Gilbert Strang, the legendary mathematician who proved risk can be cancelled to zero, on purpose, every single time:
"Take any bet you're unsure about and ask what happens if you're wrong. I proved there's an exact operation that undoes a bad outcome completely, not roughly, exactly, and almost nobody ever learns to calculate it."
Nobody outside that lecture hall has seen the operation itself.
here's the actual mechanic. write down the equation for your first move. now tack a second column onto it, the one representing the exact opposite outcome you're worried about. don't solve them separately. run the same elimination steps through both columns at once, together, side by side.
by the time the first column simplifies down to a clean answer, the second column has already turned into the exact move that cancels it. you never solved a second problem. you read the answer off the same steps you were already running.
most people treat the hedge as a separate calculation, done after the fact, once they know the trade went wrong. by then it's too late to get it for free. the exact cancelling move only comes cheap if you attach it to the original problem before you start.
zoom out to any model that prices a position and its exact opposite in the same breath. it isn't running the numbers twice. it tacked the second outcome on from the start, ran one elimination, and pulled both answers out together.
the takeaway isn't "hedge more." it's this: whatever you're solving for right now, the exact opposite answer is one extra column away, if you set the problem up before you need it, not after.
People pay six figures to sit in a room and hear this. It's in this video. For free.
The Roots & Ice Cube’s “Straight Outta Compton” from that Jimmy Fallon rehearsal is one of the greatest live hip-hop moments ever. Just a warmup and they still went nuclear. Kirk taking Eazy’s verse might be the highlight.
A frame-by-frame stop-motion recreation of the Beastie Boys’ iconic “Sabotage” video by independent animator Corduroy Frames.
Five years of work. 4,340 hand-animated frames made from card stock, foam, cardboard, tin foil and cotton balls. No AI. Just pure obsessive craft.
This mountable hurdy-gurdy style device is seriously cool 🔥
It turns a regular acoustic into an “inside-out” crank-driven instrument with that rich, droning, medieval sound. The melody and continuous drone together create something hypnotic.
Ten million people have watched an MIT professor accidentally destroy the executive coaching industry.
He filmed the lecture once in January 2018 and died eighteen months later.
Executive coaches charge fifteen thousand dollars a session to teach a third of what he covered in one hour for free.
His name was Patrick Winston. He ran the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997 and wrote the AI textbook every computer science major in the world read for thirty years.
Every January for four decades, he gave a lecture called "How to Speak."
His entire framework fits on a napkin.
Do not read. Be in the image. Keep images simple. Eliminate clutter. Start with an empathetic connection. End with a punch line the audience can repeat over dinner. Never open with a joke. Never end with "thank you."
That last rule alone has probably cost the executive coaching industry a hundred million dollars.
"Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas. In that order."
That is the actual opening line of the lecture. Winston believed it strongly enough to spend fifty years teaching computer scientists how to talk.
Founders spend $80,000 on an MBA and then hire a communications coach to teach them the same material Winston filmed once for free. Engineers write brilliant code and lose promotions to teammates who watched this lecture on the train.
The lecture is free on MIT OpenCourseWare. The textbook is free on his page.
Winston died in 2019. Almost none of the ten million viewers have actually implemented the four rules on the napkin.
The napkin is free. The willingness to actually use it in your next meeting is the entire edge.
Holy smokes! When Brooklyn and Los Angeles shared the same stage like it was nothing. Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill live on Arsenio ripping through “So What’cha Want,” 1992.
𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚: A kid has gone viral for being forced to compete in a bodybuilding show as punishment for losing his fantasy football league.
One of the greatest punishments we've ever seen.
😭😭😭