GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Books

  • Money Multiplication Matters

    Tangents from a few books about money. I heartily recommend the one by Harry Browne; the rest are OK.

    ,

    Fail Safe Investing, Lifelong Financial Security in 30 minutes, Harry Browne, 1999

    If you’re a wimp (like me) this is the best book on investing. And if you get interested in Risk Parity style portfolios, check out Frank Vasquez’s “Risk Parity Radio” for up to date opinions and advice on this style of portfolio construction.

    • If you want to speculate, look elsewhere. Harry Browne advises that your profession will be your primary source of wealth and warns against taking risks like investing on margin.
    • Clean, clear advice. Some specifics are outdated (such as how to purchase investments) but his conservative concepts are solid.
    • I plan on revisiting this book every year. I’ve taken a more aggressive approach than his “Permanent Portfolio” (more stocks, less gold and bonds). Still, I thank him for introducing me to Gold. It’s a controversial asset but a game changer for me. It added a third uncorrelated asset class to ballast the portfolio, which made me more comfortable with investing heavier in stocks.

    ,

    Explore TIPS, Harry Sit, 2010

    Gotta start somewhere and I was curious about Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities when I started my investment journey in 2022. I’ve gone with a different investing strategy.

    • TIPS are bonds with inflation insurance. Harry is a fan of going heavy on TIPS relative to nominal bonds. (I believe a properly diversified portfolio will compensate for inflation with the other asset classes, so I don’t like the extra cost of the inflation insurance).
    • Purchase them at auction, the secondary market or via ETF’s. Harry Sit is open to all investment avenues.
    • I-bonds are more like CD’s since they can’t be sold on the secondary market. Harry Sit is not a fan.

    ,

    Value Averaging, The Safe and Easy Strategy for Higher Investment Returns, Michael E. Edleson, 1993

    An optimized way to pour cash into the investment market.

    • “Value Averaging” is setting a goal for how much you want an investment to increase over time and purchasing accordingly. Unlike “Dollar Cost Averaging”, Value Averaging pushes you to buy more when the markets are down and less when they’re up.
    • If you want to be awesome, the book gives a bunch of math to optimize the investment curve.
    • As a retail investor playing with small sums, I believe optimization is a waste. After learning the basics, the smallest edge requires a ton of study. Any such such bet will be overwhelmed by the capricious whims of the gods. Better to enjoy the finer parts of life.

    ,

    Die Broke, Stephen M. Pollen and Mark Levine, 1997

    I found the book in a random giveaway pile in Berkeley, maybe in lower Sproul Plaza. Two cities (and decades) later, I finally read it.

    • Great title and interesting provocation to reevaluate our relationship to money, work, and retirement.
    • I love books with unique structures. Part 1 is a short self help mindset manual. Part 2 is an alphabetical list of chapters with practical advice. (Since this book is almost thirty years old, I lightly skimmed the second part since I presume most of it is out of date.)
    • I enjoyed Part 1, partly because I already agree with their four key maxims. I view employment as a transaction not fulfillment, believe in avoiding debt, and doubt the positive good of leaving a large bequest. I’m not totally sold on the maxim of “Don’t Retire” but I appreciate their skepticism of the modern retirement paradigm.

    ,
     

    make
    money
    grow
    invest
    digits
    on a
    screen

    .

  • Pen and Ink, James Hobbs, 2016

    This is a great little survey of what’s possible with this medium. Hobbs picked a variety of artists and provided thoughtful commentary on each of his picks.

    As I get deeper into sketching, this book is a definite keeper. It’s nice to have an overview of all the different approaches in a single volume. Seeing the multiplicity of technical skills makes the practice less intimidating than studying the work of a single master.

    I got mine for $14, but prices fluctuate because it’s out of print. While you fish for a good price, I’ve included the list of artists in the photos below.

    Please note that this book is a bit smaller than I expected, so I included a Lamy Safari for scale on a couple photos.

    Now go and fly that pen!

  • OPM.55 (notes on) Small is the New Big, Seth Godin, 2006

    Stop making products and start making magic.

    This has been Seth’s mantra over the years. This book is no exception.

    It’s a fun read, delightfully nostalgic for someone that live through the internet revolution. Even though this book was about the World Wide Web before social media inhaled the information superhighway, Seth’s encouragement is still as powerful as ever.

    Go out there, let it all hang out, and do something.

    This book emphasizes “zooming” — acclimating to the difficult art of change. He posits that zooming is a powerfully motivating way to view the world.

    This book comes from that short lived genera of collected blog-posts volumes. The world has changed a bit since publication, but it still rhymes with the 00’s, even if things feel a little gloomier.

    Seth has been telling the same story for the past three decades.

