The Swyx Mixtape

I was super honored to join Adam Wiggins (cofounder of Heroku's) podcast to share thoughts on tools for thought, LIP, and Creating Luck.

Full show notes on Metamuse: https://museapp.com/podcast/53-career/

(listen with good bassy headphones)

• Marcus Veltri intro (first, second, last clip) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_JrcAOfAp4
  • 00:00 cold open
  • 01:49 Yeti, Pickle, Guitar
  • 29:30 Guitar, Star Wars, Black Hole
• "You make beats?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNC68gQluSE
  • 05:01 rhyming platypus, cleanser, eternal, onomatopoeia
• Miami Guerrila Beats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6yoJTup3nY
  • 10:58 miami beach
• Behind the Beats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqTMbYvc57g
  • 13:41 practice
• Stevie Knight interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwn1UsNNmZE
  • 17:37 top 5 influences
• God tier doubletime  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js2Q8tJLgig
  • 26:30 Harry potter, Octopus, Jacket

First Clip

right on time h mac with the freestyle

rhyme i be coming through to get that

shine

when i start i'ma blow your mind yeah

and i'm going over heads

kinda like a bald spot yeah as soon as i

come in with the lyrics

hey imma make your jaw drop let's move

imma make his own improve every night

like it to the grove yeah

every time i show what i'm about when i

be rapping they cover their mouth

yeah i'm tearing rappers to pieces i

come in hot and they couldn't believe it

hey

i make them back down you got rat goods

in your background i can see those i

kick free flows i come off top when i

rip

yeah every mac every time around man

people around the planet they can't even

get a grip hold up they love the vibe

that i provide all at once everybody

look to the side

yeah imma make his figures go boom

what's going on someone coming in the

room

yeah h man i'm speaking with a pure

voice please said the girl in the

sweater that is turquoise harry met

coming off the tip of the mantle when

they come to bars man they know i'm

essential mad effect i'll be the one

they acknowledge peace to the girl with

the black finger nail polish imma solve

it any time i was happy every man you

know they'd be loving what i'm rapping

yeah

you know what i'm all about look to the

side how does he call it out

yeah imma do it like none other yeah

i've been calling out the nail polish

color hey harry mack i be leaving tracks

mother aye

and you know i put them under pressure

boys that they couldn't even measure all

up in the background you got the dresser

drawers i give y'all more i checked her

out territory

i explore when i spit it yo it's hard to

record

every time that i beat rapping they can

see we really acting up

i'm spitting with the passion i got all

my enemies backing up let's go

Second Clip - Yeti, Pickle, Guitar

yeah yeah yeah hey rappers ain't ready

coming through shop like machete y'all

know my lyrics is deadly my name is

harry compare me to the yeti

yeah whenever i'm rapping y'all know

they're gonna go ham hey scaring y'all

like the abominable snowman

i'm coming through and y'all know my

lyrics quite pure scary kinda like the

hairy eddy with the white fur

hey yo i'm doing me i hope you

understand it they popped up in the tent

we were like damn are y'all camping

it was like yeah we chilling in the

backyard never thought you'd be the

piano player in rap star

but here we are coming through do it

swift yeah find another rapper who could

do it like this

off the handle forever we coming through

so easily and back when i first started

told you ain't no one believing me but

now i make it happen y'all my style is

not for rant kid kinda like your

situation this

is intense hmac break it down y'all

better feel me

i never hold it down cause i'm

delivering the real me

yeah i come with the sick flow a lot of

them don't even get those but when they

becoming a pringle major flavor i'm like

a pickle

i'm here to make it happen i'm the

dopest with the bars yeah

flavor like a pickle when you open in

the jar yeah i keep it real and my

thoughts are concealed word to pickles

cause i'm about to give y'all the deal

you feel me i break it down real swift

just like this get your high

like a spliff i'm really bout to drift

moving through it when i'm on it i'll be

delivering bars hey yo

marcus on the chords but he ain't

playing guitar yeah

check how we do this man we plucking the

strings yeah for me it really isn't

nothing to say

hey yo i come right off the top when i

be flexing i get stronger

we popped up and she was like hold up

are y'all songers

i'mma break it down one time h may be

coming through with that astounding

rhyme

yeah hey yo y'all know i get loose when

i create rhymes peace to both of y'all

and the homie up on facetime

Third Clip - Platypus, Cleanser, Eternal

yeah coming off the top and i'm spitting

that heat he's like you gotta rhyme over

one of my beasts i'm like no doubt man

we bout to get loose i was like oh you

make beats tell me you produce he was

like yeah you know i got the fire i need

three words just to get inspired hmac

i'm about to keep it true he was like

