Tim Ferriss - 5-Bullet Friday — February 24, 2023

Hi All!

Here is your weekly dose of 5-Bullet Friday, a list of what I’m pondering and exploring. Please feel free to forward this along to friends.

Longform article I’m reading

“Stone Skipping Is a Lost Art. Kurt Steiner Wants the World to Find It” by Sean Williams (@swilliamsjourno). For a taste of this wonderful piece, nibble on these sample paragraphs:
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​Finally, in February, after pursuing Kurt for more than two years, I flew from Europe to Detroit, where border guards had a hard time believing I was entering the U.S. to interview a stone skipper. Then I showed them a video of Kurt’s magical record throw, and before long a group was gathered around a computer screen, counting the skips and hollering “No fucking way!” before letting me through. From the moment I met Kurt in Erie a day later, it was clear that his hibernation had ended. By 10 p.m. on our second evening, when he fashioned a can of Monster energy drink into a makeshift bong, we’d spoken for 12 hours straight.
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Kurt toiled with the duality of his mental life throughout his teenage years, lurching from hyperfocus to apathy. Classmates would crowd around to watch him at a pinball machine, where he could go hours without losing a ball. He excelled at chess, could pick apart a radio and put it back together, and racked up an Asteroids score so crazy he assumes it broke any known record. “He was seeing the back end of the coding rather than the graphics on the screen,” Victor “Chip” Susol, one of Kurt’s oldest friends, told me.
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Whenever he discovered a body of water on these sojourns, he skipped rocks. It felt natural, as if by clasping a stone he was anchored to the planet, able to “hold infinity in the palm of your hand,” in the words of William Blake. Skipping was “safe from development and capitalism, and in control,” he told me, at odds with a society that seemed “hell-bent on detaching itself from the natural world.”
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​Sincerest thanks to Victor for sharing the above!

What I’m watching

“Psychedelic Assisted Therapy: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” The writing and execution on this are brilliant. Masterfully done, John Oliver (@iamjohnoliver) and the whole team at Last Week Tonight (@LastWeekTonight)! They threaded so many needles well that it might be a quilt. NOTE: The YouTube video appears to be restricted to U.S. viewers only. There is a shorter version available on Twitter here. For projects related to this, and some familiar names from the video, click here.

What I’m using on food

​Rozendal’s Fynbos Botanical Vinegar. The preceding link only delivers in South Africa. For the USA, try Interdependence Natural Foods or Stellenberg Imports, which offers a 9-bottle case. This vinegar was gifted to me by Zach Williams, an alpine ski racer and Paralympic hopeful. I’ve been drizzling it on practically everything, including salads and thinly sliced elk with some oil, salt, and pepper. Here is the official description: “Carefully selected Fynbos herbs reflect the rich biodiversity of the Cape Floral Kingdom. Balsamic vinegar infused with buchu, honeybush tea, rose geranium, wild olive, and wild rosemary.”

​​Community project I’m very excited to kickstart

3D rigging! I’m releasing a whole bunch of 3D character files here, which are the 3D versions of all of the figures I made available in 2D for AI artists a while back. If you are a 3D artist and know how to “rig,” please feel free to experiment away on any of those files and share your work! I’d really love to see what you can do. My team and I will be retweeting some of our favorites, so please be sure to tag @cockpunch on Twitter and use #3D at the end. Have fun!

Quote I’m pondering

“The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. … What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing … the thing that might be worth saying.”​
— Gilles Deleuze​
​(​​​Click here to share on Twitter)​​
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You can complement this edition of 5-Bullet Friday with this clip on some of my favorite spices when I cook.
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And, as always, please give me feedback on Twitter. Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @tferriss and put #5BulletFriday at the end so I can find it.
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Have a wonderful weekend, all.
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Much love to you and yours,
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Tim

P.S. Deal of the Week — 80,000 Hours! Read this P.S. and you’ll thank me.

You have roughly 80,000 hours in your career—that’s 40 hours a week x 50 weeks a year x 40 years—and it’s your biggest opportunity to make a positive impact on the world. Most career advice is vague or one-size-fits-all and doesn’t spell out how you can truly make a difference that matters. But I do know of one great source: 80,000 Hours. Some of the best strategies, best research, and best tactical career advice I’ve seen comes from 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit that provides free research and advice to help you find a career that tackles one of the world’s most pressing problems. The team at 80,000 Hours has put a lot of work and dedication into providing carefully researched, evidence-based career advice, and they provide it all for free. Right now, as a 5-Bullet Friday subscriber, you can also get a free book sent to you in the mail (they’ll even cover shipping). They’ve chosen some fascinating books to help you make a positive impact with your career. Join their free email newsletter and get your book sent to you for free.

P.P.S.

In case you missed it, my podcast interview with Professor John Vervaeke explores how to cultivate wisdom, tap into flow states, fall in love with reality, and much, much more. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favorite podcast platform. John has been a widely requested guest.