    So if you dig him, check it out. If you don’t, this book won’t change your mind.

    With AI, change is coming (again!). What would you do if you knew for certain that what your work today won’t survive the next two decades of disruption? How will you embrace the change that is coming? Are you gonna zoom?

    ~

    One of my favorite riffs is when Godin embarks on an extended discussion about “maybe-proofing” the company. One of the best ways to kill a project flow is to dawdle. Sometimes we should pause and let things develop, but that should be a deliberate choice. As OPM’s, we have to maybe-proof ourselves. Our job is to make choices.

    ~

    In the two years after reading this book, I’ve realized that I’m on the back half of my career. So I’ve lost interest in self-help and Seth has been a casualty of this shift. He’s correct that one needs to embrace change in your career, but I’m not focused on my career anymore.

    I will always work hard and dabble with process improvements, but when I’m not at work, I focus on other joys. I no longer feel an urge to to maximize my output or lead the charge to make things better in the office.

    ~

    Some Links

    At the end of each month, I often need to use up my quota at Hoopla (a library streaming service). I invariably return to these albums. Two of them are absolute classics. The third is lesser known, though by perennial request by our kids. The fourth is a nod to my weakness for EDM.

    Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert. It’s the best selling solo jazz album of all time, but I’ll switch it up and borrow his Paris Concert which forays into baroque counterpoint.

    The Awakening is one of the most sampled albums in hip hop. Recorded in February 1970, it feels like a distinct evolution by the Ahmad Jamal Trio from the bebop of past decades. If I’ve had too much piano lately, I’ll get Way Out West with a unique trio of bass, drums, and saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins.

    My kids are obsessed with the “Ballad of Pancho Villa” (which they call “cafe music”) so they always insist on borrowing From All Sides, a collaboration between guitarist Bolo Sete and the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

    I recently mentioned Klangphonics for their quirky YouTube shorts. Driving feels better with Songs to Try on the speakers (but it’s not so aggressive to become dangerous).

    ~

    Park Shade, 2022

    ~

    Thanks for reading!
    Justus Pang, RA

  • The 3 Gaps, Hyrum Smith, 2016

    To excel in life we need to address three gaps — Belief, Value, and Time.

    Belief gaps are the deep cause of your underperformance. It’s hard to change ingrained beliefs. Hyrum recommends that you test drive new beliefs by acting “as if” to see if the alternate reality will ultimately change your situation.

    Value gaps are your own personal constitution. What matters? So much that they govern your life? How will you prioritize them, to reorient your life?

    Hyrum uses the I-Beam thought experiment to test how important something is in your life. What’s worth crossing the Grand Canyon on a little slippery I-beam?

    • Family
    • Integrity
    • Health
    • Mind
    • Work / Finances
    • Making a Difference

    Time gaps are where the practical world collies with Belief and Value gaps. His primary recommendation is to start the day with daily “Magic 15 Minutes” exercise.

    1. Quiet Focus
    2. Seek Inspiration
    3. Review Values
    4. Integrate Long Term Goals
    5. List Appointments
    6. List Tasks
    7. Prioritize

    That’s it. It’s a two-hour audiobook that took an hour at 2x speed.

    I was inclined to like this book since I have a weakness for self help fare and I appreciated that he didn’t bloat the book like many others in this genre.

    However, I could argue that his advice is too simplistic. This book is for someone who is already in a good spot and wants an extra edge. Someone in a tough spot has bigger emergencies at hand.

    For someone in such a difficult situation, I wonder if such bootstrap advice is comes off insulting. Ultimately, this is generic advice, packaged tightly.

    When I wrote the first draft I thought this might be a good book to return to regularly, like John Miller’s QBQ. In reality, I haven’t given it a second thought over the past two years.

  • OPM.53 (notes on) A Sense of Style, Steven Pinker, 2015

    I often write about the grand challenges aspects of this work — eliminating and preserving slack in the system, juggling budget and schedule, fostering a decisive culture, executing a careful process, developing relationships.

    But in this world of digital communication, much of my time on the job is trying to write good. A well turned email can make a difference, and it’s amazing when a carefully crafted memo gets the needed response.

    This book stands out from prescriptive manuals (like Strunk and White) because Pinker carefully explains the why behind the rules. This book’s strength is also reflection upon what I do as an OPM.

    Yes we must follow our agency standards. And we all got personal preferences. But we’re at our best when we can explain the logic behind our decisions. It’s important for our team to know why, especially if the institutional logic results in weird choices.

    At least that’s what I hope. Maybe I just bore my consultants to tears with extended explanations of bureaucratic esoterica.

    That’s one of the perks and dangers of being a client — no one will tell you to shut up.

