No Sugar No Problems

Yo, welcome to Week 4. Happy Birthday to my Dad if he’s reading this lol

No Sugar No Problems

I’ve cut out sugar for the past 3 weeks (0 added sugar, natural sugars only in the form of a few blueberries / raspberries with breakfast). I saw an instagram video of someone doing it and saying it “changed their life” or something like that. So I figured why not, lets give it a go. I generally don’t do anything special with my eating, but have found whenever I do, it makes me a lot more aware of what it is I’m eating.

The good: I definitely have been eating “healthier”. More cooking, more good veggies and everything, not nearly as much frozen food. I’ve also been very aware of what I’ve been eating (see above). You never really realize how much sugar there is in everything until you start paying attention. Its really wild.

The bad: Cravings. Its been 3 weeks and though I haven’t had and ~crazy~ cravings, but I’ve definitely had some. Cutting out ice cream, donuts, mid day sugary snacks, etc, definitely had its toll. Not even saying I had that much before, but going from some to none is always hard. Additionally, with no frozen/prepared food (most of which has sugar) I was left cooking a lot more, which in general just takes a lot of time.

Overall, I’d recommend it for a month or so. I’m not sure if I’ll stay with 0 added sugar forever (likely just another week or two), but I’ve definitely liked certain aspects of it, and being a lot more aware of all of the shit we’re eating is only a good thing.

Heres’s a YouTube video of Matt D’Avella doing it for 30 days too if that seems more interesting than me writing about it lol.

BTC Mining Takes National Parks

On the topic of bitcoin mining, heres a fun use case.

Virunga National Park, the Congo’s most famous park, is funding itself with bitcoin mining.

With the Congolese government providing only 1% of the park’s operating budget, they’ve been left to fend mostly for themselves. Though they usually use tourism (>40% of revenue), with violence in the park, then Ebola, then COVID, they’ve been struggling for money.

Using the hydro plant in the park, they are using clean energy to power 10 shipping containers, holding between 250-500 mining rigs each.

This is not only an awesome model for how to use extra energy that can’t always be exported or used, but is an awesome way to fund an awesome piece of land.

Another long article, but such a good read. S/O to Florian for the tip.

Also, a new upgrade to the Bitcoin protocol allows for NFT’s to be encoded directly on-chain using Satoshis ?? Kinda cool and I’ll probably write about it for next week.

Josh Wolfe

If you know me, you know I love Josh Wolfe. Wolfe is the co-founder and managing partner at Lux Capital. I first found Josh Wolfe when he was on Patrick OShaughnessy’s podcast, Invest Like the Best (Episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5aEcJyMrS4B1NRJ5EOBfyp)

Here is some more Josh Wolfe content though. Investing to turn “Sci-Fi into Sci-Fact”, Lux Capital is always looking to the edge of interdisciplinary thinking and the edge of science.

A highlight from this article: Lux Capital is currently investing in “three spaces: inner space (biology), outer space (aerospace and defense), and latent space (the magic of AI models)". Immediately you can get a sense for how he thinks and how ambitious they are.

Additionally, he said when asked what he’s obsessed about that others don’t usually talk about: Entropy. I’m planning a good entropy rant at some point here, so really liked that answer.

Hope you enjoy this read, and if you get a chance, the podcast above as well.

6-3, 7-6, 7-6

I generally fall on the side of: I don’t care what sport it is, I’ll watch it (and most of the time actually be interested in it).

Tennis definitely falls on this list.

After following the Australian Open for a few weeks, it seemed decently clear that Djokovic had it in the bag. Going into the finals, he hadn’t dropped a set the entire tournament…

Against Tsitsipas however (who is ranked 3rd in the world), it seemed like it would be a good match.

Yea not so much. The sets are in the headline, and Tsitsipas really needed to play the tiebreaks better to have a chance. Fun highlights, but a dominant tournament from Djokovic.