Five… Four.. Three.. Two…
“He fled Them, down the nights and down the days;
He fled Them, down the arches of the years;
He fled Them, down the labyrinthine ways
Of his own mind; …”
“Avoid boring people.”
Three words. Two meanings. One philosophy.
Watson wrote it.
The Renaissance Capitalist Attia runs on it.
He guards the book that titled those lexemes as part of civilization’s memory (human speak for ‘RAM’) at the world’s third-busiest library, while partnering with founders, funders, and faculties who write its future.
“Avoid boring people: lessons from a life in science”
Source: State Library of Victoria
He refuses to write about himself in first person, finding it insufferably self-regarding. He prefers the Victorian distance of third person.
Part-librarian, part-adventure-capitalist, part-researcher, part-creative, part-whatever-the-inspiration-requires; he won’t even let a coffin put him in a box.
(Cremations are nature friendly, get with the regime.)
“It is the customary fate of new truths,
to begin as heresy, and end as superstition.”
He believes every great idea begins as a conspiracy against consensus. His favorite pastime is to help those conspiracies become conventional wisdom. become conventional wisdom.
He learned the mechanisms required to do so backwards, which is the only way to learn anything worth knowing.
Next, we unseal the files. One accusation, and one conspiracy at a time.
From hedge-fun “activism” when Goldman Wacks flopped the capital raise of a founder-led public co, to a cameo as an independent “expert” in a $20bn suit-led private co’s capital calamity, ironically branded a “class” action, to Johnny Depp’s reputation laundromat firing its own client when it, allegedly, realised it couldn’t hang the technologist who had Attia superposed in his corner.
Appendix: Curated Conspiracies
Against Amnesia.
Protects humanity’s Random Access Memories on the Foundation Council at the State Library of Victoria.
Against Forced Association.
Founding member of Balaji’s Island aka The Network School.
Against Gatemakers and Their Keepers.
Occasional dispatches via The Renaissance Capitalist on beehiiv, the platform he may have helped capitalize.
Against Incumbency.
Occasionally partners with founders forging the axis that defines their category.
Against Consensus.
Special Advisor to VP Capital, a based hedge fund in Asia.
P.S. Stay in tune to your own.
Your curiosity is it’s own reward.