    ~

    Listening is not the best way to consume this book, but a little is better than none. There are diagrams and complex analyses that warrant a visual reading (either physical or electronic). But I haven’t bothered in the past couple of years, so I guess it’s not going to happen.

    ~

    Some Links

    Live performances of electronic music sounds like a contradiction, but they have a spark that is sometimes missing from their albums. Here are a few examples.

    I’ve haven’t gotten into his studio albums, but I often play Oupio’s concert at Red Rocks with the SYZYGY Orchestra when I’m cranking on work.

    Admittedly Caravan Palace’s animated music video is wildly vivid, but there’s a great vibe in this live performance of Lone Digger.

    I used to listen to Moon Safari album on a little blue MP3 player while walking to studio. This video of La Femme d’Argent in a recording studio materializes the music and the memories.

    ~

    Ferrero Rocher, 2022

    ~

    Thanks for reading!
    Justus Pang, RA

  • foreword to Monkey King by Gene Luen Yang, (Julia Lovell Translation), 2021

    When reading classic literature, I often stumble at the introduction and never make it to the text itself. So I have mixed feelings towards introductory materials.

    However, Gene Luen Yang wrote an amazing foreword. It was concise but heartfelt. He spoke of himself, but captured a moment that included me.

    He nailed the rootlessness that I sensed as an Asian kid growing up in America. My mom also read the Journey to the West to me and my sister. Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy were integral parts parts of our childhood in a universe where they didn’t exist outside our home.

    Unlike Gene, I never fell in love with comic books. I never thought I had a favorite superhero, until I realized I did all along. This ridiculous monkey had settled deep into my psyche and never left.

    Like us, Sun Wukong was an outsider navigating a strange land. I never had his brashness, but I wish I did! (If I ever get a tattoo it would be 齊天大聖 , Great Sage Heaven’s Equal)

    One of the best introductions I’ve ever read. But I’m biased since Gene wrote it just for me.

    ~

    I drafted this note two years ago, before reading the book. I will always be in debt to the Lovell abridgement because it lead me to read the full translation by Anthony C. Yu, which I prefer. The story is a classic but the experience is incomplete without the poetic interludes in the novel.

  • Mythologies, Roland Barthes, 1957

    I bought this book for freshman rhetoric (or art history?) to fulfill one of my English requirements at Berkeley. I kept the book because loved his essay about professional wrestling and I finally read it over the pandemic.

    The book has a surprisingly contemporary feel, since it’s a series of short essays with a deep analysis at the end of the book. In our contemporary era, this would be a collection of posts with an extended coda.

    Then again Barthes was French so the essays are deeper than your typical tweet-storm and the closing discussion on semiology was an absolute ass whupping since I haven’t tussled with high theory since 2006.

    I’m fortunate to have taken those grad school theory courses before reading that last essay. I don’t remember much from Houston, but I knew just enough to roughly grok his game.

    Wikipedia

    Barthe posits that “mythology” is a second order semiological effect. The “full” Sign of language becomes the “empty” Signifier for myth which is paired with an unspoken Signified to create a new Sign.

    The main effect of myth is to distort knowledge in the service of power by making dominant values invisible. Myth makes ideology natural.

    In contemporary parlance, mythology hides privilege.

    The duty of the mythologist to untangle the web of obfuscation and expose such rhetoric for analysis.

    I might be 23 years late to the game, but it was totally worth lugging across the continent and back again.

    ~

    Two years later, my current reading obsession is “ancient wisdom”. Editing this draft reminds me that I need to re-read of this book — the ancients were no less susceptible to corruption than we are today. And if I’m gonna keep writing these notes, I should grab his baton to question today’s mythologies.

  • OPM.50 (notes on myself, from) Icarus Deception, Seth Godin, 2012

    I wrote this near the start of this OPM Letter. I started strong in 2021 but then went on a long hiatus before deciding to give this project proper closure. Even so, I thought I’d share as a way to celebrate the half century mark.

    ~

    This book hit me at the perfect time. Seth’s encouragement to step out into the void really hit after having started this OPM Letter project.

    Every few years I feel an urge to level up. After my first gig in a firm, I went to grad school. After Rice, I jumped from a small shop to work to try a corporate firm. Jumped from CAD to BIM. Took some (a lot) time remodeling our house. Slid over over to owner side.

    As discussed in Bob Buford’s Half Time, the best time to start the next thing is before the current thing has run out of steam.

    Maybe that’s the role of this newsletter.
    (2023 note: Doesn’t seem like it. I still enjoy my work, but I’ve moved my focus away from advancing my career.)

    I’m sticking myself out there, as if I’m an expert or something. I’m not. But maybe this project will help me contemplate my work.

