Pine needle tea has more than 100 percent of the vitamin C of orange juice — Nautilus
The value of returned purchases in the United States would make it the 16th largest economy in the world — Rohit
Musings
“Great problems have to be discovered; often the solution of the problem is only a tiny part of the story, most of it is really about discovering the problem.” — From Michael Nielsen, ~Quick thoughts on research:~ (found via Zheng Dong Wang)
OceanMade has announced pre sales of its Kelp Pots. These seed starter pots use kelp pulp to retain water instead of the traditional peat. The kelp pulp used in these pots is a byproduct of Macro Oceans beauty ingredient, Big Kelp Hydration. I’ve gotten a chance to see some of these up close and I’m really excited to see them coming together. It’s a small example of a big dream: using traceable, ocean farmed kelp products as an alternative to higher impact terrestrial sources. Due check them out if you’re a gardener.
Worth your time
Michael Lewis’s story about Chris Marks, a public servant who “led the development of industry-wide standards and practices to prevent roof falls in underground mines, leading to the first year (2016) of no roof fall fatalities in the United States”, is fantastic. Some gems:
At the height of the Vietnam War, a coal miner was nearly as likely to be killed on the job as an American soldier in uniform was to die in combat, and far more likely to be injured. (And that didn’t include some massive number of deaths that would one day follow from black lung disease.)
And
People facing a complicated problem measure whatever they can easily measure. But the measurements by themselves don’t lead to understanding.
And
Roof bolts were indeed more efficient and effective than timber supports in preventing chunks of roof from wounding miners. But they were expensive to install. The coal mine companies had, in effect, figured out how few roof bolts they needed to use to maintain the same level of risk their miners had endured before their invention
Noah Smith on Japaneseurbanism. Having zones that restrict certain activities rather than prescribe what can be done seems like a small change with a big impact.
The first awesome conclusion of the model does the eval is that we will achieve every evaluation we can state. Recall that evaluations must be legible, fast, and either a good approximation of a wanted capability or useful itself.
And:
Two years ago, ~Demis Hassabis enumerated~ three properties of problems suitable for AI: a massive combinatorial search space, a clear objective function to optimize against, and lots of data or an efficient simulator.
All of the world’s gold is estimated to fit in one 20 meter cube — BBC
There are more people under the age of 25 today in Africa than there are in all of Europe — Stephen Kotkin
Musings
All large scale changes should be presented as a return to the past.
I wonder what it would look like to restructure local government around an escalating set of reviews. Imagine filing for a building permit where:
The first level of the form is evaluated by AI with the ability to appeal
The second level goes to a human
The third level goes to a supervisor
The second and third levels become new evaluation cases. This already happens today at places like YouTube, but imagine bringing it to your local government.
The proper response to losing, I learned as a child, was to hate it. It should make you miserable, frustrated, and sad. Feeling terrible about it was a good thing, because you would work even harder to make sure you never felt that way again.
I like to think that I got this from Michael Jordan. The impression I have of him was that he hated losing more than anyone else and because of this, he could will himself to win, no matter obstacles lay before him.
I don’t know about him, but it didn’t work for me. More than once, I quit or didn’t try my hardest to avoid the pain of losing.
Now I think the best response to losing is to take it as easily as possible. Maybe not enjoyment, but bemusement if you can manage it. Analyze it, but don’t stress it. The important thing is to continue to try.
In my mental library, this book is part of a trilogy with Range and Talent about how to do your best work.
The book probably only gets published because it’s about late bloomers, but I can’t think of any part of it that is only applicable to late bloomers.
I thought about survivorship bias basically the entire time I was listening to the book. Some of it is definitely embedded in here, but some wisdom is too.
A common theme in Oliver’s late bloomers is earnestness. Earnestness to the point of being annoying to their contemporaries. I think earnestness is a quality that ages really well.
Many of the lessons I took from this book can be reduced to the sorts of things a youth baseball coach would say to me during practice. This is related to the earnestness.
The need to move through periods of exploration and exploitation at different stages of a career is a lens that will stick with me. If you think your potential is capped in your current situation, it’s probably time to turn the dial towards exploration. This is not one I got in youth sports.
Luck from motion — when you get an opportunity because you’re out in the world doing interesting things
Luck from awareness — when you notice an opportunity is available to you (or you’re open to it)
Luck from uniqueness — opportunities that come to you because of your unique interests, passions, and projects
“The harder you work, the luckier you get!”
Networks are important because of the influence they have on your aspirations. You need to be around people that expand your idea of what’s possible through words and actions.
It’s really important to (appropriately) display your work. People can’t bump into you if they don’t know you exist.
Caring is a source of alpha. Ray Kroc was one of the late bloomers. McDonald’s dominance made more sense when I better understood how much Ray Kroc cared. His passion for french fries isn’t something I share, but it makes sense that he of all people created the dominant fast food company. He cared more than anyone else!
Being a little reckless can be a good thing as you age. He cites a study (I think this one) where people who make a life change by flipping a coin are ultimately happier when it forces them to change rather than stick with the the status quo.
People who keep trying have more successes and more failures than those that don’t. Chaos and failure are not to be avoided but part of taking many chances at success. You do your best work when you do your most work. Quantity precedes quality. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Courage / not counting yourself out is underrated. Believing that you have the ability to be excellent is not sufficient for becoming excellent but it is necessary. This is increasingly important with age. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Recommended if you, like me, hope your best work is ahead of you.
Many wonderful public servants made valiant efforts and scored some great wins, but Democratic leadership did not make it a top priority to clear out the underbrush that jams the gears of government.
Every second for the viewer is just that viral video where the person picks between two pop stars. You’re always deciding what to pay attention to. The relationship between person-who-makes and person-who-consumes is paramount to long-term success, because if you are winning that game then you will be able to survive.
Things I learned
Eyes have evolved more than 50 times - Salon via Rohit
Musings
You can only avoid competition by avoiding good ideas. — Paul Graham
Product market fit provides a business with gravity
- It lets you know up from down — this helps
- But it also weighs on you; it’s tough to take the business in a direction that your current product / market / customer isn’t pulling you
A key skill for the future is going to be how to work with something that is:
1. smarter than you in many / most domains
2. sometimes wrong
A surprising amount of life is figuring out the right words to say in order to get what you want