Hi. Thanks for reading.
I hope you all have a wonderful leap day this weekend 😃
Tahoe is having a scary terrible snow year right now. After getting over 900 inches last year (!), they are currently hovering at around 200 inches for the season.
Even stranger, a substantial amount of this snow came in November and December. February (usually the biggest snow month) has seen just 3 inches of snow…
For fun, I compared this to Wildcat mountain in New Hampshire (where I grew up skiing) 106” on the season… I guess I’m just spoiled now 🤷♂️.
The lack of snow didn’t stop us from touring Rubicon Peak on Sunday. The snow was fairly mediocre, but the views were unreal 😍.
Luckily I’m still in the honeymoon phase of splitboarding, so basically any tour I get out on I couldn’t be happier.
The last ~100 feet of vert of the peak are a class 3 rock scramble. It’s hard to tell from the picture but climbing up there definitely gave me a few butterflies - especially doing it in snowboard boots.
After a few minutes on the peak, we hiked down to our skis/snowboards, transitioned, and skied down the first ~1k of vertical. The snow was actually pretty decent all things considered! They say the key to happiness is setting your expectations low…
From there, we stopped and ate some food before starting the climb back up for another lap. The 2nd ride down was much better, the sun had softened the snow a bit more and we knew to the south.
This time we skied down to the car, the last 500 feet providing a bit of excitement in the way of log and rock avoidance. We logged ~3.4k of vertical feet in total. Overall super fun day.
🙏 for some ❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️.
^ proof that we were actually able to ski and not just hike 🙈.
The Largest, Most Addictive Multi-Player Game in the World
If you know me - you might know that I am a bit allergic to politics. To a fault. But even I got a bit sucked into watching a few highlights from the spicy democratic debate last week. I absolutely regretted it…
I think this is part of why Eugene Wei’s commentary on this resonated so well with me.
Furthermore, identity politics is, like Facebook Connect, a platform that integrates into anything. When Donald Trump trolled everyone by complaining about Parasite winning the Oscar for best picture, he was bringing identity politics to film. But even if he hadn’t, it was already there. Identity politics is a human web service that has been integrated into every adjacent field more seamlessly than at any point in human history.
Like kale? Sip lattes? Or perhaps you’re a voracious red meat eater? All of that maps to some identity. Do you listen to Kendrick Lamar or Kanye West? Did you prefer Moonlight or La La Land? Do you drink wine or beer? If you drink beer, are you drinking Budweiser or some microbrew? There is a legend that maps all of those to some identity.
Another political fun fact I learned over the weekend: 50+1 (a campaign strategy consulting firm) has an 87% win rate! This absolutely blew my mind when I heard it. When it comes to politics (and a lot of things) we are probably not thinking for ourselves nearly as much as we think we are.
the tricultural premium
Bicultural people excelled tremendously in their newly adopted countries (professionally, socially, and so on), but at the same time had a massive premium when they went back to where they came from. Having brought back the much needed exposure of “how things are done” in the West, many doors open up back home.
Bicultural execs got higher salaries, faster promotions, a seat at the table on most important decision making fora, and so on. Not just Industry, this premium is seen across Government, Academia, and even the Arts.
What Alex Tabarrok Thinks About Basically Everything
This podcast is *really* good. It changed the way I think about immigration (ohhh shiit getting political).
Alex makes a compelling argument for open borders:
If you believe in free markets, it’s hard not to believe in free borders
Free borders basically just create a free market for governance
Borders (in some shape or form) will probably always need to exist, but more for protection and quick screenings than population control and forcing people to jump through hoops in hopes of scoring a visa
It is wild how many extremely smart, talented, skilled people the U.S will not let stay/work here. There is so much room in the U.S! We have room for a whole new major city to pop up (probably somewhere in the midwest).
Tweet of the week
Interesting Companies
Thanks for reading.
- Taylor