    Maybe it results in something worth sharing. Otherwise why share?

    And if it doesn’t go anywhere? At least I’ll remain anonymous. Fame is overrated!

    ~

    Interestingly, I wrote almost nothing about the book in my first draft draft twenty four months ago. And now I can’t remember a single thing from the Icarus Deception aside from the green cover. I bet it had some inspiring moments about putting yourself out there in the new connection economy, but that’s just guessing. But I copied quote back then still resonates.

    Grit is the attitude of someone who realizes she has the power to care and is intent on doing something with it.

    An agency client just sent me a kind note before she retired. Maybe she was just being nice, but if I actually did anything special to earn her compliments, it was only because I cared and did something with it.

    ~

    Some Links

    Mark Starlin writes a fun newsletter every Monday with three quick fictions, a witty sentence, a flash fiction, and a short story. It’s a great start to the week.

    Carolyn Yoo explores the creative practice every week. I dig her warm embrace of the world at large. A great start is this newsletter sharing how she published a zine about finding her wedding dress.

    A few weeks ago I thought I becoming a Glitch-hop aficionado, but I’ve realized it’s too close to big-time EDM. Instead, I’ve been playing this Chiptune playlist on repeat. It reminds me of the days of downloading mods from BBSs.

    X-15 Crash (Pilot Jack McKay survived but was forced to retire early), Mud Lake, Nevada, 1962

    ~

    Thanks for reading!
    Justus Pang, RA

  • OPM.48 (notes on) What your CEO wants you to know, Ram Charan, 2018

    I listened to this book three years ago, and all I remember was his obsession with cash flows. Which isn’t particularly relevant to a guy who has no plans on going back into private practice.

    However, in updating this draft, I was reminded about his last chapter on “synchronization”. It sounds like a gem to revisit. This section is all about sharing information so the team can work together in unity.

    Charan emphasizes the concept of a “social operating mechanism”. It could be a regular update letter, some sort of webtool, or a recurring meeting. The key is that important information is shared and that people walk away energized to tackle the key issues in their responsibilty.

    Charan identifies four key aspects for a good dialogue:

    • Openness – be honest in the search, don’t pre-decide, listen to everyone.
    • Candor – be willing to speak and be honest about the conflict.
    • Informality – encourages candor. don’t be stiff and prepackaged
    • Closure – once done, be disciplined to ensure that follow through happens.

    I’ve tried to adopt this attitude during my time as OPM. With some folks it can be difficult, but I find that acting otherwise just makes it even harder. Social lubrication is real and has earned good feedback from my project mates (admittedly they are all financially incentivized to butter me up).

    However, this past year, I had gotten lax about the regularity of these meetings. I had a few projects with long lead times where I skipped the recurring meetings until things got started in earnest. Unfortunately, I found out on the back end that things just slipped through the cracks until we started meeting regularly.

    So until I find a better solution, I’m resorting to requiring regular (virtual) meetings on my projects. I hate the distraction of having a meeting on the calendar, even if they are for a few minutes. However, I don’t know of a better way to ensure my teams are keeping pace on their jobs.

    Even if I can’t recommend this book as essential, I’m a fan of Charan’s Leadership Pipeline which I have recommended multiple times.

    ~

    Some Links

    A few years ago, CGP Grey went on an information diet to reset his attention habits. My purge won’t go two years like Project Cyclops, but I started July by unsubscribing from news podcasts and YouTube channels.

    One immediate side effect of this cull is that the algorithm has been feeding evergreen comedy, such as British comedy skits. One of my new favorites has Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie as competing psychiatrists analyzing each other.

    Weston Parker is a (mostly retired) carpenter who has been sharing lovely poems on A Carpenter’s Point of View. It’s fun to find other industry folks who are practicing the arts. A recent poem includes the line “with good drainage”. I feel seen.

    ~

    Town Hall, Halmstad, Halland, Sweden, 1939

    ~

    Thanks for reading!
    Justus Pang, RA

  • Island Book (1), Evan Dahm, 2019

    The art is lovely, the story is evocative, but it brings up a problem I’ve noticed in some graphic novels — density.

    It’s short story in a book format. Nothing wrong about that, but it left me feeling a little empty. One might argue that Dahm preserved liminal spaces for the reader to insert themselves, but I’m not yet ready to give it the benefit of the doubt.

    Part of the problem may be that it’s a serialized piece of fiction. Maybe the openness was to make room for the author to infill in future volumes.

    Still, this book is a fun read, worth checking out at the library. Maybe my opinion will shift after I’ve read volumes 2 and 3. I’ve put them on hold at the library, it’s certainly earned that.