the Titanic well there’s a rationale to the Brits the Canadians and the Americans they didn’t want people going to the wreck and pillaging it so they passed a Federal US law saying that you need a permit and you know if you go and pillage the Titanic without a permit from the US then technically that’s a violation of our laws so if you ever come to the US Canada or the UK you could be arrested so it acts deter but if I was from Serbia and I wanted to go plunder the Titanic and I never went to the US yeah you could go do that but there aren’t that many submersibles I can get down that deep and it’s a big operation to bring stuff up yeah yeah you mentioned that uh so it’s interesting this whole project um you said the submersible there the Titanic yeah was 35,000 or $35 million yeah to build the submersible yeah what was the total cost of the entire project for four years yeah a lot more so so you the dirty the dirty secret of deep ocean exploration is okay the cost of the vessels is is extremely high the operations and maintenance of a 24/7 operation for marine exploration is extremely high which is why it is so rare it’s very expensive and governments even have a hard time rationalizing it and private individuals it’s extremely rare there are only a handful of private individuals like Ray Delio with ocean X Kell Roi of rev Ocean or Eric Schmidt of Schmid ocean I mean it’s like on one hand and then what I did I did it for four straight years but I was very thankful that Gabe Newell the American billionaire who founded the steam gaming Network bought my entire system system hired my entire crew and has funneled an enormous amount of money into the the exact same system and they’re diving in the Pacific and in Antarctic doing the science missions I’m incredibly thankful for him to do that that’s what I wanted but now that allows me the Liberty to learn from everything we did for four years and try and develop the Next Generation submersible that will be even more capable than the limiting factor I mean typical engineer I mean God there was I’ve got this list of all the things I would change about the original you know so when you were starting backtrack a little bit you you were basically calling these guys and and I I’ve come up with a scenario in which I could kill myself what is our solution to make sure that that doesn’t happen it wasn’t that way at all I had the idea hey this is doable to do the five deeps with a reusable submersible the only people in the world that I thought remotely could do it were Triton submarines in Florida so I contacted Patrick Le the president he was like yes this is going to be awesome we’ve been wanting to do this for 10 years and uh so then we started and uh it was a great interplay between the designers Patrick myself developing the submersible you needed someone you know that really believed to pull this off because there were a lot of people saying that this was a fool heart a fool hearty look one thing that I think people don’t fully appreciate maybe people here at the adventures club and true explorers get it after you’ve done it it’s like oh well yeah great that’s awesome we had no idea that this was going to be successful I undertook this mission I wrote those checks with zero assurance that it was actually going to work the per the embedded journalist that we had on the Expedition Josh Young Who wrote the book expedition to deep ocean he said it was the hardest book he ever wrote I asked him why he said I had no idea how it was going to end and think I was right in the middle of it I didn’t know either and there were several times where I didn’t know if it was going to work but 2020 hindsight it makes it look easy and it’s not it’s really really hard I mean the path is clear when you look behind you right so we you had this bug five deeps and you had to go to this compan you had to F you had to find a company who could build you a submersible because everything I’m sure you like you said you did spreadsheets you know you looked at looked at everything there’s I need to build my own submersible right and other people have tried and Richard Branson who’s richer than I am he he tried and it didn’t work out I mean you had to be very careful very methodical but that’s what I do how long did it take these guys to design this submersible a year that’s fast it’s private sector oh let me give you an example the difference between for all of my friends here in California let me give you an example of the efficiency and speed and cost effectiveness of private sector versus government this actually happened I was sitting at my desk in Dallas one day where I live I’m native and I was working on business stuff and I got a call from Triton they said oh there’s a detail we need to nail we need to get it like now because of a bunch of other stuff where do you want the stick shift that controls the maneuverability of the Sumer well you’re the pilot what is optimal for you we can put it on the left we can put it on the right how high do you want it you know this type of everything and we talked about it for about 15 minutes some really rough pros and cons made a decision within 15 minutes done that’s it how long would that have taken how many committees would you have had to go through to decide where to put the primary control mechanism for $35 million submersible it would have taken months it would have taken so much more time and money and it probably would have been suboptimal yeah because it would have been a decision made by committee that’s the difference at the most fundamental level between private sector and government but this was extraordinary because I was not only the person writing the checks I was setting the requirements and I was the bloody pilot that’s a really really