This is an open letter of gratitude to some great people who have significantly influenced my core values and dreams.
This is both to give thanks and to shed light on a few of the many remarkable details from these these individuals’ stories.
Ron Jarzombek
Ron Jarzombek is easily one of the most creative and dedicated musicians I know of. He’s an elite, diabolical mad scientist, inspiring visionary, and teacher.
One fun thing that separates Ron from other guitarists is his knack for scoring songs to film. The Animation of Entomology, for example, is entirely scored to horror films. It also manages to use bugs as the main agent of horror rather than the standard, cliched gory metal stuff, and it’s a complete technical rollercoaster. Quite the album! The themes of Ron’s music are not thematically limited to horror either. I was lucky to discover The Cereal Mouse as a kid because someone made a Tap Tap Reloaded track for it. It’s scored to Charlotte’s Web and sounds nothing like the bug metal. Still thoroughly adorned with nuanced technical wizardry, but more giddy and goofy than dark and creepy this time. It strikes an impossible balance of unpredictable yet perfectly coherent. Pretty much only Ron can write music like that.
Beyond spellbinding guitar-playing and song-writing virtuosity, Ron produces a ton of free, publicly available educational content about his tunes and the processes behind them. He has also written and released tons of free tablature for his songs. You can find all of that on Ron’s website and YouTube channel.
Annie Rauwerda (Depths Of Wikipedia)
Depths Of Wikipedia (DoW) highlights noteworthy corners of Wikipedia and shares her findings on social media. Annie Rauwerda created DoW during the Covid lockdown and it has since reached a large audience.
Quirky fun facts are underrated. What they really do, and what Annie’s work on DoW has achieved spectacularly, is help reduce unknown unknowns. That is, they illuminate meaning that could not be identified before, let alone appreciated, by offering introductions into new and unfamiliar branches of understanding.
This flavor of exploratory education is a potent motivator. Having an upfront target topic, as we more often do, limits how surprised, excited, or challenged we can be. However, it’s hard to reduce unknown unknowns alone. The difficulty has historically been on teachers to figure out which missing concepts their students need and teach those. Kudos to teachers who take that challenge seriously. But, arguably, Annie’s work with DoW has positively affected many times more students than most teachers can.
Doing the research to answer questions that various people didn’t know they had is a beautiful and mightily important calling. The delight I get from Depths of Wiki helped inspire the creation of FITM.
Mark Minervini
“FinTwit” was a deceptive community, in my experience. A lot of users were inactive, unprofessional, or plainly mean (That was around 2019-2021—I had no idea how much worse Twitter could get). But a handful of knowledgeable, magnanimous voices made it, overall, an irreplaceable forest of investment wisdom. From my few years of keeping up with the online stock trading community, Mark Minervini stands out as a paragon of excellence and honor. Despite the distasteful attitudes sometimes found on that corner of the Internet, Mark returned week after week to encourage new and/or struggling traders with thoughtful and powerful words. Here’s a great example.
Mark’s trading journey is unique and inspiring. He learned about speculation in the 1980s as an independent, uneducated (dropped out of high school) rock drummer. He struggled for years while self-teaching, analyzing price quotes he recorded by hand from newspapers. (Bear in mind it was also common at that time for transaction commissions to cost hundreds of dollars each.) He endured for 6 years and crawled into profitability. In 1997 Mark became the US Investing Champion, and again in 2021. His Minervini Private Access program students often perform well in USIC competitions too.
Outside of trading and mentoring, Mark is the author of several books about his work and his life philosophies. I enjoyed and learned a lot from his book Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard. He also likes to jam out on the drums.
For someone like Mark, it’s probably tempting to relax and enjoy the life you’ve made. Still, he continues to cheer on fans, many anonymous, and drive them to give their best to trading and beyond. He seems truly delighted to see everyone else win, in their own way, so I love seeing him win too.
Aaron Swartz
It’s shocking how many vital, ubiquitous features of the modern web tie back to Aaron Swartz’s vehement efforts. During his tragically short life, Aaron contributed to the authoring of RSS 1.0 in 2000 at age 14, helped to build and proliferate Creative Commons copyright license formats [1] in 2002, inspired and guided development of Markdown language in 2002, and helped to launch Reddit.com in 2005 (rewriting the codebase using web.py, which he created and open-sourced).
