www.oneusefulthing.org/p/setting…

So many important processes assume that the amount and quality of our written output is a useful measure of thoughtfulness, effort, and time.

A professor from NYU said, on one of the nightly news shows, that the written word is no longer the symbol of human thought. Long term this is very true but there will be a short term arbitrage in those that can use AI tools in their work.

Will AI’s accurate code generation slow adoption of new programming languages? A lack of a broad code base for new languages may lead to bias towards existing languages.

Finished reading: The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell 📚(5/5)

The Bomber Mafia book cover

I thoroughly enjoy reading and listening to works authored and narrated by Gladwell, and his latest offering does not disappoint. This captivating piece is part podcast and part historical novel, where Gladwell delves into the lives of the men who shaped America’s WWII bombing strategy. Through their moral views and beliefs, Gladwell highlights how their decisions impacted not only the war but also our present-day lives.

Self-Repo Fords

Ford has submitted a patent to automate the vehicle repo processs. www.theverge.com

Those include sending messages to the owner’s smartphone or the vehicle itself, locking drivers out entirely, disabling functions like air conditioning, geofencing drivers to only operate within a certain time or set area so they can still get to work, and in one especially harrowing example, enabling an autonomous car to just drive itself to an impound lot — or a junkyard if the car’s market value is determined to be below a certain threshold.

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you

Finished reading: Authentic by Paul Van Doren 📚(4/5)

Authentic book cover

The making of the Vans shoe. If you enjoy books about how businesses are built, skate culture, and a bit about life in SoCal in the 60-80’s this a fun quick read/listen.

Finished reading: Taste by Stanley Tucci 📚(4/5)

Enjoyable audiobook read with the gentle and smooth voice of Stanley Tucci himself. Parts of the book ran long, but the penultimate chapter was a shock to me and put the whole book into a new context. A book about the love of food turned into a book about gratitude in a wonderful way.

Finished reading: The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon by Todd Zwillich 📚(4/5) an Audible Original.

“The story of John C. Houbolt, an unsung hero of Apollo 11 and the man who showed NASA how to put America on the moon.” It’s the story of determination, achievement, perseverance, and the struggle for recognition. Doing the right thing isn’t always rewarded at the time we feel it should be.

For the first time in my life, I heard a radio station play the same song twice in a row, and not for any type of marathon. Santeria (song) - Wikipedia. Odd.

7 marathons - 7 Continents - 7 Days

David Kilgore just ran—and won—seven marathons in seven days on seven continents. The 31-year-old American runner averaged about 2:56 per marathon, which means he ran 183.4 miles at 6:43 pace per mile.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Remarkable

Tonight the NBC Nightly News had a story about a woman who found her father’s bucket list after he was killed in a distracted driver accident. The list included about 60 items of which about 6 where already completed. When she found the list she felt compelled to finish the bucket list and in doing so found new strength inside her as well as a connection to her father. She finished the list in about 5 years.

NBC Nightly News - Daughter honors late father by finishing his bucket list

As I watched this episode I thought about how this father’s bucket list was like a treasure map. It was a plan laid out for someone to follow. It gave the daughter a plan to act upon without struggling to think of her own bucket list (though she may have had one).

Is this a bad thing, to have a challenge laid out before you? Probably not, who knows if she would have accomplished her own bucket list in just a few years without the impetus or challenge from her father.

So the lesson here is to take the leap, find a list, any list and get started.

Wired - Robot Cars Are Causing 911 False Alarms in San Francisco

In a letter filed with a California regulator yesterday, city agencies complained that on three separate occasions since December, Cruise staff called 911 after a passenger in one of its driverless vehicles became “unresponsive” to the two-way voice link installed in each car. Each time, police and firefighters rushed to the scene but found the same thing: a passenger who had fallen asleep in their robot ride.

Now that is some confidence in self driving taxis, or just a few folks sleeping one off.

Finished reading: PSYCHOLOGY OF MONEY. by MORGAN. HOUSEL 📚 (4/5)

Great money lessons best summed up by:

  • Build wealth by saving more
  • Save by more spending less than you make
  • Spend less by desiring less
  • Desire less by not caring what other people think

Simple is not always easy

Savage Waters on Outside+

Watched Savage Waters on Outside+ (4/5)

Savage Waters is an adventure to find an awe inspiring wave recorded in E. F. Knight’s personal journal in 1891. The film wonderfully captures our desire to connect to the wonders of our world across generations. From the journal…

“When we were close to it, the sea happened to break, and the sight was a lovely yet a terrible one. A huge green roller, very high and steep, suddenly rose as if by magic from the deep; then swept over the shoal, and, when it reached the shallowest part its crest hung over, forming a cavern underneath, through whose transparent roof the sun shone with a beautiful green light; and lastly the mass overtopping itself fell with a great hollow sound, and was dashed to pieces in a whirl of hissing foam.”

The Cruise of the “Alerte” by E.F. Knight

Savage Waters - Official Trailer on Vimeo

The Cruise of the ‘Alerte’: Knight, E. F. on Amazon (Affiliate)

It’s amazing how many side conversations held during meeting breaks become part of the core “canon“ of the meeting following the break. It’s easy to consider these brakes a waste of time, rather than a time to process what has been said.

Finished reading: We Are What We Eat by Alice Waters 📚(3/5)

A manifesto about how we eat affects who we are. A bit preachy, but isn’t that what a manifesto is? Chapters tell you a ton about the focus of the book.

Part 1 : Fast Food Culture

Convenience, Uniformity, Availability, Trust in Adverising, Cheapness, More is Better Speed

Part 2 : Slow Food Culture

Beauty, Biodiversity, Seasonality, Stewardship, Pleasure in Work, Simplicity, Interconnectedness.

I have noticed that my breathing stops or slows while I work. I will stop breathing while scanning for “threats” during calls, checking my inbox, reviewing my task list, or in meetings. Mindfulness and awareness help me identify these times and just breathe.

Right now. Breathe

f(health,wealth,time) = maximum fulfillment

Dr. Peter Attia, a doctor focused on longevity and maximizing our lives, recently interviewed Bill Perkins about his book Die with Zero (Affiliate). In his book, Bill focuses on the ways to maximize your personal life fulfillment by focusing on three key inputs:

  • Health
  • Wealth
  • Time

Too often we focus on wealth as a key value driver in our lives, but Bills points out that there is a maximum utility to the wealth we have and that peaks sometime in the middle of our lives like a bell curve.

For example what is the value of $1 million on your deathbed to you? Probably not much. What’s the value of that same $1 million to you when you are 1 year old. Not much, you have very little needs at that age. $1 million in the middle of your life, now that can make some real impact. So the value of money/wealth changes as you age, but we must also consider our health. What if we had $1 million so that we could take a month long hike along the rim of Grand Canyon, but we were too old to make the journey.

Perkins point is that we need to focus on fulfillment which is a function of age, wealth, and health and that finding the proper order and balance in our lives is the key to fulfillment.

Key Lessons

  • There are certain activies that you can only with others at a certain time in their lives. You can’t have story time with your kids when they are thirty. You can’t go on a father son trip when your father has passed away.
  • There are seasons of your life that you cannot recapture. Bill discusses his friend taking a summer backpacking in Europe just out of college. Bill took a similar trip many years later when he was older but just wasn’t the same.
  • Find the time for maximum utility for your resourcess throughout your life. Why would you wait to give your children money in your will at the cost of a trip together earlier in life.

Of course, everything has it’s limits or extremes, but are you deferring fulfillment for a future that never may come to pass?