Hey friends,
Happy December— how wild is it that 2024 is less than three weeks away? I don’t have many updates on life happenings since the last time we chatted, so I’ll keep this quick.
Here are a some things I’m treasuring over the holiday season:
- Michael Buble’s Christmas album
- The smell of fresh pine wreaths
- Fairy lights
- Choosing, making, wrapping, and giving gifts
- The “Best of 2023” lists in every domain
- Reindeer, polar bears, and Hallmark movies
What are a few of your favorite things?
Wishing you a (figuratively) warm winter and refreshing new year,
Maya
Links
- Important ideas about the world
- How a bigger, better bureaucracy can save America
- What happens when the Coast Guard intercepts kids seeking asylum at sea — this is so profoundly sad and tragic, but I have no idea what a more ideal solution would be?
- Calling into question the validity of behavioral economics: “We can’t afford to defer questions about human nature, and the social and political policies that come from them, to commercialized “research” that is scientifically questionable and driven by ideology.”
- Sooo relatable
- On the emotional attachment to the million Internet tabs you have open
- Building a personal website is like creating an intellectual home
- You can’t hoard life: “The truth, of course, is that experiences are for having, not for hoarding. As J. Jennifer Matthews puts it, in her book Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just as You Are, “we cannot get anything out of life. There is no outside where we could take this thing to. There is no little pocket situated outside of life” to which you could take “life’s provisions and squirrel them away.” Spending your days trying to get experiences “under your belt”, in an effort to maximise your collection of experiences, or to feel more confident about the future supply of similar experiences, means placing yourself in a position from which you can never enjoy them fully, because there’s a different agenda at play.” This hit me hard.
- How random are you, really? This is something I genuinely struggle with, especially when doing art — it’s so hard to make or draw a truly random pattern!
- A guy walked almost every block of NYC, about 6000 miles over four years
- Cool data viz
- Taiwanese families have more pets than kids — creative depictions of aging populations
- A cool visual explainer from the NYT on how to get a restaurant reservation
- All the ships in the world
- Things I would buy if I had a house… more things.. more money… less guilt about materialism…
- These shelves
- This (really expensive) cloud
- This “perpetual sliding calendar”
- Miscellaneous
- Watch a sunset in real-time, anytime, somewhere in the world
- … such an entertaining recap of The Great British Baking Show’s season premier? I feel as though I enjoyed reading this more than I would watching the episode.
- Aura Bora sells weirdest sparkling water flavors around (green bean casserole?)
Things I’m trying and loving
- HowWeFeel — always a fan of a self-study, and it’s interesting to track the energy and valency of my mental state across the days! Really clean and intuitive design, simple analytics, all for free!
- one sec — introducing a delay to opening apps I often instinctively open and scroll on… according to their algorithm, I’ve cut the number of times I open these apps in half!
- Cold brew coffee — got a cold brew maker for my birthday, so I can make 8 cups of concentrate at a time. Cold brew results in coffee that is less acidic, more caffeinated, and smoother-tasting coffee than other methods. I’ve enjoyed being able to choose and enjoy actual coffee varieties (recently, from Verve and Sightglass) versus just Nespresso pods!
Quotes
- “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Oscar Wilde
- “First we have to believe, and then we believe.” — German physicist G.C. Lichtenberg (fake it till ya make it?)
- From the same: “I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up.” Reminds me of all those things you know will make you feel good that you never want to do beforehand…
Books
- Cobalt Red — Siddharth Kara
- [How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives]
- Democratic Republic of the Congo book. Did I learn something? Yes, for sure— I had never thought about cobalt (its uses, impact of mining) or the political history of the Congo beyond King Leopold. Definitely added a layer of complexity to my view of geopolitical relations (China controls most of the mines?) and unintended consequences of electrification.
- “Artisanal”(which sounds fancy but just means small-scale) mining of cobalt is intrinsically tied to electrification and the absolutely horrendous conditions in the Congo
- Cobalt is an essential component of lithium rechargeable batteries— increased demand with smartphones, but especially with EVs! Cobalt increases energy density and stability of batteries.
- A SLEW of negative health consequences in adults and children from heavy metal exposure, environmental contamination
- Who is responsible for abuses in the artisanal mining sector? Mining companies themselves (many Chinese), or tech companies?
- Related: the IRENA report on Geopolitics of the Energy Transition: Critical Materials
- The Copenhagen Trilogy — Tove Ditlevsen, transl. by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman
- [Childhood — Youth — Dependency]
- Denmark book. Did I learn anything? Not really, although it was novel to experience WWII from the perspective of a Danish child.
- A mid-century autobiographical coming-of-age story of a Danish creative writer, told with an almost cringe-worthy degree of honesty and emotional transparency. Honestly, I thought this was really boring, and I had no feelings but annoyance towards the narrator.