Aaron also bravely fought informational and political injustice. He became an early leader of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) in 2009, which funds uphill advocacy initiatives for fairer governance, and in 2010 he co-founded the Demand Progress organization which raises support for Internet transparency and freedom. Demand Progress played a critical role in averting passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), whose terms would have annihilated online free speech and the creative and communicative potential of sites like YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, and others (and crippled web safety, useability, and growth prospects by breaking global DNS [2]).
Moved by extreme belief in the universal freedom to information that is unrestricted by greed, bias, or other short-sighted motives, Aaron attempted in 2010-11 to illegally collect numerous academic journals from JSTOR through MIT’s private network. He was charged with wire fraud and violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and faced up to 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, supervised release, and fines of up to $1 million [3]. Neither MIT nor JSTOR pursued prosecution; charges came from the United States Attorney’s Office in Boston. Aaron’s vicious and controversial prosecution preceded his suicide in 2013.
Rest in peace, Aaron. Your sacrifices have made countless lives much better.
[1]. on the significance of Creative Commons
[2]. https://circleid.com/pdf/PROTECT-IP-Technical-Whitepaper-Final.pdf
Justin Wong
Justin Wong is not an educator per se like most others here. But his achievements have taught fans the limitless potential of determination and mastery. He is a professional fighting game player who I came to know as an icon in the community of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, my favorite video game.
In the early years of “Mahvel”, Justin was a regular finalist in tournaments. Despite being infamously unbeatable in the previous edition of the game series, Justin was often regarded as an underdog in Marvel 3. It’s quite an unfair game at times, and tactics to produce near-riskless victories were, even by its 2nd birthday in 2013, well-known. Many abused these strategies but Justin never (well, almost never) relented and joined them.
(You may think, “that sounds like a bad game if it’s so unfair,” and you would be right. It has other redeeming qualities which explain why I rate it a 9.9/10 overall.)
Justin played fair and generally relied on superior skill, making it harder for himself. Why? I believe it shows his stance that the process of earning a victory is more important than the outcome of having one. Following from that creed, there is no point in picking low-hanging fruit.
Still, he often came out ahead. Not only that, he would often conjure some mystical force which allowed him to suddenly, in the most dire and hopeless moments, make the exact decisions and executions needed to maneuver an impossible event sequence and invent a win out of thin air. It has been dubbed the “Wong Factor.” Beholding the Wong Factor in Evolution 2013 and 2014 finals was like witnessing magic. I consider it a defining moment of my lifetime. The immaculate talent Justin displayed and the collective psychological inflection that the hoard of onlookers felt forever changed my notion of “impossible.”
Years later, I still replay Justin’s early-Mahvel-era matches. If he did that, what else might be possible that few believe in?
Incidentally, in the decade-plus and tens of thousands of matches I have experienced as a player and spectator, Justin Wong is the only player I have ever seen to attempt—let alone pull off—the same-side overhead mixup from the Evo 2013 clip linked above. It’s extremely risky—certain death if anticipated. He did this 3 times as far as I have found: once then against Flocker, once here in 2016 against Jibrill, and once more here in 2022 against Chris G. Chris G and Jibrill later claimed Evo championships themselves, and are considered some of the strongest players of all time, demonstrating elite competitive composure and defensive skill. The absurdness of attempting that mixup against these titan-level players, including in the final rounds of the world’s largest tournament, waiting years in-between, and it succeeding every time, is just supremely epic.
Tim Ferriss
Tim Ferriss does many things, but I am most grateful for his work on The Tim Ferriss Show. Like Annie Rauwerda, Tim is one of the best at hunting for potential unknown unknowns in our crazy, complex world’s infinitely broad catalogue of striking features and possibilities, and curating them into fun, valuable snack packets. His podcasts are typically interviews/conversations and have involved a far-reaching lineup of guests over the years. It has by far the highest-quality average episode of the podcasts I’ve tried.
What makes the podcast so good? A fine blend of unusual and thought-provoking subject matter, great questions (often the same or variations of each other—because they work well), focused conversions with few detours, a willingness to congratulate and empower rivals (the opposite is a red flag indicating selfish ulterior motives), and a refreshing sincerity seldom found in other shows.
