Andy Zhao

Co-Founder @LimelightSteel | Disciple @ActivateFellows |
Views are from somewhere between Boltzmann and Bessemer

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

Henry Bessemer figuring out how to dismantle the steel industry is a vibe.

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

Shenzhen and Apple in China is a layup.

Like steak and red wine.

Then hanging out with my friends that work at Apple, while we're all in China, is the meta we need.

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

Visiting a city, while consuming media set in that city, is like eating dinner with fun beverage pairings!

Reading a book vs. watching a movie vs. listening to an album bring out different flavor profiles of a city!! 🍖🍾

Let me know if you got any city pairing recs

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

Hong Kong and Lucas Sin youtube

Watching Lucas go to his favorite Hong Kong bbq spot, then taking a 30 minute bus to the most eastern part of Hong Kong Island to have the best char siu of my life...

Like an ice cold beer with grilled meats.

https://t.co/c1yuIyOulp

[Ilan Gur @ilangur]

more like

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

The existence of deep tech implies the existence of shallow tech.

Love Ian's historical grounding that VC-backed companies have always been building hardware.

Fairchild, Intel, Apple, Genentech.

[ian @IanRountree]

Okay hear me out…

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

@mattkrisiloff WHOA! I totally forgot about that deal!

Reflects Microsoft's range!!

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

Choice in nuclear reactor design reflects something deeper about how these companies operate.

Microsoft going for old as hell, legacy light water reactor

Google betting on fancy molten salt reactor

Amazon adding carbide coatings over uranium pellets

[Simon Mahan @SimonMahan]

Sep 20 - Microsoft announces Three Mile Island deal (Pennsylvania)
Oct 14 - Google announces deal with Kairos (Tennessee?)
Oct 16 - Amazon announces deal with X-Energy (Washington)

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

Favorite nugget:

Kaiser Permanente is a spinoff of Kaiser Shipyards in Alameda and Oakland, which employed ~79,000 people building steel ships during WW2

They provided hospital care to their employees and got really good at it

https://t.co/drswKq3XN6

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

West Oakland has been a hub for manufacturing and shipping for over 100 years!

Really fun to learn about how consistent the relationship between SF and Oakland has been for a century.

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

An exploration of why I love Oakland and a few history nuggets

https://t.co/PM385FWYxB

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

@rsnous https://t.co/IxAYgldmfD

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

# on shortification of "learning"

There are a lot of videos on YouTube/TikTok etc. that give the appearance of education, but if you look closely they are really just entertainment. This is very convenient for everyone involved : the people watching enjoy thinking they are learning (but actually they are just having fun). The people creating this content also enjoy it because fun has a much larger audience, fame and revenue. But as far as learning goes, this is a trap. This content is an epsilon away from watching the Bachelorette. It's like snacking on those "Garden Veggie Straws", which feel like you're eating healthy vegetables until you look at the ingredients.

Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that "10 minute full body" workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It's not that the quickie doesn't do anything, it's just that it is wildly suboptimal if you actually care to learn.

I find it helpful to explicitly declare your intent up front as a sharp, binary variable in your mind. If you are consuming content: are you trying to be entertained or are you trying to learn? And if you are creating content: are you trying to entertain or are you trying to teach? You'll go down a different path in each case. Attempts to seek the stuff in between actually clamp to zero.

So for those who actually want to learn. Unless you are trying to learn something narrow and specific, close those tabs with quick blog posts. Close those tabs of "Learn XYZ in 10 minutes". Consider the opportunity cost of snacking and seek the meal - the textbooks, docs, papers, manuals, longform. Allocate a 4 hour window. Don't just read, take notes, re-read, re-phrase, process, manipulate, learn.

And for those actually trying to educate, please consider writing/recording longform, designed for someone to get "sweaty", especially in today's era of quantity over quality. Give someone a real workout. This is what I aspire to in my own educational work too. My audience will decrease. The ones that remain might not even like it. But at least we'll learn something.

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

@rsnous Similar to being skeptical of educational videos on youtube since they bring more entertainment than real learning.

Viewing biography as a story to generate interest and provide an epistemology to view that person and their time makes sense!

PSFinished Path to Power last night!

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

@taytabb @sfcompute I see you acquiring good materials @rsnous!

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

Thinking about the modern manifestations of different branches of science.

Thermodynamics -> Turbine

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

17:45 to hear my sweet sweet podcast voice.

https://t.co/2nikZA5qt3

[Andy Zhao @phandypack]

So fun to run into @mollywood at the ARPA-E Summit and share my love of rocks and metal!