527: Santa Teresa tips, my new job, and unhoused relational poverty
If you find value in this post, click the 'Heart' button to let me and the algorithm know which content to lean into <3
Hello from back in the SF Bay Area, along with the first week of my new job!
I’m doing product and marketing for a venture studio currently working on Saudi Arabia’s NEOM gigaproject charter city (which is why I’ve been posting it recently).
So far they’ve been paying me to talk to ChatGPT4 about green construction startup ideas. I’m loving it.
Last week though I was in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, so I owe you tips:
You can fly to nearby Cobano from San Jose, or take the ferry from Puntarenas.
The town itself is one unpaved street parallel to the beach, because the local ATV rental mafia has apparently kept it from getting paved.
It’s much more developed than ten years ago though, apparently due to heavy foreign investment during COVID. Many huge beach clubs and restaurants and lodging options in town.
Every day has a different beach party of course, though the crowd is mostly in their early twenties from Israeli, Argentina, and all over.
The waves are some of the most accessible I’ve ever seen, and firing year round.
We did the Tortuga Island snorkel tour with Raccoon Travel, and enjoyed visiting Zunya, Yoko Village, and the Montezuma waterfall.
Technology
Hunch is a no code interface that lets you chain together AI prompts a la Zapier Zaps.
Jobright is another AI job search app that claims to make it as easy as asking GPT.
Ideologies
I finished When We Walk By - Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness on the plane ride home, which was a fact dense deep dive into many of the fake news we hear about unhoused populations.
The author started a nonprofit that helps unhoused people record messages for their families that he then locates, and coordinates donations to get them on their feet.
TLDR: the only way to solve this is through policy, but each of us can help by talking to unhoused neighbors and treating them like humans, as relational poverty is even worse than financial poverty and that’s what hurts them most, how we treat them.
Interesting to see the Indian diaspora disagree about their own moniker - ‘brown’ edges out Latinos, ‘Desi’ is Hindi centric, and ‘South Asia’ lumps them in with Asians.
Memes
This weekend I’m headed to Bombay Beach Biennale, a burnery arts event in the abandoned former beach town of Bombay Beach, on the dry shores of the Salton Sea. Here’s a portfolio of a recent year - should be interesting.
I met this guy selling laser cut light prisms at Envision and the compliments I’ve received on mine since buying prove its party worth tenfold.
I watched Dune 2 this week, and honestly wasn’t impressed. Another big budget Hollywood movie putting spectacle over story - though what a spectacle it is. The Creator movie from the Rogue One director honestly stuck with me more.