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52 things I learned in 2022

2022-11-24

Triple Falls, Dupont State Park, North Carolina, part of the Appalachian mountains and the most beautiful place I went in 2022.

I borrowed this concept from Tom Whitwell as a way of cultivating a habit of curiosity. You can read his 2022 version here.

My 2022 in a nutshell: I had a son, moved back to Georgia, launched Stripe Apps, and helped the team at Macro Oceans build the kelp economy of the future.

Here are 52 things I learned along the way, with some quotes and pictures that inspired me mixed in:

  1. It’s physically impossible to meet the domestic weight limit for a USPS small flat rate priority mailbox. The weight limit on the box is 70 lbs; filled with osmium, the densest substance known to man, it would only weigh 61.48 lbs. Paul Sherman.
  2. Elks are able to tell the difference between public (where they can be hunted) and private land (where they cannot). Todd Hollingshead.
  3. 45% of Gen Z feels most like themselves online rather than offline. Dan Frommer. This is the strongest case I’ve seen for the metaverse yet.
  4. Steve Kerr has won the NBA finals 40% of the time since entering the league in 1988. Trond Wuellner.
  5. There are 15 to 20 million beavers currently living in North America, down from a peak population 400 million (!). Sacramento Bee (paywall).
  6. 60% of the world’s cosmetics are produced in the provinces of Cremona, Lodi, Bergamo, and Milan; it's called the Cosmetic Valley. Lisa Dansi.
  7. 1 in 3 homes in the United States is owned by someone age 65 or older. Tony Fratto.
  8. Adding iodine to salt increased IQs in the United States by 15 points. Ethan Mollick.
  9. Helen Keller was one of the founders of the ACLU. Ross Simonini.
“Just because nobody complains doesn’t mean all parachutes are perfect.”
— Benny Hill
  1. Though the name "Tiffany" sounds modern, it dates from the year ~1200; thus the phenomenon where something sounds modern but is actually old is called the Tiffany problem. Helen Zaltzman.
  2. The “British Isles”, “Great Britain”, and “the United Kingdom”, are not interchangeable terms. The British Isles is the collection of islands, including Ireland. Great Britain is the big island which includes England, Scotland, and Wales. The UK is the legal union between England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Tim Watkins.
  3. Julius Caesar was not born via cesarean section. The name most likely comes from the latin verb caedere, to cut. Wikipedia. Bonus: Carthage was not plowed over and sowed with salt by the Romans; an erroneous article in the 1930 edition of Cambridge Ancient History is the source of this claim. Wikipedia.
  4. Croissants aren’t French; they’re Austrian. Amanda Fiegl.
  5. Pizza isn’t Italian; it's Neapolitan. At the turn of the last century, you could get a pizza in Buenos Aires, New York, or Sao Paulo, but not in Rome, Florence or Venice. This is because pizza was exported out to the world from Naples before being reimported. This pattern is called the “pizza effect” and has also happened with yoga and the day of the dead. H.D. Miller.
  6. Punctuation wasn't invented until the late 4th / early 5th century CE, when St. Jerome introduced it. Priscilla Long.
  7. The Pyramids of Egypt were not constructed with slave labor; evidence shows that the laborers were a combination of skilled workers and poor farmers working in the off-season. Wikipedia.
  8. The term “catfish” as in to “lure someone into a relationship using a fictional online persona” has a delightful backstory. It goes like this: a fisherman was transporting cod from Alaska to China. The cod would stop moving during the journey and their flesh would be come bland and mushy. So the fisherman reasoned that he could improve the taste of the cod by adding a catfish to the tank. Since catfish are natural predators of cod, the cod would have a reason to swim around during the journey. Except, wait a moment, this backstory itself is made up! It’s told by one of the people in the documentary Catfish(that later became the MTV TV show) to justify the actions of his wife, who was catfishing people online. Alexi Mostrous.