tight decision cycle right and that’s why you’re able to do things quickly and effectively and how many how many Engineers do you think um touched this project over the course of a year odd 50 all the different components subcomponents electrical engineers mechanical engineers you know block and tackle guys have had to get it on and off the ship it was it was very involved we had up to 50 people on the ship that you can see there at one time combination of technicians ship’s crew film crew scientists sonar operators you name it and then and then was that build time included or design time was a year design time strictly design and then how long was the build years to build two years to build it and then 6 months to test but really the testing took a year and a half the five deeps expedition was effectively a Shakedown Cruise of the ship and the submersible where we figured out what went right what went wrong so and there you can see you can see the map we took it around the world I figured hell if you’re going to do a Shakedown Cruise do it right you know let’s go to the bottom of all five oceans the funniest thing that happened when we were planning this Mission we brought the scientists on board and you know idiot me I thought oh well we know where the bottoms are at least right we’ve mapped the seaf Flor and Heather Stewart a geologist from the Royal Geological Society raised her hand she said um Victor actually we’re not exactly sure where the bottom parts of four of the five oceans are we know Challenger Deep pretty well but we’re not sure of the other four I said what do you mean he says you’re going to have to map them first to know where to dive I went really okay what do I need for that she said you need a really big sonar I went okay so in about six months we bought the most advanced sonar ever put on a civilian vessel a kongsberg em24 I bought serial number one and we actually debugged it and tested it also on the five deeps but we were able to identify the deepest points in all five oceans which wasn’t easy now was that was that real time you had yeah you had um the the the submersible on the back pretty much sub surveyed and you’re like that looks like it yeah we had to take it we had to take it to cure out to build a gondola for the sonar install it and then on the first dive in the Puerto Rican Trench was when we were testing and qualifying the sonar I mean this was all really break neck speed really fast and loose I mean no way this would have happened in the government but it was my ship and I was paying for it and people were like going okay why not I always always hire real young people they have no idea what’s impossible yeah very yeah they work long hours too right right but that is f by the way the best way ever to motivate Engineers it’s a little secret I learned in business and in in this type of stuff was uh if an engineer ever gave me too much oh I’m not sure we can do that this oh that’s okay um I H I know this other team they they’ve got they I think they have a way to do it that’s okay no no we got it got it yeah then like no no no I can figure it out you know I think it helps that you’re doing something really freaking cool too right well when you’re also doing something that’s breaking barriers that’s what every engineer you know lives to do is to build something that’s never been built before that’s doing something extreme and God forbid you say someone else might be able to do it better than you then they faster they won’t sleep for like 5 days to get it done and that’s what I needed and that’s what we got done so so take us forward to I or wherever we’re at in this this talk um setting out on this Expedition so you got your ship yep you’ve got you got the limiting factor on the back yeah the first solo dive I ever did was to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and the limiting factor and the 36 hours prior to that lots of things broke it was very unclear if we were going to be successful I was this close to hitting the pause button for a year which would have been a disaster financially and to morale but then I said you got 36 hours and you know taking some of my my business training I left them alone I literally went into my cabin on the ship and I didn’t come out for like a day I just let him go at it and then finally you know Patrick came to my cabin he said I think we got it I think we’ve got you a sub that can dive and I went okay and I got what was broke I think that’s important oh so many uh electrical systems had been shorted out uh the manipulator arm had fallen off in a previous dive there was all sorts of stuff but I said focus on the core elements I need to go down and come back up successfully and that’s what they did they basically hotwired this up but they did it really well and so I had a completely uneventful dive but it was my first solo dive it was two 8,000 plus meters 2third of full ocean depth that’s when we kind of knew we had something but then the next dive was in the photograph that you see was off of uh the Southern Ocean that’s South Georgia Island one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen where Shackleton is buried and we spent a month in the Southern Ocean getting the hell beat out of us we actually had a collision between the sub and the ship at one point which was not cool but no one had even remotely mapped the South Sandwich Trench before it’s completely Virgin Territory and no one had ever found the deepest point the Southern Ocean we mapped it and we found it and on the one day we had a successful dive I dove solo down to the bottom of the Southern Ocean and at 4,000 M I lost all comms with the surface because of because of a very thick thermal climb a temperature differential in the water and it cut off