Jan + Feb Highlights!

Hello, hello, hello! Happy belated Valentines to all you lucky folks that are celebrating.

It’s 9 am on a Sunday and I just crushed an entire bag of Sun Chips for breakfast, which means that this newsletter is getting a primetime slot during my window of productivity. Okay - let’s debrief.

I’ve been putting myself out there. This place is a 1:1 replica to tech Twitter. I will see a launch on my feed and then meet the founders at an event the following week. I’ve lost count of how many LinkedIn QR codes I’ve scanned. Everybody’s first question is “What do you do” which I didn’t mind answering three months ago but now is starting to feel robotic.

In other news, curling is trending on Twitter! It makes me reminisce because I used to compete against someone on men’s Team Canada way back in high school, in addition to playing piano, learning philosophy, and running a marching band. I was a renaissance man, you know. Now my hobbies consist of answering “what I do” 20x a week and touching tips with other people’s iPhones.

Nah but honestly I have been working out more and getting into a routine - something that wasn’t possible in New York.

Latest Happenings

• Artifact Festival: Imagine the biggest science fair you’ve ever seen, except instead of exploding volcanos it’s posters pitching AI girlfriends or compliance software or AI UGC. And there’s free dubai chocolate.

• Point Lobos: Caught a stunning sunset here. California does a great job of keeping beautiful areas as public parks vs. zoning for private ownership.

• Pinball Arcade: Had a great night learning the ropes of pinball and competing against friends - highly recommend for a Friday night activity!

• Birthday Party v2: My good friend Janette hosted a wonderful garden soiree complete with a hot tub and endless pizza. It even inspired me to get back into hosting.

• Blood Test: I took a blood test by myself for the first time ever. It was so nerve-wracking but now I feel much more like a fully-fledged adult.

Content for Consumption

• Why the Modern Dating Market is Structurally Broken: Great deep-dive on the dating scene.

• 38% of Stanford Students Claim Disability: Interesting narrative on how students are “gaming” systems.

• Sriram Krishnan's Memo Collection: Inside look at how top executives communicate - I really like Bezos’ writing.

• NY Times: America Has a Marijuana Problem: NYT has completely backtracked on their pro-marijuana stance.

• Vancouver Neighborhood Map (Hoodmaps): Hilarious joke website to browse for a few minutes.

Hou’s Hacks

• Webtime Tracker Chrome Extension: Super helpful extension that you can review weekly to see where your time is going

• I stan the Next Play newsletter if you’re interested in working in tech

• Lingo CGM: I’ll be testing this out starting next week to get a better sense of which foods trigger blood sugar spikes. It comes highly recommended by my healthcare friends.

Joint Ventures

1. Thank you to everyone who’s been helping me scout for my next gig

2. Anyone have experience dealing with IT band overuse syndrome? Would love to chat

byebye