The Upper Nepean by WC Piguenit

The Upper Nepean by WC Piguenit

  1. Joe Biden was born closer to Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration (March 4, 1865) than his own (January 20, 2021). Michael Goodwin.
  2. The bright yellow of Swiss PostBuses is derived from the imperial colors of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, who established a postal service in the 15th century. The shade is one of three colors protected by trademark in Switzerland. Financial Times (paywall).
  3. The route used for ticker tape parades in New York City was first used for the Marquis de Lafayette on his visit to the city in 1824. Mike Duncan.
  4. The BBC operates from the same corporate charter as the East India Trading company. William Dalrymple.
  5. Queen Elizabeth reigned for almost 30% of US history (28.5% if you're dating from 1776; 30% if you're dating from the ratification of the constitution in 1788). Matt Glassman
  6. In 1833, the British government passed the Slavery Abolition Act, paying off slave owners to gradually free enslaved people across most of the empire. To finance the payments, the government took out a £15 million loan; it was fully repaid in 2015. William MacAskill.
  7. The cologne worn by Napoleon is still on sale. Jude Stewart.
  8. There are 10 companies operating today that were founded before 1000 AD. Razib Khan.
  9. The Trevi fountain in Rome is served by a functioning Roman aqueduct that is over 2000 years old. Garret Ryan.
  10. Nintendo, founded in 1889 (!) and the Ottoman Empire, which fell in 1922, coexisted for 33 years. Tim Urban.
  11. The administrators of the Roman Empire had no offices. Marc Andreesen.
  12. The reparation payment placed on Germany by France at the end of the first World War was calculated to be the same amount plus interest that Bismark had placed on France at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. How did Bismark get this number? By calculating an amount identical to what Napoleon has imposed on Prussia in 1807. Mike Duncan.
  13. Aldous Huxley taught George Orwell at Eaton. Bonus: George Orwell is credited with coining the phrase “cold war”. Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook.
  14. Our most recent common ancestor (probably) lived no earlier than 1400 BC and possibly as recently as AD 55. Douglas Rohde.
“A tiger doesn’t proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.”
— Wole Soyinka
  1. The amount of land devoted to agriculture worldwide has peaked. Hannah Ritchie.
  2. Felix Hoffman invented aspirin and heroin 11 days apart. Dan Shipper.
  3. Apothecary, boutique, and bodega are all evolotions of the Greek word “apotheke”, entering English from Latin, Provençal French, and Spanish respectively. Ted Strong.
  4. There are ~14 dead people for every person living today. Ethan Mollick.
  5. The “sailing ship” effect describes the tendency of legacy technologies to experience a burst of rapid improvements before they fade into irrelevance, as clipper ships did alongside the rise of steam ships. Ethan Mollick.
  6. Per capita CO2 emissions worldwide appear to have peaked in 2012; 2021 was 4% lower than the peak. Glen Peters. Bonus: Per capita co2 emissions in the US are down to 1920s levels. Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser.
  7. In October of this year, Greece’s entire electrical grid ran completely on renewable energy for the first time. Bill Chappell.
  8. The Bank of Japan in Hiroshima, which was just 380 metres from the hypocenter of the atomic blast in 1945, reopened within just two days of the bombing.” William MacAskill.
  9. The Appalachian Mountains run through the territory of 3 countries: the United States, Canada, and France. Wikipedia. Bonus: France’s longest international border is with Brazil. Incunabula.
  10. All eels in North America and Europe spawn in the Bermuda triangle. Emily Finch.
  11. All US commercial auto production halted completely from February 1942 through October 1945. Robert Putnam.

Poppies by Robert William Vonnoh

  1. In the dating market, six inches in height for men is equivalent to $175,000 in annual salary. Rob Henderson.
  2. College educated Americans are more likely than any other demographic group to attend religious services Ryan Burge
  3. Playing a video game together for 45 minutes increased team productivity by 20%. Todd Hollingshead.
  4. The optimal conversation size is 4 to 5 people; at 6 it starts to break into subgroups (4 and 2 or 3 and 3). Matt Webb.
  5. Police cars kill more people annually in the United States than Hurricanes. The key part here is that they are cars (and even more importantly SUVs), not that they are operated by police. Larger cars are more dangerous for pedestrians. Alissa Walker. Bonus: Getting rid of your car by choice makes you measurably happier. David Zipper
  6. 57% of Americans have never lived outside their home state; 37% have never lived outside their hometown. Steve Hind.
  7. If a married woman is diagnosed with a brain tumor, there is a 21% chance that the couple will divorce; if the husband has a tumor, there is only a 3% chance they will divorce. Rob Henderson.
  8. Since 2017, the Episcopalian Church has been conducting more burials every year than baptisms. Ryan Burge.
  9. The percentage of Americans who say they don’t have a single close friend has quadrupled since 1990. Jennifer Senior.
  10. On average, time spent with your famiily peaks at 15, with friends peaks at 18, with coworkers peaks at 30, with your children peaks at 40, and with your partner peaks at 70. Time alone peaks at the end of your life. Derek Thompson.

