You do not fear death

[Spoiler alerts for The Dark Knight Rises contained within]

I couldn't read Sarah Lacy's The Acqui-hire Scourge: Whatever Happened to Failure in Silicon Valley?​ without thinking of that prison scene from The Dark Knight Rises when, after a few failed attempts by Bruce Wayne at climbing out of that prison, that blind guy explains to Wayne why he keeps failing to make the leap to that final ledge near the top:

Blind guy: You do not fear death.

Bruce Wayne: I do fear death. I fear dying in here while my city burns. 

Blind guy: Then make the climb. 

Bruce Wayne: How? 

Blind guy: As the child did. Without the rope. Then fear will find you again. 

Bruce Wayne: You couldn't have told me that before I jumped and missed a few times and nearly snapped by back in half at the end of that rope?

[Okay, I made that last line up. Also, there was room to get a running start to jump and catch the other ledge, how come everyone seemed content to just try to do a standing jump? Oh, never mind.]​

In The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce Wayne, flush with wealth from Wayne Enterprises, spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to develop a clean energy source, then goes bankrupt when Bane takes his fingerprints and makes some crazy options trades (a la Mat Honan with GMail, apparently Wayne had not turned on two-factor authentication on his ETrade account).

In real life, Elon Musk, who had plenty of money from PayPal, nearly bankrupted himself launching and financing an electric car company. Most people who obtain a lot of wealth walk away from the blackjack table, but Musk put all of his chips back out in play, and not on sure things. Building cars is inherently a high capital, high risk enterprise, and building electric cars are even more so. But that wasn't enough risk for Musk so he also started a space exploration company. There are entrepreneurs, and then there are Entrepreneurs, and then there are entrepreneurs' Entrepreneurs, and Musk is the latter. If his parents had been gunned down in an alley by a criminal while he was just a child, Mustk might be spending his evenings in a batsuit, fighting crime in the Tenderloin in San Francisco.

My backpack of choice

BBP is having a 50% off sale on their Hamptons Hybrid Messenger Backpack. It's a great deal at half off, or $49.96 rather than it's usual $99.95. If you walk and carry a laptop in your bag regularly​, you can use the coupon code 50HAMPTONS through next Monday night, Labor Day weekend. ​I don't earn any commission if you purchase one of these, I'm just a fan, and this is a great deal.

BBP stands for "bum back pack" and refers to the way the bag rides, low on your back. The double straps distribute weight evenly across both shoulders, like Izzo's dual straps did for golf bags, and the low hanging position of the bag reduces strain on your shoulders and back. I've been carrying a laptop for as long as I can remember, and I've tried a variety of solutions: conventional backpacks, bike messenger bags, and laptop briefcases. Comfort was always a problem. Messenger bags and laptop briefcases put the bag on one side, and eventually that leads to asymmetrical strain on your shoulder, neck, and/or hip. Backpacks often caused me to lean forward to counterbalance the weight.

The Hamptons Hybrid solved my comfort and ergonomic issues and has been my primary laptop bag for over 7 years now. There are only two disadvantages. One is that it looks a bit strange to have your bag hanging so low, but when it comes to my back fashion is a lesser concern, and you can disconnect the double strap in the middle with one click and wear it messenger bag style or grab the fabric handle at the top and carry it like a briefcase. The other minor drawback is that the bag has a lot of padding built in and is heavier in its base configuration than, say, a messenger bag. But I appreciate the extra padding surrounding the laptop compartment. It feels very safe, especially when jamming it under an airplane seat.  With a lighter solution like a messenger bag I'd still purchase a padded sleeve to hold my laptop, bringing the naked walkaround weight up quite a bit.

As laptops grow lighter, or as some people transition to using tablets for travel, perhaps the need for a bag to distribute heavier weights diminishes. I think we're still a ways off from that day, though, and when I travel I still find the sum total of my laptop, chargers, and miscellaneous ​knickknacks to be uncomfortable to carry for long periods. I've had the same large Hamptons Hybrid for years now, and it's a testament to the enduring utility of the design that it hasn't changed one bit, as far as I can tell. Now that I no longer carry a 17" laptop, I'm grabbing the smaller and lighter medium size at this sale price.

Man on the Moon

The first speech uttered from the surface of another celestial body turned out to be an absurdity. The task fell to Armstrong as he descended the stairs of the lunar module: ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ But ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ amounted to much the same thing; if there was to be any point in the First Sentence, it would derive from an implied contrast between what a particular individual did and its significance for the whole of humanity. After a few weeks, Nasa could no longer withstand repeated observations that the First Sentence was vacuous. Armstrong said that he was ‘misquoted’ in the official transcript and an official spokesman announced that ‘static’ obscured a missing ‘a’: ‘That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.’ ‘I rehearsed it that way,’ Armstrong later said. ‘I meant it that way. And I’m sure I said it that way.’ The claim, however, smacks literally of l’esprit de l’escalier, and you can judge its accuracy for yourself by listening to the recording at www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/a11.step.html. There is no evident ‘static’ and it’s clear enough that Armstrong said what everybody heard him say at the time. In the event, he eventually gave up the pretence: ‘Damn, I really did it. I blew the first words on the Moon, didn’t I?’