all acoustic Communications with the ship so I had a decision when you communicate what you’re not tethered right not tethered nope so so the communication with the surface all acoustic is just acoustic yeah uh people don’t realize often that radio doesn’t work underwater so we’re using an acoustic telephone built by L3 Harris it was basically a military system and it was traveling the speed of sound so actually at the bottom of the ocean it takes 7 seconds for Transmissions To Go from the surface to the very bottom of the ocean you can talk to the moon faster than you can talk to someone at the bottom of the ocean how did the sun work the sonar was a multi-beam echos Sounder so it was a gondola that was about 10 m long 5 m wide and it had transmitt and receiver noes so it would send sound waves down to the bottom of the ocean and line by line it would map the bottom of the ocean and we would do that kind of in real time and then they’ produce the maps they go where do you want to dive I want to go I want to dive there and that’s what we would do but in the Southern Ocean I went down below 4,000 meters lom’s procedure in submarines and there’s some submarine people out here is that if you lose Communications for more than 30 minutes you come up well this was a special situation we were in a very remote place it was like the one day we were able to dive I said when am I coming back to the Southern Ocean so I made the call to keep going down down everything else was fine with a sub I just couldn’t talk to the surface I didn’t really need them anyway I was autonomous so I kept going down got down to about 6,500 got to the bottom of the Southern Ocean which was just awesome it was amazing stayed down for one hour and then I came back up and then at 4,000 meters so we got comms again so they were really upset with me uh when I got to the surface although although although one of them one of the engineers he took me aside later that night he said now I knew you were okay I went really how did you know I was okay you didn’t hear from me he said if you had imploded we would have heard it yeah I was like oh great thanks you know so I kind of want you oh by the way the deepest point in the Southern Ocean is now named The factoran Deep after the submarine that’s traditional I want you to kind of take us through a dive because you know a lot of what we see we we can kind of imagine you know we’ve seen images at the bottom right around the Titanic or you know the the the the crazy alien landscape the ocean floor and we see you we see you you know bobbing around the surface what what’s it like after the point so so you you know you drop the submersible in the water I’m not sure how you get over there a skiff or something but you nope I’m in the sub when they put it in the water okay so so you’re in there and you you close that hatch and and you’re bobbing at the surface yep uh tell us what it’s like once you descend past like 5 ft or something okay well first of all the the whole process is very methodical I’ve been a pilot since I was 19 years old and I’ve I stressed over and over again I want every single dive to be as boring as possible you make a yeah checklist after checklist you make your plan you stick to it yeah things happen and you adapt just like being in a plane and so you know you pre the dive the day before I personally inspected the sub before every dive I made checking every gasket every potential major failure Point yeah I did it myself it’s how you fly get in the sub they lowered in the water and then they’re looking for other craft all this other stuff and then they they tow me right over the point where they wanted me to dive where I wanted to dive and then we go through the checklist and they say you’re clear to dive I open the buoyancy tanks water comes in and then very gently it starts slowly going into the water and after about 5 ft it then starts accelerating a little bit about 1. https://liamzebedee.com/my-work/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/my-work/ My work Entrepreneurship. Dappnet. Featured in $50k raised. Mergeswap. ETHW to Ethereum bridge using storage proofs. $100k volume. Employment. Synthetix - protocol engineering. Keep Network / tBTC - protocol engineering. Work. UX designer at Vivant. Software engineer at WiseTech Global. Veredictum. Community. Started a meetup with 350+ members, 2 cities (Sydney, Brisbane), monthly meets since 2022. https://liamzebedee.com/people/elon/sulaiman-ghori-xai-interview/article/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/people/elon/sulaiman-ghori-xai-interview/article/ WTF is Happening at xAI: An Interview with Sulaiman Ghori A conversation with an engineer at xAI about the company’s culture, speed, and mission to build human emulators. The Speed of xAI Tyler took this bet with Elon: “Get a Cybertruck tonight if you can get a training run on these GPUs in 24 hours.” And they were training that night. He got the Cybertruck. “My first day they just gave me a laptop and a badge and I was like, okay, now what? https://liamzebedee.com/people/elon/sulaiman-ghori-xai-interview/raw_transcript/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/people/elon/sulaiman-ghori-xai-interview/raw_transcript/ Tyler took this bet with Elon like get a Cybert truck tonight if you can get a training run on these GPUs in 24 hours and we were training that night. » Did he get the Cyber Truck? » Yeah, he got Cyber Truck. » My first day they just gave me a laptop and a badge and I was like okay now what? I don’t even have a team. I’ve not been told what to do. https://liamzebedee.com/uncat/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/uncat/ General: The law is beautiful Notes I like: How to build a house Biology in Brisbane Different shapes