Pinball Wizards

Ben Sinclair is a wizard who builds amazing technology just for fun. This episode is hilariously awesome as The Bens chat about their special origin story. We open the gates on the evolution of FliteBrite, building an electronic serving system, and a beer festival app. Laugh with Ben and Sinclair as we have fun connecting jokes with WWDC23, astronomy, web2 vs. web3, OpenOpen, being present as a parent, building as co-founders, and staying professional over pinball.

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By Ben McDougal, ago

Triangulation

Cross-checking helps to determine distance, maneuver around obstacles, and identify rogue objects. Alongside the math, a triangulated team increases dependability.

Diversity of thought, talent, and real skills add synergy to accelerate progress and increase a team’s confidence when a problem is attacked from multiple angles. This nimbleness is leveraged as co-founders create a culture that makes each person feel significant.

Extra Shot

Building alone is easy.

Team up to make it fun.

On the prowl for co-founders? Consider triangulating a hipster (customer experience), hacker (technology), and hustler (business development). When these complimenting archetypes also blend hints of founder-market-fit, a timely curation gives any team exponential capacity.

To find missing links, connectors become connected. So show up and be quick to make interesting introductions. When the first degree of contact lacks obvious opportunity, remember it’s the second and third degree of connectivity that delivers precision. Over time, generosity in an entrepreneurial ecosystem expands and tightens engaged networks. Instead of forcefully recruiting co-founders, the open-ended activity of a serendipitist will have us colliding with friends we simply haven’t met yet.As teamwork begins, bonds that have formed naturally will support lasting collaboration with people you respect. That said, established trust is not an excuse to get complacent.

To nurture the power of triangulation be honest and transparent from start to finish. Every story ends, so don’t avoid difficult discussions. When structuring a business, agree on the terms, leave space for change over time, and maintain an operating agreement to ensure clarity with less tension. A commitment to abundant communication helps each team member remain attentive to details.

Professionals will take it further—inviting responsibility, then keeping the promise. For any idea maze, we take the blame, willingly give credit, and celebrate in style.

Lone wolves move fast but the expanded capacity of a team helps an odyssey go far. When a fun, long-term cast plays long-term games together, the chemical reaction can be an affinity toward work that feels like play. Cheers!

By Ben McDougal, ago

Goodnight Moon

Star parties assemble people who are curious about the cosmos. Let’s set the scene. Imagine a remote place with dark skies and very little light pollution. Each campsite includes 1–3 telescopes. The astronomy equipment ranges from homemade to expensive. There are scopes made for visual observations and others geared for astrophotography.

Extra Shot
Explore my cosmic creations.

Daylight is relaxing, but the heavenly show starts as the sun begins to set and the first observations kickoff an evening of exploration. Tonight, our first stop is our own setting moon. From there, we spin the scopes to target a transitory comet. Planets in our solar system are next, then we go deeper. Globular clusters form dimensional shapes, with distant galaxies that look like eraser marks on black paper. The Milky Way can be seen all night, as constellations help star gazers navigate the rotating sky.

Space is for everyone, and astronomy makes everything feel small. Star parties remind us how we are all weird. Not an alienating type of weird, a wonderful weird that bonds people who care about anything together.

Brewed From Within
#106 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago

13.8 Billion

The universe is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old. That’s enough time to ask a few cosmic questions…

  • What are educational paths to the space industry?
  • Can astronomy, cosmology, and religion co-exist?
  • Does digitized consciousness unlock time travel by leaving the limitations of a human body behind?
  • How long would it take to arrive at the closest black hole? Who’s going in first?
  • How will robotics, AI, quantum computing, and material science accelerate space exploration?
  • It seems impossible that extraterrestrial life does not exist. When we learn that aliens are real, how should first contact be carried out?
  • If life on Earth has endured less than 25% of the time our universe has existed, how many distant civilizations may have come and gone?
  • Is it not foolish to mindlessly feed on energy that uses finite resources? When might we run out?
  • How does our planet’s spatial position and cosmic direction change inside an infinite universe that is expanding at an ever-increasing rate?
  • Visiting, even colonizing Mars feels like an important interplanetary exercise, but could other planets be a place to store all the things we don’t want on Earth? Even better, how about asteroids we load up and send off into the dark matter?
  • Can subatomic nanotechnologies alter the input of an energy source to transform the output?
  • How will ownership be handled in space?
  • Does seeing deeper fuel urgency?

                        These are bizarre prompts, and cosmic conversations can quickly become theoretical. To find answers in the unknown, our imagination, scientific exploration, and continual learning are essential as we keep tackling the questions of our universe and the unsolved problems in astronomy and astrophysics.

                        Cosmic questions put life into perspective and make our existence feel fragile. Arguing becomes a lost cause when collaboration is vital for our species to survive.

                        Brewed From Within
                        #108 📖 Life & Happiness

                        By Ben McDougal, ago