nah wait a minute i'mma rap for you uh

we about to flip it to my birth so much

passion my heart really hurts hmag y'all

know that i'll really be a boss as soon

as the beat drops i'll be fully going

off

from the heart imma gladly push i'm an

animal platypus hmeg when i rhyme and i

really get ill like a platypus mouth

i'll be getting to the bills

get into the money uh i live with every

day and be sunny when it comes to lyrics

man i've never been a dummy uh hmac

really about to kill this [ __ ] i'm about

to make you feel the [ __ ] i'm real with

this whenever i be on it man i'm about

to leave a rhyme on censored uh y'all

know whenever i be all up on the scene

keep it clean like i came through with

the cleanser yeah hmac man i get it done

uh how to show where i spit it from yeah

and my lyrics be the mean type spray a

bit of cleanser then hit you with a

screen wipe what i mean to say is they

talking i live it hit the screen right

cause i'm always coming through vivid

hmac with the hd cam whenever i be

coming off the top i'm bout to slam yeah

y'all know i'm bout to spit it clean and

my whole demeanor is something like soap

back in the game just to fill him up

with hope preaching on the microphone

something like the pope yeah y'all know

i'd be the illest freer first word he

threw was onomatopoeia i was like i'd

love to do it for you boy but the

problem is oh i did that one before h

man you know i'm really about to slam

hard on mine up here cause my flow boom

bam how you spend i've been coming

through and making noise hma rocking for

the girls and the boys and the whole

entire team and the whole entire squad

when it comes to kicking livers people

know that i'm a god yeah they're like

hold on wait a minute cause they see me
...

Listen to Analyse Asia: https://www.analyse.asia/solana-with-raj-gokal/ (15mins in)

Listen to Bankless: https://sites.libsyn.com/247424/how-to-become-a-vc-with-haseeb-qureshi-layer-zero (55mins)

Listen to Infinite Loops: https://www.infiniteloopspodcast.com/alex-danco-what-is-web-30-all-about-ep95/ (37mins in)

Transcript

Alex Danco:
Yeah. So one of the cool things is that, I can say this from a vantage point at Shopify, is that all of this is
fairly obvious to us and it's not because we're smart people, it's because when your whole life is working
with merchants, it's like, these are merchants whose job is not terribly dissimilar from musicians. It's
create meaning, create community, create a reason to come back and talk to each other, and therefore
products get sold because of that underlying meeting. It's like, no, shit, that's what this is for. This is
what we already were doing, this isn't new, this is kind of like it just makes a lot of sense.
Jim O'Shaughnessy:
Right. And it's repackaged and it gives the tool to greater extend the reach. But yes, I agree with you.
Alex Danco:

So, hey, we should NFT this conversation and sell it, and then if you buy this NFT, you'll become the only
person who gets to understand what NFTs are for. You have the exclusive rights to it, everybody else
gets to be wrong.
Jim O'Shaughnessy:
Everyone else is wrong.
Alex Danco:
Unless somebody right clicks and saves the audio file of our podcast, in which case they have stolen it
from you.
Jim O'Shaughnessy:
Yes. And you're fucked.
Alex Danco:
Good luck to you. Sorry for your loss. Sorry, you got hacked.
Jim O'Shaughnessy:
Well, this leads into Web3, because I was very eager to hear you do a bit on Web3, it's like so much stuff
is being written, talked about, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What are your thoughts?
Alex Danco:
I mean, to some degree, I think it's like being able to draw a precise box around Web3 is a little silly
because it's like there's just the web and it's all these cool tools. And certainly at Shopify, our job, I mean
on the blockchain team and also generally is not to give merchants the best of Web3, as opposed to
Web2, our job is to give them good things that help them.
Jim O'Shaughnessy:
Exactly.
Alex Danco:
And it's like if you want to draw a box around this bunch of stuff that's Web3, fine. However, in an
attempt to not be sarcastic and actually answer your question correctly, here is I think a good way to
think about what Web3 is. So if you go back to this whole idea of, okay, there are these things called
blockchains, what is the point to them? What do they do? Why do we care about them? It's like, okay,
what is the blockchain? A blockchain is a new kind of network computer that is designed around a really
interesting set of constraints.
And the constraints are very expensive and but they do something really interesting, which is
they allow for a bunch of people to create this shared state that everybody can agree on the inputs and
everybody could agree on the rules. And it's very, very constrained in how you're able to modify this
state, but everybody can agree on what has been done. And different blockchains have different rules,
the rules of Bitcoin are different from the rules of Ethereum or different from the rules of flow
blockchain or polygon, any of those things. But ultimately you create this shared bit of state that can
grow in ways that are very, very constrained, but are highly observable and agreed upon.

