Learn from your digital avatars
Also: Short Tesla (again), Sanebox, and Notion API
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Catches of the week 🐟
Sanebox 💌
I have a new favorite tool for my Gmail accounts - Sanebox. Sanebox automatically sorts your emails and only keeps relevant or urgent mail in your inbox. Everything else is sorted into a “Sanelater” folder which I go through once a day to see what’s in it.
I signed up for the service last week and connected two of my Gmail accounts and I have to say it works like magic 😍
Maybe using Sanebox is only the first step to transitioning to a real pro tool like Superhuman, but I feel like I already get so much value out of it. So highly recommend checking it out.
By the way - is anyone doing this for WhatsApp or Slack chats?
Notion API 🔗
I started using Notion last year and initially just wanted to leverage it as a better note-taking app to structure my thoughts & ideas. Over the course of the last ~18 months, however, I learned more and more about Notion and the incredible things that people are building on top of it (just search for Notion templates on Youtube if you want to get a taste). Notion is a real Swiss Army Knife and I encourage everyone to give it a try!
I wanted to mention Notion this week as the company just released its API to the public and I believe that this is important news. Every time a large platform opens up like that, it creates massive opportunities for entrepreneurs and builders.
I have come across a few use cases already of how third parties can use the API to integrate into Notion (here, here, and here) and I am very much excited for the upcoming months as I believe that we will see lots of innovation in this space.
How avatars affect our lives
I read a great piece called “Stay for Who You Can Be: Avatars in the Metaverse” by Rex Woodbury last week and wanted to share some insights.
The main point of the post is that more and more people enjoy spending time in digital worlds as avatars because it allows them to slip into another character’s life and be something they can’t be in their physical lives.
What really struck me though were two insights. First of all, the post mentions scientific findings that the way we behave in digital worlds is strongly influenced by the characteristics of our avatar. Users that control tall and attractive male avatars, for example, showed a more confident behavior in their social interaction with other avatars (something that is also proven to prevail in physical social gatherings).
In addition to that, scientists have also found that these digital behavioral traits are also transferred to our non-digital lives if experienced long enough! So what does that mean? Well, it means that a shy and maybe less confident person that spends enough time controlling a very dominant and confident digital avatar will experience increased confidence in his physical social behavior afterward.
I think that this is super interesting and really made me think about ways that this could be used for the greater good in the future. Think about intercultural learnings for example - if you want to experience what it must feel like to be of a different gender or race? Experience it firsthand “playing” a digital avatar. What are your thoughts on this?
Trade of the week 😎
Micheal Burry is shorting Tesla. If you read or watched “The Big Short”, you know Dr. Micheal Burry as the genius investor that called the bubble in the US housing market years before everyone else.
Also, if you followed the whole frenzy around GameStop earlier this year you might also know that Dr. Burry was one of the earlier investors that noticed the excess of shorts and made a small fortune buying the stock.
The “star investor”’ is now targeting Tesla and its ridiculously high valuation. He reportedly built up a large short position worth 800.000 Tesla shares. Many news reports misread the position, however, saying that he is betting half a billion USD against Tesla. That is not exactly right as the value of his options is worth roughly this amount, the premium he has to pay for them (his actual bet), however, is way smaller.
Nevertheless, I think it is interesting to see him bet against Tesla. By the way - since we made the prediction that Tesla stock will go down back in February, it has lost over 30%. Let’s see how far it can go 😁
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The day oil went negative 📉
This is my Youtube recommendation of the week. Remember when oil prices went negative for a few hours last year?
Well, a few guys in England made $600 million on that one trading day! Here is a short Youtube video telling the story behind their “mega-trade”.
Bridging the digital and physical world
I mentioned the Cryptopunks project before in this newsletter - a set of 10.000 unique digital collectibles (aka NFTs) that are extremely popular and sought after in the crypto space.
RTFKT studios have now released a collection of 10.000 Nike sneakers designed to specifically match the Cryptopunks. Owners can claim their pair on RTFKT’s website and get a digital copy of the sneakers to wear in the metaverse. I think this is so dope, check it out below 🙌
That’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed this newsletter and took some inspiration away from it! Feel free to reach out with feedback, ideas, and things you would like me to write more about. Make sure you hit subscribe below, to be among the first to receive this newsletter in the future