Projects
The talk examines the central paradox of human character, that no individual is wholly virtuous or wholly wicked. It opens with a case study of two unnamed men, one who banned the practice of human zoos and was a devoted animal lover, the other who owned slaves and was widely regarded as ruthless, revealing only afterwards that the first man was Adolf Hitler and the second was Franklin D. Roosevelt. The reveal demonstrates how readily moral character is misjudged when facts are stripped of context.
From there, the talk draws on Gandhi’s early prejudices and Al Capone’s Depression-era soup kitchens to argue that virtue and vice coexist in nearly everyone, captured in the proverb “None so good that he has no fault, none so wicked that he is worth nought.” It closes by warning against the urge to flatten people into purely good or purely evil, landing on its central idea that personalities aren’t black and white, they’re fractal.
We open with two unnamed guys. One who banned an actual human-zoo horror show and loved animals enough to go vegetarian for them. The other owned slaves, cheated on two wives, and was about as ruthless as people get. Everyone always picks the obvious good guy. Everyone’s wrong. The animal lover was Hitler. The slave owner was Roosevelt.
From there, the talk gets into why that twist isn’t just for shock factor, it’s the whole argument, using Gandhi’s early prejudices and Al Capone’s Depression-era soup kitchens to make the case that nobody’s actually that simple. With sprinkles of Star Wars and pizza and a lot more soup, it all lands on the one line that actually matters, people aren’t black and white, and personalities are fractal.
The talk explores the paradox of mortality as a source of meaning rather than despair, structured around the idea that life’s brevity is precisely what gives it weight. It opens with the cautionary tale of Thomas Midgley Jr., whose own inventions, leaded gasoline and a bed-pulley system, ultimately caused his death, and pairs it with Galileo’s persecution for a truth later vindicated after his death. From there, it turns to legacy, Alfred Nobel reading his own premature obituary and founding the Nobel Prizes in response, and Oskar Schindler’s transformation from war profiteer to the man behind Schindler’s List. The talk also touches on dissatisfaction and spite as drivers of progress, before closing on Robin Williams’s reflection on finding a lifetime within a single day, and Epicurus’s argument that death, properly understood, is nothing to fear. It ends with a call to live fully and without delay, treating every ordinary day as significant.
We open with Thomas Midgley Jr., the guy who invented leaded gasoline and CFCs and then died from a pulley system he built to help himself out of bed, proof that science makes people do genuinely dumb things. Galileo shows up next, punished for being right too early, vindicated only after he was already gone. From there, the talk shifts into legacy, Alfred Nobel reading his own obituary by mistake and inventing the Nobel Prizes to rewrite his story, Oskar Schindler going from profiting off the war to saving over a thousand lives. Mozart writing poems about farting and whatnot for the fun of it. To make the point that even geniuses make time for nonsense, so the rest of us probably should too. There’s a detour into spite as the best motivator, a Robin Williams quote about fitting a lifetime into one good day, and a closing nod to Epicurus on why death isn’t actually something to fear. Ends on eating the cake, wearing the good shirt, and treating every day like the grand finale it quietly is.
The pitch presents Project Jharokha, a modular retrofit concept that adapts the traditional jharokha window structure for modern passive cooling. It argues against full scale mechanical refrigeration on environmental and energy-efficiency grounds, proposing instead that homes attach jharokha-style fittings directly to existing windows rather than undergoing structural renovation. The result is framed as a scalable, low-cost intervention capable of reducing household energy consumption without requiring homeowners to rebuild or relocate.
The pitch is for Project Jharokha, basically an old window trick getting a second chance. Mechanical refrigeration works, but it’s expensive and bad for the planet, so the idea is to go back to passive cooling instead, the kind that doesn’t need electricity at all. Rather than gutting an entire house to make that happen, the pitch is just to retrofit the windows and clip a modular jharokha onto what’s already there. Same effect, way less renovation, and a real dent in how much energy a home actually burns through. And it also looks wayyyy better than the plain and boring windows we currently have.