Call me Wes.
Once upon a time I was a neuroscientist, and an environmental activist, who (voluntarily) lived in my car for five years. Now I'm "deep tech" venture capitalist, and a broad-spectrum enthusiast.
I love running, climbing, cooking, comedy, and learning to embody new wisdom with my body, my voice, my eyes.
I intentionally take things slow (with sporadic hard turbos). Slow airport walker. Slow cup of coffee. Handwritten daily diaries. Mere monthly postings on my blog.
I don't social media. But I send an "Annual Letter" to my friends via email, sort of like a holiday card.
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How I maintain friendships: A toolkit
Maintaining friendships is hard. It's even harder for friends in different time zones, friends who are busy and/or ambitious, and friends who have just fallen out of the radar over the years. I am reflecting on a few useful tactics I've accumulated over the years. I hesitate to publish
2025 Annual Letter
Dearest friends, 2025 was a quiet whirlwind with so much happening, and one of the years where I browse backwards at my photos and think, "wow I haven't even reached 2024 yet." I feel so fortunate to be able to explore so many new places this year. Internationally, I flew
Ugh, stop using AirPods
This is a PSA I've been holding onto for 4 years, since the pandemic pushed everyone to teleconferencing: You should stop using AirPods for taking Zoom/phone calls. It doesn't matter if you dished out $600 for an AirPod Max – it might feel like a Michelin-star dish on your ears,
2024 Annual Letter
Happy New Year from Taiwan! 🇹🇼 My brother and I flew here the day after Christmas to be here for New Years with one of my best friends (Michael what up!) who said I should celebrate New Years here. Absolutely no regrets so far. I'm writing this from a shoes-off Japanese
5 rules of my training philosophy (2024)
I'm a multi-athlete (climbing, running, yoga but also snowboarding, tennis, and rowing). My training goal is to be well-conditioned for a variety of movements, and to have the stability and coordination to not get injured. Strength training is purely supplemental. It's maybe one-fifth of the time I spend running or
What I said in Argentina: Innovation is a Transaction
📖Context: I was invited to be on a panel at the Inter-American Development Bank's Lab Forum in Buenos Aires, where I spoke innovation, climate change, and food security. It's online if you want to watch it, but I wrote the ideas here below. I humbly thank IDB Lab for the
We should make public transit fare-free
💡This is Part 1 of a series that explores a question that I have been thinking about for a long time: Can we make public transit free? We have a fare-based public transit because of the private-sector commercialization of mass transit in the 19th century, which had to operate on
A letter to the people who nearly crippled me
1: observations At 12:59 PM PST on March 11th, 2024, you violently swerved your white sedan into the bike lane that I was in. Luckily, I managed to skid my Lyft bike to avoid your car pinching me against the other parked car on the right. In my rage,
How to start running: A biochemical perspective
I started running seriously last year, coming from basically zero aerobic base. I think I made big improvements in a short amount of time, and it's largely because of how I focused my training. There are 3 main modalities of training: 1. Mechanical - musculoskeletal, kinetic patterns, strength, flexibility 2.
2023 Annual Letter
Happy holidays, friends. Phenology refers to the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate, plant, and animal life cycles. I love writing an annual letter every year because it's like a phenology of the self. Some themes are cyclically recurring in my life. Some energies