A Question, a Startup Idea, and Thoughts on Spring 2021 plans

Question I have been pondering: Why are Asian-Americans not as victimized as African-Americans? A brief Google scholar search of 'model minority' blasts you with evidence to the contrary of a 'model minority'. Some research explains the Asian-American prosperity through immigration of highly-skilled labor and loss of systemic racism. It still begs the question: Why did the equalization in wages occur? From the perspective of an Asian-American in the Unites States, there is some truth to the 'myth'

Startup idea: Betting on stocks through paper trading: the basic idea is a fantasy stock league similar to fantasy football where you can buy in to a paper trading competition and compete with others on who makes the best stock picks. The thesis is that you don't have to be better than everyone, but rather just your group of people. You can also trade in stocks over different time frames without risking too much real capital. People like to gamble. Period. Hard Stop. By creating a pool of money you create 'lottery' type system where the potential for gain is huge with only a small buy-in, similar to options trading without the professionals and complicated dynamics. 

Spring 2021: 

After my recent streamofconsciousnesswhatthefuckisthis essay rant about my college, UC-Berkeley, going online, I pondered over what to for the next semester (talking to a friend that is high truly is pondering) and I came to the conclusion that I need to change my living circumstance for two reasons. The first one is serendipity. Defined as 'the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way' serendipity infuses life with a sense of uncertainty and hope that can revive even the dullest of mindsets. The key word is chance. Within my current circumstance, there are no chances to be taken, no uncertainty in my decisions or even the outcomes of those decisions. I eat the same thing at the same times and do the same things at the same time. I would categorize my monotonous action as a routine rather than the typical 'midlife rut' because of the productivity and positive consequences that stems from my routine. I am in great shape and doing well in school, but the overwhelming comfort that comes with such a routine has destroyed my will to be uncomfortable, an essential aspect of a well-rounded improving life. The next concept that framed my thinking originated with Tversky and Kahneman in 'Thinking, Fast and Slow': The concept of the two selves(I highly recommend slogging through the 500+ page book because it truly changes your view on human behavior). The two selves are the experiencing self and the remembering self. The experiencing self is the part of the brain that experiences life while the remembering self is the part that remembers it. A demonstrative example of the difference is that of raising children. the experiencing self has obviously had a terrible time as raising a young child is an objectively bad experience with the numerous hours spent changing diapers and the additional emotional and financial stresses placed upon new parents, but most parents wouldn't renege on having a child. To me, the idea behind this difference is the distinction between an activity being enjoyable in the moment vs rewarding at the end. By staying in the Ti-Cities, I lose the remembering part of myself. There is no "remember that time...", when for six months I have woken up at 5 am, worked out, and worked on repeat. I have no chances to mess up, to feel bad, to experience trouble, thus severely limiting my chances to have memorable moments and awe-inspiring experiences. 

Those two ideas frame my thinking about Spring 2021 and why I am seriously considering moving elsewhere in the country. I want to be able to be uncomfortable, to be imperfect, to mess up in both good and bad ways, because even routine can hurt you. I have become an isolated, albeit productive, person, withdrawn from others sentenced to life in a box (literally and figuratively). I want the chance to explore, the chance to feel like shit, the chance to be stressed and then immediately happy, the chance to vulnerable, but most of all, I just want Chance involved. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Animal Spirits Book Review

  Animal Spirits, Why Psychology matters in Macroeconomics Today I finished the book “Animal Spirits” written by George Akerlof (hey, Berkeley faculty) and Robert Shiller. I will go through a quick summary followed by my thoughts on the book as a whole Summary The premise of the book is quite simple: macroeconomic theory is based on a set of obtuse assumptions, thus lessening the validity of such a theory. Shiller and Akerlof use data and anecdotes to originate a new set of driving forces for economies today, the titular ‘animal spirits’ first referenced by John Meynard Keynes. They breakdown animal spirits into the following five categories which, when analyzed in sum with macroeconomic theory provide a framework for thinking about macroeconomics 1.        Confidence: recessions are in large part due to a los of consumer and business confidence which decreases spending and output. The reverse also holds true 2.     ...
Read more

TransMedics (Nasdaq:TMDX), A catalyst upcoming

Image
Summary: Transmedics is the maker of organ preservation systems to extend the life of organs for transplants. Organ transplantation has suffered with low usage rates due to a lack of effective preservation techniques, but Transmedics' organ care system solves this issue and effectively expands the market for organs. With an upcoming FDA panel for their OCS heart system on October 7, I believe the stock is undervalued at current levels and has a positive catalyst coming soon. Product The current standard of care for organ transportation cold storage, effectively a cooler for organs. Under this method, only 2-3 organs thoracic organs are used out of every 10 donated and there is a 30-35% post-transplant complication rate. Their organ care system (OCS) has shown a significant increase in organ utilization to ~8/10 organs and an improvement in the post-transplant complication rate to 14%(source: company presentation). While typically organs are thrown into a cooler, TMDX used warm perf...
Read more

Myomo Thesis(MYO)

Image
Since substack is all the rage now, the I post all of my DDs on there as well. I like the ease of use of the platform as well.  Myomo is a medical device company that sells an assistive device for those with reduced strength in their arms. The device uses the impulses generated by a persons brain and amplifies them to strengthen movements. The target population are a specific set of patients with chronic arm paralysis (basically you have trouble using your arm) such as stroke survivors, spinal cord injuries, Brachial plexus injuries and other various conditions. Market:  Management sizes the total market opportunity at 3M people with chronic arm paralysis in the USA and 1% of the global population growing at 250k each year. Not all of these patients will get a Myomo device, but there is still a large and growing unmet medical need Industry:  Myomo has no direct competitors, but there are two other companies focused on augmenting human movement: Ekso Bionics (EKSO) and Rew...
Read more