#2: Diversification will save you — A big part of success in investing and in business is simply not blowing up. Note that I didn’t say “not failing.” In both disciplines, failures are fine — perhaps even good — because they provide valuable information. Failures that wipe you out, though, are bad. Blowing up prevents you…

The curse of Black Swans, and building Antifragility — Put simply, tail risk is the possibility of a highly unlikely event happening. The term has its origins in the statistical idea of a bell curve, which is (unfortunately) omnipresent in investing, risk modeling, and many aspects of daily life. Understanding tail risk (and the failings of the bell curve)…

And more energy-efficient, too — Housing prices are surging, and so are mortgage rates. That means many would-be homeowners will have to keep on renting for the foreseeable future. If you’re stuck in a rental house for the long term, don’t despair — there are some easy, non-damaging home improvements you can make to spruce…

The community ‘took a chance’ on the store and its queer Filipina owner — When you launch a brick-and-mortar chocolate store in the middle of a global pandemic, you need all the help you can get. Thankfully, San Francisco’s Kokak Chocolates received it in spades from the Castro community, where founder Carol Gancia launched her Phillippines-inspired truffle store in early 2020. …

They’ll make money — and pay $0 in taxes — either way — Crypto has had a wild ride lately. Over the last six months, Bitcoin plummeted by nearly half, erasing billions of dollars of market value. Many sophisticated crypto investors, though, likely don’t care at all. Why? These crypto whales use a special kind of financial alchemy to achieve massive profits even…

And it’s a family business — School is about to let out for the Summer, the Bay Area is getting oppressively hot, and travel restrictions are lifting. That means many locals are preparing to fly off to our region’s unofficial second home: Maui. Eating shave ice is an iconic part of a trip to the Hawaiian…

Greener rooftops for a greener world (and SF) — The tops of San Francisco’s buildings are slowly turning green. No, it’s not because of some weird chemical reaction with Karl the Fog — the change is happening because of a 2017 law that requires the newest construction in the city to incorporate solar panels and living roofs. With the…

And how to use free tools to dig deeper into your Direct visits — Last week, my website blew up. For several months I’ve been following Christopher Kokoski’s boring content strategy. It involves writing quality, long-form content about topics that get a lot of search traffic but which many people find too dry or too specific to cover. In this case, I wrote a…