Kevin Today

Welcome! I'm Kevin Today.

I'm a former Palantir engineer and founder of Kurtosis, and current writer and myopia researcher.

Personal Writing

On Substack. Some of my popular posts:

What's AI Anyway?, a layman's explanation of the latest AI hubbub.
The Sleep Guide, a detailed how-to manual on battling insomnia.
The Leverage Series, an exploration of leverage and how to get it.
Building The Factory, a description of how I'm building my own personal automation factory.

Live:

cmdk, an "access anything" shortcut for the terminal just like Notion, Slack, Discord, etc.
Wealthdraft, a financial planning tool for tracking your assets, monitoring net worth changes over time, estimating yearly tax, calculating changes needed to rebalance your portfolio, and more
FIRE Calculator, a Python script to calculate how much money you need today to never need to work again (FIRE)
FitPages, a web app for displaying data from the popular Fitnotes app
Overpowered Writing Tools, a collection of tools for managing a writing repo as defined in An Overpowered Writing System (TODO LINK)
CLI Journal, a CLI for writing and searching a repository of tagged journal entries
CLI Journal, an automated pipeline for pumping Brazilian bank account transactions into YNAB
Teact, a React-like framework for the Bubbletea TUI library
ActivityWatch Screentime Loader, a tool for regularly pushing ActivityWatch screentime data to a webhook
My Bash and Vim dotfiles
safebrew, a tiny Homebrew backup system
A script to download your Kindle highlights as JSON
A tool for querying the US Treasury website to get the value of a multiple savings bonds at a time

Dead:

Wunderpy2, Python bindings for Wunderlist (RIP)
Smooth Mechanism, my very first attempt at automating my GTD system
Unbox, a tool for symlinking things on your filesystem (e.g. your dotfiles) into Dropbox so they're always up-to-date
file-vacuum, which attempted to do what sftp does before I knew sftp existed

A list of tools built by others that I want to try, on Notion.

Chillout Cafe, a playlist of almost exclusively nonvocal, groove-heavy, lofi-focused tunes that I've been building since 2015 in preparation for the cafe I plan to open one day
Focus Time, a list of hard-driving tunes for when I'm amped up on coffee and want to get into the work zone
Gym

Mental Health/Life Mindset

Productivity/Career Success

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Naval Ravikant (listing again because it's just so good)
Getting Things Done (2015 ed.) by David Allen
Deep Work by Cal Newport
So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport
The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram
Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss

Finance

Other

Buffway minimalist wallet:
- Chase Sapphire primary credit card
- CapitalOne VentureOne backup credit card
- Ally bank debit card
- Driver's license
- Insurance card
Samsung Galaxy S10E in a Otterbox Commuter case with an MP-MALL glass screen protector
Keyring:
- Yubikey 5
- TRUE CashStash, loaded with local currency
- Mack's Blackout keychain earplugs
- OLight I3T pocket flashflight
- Victorinox MiniChamp Swiss army knife
Bose QC45
Wazoo firestarter necklace or Wazoo whetstone necklace
Homemade paracord bracelet in quickrelease braid
Levi's 511 jeans
Banana Republic Custom 078 Wash button downs in Grant Fit (these have lasted me years, and I'm very happy with them)
Florsheim Lodge boots

I carry my "home" around with me in my suitcases

Osprey Farpoint 55L travel backpack (everything you need and nothing you don't; highly recommend)
Large Victorinox luggage case with roller wheels and suit storage
Ledger Nano X for cryptocurrency storage
Gonex Dopp kit:
- Philips Norelco multigroom with attachments (I've used the same one for years across 6 continents with no issues; highly recommended)
- Sensodyne extra-soft toothbrush (antidote to brushing too hard and getting gum recession, though this toothbrush is becomingly increasingly hard to find and electric toothbrushes seem to do better job)
Panasonic Eneloop Pro wall charger
Daily Supplements:
- Mindlab Pro nootropic (I did a good amount of research into nootropics, and this was the only one I found that had research-backed ingredients in the right active dose)
- Centrum Men multivitamn
- Vitamin D, 5000IU

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