42 CHEAT CODES I WISH I KNEW AT 22:

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Great seeing one of the fastest natural drivers of the last decade Robert Kubica today with @WilliamsRacing at @COTA #USGP #f1 #robertkubica #Poland #richenergy

👇Thread.

Published a new essay: The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics – 80 slide deck included!

This was a deck that I created on my (longish) interview process with @a16z. It was a long path, starting with meeting folks at the firm 10 years ago. But the purpose of the deck was to explain how I would use my superpower in an investing context

Here's what I explain in the deck. As investors (whether angel or VC) we're often confronted with an up-and-to-the-right graph. Is it going to go up? Or down?

One solution to forecast these growth curves is the Growth Accounting Framework, where you add up New+Reactivated and subtract churned users. In each time period that gives you the difference in monthly actives.

The problem with this is that it's a lagging metric, not a leading one. We need to go one level deeper and look at the underlying loops that drive these numbers, to understand the quality.

1/ Today is #BlackHoleFriday, an annual science outreach event that, by complete coincidence I’m sure, is done on #BlackFriday. You’ll read lots of cool stuff about black holes on the hashtag. Here’s mine.

2/ Black holes are weird. Duh. People like to think of them as something like incredibly dense nuggets of stuff that sucks other stuff in. But they’re not like that.

3/ If you squeeze enough mass into a small enough volume, the gravity gets so intense that it’s impossible to escape them *if you get too close*. From far away, though, gravitationally they more or less act like anything with that much mass.

4/ So if the Sun turns into a black hole we wouldn’t get drawn in. In fact, we’d orbit it almost exactly the same way as we do now, though we’d freeze to death pretty rapidly, which, in the end, would still kinda suck.

5/ Black holes get weird *when you get close*. Anything with mass warps space — we feel that warp as gravity! — but black holes stretch space to its limit.

(THREAD) Pre-election Russia collusion may take down Trump. It's equally possible the Trumps' pre- and post-election collusion with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel will do it—a course of collusion also connected to the Kremlin. I explain here. I hope you'll read on and retweet.

1/ I must stress how unbelievably complex the "Grand Bargain" theory of the Trump-Russia case is—a different thing from saying it's not substantiated. It's substantiated in *almost every single particular*—it just *also* happens to be very confusing. Not byzantine—just confusing.

2/ The basics: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE all view Iran as their chief regional enemy. Iran is propped up by Russia. Therefore the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis all need a US government willing to find a way to get the Kremlin to *stop* supporting Iran in the Middle East.

3/ The best way to get Russia to stop supporting Iran—or reduce support—was/is to drop all sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, as that'd be worth *trillions* to the Kremlin over the next decade. Everyone knew that Clinton wouldn't do this—and that Trump would.

4/ Per the NYT, on August 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. met secretly at Trump Tower with a Saudi and Emirati emissary, George Nader, as well as an Israeli intelligence expert, Joel Zamel, with *significant* ties to both Israeli intelligence *and* Russian oligarchs allied with Putin.

SRI BANASHANKARI AMMAN, BANGALORE
#bharatmandir

Located in Southern Bangalore, this is one of the most popular places of worship in Bangalore City.
Devoted to Devi Banashankari, this shrine is visited specially during Rahukala which is believed to be an unfavorable time.

Somanna Shetty, a great devotee of Devi, brought this murti from Badami’s Banshankari Amma Kshetram.
It is said that many years ago, three ladies visited this shrine and requested the pujari to conduct puja for them. Since it was the inauspicious rahu kaal, the pujari refused.

However, upon their insistence, he conducted the puja. When he returned with prasadam, the ladies vanished. This made the people believe that they were none other than the Devi herself. Since then, the people perform poojas here during the Rahukaal.
@GunduHuDuGa

People use lemons as a diya. Lemons are cut from the centre and their pulps are removed, for pouring oil in them.
It is strongly believed that Devi removes all the troubles from the life of her devotees during the Rahukala although it is considered inauspicious for any pooja.