This year, I began tracking for the first time the people and websites that pointed me to the place where I found the things I learned. The two most common where The Browser and Marginal Revolution. If these aren't already a part of your regular reading, you should consider them. The third, surprisingly, was Twitter. I hope it continues to survive in 2023!

My list for 2021 is here.

If you think we’d have an interesting conversation, please reach out; I’d love to chat. You can send me a note at jdilla.xyz@gmail.com.

US housing market fact of the day

2022-10-17

1 in 3 owned homes in the US belongs to someone 65 or older. Pointed out by Tony Fratto from a recent episode of Odd Lots.

Climate change: progress and setbacks

2022-10-17

This week Greece’s electric grid ran entirely on renewable energy. And it looks like per person CO2 emissions have probably peaked.

However at the same time, the Alaska snow crab population has collapsed (although fishing methods may also have played a role).

My mental model for the climate change story is that for the foreseeable future, there’s going to be significant progress on renewable energy, decarbonization, and the like. It’s actually going to be shockingly fast. Eventually carbon removal is going to be figured out and costs will fall pretty quickly. A critical mass of people have accepted that decarbonization is a problem that has to be solved and it is technically feasible to solve it (with some innovation required along the way).

Alongside this though, a fair amount of environmental cost going to be paid and people and communities are going to suffer because of it. To a large extent, these costs are no longer preventable - the time for that was 10 years ago.

I’m not advocating for this path, but think it’s the likeliest outcome and if you suffer from climate anxiety, it will be crucial to remember that both those things things are happening at the same time.

Book notes: Bowling Alone

2022-10-10

Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam, is a classic book about trust and society. As a part of my obsession with trust, I felt like I had to read it. The book, which was published in 2000, is about the decline of social trust in the United States. I didn’t find it to be dated — if anything, I think the additional distance from the publish date helped the book. From the vantage point of 2022, I felt like the book previewed some of the challenges that lay ahead of American society when the book was written and was detailed enough to help me hypothesize about how trends since 2000 may or may not have continued since then. It’s a classic for a reason!

The main idea of the book is that social trust — the invisible quality that makes us feel a bond with our fellow human — has been decaying in the United States. This much I (and I suspect many others) knew about the book even without reading it because it gets cited a lot.

This is a big deal because social trust makes it possible for society to function efficiently. Business and government work better in high trust societies. Additionally, according to Putnam, trust and participation seems to be closely linked to personal health and happiness.1

So what leads people to have trust in their community and society? The book isn’t as explicit here as I wish it would be, but far as I can tell, though, the critical factors are:

Trust in the United States has been falling pretty steadily since the late 1960s.

Data from Bowling Alone, thanks to Engaging Citizens and Building Social Capital: The Exceptional Civic Story of Portland Oregon and the Role of Information Technology. Steve Johnson, Ph.D for the visualization.

Putnam makes a convincing case that this is not just people changing the way they answer a survey question, but a general decline in social capital. Across almost every dimension he studies — church membership, bowling leagues, running for office, formal involvement in volunteer groups (like the Lions club), sports leagues, volunteering at local charities, dinner parties, you name it — Americans are less involved and less trusting by the end of the 1990s than they were in 1960s.

Moreover, this pattern holds across different groups. People with more education are more likely to be involved and trusting than people with less education, but both cohorts are less involved and less trusting than they were 30 years ago. Same with race, gender, and income. It really is striking how many different cuts of data tell basically the same story — a decline in trust and participation starting in the late 1960s.

I want to pause on this for a minute, because I think it’s an underrated point. America in 1998 was not producing social capital at the same rate it was in the 1960. While America in 1960 had many flaws, black people and women of the 1960 reported higher levels of social trust than did their counterparts of the 1998. This isn’t to say that we should seek to go back to the way society was in 1960, but it is worth understanding – after all, wouldn’t we expect a more equal society to have higher levels of social trust? Putnam suggests that it was the social cohesion of the 1960s that allowed America to make the steps it made towards racial and gender equality – the implication being that lower levels of trust are causing us to miss out on further progress.2

The one exception to this trend of declining participation are social activities that can be done alone. So as an example, people don’t join a local volunteer group, they write a check to an issue based organization; they don’t join a bible study, they are spiritual at home. Individual activities, however, don’t create trust.