of thought Technical posts: How does Tendermint work? IPFS, BitTorrent Synthetix simulated liquidity AMM IPFS vs. BitTorrent Stateless SPV proofs Taxonomy: P2P vs. Federated vs. Cryptonetwork Anatomy of a STARK proof Understanding recursive ZK proofs A deep dive into StarkNet Categories: x y z Full index: date,title,tags https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/new-foundations/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/new-foundations/ Stripe: https://x.com/thegautam/status/1920198569308664169 Netflix: https://netflixtechblog.com/foundation-model-for-personalized-recommendation-1a0bd8e02d39 X/Twitter: https://github.com/xai-org/x-algorithm/tree/aaa167b3de8a674587c53545a43c90eaad360010/phoenix Questions: what would a foundations model look like for crypto? what use cases? https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/software-ml-guide/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/software-ml-guide/ Types int, float, bool, Fixed size vector. Code: [float; 32] Math: $\alpha \in \mathbb{R_d}$, where $d=32$ Type conversion. softmax converts real numbers to probabilities logprobs are $log(P)$. why? because when we are doing sequence modelling, we multiply probabilities - P(x1) * P(x2). If the probabilities are small, the precision is vanishing. Whereas for logprobs, multiplication is defined as addition. Anthropomorphisms qualitative terms (this problem is hard) vs. quantitative terms (this objective is costly) https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/notes/finance-funny-terms-losing-money/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/notes/finance-funny-terms-losing-money/ Impermanent loss Toxic flow Liquidations Slippage Spreads https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/bootstrapping/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/bootstrapping/ Bootstrapping is something interesting that happens in computers. Compilers. Bootstrapping in compilers refers to the process of writing a compiler for a programming language in the same language it is intended to compile. Initially, a minimal version of the compiler is written in another language (like assembly or C), just enough to support writing more of itself. Once this minimal compiler can compile basic constructs of its own language, developers can progressively rewrite and improve the compiler in its own language, recompiling itself at each stage—this is called self-hosting. https://liamzebedee.com/changelog/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/changelog/ New Pages Leader leases versus quorum writes — 141 words Crash versus Byzantine faults — 256 words Notes on LLM anti-intelligence — 263 words Edited Pages Cryptography and blockchain: - Tech: - Uxtreeo - Bitcoin Core PR review group - A Formalization of Cross-Domain Maximal Extractable Value - Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) - Tiny BFV HE implemented in Tinygrad - How does a skip ratchet work? - Probabilistic sampling: - Recursion in cryptographic computation schemes: - ZK proofs - SNARK’s can themselves implement verifiers for SNARK’s (recursive verification) - FHE. https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/crash-vs-byzantine-faults/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/crash-vs-byzantine-faults/ In a crash fault, a process simply halts. In a Byzantine fault, it can behave arbitrarily. Crash faults are easier to handle, as no process can lie to another process. Systems which only tolerate crash faults can operate via simple majority rule, and therefore typically tolerate simultaneous failure of up to half of the system. If the number of failures the system can tolerate is f, such systems must have at least 2f + 1 processes https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/pmf/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/pmf/ Current areas. Crypto has found product-market fit in: Alternate stores of value. Bitcoin is being proposed to be added to Microsoft’s corporate treasury. You can measure the correlation of an asset with other asset categories. Diversification is your free lunch. And bitcoin serves useful purpose as being sufficienly uncorrelated, among other properties (seizure resistant, fixed monetary policy). Leaders: BTC, ETH, Microstrategy. Stablecoins. Stablecoins export the USD to the world, enabling anyone to pay contractors instantly and store wealth. https://liamzebedee.com/people/elon/sulaiman-ghori-xai-interview/analysis_compressed/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/people/elon/sulaiman-ghori-xai-interview/analysis_compressed/ Core Ideas: xAI Interview with Sulaiman Ghori The Speed Philosophy No due dates exist—everything is “yesterday” No artificial blockers; only physical/fundamental constraints matter Attempt 1-year projects in 1 month; you’ll finish in 2 months (still 6x faster) Every time estimate is based on assumptions—audit and eliminate them for 2x+ speedups Organizational Structure Only 3 management layers: ICs → co-founders/managers → Elon Fuzzy team boundaries: anyone can fix anything, merge immediately “Live by the sword, die by the sword” - ask for responsibility, deliver or leave Binary decision responses: “no, that’s dumb” or “why isn’t it done already? https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/software-design/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/software-design/ From What Is Software Design?: The overwhelming problem with software development is that everything is part of the design process. Coding is design, testing and debugging are part of design, and what we typically call software design is still part of design. Software may be cheap to build, but it is incredibly expensive to design. Software is so complex that there are plenty of