So what is the point of that? Who the fuck cares, what is this for? Well, what's interesting about
this is that this creates this new format for something that you can call code that can make
commitments. What does that mean? Well, it means that you can submit some code to this that will
run, and once it's running, you can actually trust that it will run in a fairly deterministic way,
independent of any of the actors involved. So long as you trust that Ethereum will exist, then you can
expect that this smart contract will behave in a certain way. It's code that can make commitments, that's
neat. Well, what's the point of that?
Well, what's really interesting about code that can make commitments is that it makes possible
a new setting for running certain kinds of applications. Well, what are those certain kinds of
applications? It's like, well, it's a new setting for whether, it's like developers to go create little instances
of rules that will follow those codes that can make commitments. And that might have some value to
people, both because of the inherent work that they do, but also because of the shared state that they
do it in. Again, going back to this, well, there's a shared meaning and that has some interesting value,
and if you're also participating in this, then that's really cool.
And I'm sort of building and building there, but what ultimately that makes possible, and really
it's like it took us the better part of a decade to actually really settle on this as the atomic unit of what's
the point of this is wallets. We had all these false starts with crypto about how regular people could
think about what the atomic unit of it was. Like, is the atomic unit the coins? It's like, well, yes, but then
largely what you think of what you're doing is speculating. Is the atomic unit like network and ICOs as a
way of bootstrapping a certain thing? It's like, oh, maybe, if what you think of what you're trying to do is
various kinds of incentive design and whatever.
But ultimately now I think we're sort of at this point that largely actually mimics the beginning of
the internet and the web where it's like there was 10 years of web before the web browser where it was
very hard to actually do anything with it. And then the browser came along, it was like, ah, okay, now I
can actually do stuff. Same thing with wallets, I mean, wallets have existed since the beginning of
blockchain. It's literally just like an address and then a key that you sign with to show you're you, but it's
like it wasn't until I want to say Metamask is the first sort of modern wallet that let you actually do
things.
And now these modern wallets, like Rainbow that are amazing where you're like, "Oh my God, I
get it." The point of this is for me to be able to say, "Hey, this is a way for me to do informed consent for
things where you know it's me consenting because of the blockchain in the back being you know it's me,
and you know it's informed because of what is basically called, if you ever interacted with this, it's like,
sign this message. Sign this message to inform consent to X. And it can only be you because it gets all go
back to, so the point of the blockchain is so that why wallets can do informed consenting to things and
the wallets can do informed consent that has meaning because of the shared state that's in the
blockchain back.
So pause for a second. Now what on earth is that good for, if again, this is only useful in this
super slow, clunky Web3 environment that doesn't actually have any real work it's doing yet? It's like,
well, now you can go back and you can say, "Okay, well now we can think about this web space full of
web apps and full of databases and applications and abstractions about what's in those databases and
APIs through which you can access them and then applications that build on top of them and then users
who use this applications. And it's like, all of that web stuff can still exist, just now bookended with these
two very strong concepts of the wallet and informed consent and removable informed consent.
I can take it with me, I can remove my consent from somewhere and add it to somewhere else.
This is all the idea of how Unfollow is the most important button on Twitter? Remove Wallet is the most
important button in Web3, it's like you can just leave and go somewhere else. But again, it's like you 

...

Listen to Unchained: https://unchainedpodcast.com/did-someone-deliberately-attack-terra-luna-to-kick-off-a-death-spiral/ (15mins in)

My reflections: https://www.swyx.io/risk-conservation

Richard is one of my fave speakers in software, particular in the Elm and language sphere of things. Check out Why Isn't Functional Programming The Norm? and Roc, the new language he's working on!

Listen to Software Unscripted: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/software-unscripted/crossing-the-chasm-1-dDJwWER37/

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VSDVQFQNWk
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6jp-e592Tw
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1dfP_Xbe3Q

Listen to HIBT: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/17/1065352806/spin-master-paw-patrol-ronnen-harary (55mins in)

Listen to the Changelog: https://changelog.com/podcast/487 (12mins)

Series A: https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/05/warp-raises-23m-to-build-a-better-terminal/
HN reaction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30921231