So where is all this trust going? The book makes the case that there are four factors worth considering:

  1. Generational replacement. The generation that lived through World War II seems to have had particularly high social trust that they learned as a part of their formative years. This social trust habit hasn’t been passed down (or hasn’t been activated?). This is by far the largest contributing factor.

  2. Time spent watching TV.3 Or said differently, as our entertainment options at home have gotten better, we’re less likely to venture out into the real world and do the sorts of things that lead to trust. For individuals, the time spent watching TV is the “single most consistent predictor” the author discovered.

  3. Commuting. At least during the period when the book was being written, time spent commuting was going up. Almost by default, commuting in a car happens alone and is time that can’t be spent on other things. Additionally, it’s not just commuting workers who pay this penalty; in communities with long commute times, even retirees are less involved.4

  4. Financial pressures are causing us to spend more time working and leave us with less time to spend on leisure. Before reading the book, I would’ve guessed that this would be the dominant story, but it doesn’t appear to be. There does seem to be some pull away from community engagement due to work, but it very much appears to be on the margin.

So where do we go from here?

First, from the vantage point of 2022, I have a hard time not seeing a lot of the trends outlined by Putnam getting worse. Based on what Putnam said about the impact of TV on participation, it’s hard to imagine that social media and online gaming have made the situation better. Add to this the pandemic, which broke the habits of engagement for many people, and it’s easy to see how people might start to feel like the world is spiraling out of control for them. I would predict this to continue in the near term!

The one silver lining I see is that I feel like the pandemic and shift to remote work has made it significantly easier to create social capital online. In an additional chapter from the 2020 version of the book, Putnam discusses the potential impact of the internet on social capital and posits that it will be good for organizing, but bad for creating relationships that lead to meaningful change. Based on my experience, I think that this was true before 2020, but sometime during the pandemic, it shifted. Since about mid-2020, I’ve seen a significant uptick in the number of professional relationships I have with people I’ve never met in person (even outside of my current company); a handful of these people have become legitimate friends. This feels like something I’ll have to learn how to cultivate through the rest of my career.

Second, reading this book has made me feel more strongly that we should be nudging young adults towards civic service and potentially even have mandatory/highly encouraged civic service programs. Based on the generational replacement chapter, it seems likely to me that one’s habits towards trust and civic participation are set somewhere between the ages of 18-28, so nudging people towards service during this time in their life should pay dividends for years to come.

Third, it became clear to me while reading this book that I needed to have a personal social capital plan in the same way that I have an exercise routine and other personal health habits. Finding both informal ways and formal ways to be a part of the community matter for individual happiness as well as community outcomes and I should be intentional in how I invest in it. Ideally civic leaders would latch onto this message and start to reinforce it within the communities they lead.

Finally… at some point while reading this book and looking at all of the charts where things go sideways starting between 1968 and 1974, I started to think of this chart of productivity in the United States.

Macro Market Musings

Could there be a relationship between declining trust and declining productivity? At least at an intellectual level, this makes sense: if more trust allows two people or four people to be more productive together, why wouldn’t more trust allow a society to be more productive?

Interestingly, whilte Putnam does discuss the importance of trust to economic productivity and he shows a lot of charts, he never shows this one. Even more interesting, while I’ve seen a lot of musings about the causes of the Great Stagnation, I’ve never seen anyone put forward declining social trust as an explanation; it doesn’t mean it’s not out there, but I’m surprised that I haven’t run into it. I’d like to do more reading here!

1:  An alternate version of this book is the self help version – Bowling Alone: Why the key to health and happiness is cultivating friendships and community involvement
2: wonder if this means that some of the nostalgia for an earlier American age is in fact driven by a longing to return to a higher trust society? Another interesting question is whether more social conformity / segregation is needed to create higher levels of social capital; I’m not sure I agree but would love to see data.
3: This is where I hear a voice in the back of my head saying “after the defeat of Carthage, the Romans became complacent and decadent…”
4: It’s interesting to imagine how more flexible work arrangements could change this.

The price of floppy disks

2022-09-19

A great reminder that price is a function of demand and supply:

Another thing is that I don’t know what my inventories are worth. I know that ten years ago I bought floppy disks for eight to 12 cents apiece. If I was buying a container of a million disks, I could probably get them for eight cents, but what are they worth today? In the last ten years they’ve gone from ten cents to one dollar apiece, and now you can sell a 720KB double density disks for two dollars. I just don’t know what the market will do. It’s very hard to run a business when you don’t know what your product is worth.

That is from Eye on Design’s article about Tom Persky, the last man selling floppy disks.