different design aspects and their resulting design views. https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/archives/fallacies/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/archives/fallacies/ The network is reliable; Latency is zero; Bandwidth is infinite; The network is secure; Topology doesn't change; There is one administrator; Transport cost is zero; The network is homogeneous; https://liamzebedee.com/index2/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/index2/ Science Crypto Programming Distsys Economics ML Biology Aliens Quantum House construction (TODO add) Trading, prediction market making (TODO add) https://liamzebedee.com/maths/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/maths/ Papers A Mathematical Theory of Communication - defined entropy for the first time. On Tables of Random Numbers - Kolomogrov complexity. https://liamzebedee.com/misc/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/misc/ Unfinished notes. Mathematics Culture People Notes on Quantum Computing Notes on Machine Learning Entropy 2040 hedge fund AI’s inside MPC circuits To read Hypothesis testing Graphical Depiction of Ethereum Scaling Solutions https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/notes-uncat/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/notes-uncat/ Mutual information. https://sumanthrh.com/post/notes-on-generalization/ the mutual information (MI) of two random variables is a measure of the mutual dependence between the two variables MI can be defined by the classic KL divergence Kolmogorov complexity Minimum program to produce the data Theoretical “best model” for prediction. Theory of learning. Slow-fast weight programmer (90’s) - https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/megi8a/d_jürgen_schmidhubers_work_on_fast_weights_from/ Attention as dynamic weight lookup Information highway / bottleneck An Observation on Generalization https://simons.berkeley.edu/talks/ilya-sutskever-openai-2023-08-14 Supervised vs unsupervised learning Learning is prediction is compression Hutter An observation on generalization. https://liamzebedee.com/ml/atoms/evolution/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/atoms/evolution/ Evolution. Evolutionary landscape talks about: fitness function environment organisms genes (the selfish gene) evolution This maps onto ML systems pretty well: fitness = objective function/loss. environment = the distribution. evolution = optimizer. genes = the parameters. the genome instantiates a generative model of the organism https://liamzebedee.com/culture/articles/never-play-to-the-gallery/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/culture/articles/never-play-to-the-gallery/ Asking “what problem does World of Warcraft solve?” is dumb. It turns the product’s definition inward on itself, self-referential. “we must be fixing a problem” does not produce creative ideas. It constrains the ideas. What problem does WoW solve? Boredom and entertainment. This is indeterminate - many things solve this. Focusing on solving problems is a narrow, fixed-supply mindset. Broadening on creating opportunities is where it’s at. OpenAI is one of the founders of the 2020’s AI revolution. https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/ml-inside-mpc/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/ml-inside-mpc/ I think that autonomous AI’s will develop primarily as a matter of comparative advantage but applied to intelligence. They will sit on problems for days, weeks, and months in “system 2” mode (deepthink). Unlike humans, who require NDA’s to prevent leakage of proprietary information, these corporate AI’s can be run as pure algorithms inside encrypted secure multi-party computation circuits. Just as hedge funds develop highly-sophisticated trading strategies which make markets more efficient, thus producing more accurate signals for the market supply-demand process, so will there be firms developing highly-sophisticated AI models which will be used by firms to improve their economy too. https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/abstraction-in-maths-vs-comsci/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/abstraction-in-maths-vs-comsci/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer-science/#PragCorr Colburn (1999, 2000), while keeping software and hardware apart, stresses that the former has a dual nature, it is a “concrete abstraction” as being both abstract and concrete. To define software, one needs to make reference to both a “medium of description”, i.e., the language used to express an algorithm, and a “medium of execution”, namely the circuits composing the hardware. While software is always concrete in that there is no software without a concretization in some physical medium, it is nonetheless abstract, because programmers do not consider the implementing machines in their activities: they would rather develop a program executable by any machine. https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/aliens/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/aliens/ Confirmed UAP’s 1561 celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg Hundreds of schoolchildren saw a UFO in Melbourne, Australia 1966 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/btrees/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/btrees/ Although BST’s and B-Trees share the same asymptotic complexity of O(log n) for all operations, the specialisation of B-Trees are often more performant in practice. By specialising their order (number of keys in a node, and number of children per node) to fit into the block size of the underlying media (sectors for HDD’s, cache and block-based storage for SSD’s), they can reap the benefits of fewer disk reads per-lookup and better use of