Tim is the author of several outstanding books and has introduced others (both by direct recommendation and by bringing on guests who recommend them) that I have loved. A few noteworthy ones so far have been Anything You Want by Derek Sivers and On the Shortness of Life by Seneca. His own works tend to focus on broad performance optimization and, compared to alternatives in that genre, are generous in humor and good spirit. He is transparent about personal struggles, endeavoring not to come off as an “unflappable juggernaut” (his own great phrasing). Tim’s tomes and podcast are about as potent as Everclear; they will floor you with shocking concentrations of baffling facts and useful considerations. Yet, he is also authentic, open, and humble, which keeps things fun and not so serious. Like a great teacher, he presents complex topics with the charm and ease to entrance even a lay audience. Tim’s skillful wording is a treat and his zest for life is highly contagious. I recommend trying his podcast or blog if you haven’t yet.
Paul Graham
Paul Graham (PG)’s brilliant and prolific rhetoric has nudged me to both contemplate more thoroughly and write more in public. PG writes a lot online and his essays constitute a trove of clear, logical, and practical thinking. Some of my favorites are How to Write Usefully, How to Do What You Love, and Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule. I don’t yet know of another author having both the technical knowledge and appetite for dissecting psychology and behavior that PG does.
For the invention of Hacker News, a precious gem of the Internet and one of my most frequented sites, PG deserves many thanks. He is also known for co-founding and raising YCombinator. I don’t tend to glorify venture capital but some companies and nonprofits that YC has backed are pretty cool. Say what you will, but I admire Reddit hugely. It’s my favorite for-profit company (as of 2025, that is—years ago I would have said Google) and I’m grateful to those at YC who have played a hand in their success. Reddit matured under YC, and who knows if they would be here without having that guidance.
Despite the importance of his own contributions, PG constantly demonstrates humility, compassion, and eagerness to see good fortune fall into many hands. I salute his commitment to improving broad quality of life through startup advising, readying Hacker News to become the epicenter of chivalrous and well-researched discussion that it is, and sharing his thoughtful excerpts with the world.
Terry Crews
Terry Crews hardly needs an introduction. Why is he here? In short: Terry makes hard but mature choices.
Admitting fault can be unpleasant. Admitting error in a core component of your identity, especially, takes courage and purpose. Terry voluntarily sacrificed his toughness, key to his original recipe for fame and success in professional football, to align with higher ideals and eventually discover greater happiness. He ended his successful NFL career in 1997 to pursue acting, and over time also let go of his need to live in a permanent state of primal rage. This was not necessary or easy. Positions in the NFL are coveted after all, and toughness is arguably a career-boosting trait there. Despite powerful forces compelling him to coast by on the path of least resistance, Terry realized it would not make him happy. A crucial choice that shows his character.
Terry is radically transparent about personal struggles, in particular his personal war against toxic aggression. His early years didn’t invite peace of mind (he mentions that his earliest memory is his father punching his mother in the face, knocking her out), so it’s incredible who Terry has managed to become. He is not just nonviolent—he is a worldwide icon of self-reflection, wisdom, and bravery.
Terry, like many I admire, has had plenty of chances to sell out but will not. He could have kept doing the tough guy thing without ever lowering himself to show compassion. He could have found other partners after his affair was discovered, without addressing the personal root cause of that. He has been offered an easier and less honorable life many times but chooses instead to challenge himself to be an example for others. In particular, men who are susceptible to the follies of excessive instinctual toughness (yup, so all of us baboons) can learn from Terry’s brilliance.
Joyce Kaufman
Joyce Kaufman is my grandma, who is also the kindest and most selfless person I’ve ever known. She lives in Elma, NY in the same decrepit farmhouse in which she raised my dad and his 5 siblings. If I had to summarize her favorite things in approximate order, they would be 1) hugs, 2) making people laugh, and 3) telling you all about how much she loved my grandpa, Sol.
Joyce has always done her best to provide for those around her regardless of lineage or other differences. She fostered many kids and pets throughout her adult life, both temporarily and indefinitely. My aunt Jessica and uncle Dan are two such kids, and I’ve only known them as family because that’s how Joyce treats everyone.
When my dad was a kid, she and my grandpa would invite teenagers over from Buffalo inner-city group homes during the summers to play outside. The kids led troubled lives—some had earned prison time for horrific acts. Joyce and Sol didn’t care. They put the kids’ pasts aside and gave everyone a chance to be good guests and have fun, and that’s what always happened.
Grandpa eventually developed vicious dementia, and looking after him became a huge full-time challenge for Joyce. However, she refused to send him away to assisted living. She values attentive love and connection with other people and creatures. For Joyce, it was worth sharing the decade of stress leading up to his passing in order to remain a dedicated agent of love in his life.
She was my very first idol, before I realized it. I love you, grandma!