Re: Your Special Day
[{"sender": "David Grosof <grosof@sloan.mit.edu>", "recipients": ["Jeffrey E. [jeevacation@gmail.com]"], "timestamp": "Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 1:07 AM", "subject": "Re: Your Special Day", "body": "Dear Jeffrey,\n\nCongratulations on another spin around the sun.\n\nI would like to offer you a birthday present: my best efforts for a few hours on something where I might be able to contribute either to making something good happen for you or help you prevent the bad.\n\nWe haven't talked much at all for quite some time, so I'm not sure of the nature of your current interests but here are some of mine, where I feel I either have some special capability or can get access to those who have such.\n\n* open science -- open access publishing, data publishing, and open culture institutions considered as a network with largely consistent and mutually reinforcing values: Public Library of Science (PLoS), Wikipedia, Internet Archive, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Creative Commons, along with allied US, UK, European governmental and NGO funding sources and other institutions.\n\n* early-stage life science-based ventures, especially those with one or more of these technologies: optics, wearable-sensors, brain-computer interface, behavioral engineering that goes beyond robo-noodging. I am not up to speed on synthetic bio and CRISPR, but I have a good friend who is.\n\n* cybersecurity for you and your life. I have carefully monitored the web for articles about you and I have reason to think that those will persist indefinitely. I would be remiss as your friend if I did not encourage you to be as diligent and smart as possible in using tools like Signal, two-factor/multi-factor authentication, taking webmail archives off the web onto your own secure privately maintained archive or deleted (unlike Podesta), and other measures.\n\n* publicity for your cool-ass creative and important philanthropy in support of really good and adventuresome, high-risk basic science research. Most obvious benefit: it would be nice to know you hung out with the bright"}, {"sender": "jeffrey E. [jeevacation@gmail.com]", "recipients": ["David Grosof"], "timestamp": "01/19/17 10:13 PM", "subject": "Re: Your Special Day", "body": "all good. thx. areas of interest:\n1. distributions in nature.\n2. deception.\n3. sleep.\n4. power.\n5. money.\n6. music and the brain.\n7. signal intelligence in the biological systems"}, {"sender": "David Grosof", "recipients": ["jeffrey E. [jeevacation@gmail.com]"], "timestamp": "1/20/2017 6:28:10 AM", "subject": "Re: Your Special Day", "body": "Excellent alignment with some of my interests or those of people I like and think are smart!\n\nThe rest of the truncated message has been sent.\n\n1. What's been stimulating as a source of good questions for the \"distributions in nature\" issue?\n\n7. \"Signal intelligence in biol. systems\" seems to cover all of neurophysiology: Jonathan Victor, whom you met a few years ago in your office, is powerfully thoughtful on the issues of neural coding. Are there specific examples that have stimulated you to better questions or turned your thinking around?\n\n6. Are you aware of apps that purport to play music to enhance productivity and focus on tasks at hand? My buddy Reese Jones has backed that; he has a fascinating set of beliefs and projects around what may soon be understood as \"consciousness hacking.\" He's on the board of Singularity University as one of the founders. (His father was a pioneer UCSF MD researcher of hallucinogens, I believe!)\n\nMore to come in a day or so.\n\nThanks!\n\nYou're up late or you're not so east of my SF location!\n\nDavid\n\nPS How to trade the Trump-GOP demolition of the welfare state, erratic elevation of risks of trade disruptions and war? Has anyone from the rational center or left given thought to how to respond to a national emergency to cope with a kakistocratic seizure of emergency powers? The Patriot Act was on a 'shelf as you know, ready to be used. What should the better folks in this country have at hand if, say, a port is subject to a radiological attack of unknown origin?"}]