caching mechanisms. https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/biology/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/biology/ My main question is - how can we grow trees faster? How can we grow trees using electricity, instead of photosynthesis? These are guiding my research into how organisms are built, how they work, how does DNA work, etcetera. Reading: Molecular Biology of the Cell Resources for learning bioinformatics geohot reverse-engineering corona Hierarchy of an organism. From low-level to high-level. Atoms Molecules - bonded atoms Arginine - type of complex molecule Some molecules are small (water, glucose), others large (DNA, proteins). https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/mutable-torrents/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/mutable-torrents/ get_peers(id, infohash) returns either the list of peers for an infohash, or a list of DHT nodes that may contain this information (used by the XOR routing algorithm). announce_peer(id, infohash, port, token) the sending peer is appending their ip:port combo to the peers list for this infohash. token is given by the storage node to the querying node, to ensure only they can add themselves to this list. Mutable torrents BEP-44 introduced changes to the BitTorrent DHT where nodes could store arbitrary data under their public key. https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/entropy/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/entropy/ I found this really interesting passage in an 1870 paper by Boltzmann, lectures on gas theory: We make the following remarks: It is by no means the sign of the time which constitutes the characteristic difference between an ordered and a disordered state. If, in the “initial states” of the mechanical picture of the world, one reverses the directions of all velocities, without changing their magnitudes or the positions of the parts of the system; if, as it were, one follows the states of the system backwards in time, then he would likewise first have an improbable state, and then reach ever more probable states. https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/google-bigtable/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/google-bigtable/ Paper Overview. Database storage. Consistency. Node roles. Master. Algorithm. Tablet server. Overview. Google Bigtable - a horizontally-scalable multidimensional sorted map. API allows users to write rows with a unique key, and a set of columns. Tables are sorted by key and queryable with the basic operators (e.g. equality, lt, gt). The key feature of Bigtable is its horizontal scalability. Let’s use the example of an English dictionary for our database table. https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/elon-cars-energy/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/elon-cars-energy/ Elon made this terrific point about electric vehicles in an interview: Imagine if we ran iPhones on combustion engines. How ridiculous would that be? That’s how we run cars now. They should be run on electricity. It’s a stable current of energy, like a phone battery. Much less stress on the system from unpredictable voltages etc. https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/lisp/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/lisp/ This is the first in a series of posts covering Lisp. What have I done so far? Implemented a basic Lisp interpreter in JS, supporting function calls and recursion. Read the first chapter of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP), the “killer textbook” of Lisp. Why learn Lisp? There’s this old adage that goes - Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/pentest-the-law/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/notes/pentest-the-law/ If LLM’s are in essence a runtime for the English language, could the law be pentested? Fuzzing is a technique in computer programming where you generate random inputs to a program in order to break it. I don’t see why we can’t do this with LLM’s. Can an LLM generate synthetic legal cases to stress test the law? We can already do this with DeepSeek R1 reinforcement learning and chain of thought. https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/proof-of-stake-cap-flp/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/proof-of-stake-cap-flp/ Quoted from: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2017/12/31/pos_faq.html#how-does-proof-of-stake-fit-into-traditional-byzantine-fault-tolerance-research How does proof of stake fit into traditional Byzantine fault tolerance research? There are several fundamental results from Byzantine fault tolerance research that apply to all consensus algorithms, including traditional consensus algorithms like PBFT but also any proof of stake algorithm and, with the appropriate mathematical modeling, proof of work. The key results include: CAP theorem - "in the cases that a network partition takes place, you have to choose either consistency or availability, you cannot have both" https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/quantum/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/quantum/ Fundamentals Concepts: Photons Entanglement Bell’s theorem EPR paradox Locality the idea that a particle can only be influenced by its immediate surroundings CHSH game Quantum state Wave function representation - complex-valued function of any complete set of commuting or compatible degrees of freedom Spin Momentum Position e.g. one set could be the x,y,z spatial coordinates of an electron Qbit Observable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable#Incompatibility_of_observables_in_quantum_mechanics Uncertainty principle Standard deviation of position and speed multipled together is always greater than reduced plank