From a review of Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith in the London Review of Books.​ Lots of great anecdotes (in the review, and, I'm sure, in the book itself).

Behind the scenes was enough drama for an HBO reality show:

Despite the vast attention paid to the astronauts’ psychological profiles and their ability to work in teams, the Apollo 11 crew verged on the dysfunctional. While Armstrong and Aldrin didn’t quite match Stoppard’s Scott and Oates, there was a fierce behind-the-scenes battle between them to be first to set foot on the Moon. Early plans were for Aldrin, as module pilot, to step out first, but one version reported by Smith has it that Armstrong, as mission commander, lobbied more vigorously than Aldrin, and Nasa backed him up because he would be ‘better equipped to handle the clamour when he got back’ and, more mundanely, because his seat in the lunar module was closer to the door. Aldrin paid Armstrong back by taking no photographs of him on the Moon: the only manually taken lunar image of the First Man on the Moon is in one of many pictures Armstrong snapped of Aldrin, showing himself reflected in the visor of Aldrin’s spacesuit. Asked about this omission later, Aldrin lamely replied: ‘My fault, perhaps, but we had never simulated this in training.’ Later, Aldrin put it about that Armstrong’s First Sentence might have been a bureaucratic concoction.

The Need for Kool-Aid

From EvoAnth (short for Evolutionary Anthropology), a post on possible evolutionary​ explanations for the rise of religion. The hypothesis among anthropologists was that rising social and economic complexity gave rise to correspondingly complex religious beliefs which helped to foster the necessary social cooperation.

So they went out and gathered data (albeit from other researchers) on 178 different cultures, comparing their source of food, group size, social complexity and type of religious belief. When analysed this information almost exactly matched their predictions. Amongst foragers – who can easily gather enough food with minimal co-operation between individuals – 88% had either no “high” god or a “high” god which did not bestow morals and did not interact with the world. At the other extreme of the scale, ~40% of groups dependent on intensive agriculture had a “high” god who interfered with the world and gave morals to the group.

​Do companies that succeed even as they grow in size likewise foster stronger internal mythologies to try and maintain a consistent culture across a much larger, more distributed workforce?

Many companies have attempted to structure themselves in a way that preserves certain operational values even as they grow much larger, but perhaps religion-making is a necessary companion endeavor.​ Perhaps companies have something to learn from organized religion in the way they recruit and indoctrinate.

Making the most of your 20's

21. Go to/host theme parties. Once people age out of their 20s, no one’s trying to wear pajamas or Saran Wrap out of the house. The only theme parties that exist after your 20s are ‘Wedding,’ ‘Baby Shower,’ and ‘Funeral.’

Thought Catalog with 21 ways you should take advantage of your 20's.​

My general advice for your 20's would be to leverage​ assets generally unique to that time of life: your remaining physical prime, higher adaptability and tolerance for new environments and ideas, and the freedom that comes from not having a family yet. It's a time to cultivate and enjoy option value, and also to maximize your exposure to as broad a set of people, places, and ideas as possible, if for nothing else than to know what the world has to offer before option value starts to lessen in value in your life, and you start to trade it for certainty.

I had a 30 before 30 list, and while I didn't check everything off the list, it was useful to have one. Of items on the list, I'd highly recommend:​

• Travel to all 7 continents. I missed Antarctica, but the goal forced me to travel on a regular schedule. The easiest way to expand your worldview and reduce your tendency to reductivist "us vs. them" mentality is to become a citizen of the world. When speaking with people in that country, your first resort should be their native language.
• Live in New York City.​ No more efficient place in the U.S. to meet as many people as quickly, and as such, the ideal place to develop your socialization skills (making friends, dating, everything in between). As an expensive place to live, it teaches you to both hustle and live with less (space, money, material possessions) quickly. The wealth of options and opportunity eventually force you to find your own compass to avoid being overwhelmed or lost.
• Don't live in New York City. ​Learning to find your equilibrium in a new place teaches you how much of your own happiness is intrinsic rather than environmental.
• Run a marathon​. Or something physically so challenging you have to train for months on end to even have a chance of finishing, like climbing a mountain, or biking 200 miles in a day. Finding your physical limits is useful hardening of the soul. It teaches you to structure your efforts over extended period of time, and the time required often forces you to be more disciplined in scheduling the rest of your life. Making it something you need to train a long period just to finish keeps you from cheating, one advantage of physical challenges.
• Pick up one new skill a year​. Playing the piano. Scuba diving. Learning to cook. Getting your pilot's license. Photography. Learning Photoshop. Something new every year. It's important to maintain the educational pace from your college days, just to turn it into habit. With the advent of so many online courses, now, it's easier than ever.

If you believe the adage that the paths not taken are the ones you regret later in life, then the best way to mitigate that early in life is to take as many different paths as possible. Fear and discomfort seemed to be more useful guides as to what to seek out in my 20's. As you age, you fear less and tend to avoid discomfort.