#042: Functioning LEGO Engines, Autonomous Ship Circumnavigation, Flirting With Life

Hi All!

We are pleased to welcome you to this week's edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

This week we will take a look at LEGOs that teach you engineering, a project that will send a livestreaming droneship to sail around the world, what it means to flirt with life, and more. Let's dive in:

Functioning Engines Built Out of Legos

I recently saw a tweet from The Hustle founder, Sam Parr, who remarked how he and his wife would unwind in the evenings by assembling something called Lego Technics. You may be familiar with the LEGO Icons Sets, but the Technic Sets are specifically designed to help kids (and adults) explore engineering concepts. From the site:

Featuring functioning gearboxes, wheels and axles that kids put together themselves, each build will help to grow their understanding of the intricate details that propel cars, planes, motorbikes, construction vehicles and make them work.

Sets can be enhanced further with CONTROL+, a free app that can interact with many motorized LEGO® Technic™ remote control toys to add elements like movement and sound...

The Technics Sets allow you to build items such as a Ferrari Daytona SP3, Mercedes G-Wagon, NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle, Liebherr Crawler Construction Crane, and more. They are not cheap, but they're also one of the coolest things we have come across lately.

These Guys Are Building an Autonomous Droneship to Circumnavigate the World

Say hello to Project Bob. It's an experiment helmed by Andrew McCalip and Thomas Leps, where they will attempt to build a livestreaming droneship to circumnavigate the world. Here are a few words on the project's official website:

Last year, we had 15,000 people watching the world’s most boring livestream of a furnace door. We captured the attention of the entire world in a wholesome pursuit of science. This time, we want to create a year-long journey that we can all experience together. The footage is going to be an emotional rollercoaster, swinging between mind-numbingly dull ocean views and the most terrifying view of 40ft Arctic ocean waves.

Through the magic of Starlink and Twitter, we’re going to send a livestreaming drone boat around the world. Launching from Los Angeles, this 14ft boat will travel over 25,000 miles. To qualify as a true circumnavigation, we must hit the antipode (opposite side of the globe) in the Indian Ocean. Our path will drive under the tip of Africa and South America, skirting Australia, and ultimately returning to California approximately 250 days later.

Will it work? Who knows. Do we have a specific goal? Not really. We're just here for the grand adventure and the inevitable memes.

What I love about this project is how much agency it requires. McCalip and Leps also seem equally invested in the memes and cultural experimentation as they are challenged by the technical complexities of the circumnavigation.

The journey is being shared and documented daily on their website's Build Log. It will be fascinating to see how this turns out, and we will be sure to tune into their livestreams on Twitter.

The $0 Tech Stack

What if you could quickly build, ship, and scale your app idea for pennies? Dhravya Shah recently shared his, '$0 stack' that shows virtually free options for monorepo management, frontend, styling, database access, authentication, serverless databases, hosting, and more.

One of the top comments on the original post was 'the indie hacker community would sell this repo for $299, and you are giving it for free' - to which Shah replied 'this is for people who *really* want to ship fast'. Big thank you to Shah for this amazing insight, and be sure to check out the Github repo.

A Useful Learning Philosophy + Semantic Tree of Knowledge

Adam Majmudar and Chrisman Frank both recently shared philosophies on learning that I found fascinating. This first is from Majmudar, who listed out a few of his beliefs:

my learning philosophy:
1. you can learn anything
2. you can do it way faster than you think
3. so choose an insanely aggressive goal
4. shorten your timeline by 10-100x what you expect
5. pre-requisites are a myth. try to do the thing first, figure out what you don't know yet, and go learn that stuff. don't think you need to learn a bunch of stuff before you can do stuff. learn backwards not forwards
6. be highly selective with your learning resources, most resources are garbage
7. it only takes 1 really high quality resource on a topic to learn it well
8. building & talking to people are where you learn almost everything
9. anything else should just be to accomplish these 2 things. you learn more so you can build stuff, or so you can have a productive conversation with someone experienced

Chrisman Frank, the cofounder and CEO of the SpaceX-sponsored school Synthesis, had the following to say about what the future of education looks like:

The future is far less education.

If taught properly, students can easily master a broad range of basics — what Elon has called “the trunk of the semantic tree of knowledge” — by age 14.

After that, time to start finding your way in the world.

If you look further into what the 'semantic tree of knowledge' is, Musk describes how we must make sure we 'understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before (we) get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.'

What I find interesting about these two philosophies is how they appear different on the surface, but roughly advocate for the same end goal.

If we take Frank and Musk's philosophy, we can quickly learn the 'essentials' of education by a relatively young age. Learn what you need to learn, and then go off and build the thing the world needs from you.

With Majmudar's philosophy, you immediately start top down learning. This doesn't mean fundamentals are useless, but as he describes, 'many people get stuck in the boredom of learning prerequisites without knowing why. Maintaining motivation, i.e. why am I learning this, is critical to learn effectively'.

We believe the best strategy for learning in the future could very well be to adopt both of these ideas. Learn the fundamentals at a young age, and then tackle the ambitious projects you want in order to stay motivated, and fill out the 'branches' as you go.

Flirt With Life and It Will Flirt Back

Persuasion, flirting, and modern 'rizz' is sometimes unexplainable. We look at others that possess it, and we naturally compare ourselves. Sometimes we become convinced people either 'have it or they don't'.

@OVOAugustus recently shared his outlook on interacting with the world, and it's a beautiful summary of questions that help prompt you to go after what you want in life. If you ever wanted to feel naturally charismatic, read and apply the following:

Flirting is a way of life. Do you smile at the pretty girls, compliment the older ladies, or wink at the moon? How about the birds, when they sing, do you whistle back in tune?

Or what about when driving, do you have a smooth touch & no fear of pushing your car to its limits? In business, do you dare to demand what you want? Are you bold with your plans? Does risk excite your spirit?

In conversation, do you say what you mean & speak with your chest? Do you deliver the risky joke without qualms who will take offense?

Do you stroll with your head held high - do your steps feel weightless? When you stand, are you relaxed or are you tense?

Do you treat strangers like you’re reacquainting with an old friend? Do you ever dare to divulge your well kept secrets? Are you present, there in the moment, or are you living in your head?

Do you breathe romance into everything you do, see the beauty in the mundane, & leave a trail of unrelenting positivity wherever you venture? You see, flirting isn’t just what you do to have someone fall for you - it’s what a healthy spirit does when they’re in love with life, & I will continue flirting into the afterlife

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Always wishing you the best,

J.B.

Becket U

Undiscovered #042: Functioning LEGO Engines, Autonomous Ship Circumnavigation, Flirting With Life

#042: Functioning LEGO Engines, Autonomous Ship Circumnavigation, Flirting With Life

Functioning Engines Built Out of Legos

These Guys Are Building an Autonomous Droneship to Circumnavigate the World

The $0 Tech Stack

A Useful Learning Philosophy + Semantic Tree of Knowledge

Flirt With Life and It Will Flirt Back

Undiscovered #080: Work Backwards from Outcome You Want, Art of Storytelling, Failure Modes

Undiscovered #079: Greatest Artist Who Ever Lived, Make Your Website Beautiful, Life Lesson from Baseball

Undiscovered #078: Physics Behind Torpedo Bat, Three Stages of Talent Development, How to Spread an Idea