constant https://en. https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/quic/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/programming/notes/quic/ QUIC is not Quick Enough over Fast Internet I did some napkin math estimation: MTU (1500B) Large receiver segment (64KB) 64000/1500=42x fewer syscalls with a receiver segment syscalls go from 231k in QUIC to 15K in http/2, so 231/15=15.4x 15.4x is ~2x in range of 42x speedup. Not bang on accurate but the receiver segment could be smaller than 64KB as they mention But then they enable GRO for the UDP and it doesn’t improve performance, which is counterevidence to their whole hypothesis? https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/generative-model-organism/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/science/notes/generative-model-organism/ The Genomic Code: The genome instantiates a generative model of the organism Interesting ideas. imagine the organism as a generative model. the genome both generates the organism as well as generating the generator. Unlike an ML system like an LLM, where the entire structure is statically defined. The organism’s instantiator is also generated / bootstrapped. In machine learning, each new model starts with random weights and is trained de novo on large sets of data (e. https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/tla/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/distsys/notes/tla/ https://identity.pub/2019/05/01/peg-game.html https://pron.github.io/posts/tlaplus_part2 https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/adversaries/ https://www.reddit.com/r/tlaplus/comments/enencr/yet_another_example_that_tla_is_math_not/ https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2021/02/foundational-distributed-systems-papers.html http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2022/06/consus-taming-paxi.html https://a16zcrypto.com/measuring-snark-performance-frontends-backends-and-the-future/ https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/byzpaxos.html https://www.learntla.com/core/concurrency.html https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/4/184701-how-amazon-web-services-uses-formal-methods/fulltext https://medium.com/software-safety/using-tla-to-model-cascading-failures-5d1ebc5e4c4f https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/formal-methods-amazon.pdf https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/notes/zcash/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/notes/zcash/ How do receipients of shielded transactions (between z-addrs) detect the new ZEC they receive? They need to run indexers. Pains: this is very slow for the average user. Understanding: zcash is comprised of notes. for example, a note with 10 ZEC these notes are in a global note commitment tree the transaction: prove existence of note now spend the value of the note into multiple new output notes protocol notes: https://liamzebedee.com/science/articles/opentrons-26/indexx/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/science/articles/opentrons-26/indexx/ Earlier this week we started learning about biology lab automation. There is this YC statup called Opentron which built a robot for automating a large part of biological lab experimental protocols. An example of a protocol is “Golden gate cloning” which is used to assemble large DNA molecules. ··· A use case To frame this in terms of a use case, as I currently understand: say you want to produce something like insulin. https://liamzebedee.com/science/articles/opentrons-26/raw/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/science/articles/opentrons-26/raw/ Earlier this week we started learning about biology lab automation. There is this YC statup called Opentron which built a robot for automating a large part of biological lab experimental protocols. An example of a protocol is “Golden gate cloning” which is used to assemble large DNA molecules. To frame this in terms of a use case, as I currently understand: say you want to produce something like insulin. Insulin is a peptide, meaning it is a chain of amino acids. https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/notes/saylor-bitcoin-thesis/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/notes/saylor-bitcoin-thesis/ Takes on Bitcoin: bitcoin is clean money society has improved by clean energy, clean water, clean food. bitcoin allows companies to live longer. the half life of money in gold is 30 years. gold debases at 2% / year. the half-life of bitcoin is infinite. bitcoin doesn’t debase. bitcoin is better than gold. gold supply can increase - ie. new reserves (1600’s) bitcoin supply can never be inflated bitcoin is purely digital can be split unlike gold bars which are melted down and remade. https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/notes/sealed-state-signer/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/crypto/notes/sealed-state-signer/ IO = (public inputs, public outputs, hidden logic) Using IO, you might design a sealed state signer - a function which produces signatures over a keypair, where the keypair is embedded in the logic - and thus hidden from any user of the function. This would be very powerful for token bridges. To bridge tokens from one blockchain to another, we typically require a counterparty to operate wallets on both networks. https://liamzebedee.com/programming/sourcecodes/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/programming/sourcecodes/ Source code archives (the birth of new software ideas): BitTorrent Bitcoin JavaScript (Mocha) PostScript Linux WorldWideWeb (first web browser by Tim Berners-Lee) Reddit.com (in Lisp!) History of JavaScript / Node.js JavaScript: The first 20 years Original Node.js presentation: https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/the-grokster-decision/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/the-grokster-decision/ From GrokLaw: "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. https://liamzebedee.com/ml/articles/jan-26-ralph/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/articles/jan-26-ralph/ Ralph Loops and AGI: The State of the Art in Software Engineering A presentation on autonomous development loops, the future of work, and why questions matter more than answers. Listen along | See the slides Introduction I’ve been in my cave for about seven days now, and this is me coming out. I need to push this information out so I can be a Zen Buddhist again and focus. So what am I talking about? https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/the-path-matters/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/the-path-matters/ Let’s imagine I were able to travel through time and I went back to my 2004 self and tell him to start a social network. I explained to him that the goal was to make everyone in the world more open and connected. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen complications in time travel I wasn’t able to give him any more direction than that. What would he do? I’m pretty sure that, given those instructions, young Boz would build a social network and make it immediately available to everyone. https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/the-taste-gap/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/the-taste-gap/ https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/29/ira-glass-success-daniel-sax/ Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/the-world-according-to-rene-girard/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/the-world-according-to-rene-girard/ Earlier we looked at the world according to Peter Thiel. This week we’ll look at the world according to one of his biggest philosophical inspirations, Rene Girard. Prior to becoming a philosopher, Rene Girard was a literary critic. He identified common themes in literature which piqued an interest in anthropology. Around the same time, he converted to Christianity — and not just from a religious point of view, but from an intellectual point of view as well. https://liamzebedee.com/gratitude/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/gratitude/ God I am really just so fortunate to exist in this day and age. 50yrs ago, as a type one diabetic I’d probably lead an incredibly sad life. I’d have constant mood swings, deteriorating vision/heart/muscles, probably lose a leg, and be suffering like no tomorrow. Nowadays, thanks to technology, it’s somewhat normal. I can access insulin cheaply in Australia and despite it still being very hard and challenging, I can still live at least a good life. https://liamzebedee.com/tools/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/tools/ Slugify Slugify https://liamzebedee.com/ml/archives/carmack-upperbound-2025/upperbound25/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/ml/archives/carmack-upperbound-2025/upperbound25/ Quick background Id Software <picture of early games> Founder of Id Software in the 90’s, wrote the Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake series. I take some pride in knowing that Quake drove GPU development and adoption, leading indirectly to the modern AI world. DeepMind’s DMLab environments are also built on sanitized versions of Quake Arena. Armadillo Aerospace <picture of armadillo rockets> Overlapped with that, I worked on VTVL rockets for a decade with Armadillo Aerospace https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/english-weird/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/english-weird/ By John McWhorter Originally published on Aeon: https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. But English is weird in other ways, too. Why, for instance, do we say beef and pork for cow and pig meat, while other languages just use the same word? Why do we have so many irregular verbs? https://liamzebedee.com/people/elon/sulaiman-ghori-xai-interview/analysis/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/people/elon/sulaiman-ghori-xai-interview/analysis/ Comprehensive Analysis: xAI Interview with Sulaiman Ghori A deep-dive analysis of the Relentless podcast interview covering xAI’s culture, technology, and operational philosophy. Executive Summary This interview with Sulaiman Ghori (“Sully”), an engineer at xAI, provides an unprecedented inside look at how one of the fastest-growing AI companies operates. The key themes that emerge are: Extreme velocity - “Yesterday” is the deadline, not a future date Hardware as moat - Physical infrastructure is their primary competitive advantage Small model strategy - Counter to industry trends, prioritizing speed over size Flat organization - Only 3 management layers enable rapid decision-making Tesla synergy - Leveraging 4M+ Tesla vehicles as distributed compute First principles - Aggressively eliminating “perceived limitations” Part 1: Company Culture and Values Speed as the Core Value The dominant cultural theme at xAI is extreme velocity. https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/you-and-your-research/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://liamzebedee.com/culture/archives/you-and-your-research/ It’s a pleasure to be here. I doubt if I can live up to the Introduction. The title of my talk is, “You and Your Research.” It is not about managing research, it is about how you individually do your research. I could give a talk on the other subject - but it’s not, it’s about you. I’m not talking about ordinary run-of-the-mill research; I’m talking about great research. And for the sake of describing great research I’ll occasionally say Nobel-Prize type of work.