Dalmar

Building | Previously: Co-founder @joinperspective | Head of research @meettally, @instapage | Philosophy & public policy @uchicago

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

@IneluctableQuak @brillantcauseur +1 to Barnes’ Sense of an Ending. Haunting but excellent.

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

@tomowenmorgan @morganhousel Is this something you’ve shared or written about publicly, Tom?

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

@byconnorgiffin “Hope was a duty.” As good a motto for these dark times as one might have.

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

Rest in peace, Wendell. You worked like the snow.

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

They solved Tupac’s murder before we replaced Fabinho. #LFC

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

@tamarawinter @adam__xyz Beautifully said

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

@emeriticus Friend/enemy politics isn’t a function of Right v Left, but of extremism. We happened to platform right-wing extremists. Arendt helped us see that no camp has permanent immunity from thoughtlessness, ideological certainty, cruelty, informing, or the corruption of law.

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

@nikillinit Not sure if this translates (and/or how much of it is being a first-time parent in my 40s), but the physicality surprised me most. The carrying, holding, rocking, soothing — repeatedly, forever, with worsening form. And I’m aware we’re still getting the lighter end of the deal.

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

@patrick_oshag Ted Chiang’s excellent short story collection Exhalation:

https://t.co/O1mYsVVrU1

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

@garrytan Barely true of Steinbeck’s own form (re great editors) and hardly survives contact with others: great bands and artist/producer pairings are an obvious counterexample, but so too the Coens, Dardennes, Safdies, Powell & Pressburger, etc.

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

Parrhesia ❤️

[Florian Plettenberg @Plettigoal]

🚨💣 Jürgen Klopp addressing the German public during his introductory press conference as the new Bundestrainer:

“I’m not doing this job for myself. I’m doing it for you. I’m taking this job even though I’ve seen how you’ve treated Julian Nagelsmann. I’m taking it even though I’ve seen how you’ve treated Thomas Tuchel.

If you go after my family, I’m gone. If you think I’m rubbish, tell me to my face and I’ll leave immediately, without asking for any compensation.”

@SkySportDE 🇩🇪

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

I’ve always liked @patrickc’s 3-tiered bookshelf of things read, things liked, things loved. Remembered this as I looked at yours and thought “wait, did he not read any Dostoevsky, or was he not moved by him?!” (ditto Pale Fire - considering all the other Nabokov)

https://t.co/Tw6xJ8L1NG

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

Stumbled on this from Michael Easter a while back and found it clarifying. Sharing in case it lands for others too:

“What's the purpose of boredom? Boredom is an evolutionary discomfort. It tells us that whatever we're doing with our time, our return on investment has worn thin.

So let's pretend it's a couple of hundred thousand years ago: we're hunting and we need food, otherwise we're going to starve. But no animals are coming through. boredom would kick in: it's an uncomfortable signal telling us to go do something else. In the past, that something else was often productive: it would enhance our lives and increase our odds of survival. In our case, we'd probably get our food some other way: by picking berries or harvesting potatoes. If we didn't have that uncomfortable cue of boredom, we'd sit on that hill waiting and waiting and probably starve to death.

But today, whenever we feel the discomfort of boredom, we reach for the slot machine in our pocket, turn on the tv or fire up a podcast...at the most basic level, our brain has two modes of attention: focused mode (anytime you're focused on information in the outside world - it's a work state, like lifting a weight) and unfocused mode (otherwise called the default mode network, which triggers when we're not paying attention- it's inward mind wandering, a rest state that restores and rebuilds the resources we need to work better in the focused state).

Time in unfocused mode is actually critical to getting things done, creativity, processing information, etc. The attention we're handing over to digital media (cf: social media) isn't free - it's spent in focused mode. When we kill boredom by burying our minds into [our phones], tv, etc. our brain is actually putting forward a lot of effort: we're trying to do rep after rep of an exercise and our brain tires because we over-work it. Modern life overworks our brains.”

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

Fwiw, I don’t think any of this undercuts “his aura.” If anything, it just shows the beauty and limits of the ideal he attempts to guide his life by. With Polymarket, Rubin fell for the promise of unfiltered truth surfacing via a marketplace, while overlooking the transactional engine grinding underneath. It’s almost poignant, really. It’s the exact same instinct that makes his albums, his writing, and his podcasts great in the first place: this deep conviction that if you can just strip away the performance and the reward-seeking, something genuinely real will emerge.

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

Call it naive, but it fits his ethos. Viewed charitably, Rubin isn’t channeling Robert Greene to seem scarce or powerful. I suspect he genuinely doesn’t see the casino. He sees a tool for clarity, a way to surface what people actually care about, free of media middlemen and algorithmic noise. The 48 Laws read assumes everyone is strategizing for status. Some aren’t.

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

@bryce Law 16: Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor

Becoming too available makes you ordinary

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

For me, that’s the real critique of his Polymarket ad. His podcast works specifically because it strips away standard incentives, which leaves room for raw, unincentivized attention (ie the ground for any good convo). A prediction market does the opposite: it runs purely on incentives. It’s a casino floor wearing the mask of a truth-engine. Yes, the former can occasionally be good signals (eg cutting through election poll noise), but more often than not, the price is just a product of liquidity and whales moving lines.

[Dalmar @dalmarhussein]

@CliveDavisUK @grok was everyone on the sgt pepper cover alive when it was relesased?