The Elevator: Personal Finance Tool, Fascia, Frontier Thinking
"To be radically free from the confines of consensus reality one must inhabit states of mind that FEEL crazy and make it back to tell the tale."
The Elevator: Curated inputs to evolve your mind, grow your business, and live well.
Hey All,
I just wrapped up Edge City Austin, which is a sort of startup-weekend style event series filled with co-working, talk,s and workshops about a series of topics of interest of mine: Future tech, Ai, Crypto, Biotech, and humanities. There were a few bigger named speakers like Vitalik Buterin and Balajis, and I saw the Neurosurgen from Neurolink give a presentation on the progress of their devices (with lots of brain images yikes!).
Another interesting talk was from Just in Mares (founder of Kettle and Fire) about creating healthier cities. I’ve linked a longer post from him below.
The TLDR of takeaway from my event is that I believe people are hungry for startups and technology that go beyond our “SAAS” era of building beautiful digital interfaces. People want more real-world impact and larger structural changes to how we live, work, and relate. The themes of the conference (and movement of edge cities + startup cities) are about bridging technological progress and the future of humanities-style thinking with how we actually live day to day.
For example, people are less interested in building Instacart, per se, but instead building a Health focused Instacart service that overlaps with finding your community. Or maybe your building has it’s own organic kitchen with room-delivery or collaborative cooking experiences. We’re leaving “software” for it’s own sake of optimization and moving towards larger structural breakthroughs lead by technology.
There was also an emphasis on community and connection, for example with workshops on community movements or “Authentic Relating.”
Last, I do believe that new countries and cities will form from this movement, but maybe more important are the people and thought leaders incubated by this movement. They will be global, remote, more country-agnostic (i.e. less allegiance to their home country), and will have better access to resources despite their countries of origin. I think that’s a positive thing.
xx David
A neal finance tool from the maker of Baremetrics (Maybe Finance)
Fascia: The Body’s Bridge Between Trauma and Transformation:
(Link to Substack) My latest interest is learning more about and working with my body’s Fascia system, thanks to an incredible practitioner I’ve found here in Austin. I think of my fascia as the mycellium network of my muscles and bones.
“Fascia is a dynamic, living tissue that wraps every muscle, bone, organ, and nerve in a continuous web of support. It doesn’t just hold the body together; it facilitates communication between its systems. Recent research reveals that fascia is rich in sensory receptors, making it one of the body’s most significant sensory organs.”
The Great American Poisining:
“The invisible hand of the market nudges food providers toward profitable, processed foods. Then our healthcare system sells (very profitable) pills and procedures when people inevitably get sick.” (Substack)
I saw Miki give a talk on her new company, HIRO which is harnessing fungi to turn soft plastics back into nature and help solve the global plastic crisis. Pretty cool company and implications. Will be huge. (Kickstarter and pre-launch)
Speaking of frontier thinking, I enjoyed this post, Might You Be a Crazy Genius?
“To bring humanity something truly novel we must flirt with disaster. Whether exploring Art, Science, Math, Spirituality, or Shamanism doesn’t matter. To be radically free from the confines of consensus reality one must inhabit states of mind that FEEL crazy and make it back to tell the tale.” (Devin Martin)
Have a great weekend,