Weekly logs

Some people make the world a better place

October 26, 2025

Hello world! This is a sadder post than last week's. This week I want to remember Daniel Naroditsky. I have spent a good amount of the hard times of Covid playing chess. I don't know if it was just the fact that it was easy to do while relegated in my room, the YouTube algorithm that made me discover Gothamchess, Magnus Carlsen, or what but I really got into it at the time. There was nothing more than I would be looking forward to those days than watching a tournament commentated by Robert Hess and Daniel Naroditsky. The best commentating pair by far. This week Danya passed away tragically at a very young age of 30. I hope more people like him existed. I know it sounds strange since I never met him or saw him in person, but when I read the news about his death I genuinely cried. It is very sad to about the passing of a person that made the world such a better place by teaching, helping us understand the game a bit more, and doing so in a uniquely funny and energetic way. I will take some time to mourn.

Serendipity

October 19, 2025

Hello world! This is another post following the post from last week. This week I want to highlight the importance of recording things like Brandon Stanton. The way I discovered Brandon Stanton was extremely serendipitous. It was not through the careful set of inputs I go through every day with extreme zeal, but randomly taking a break and glimpsing upon this book at work. It was a photography book, certainly not the style I would pick up at a library, and yet it somehow captured my attention. I started going through it, and realized it was awesome. He photographed the story of New Yorkers living their lives. There were so many intriguing tales and inspiring stories, all told through pictures. I have always loved taking stock of things about my life (through notes, writing, etc.), but never thought much about pictures. I always thought pictures were just a blurrier, more confined way to see the things in real life. But I think this book made me realized that they can be much more. They can tell stories, as long as accompanied by some description like Brandon said. And they can tell it much better than words can. I am realizing only now my hypocrisy in taking notes, but being opposed to taking pictures. I see it now like if you want to grow your garden but only watering plants. The garden is a cohesive piece that comes from the connection of adjusting the terrain, mowing the lawn, tackling the invasive plants. Note-taking is like watering plants, it's what will get you 80% of the way of a great garden, but things are so much more complex that you need at times more complex pieces, like pictures to tie everything together. Pictures alone will also not be sufficient by themselves, they have no distillation, no thinking, just the momentary vision of things as they are, yet they are great at what they do. Perhaps, not unsurprisingly given the above this was also a week of challenging some of the ways I have been taking notes on Notion. I have felt a bit compressed by Notion recently, as providing barriers for more expressive and free way of recording things. I have felt the requirement to always have a design in mind to build something in Notion. This has always been one of Notion's assets for me, but that has been somewhat challenged recently (watching this video in Italian).

Academia is cool

October 11, 2025

Hello world! This is the post after the post from last week. This week I want to learn more from Google: the AI company. Acquired is one of my favourite podcasts. They do deep dives into companies and they share their story. Every story is self-contained and they have some incredible research every time. This is the closest a podcast can get to an audiobook. Except it's a lot more engaging. And this last episode was awesome (full disclosure: I am only 3/4 through)! Google is such an amazing company. They made our lives so much better and so much worse at the same time. They created the best search engine, and then they created the worst possible search experience to suck out as much money as possible. But the podcast episode was the story of the final years of Google. The story of an already great company dealing with the AI existential crisis. This felt like the continuation of How the Internet Happened by Brian McCullough. Tech companies are so fascinating. They all rewrite the playbook from scratch every few years, and you have no idea which will be the next. There are signs but in 10 years everything will be completely different again. So many attempts fail (Yahoo, MySpace, Friendster, BlackBerry, Nokia, and so many more) and yet were so promising. The Internet can make you rise in the blink of an eye, just as it can make you fall. And that's what so fascinating about it. But in this piece, you find out that Google is not just a tech company. It's an academia company. It's a research company before anything else. And that's very cool.

Reinvent

October 4, 2025

Hello world! This is the post after my last post. This week I want to remind myself to always reinvent: AOL If you were born before the 2000s, it is likely you remember AOL. AOL (America Online) boomed in the 1990s and was the gateway to the internet for many people. However, I was born in the 2000s and I had never even hear of AOL until a month ago when I read How the Internet Happened by Brian McCullough. And then this week I was listening to The Best One Yet Podcast and I heard AOL grew by 20% this year. I was so fascinated by this that I started to read more about it and I found out that AOL is now a completely different company than the one of the 1990s. I started going around AOL and I found out that it is now a media company that owns a lot of different websites. I could not quite figure out exactly what it was. Is it a news website? A blog? A social media? A forum? I still don't think I know. But that's ok. I think I came to the conclusion that it doesn't matter. Just keep reinventing yourself and trying to find new ways to throw your name around, even if these are just a big mix of incoherent things.

More rational than it sounds

September 29, 2025

Hello world! This is the post after my first post. This week I want to think about designing one's life: Episode 257: Giorgio Ugazio (Mr. RIP): Life Design, In Progress. At that link you can find a great combination: one of my favourite podcasts (Rational Reminder), with one of my favourite youtubers (Mr. RIP), with a great book recommendation (Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans), and a great website recommendation (Philosofer123).
It's a little bit about financial philosophy, a little bit about life design, and a little bit about finding the path (not in some guru way).
I don't think I have a great takeaway other than that the best conversations to listen to are not always the most insightful ones, but those where you can feel the passion of the people talking. Sometimes I look for podcasts that make me go "I learned a lot", while other times I look for something that just makes me go "That was just a great conversation". This was one of the latter (and among the best of its kind).
I am sorry for those that do not know Italian and will not be able to enjoy Mr. RIP's great YouTube content...

What this will be

September 22, 2025

Hello world! This is my first post. This week I want to remember to be consistent and act with long-term vision: AGE 12 TO MARRIED – I Took A Photo Every Day - YouTube. When I watched the video I was so fascinated by the commitment to take a picture every single day for such a long part of life. It takes so much vision, discipline and commitment. My dream would be to be 1/7 as consistent as him with these logs.
I always wish I started something sooner. But then I rarely do. So this is one such attempt.
There are still a lot of things I want to figure out about this, but for now see you in around seven days (if anyone is reading this).

Life and other stuff

Logs

Some people make the world a better place

Serendipity

Academia is cool

Reinvent

More rational than it sounds

What this will be