What’s Up Wednesday #4 - Cooperation, Climate and Quitting too Early
What’s Up Wednesday #4 - Cooperation, Climate and Quitting too Early
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The need for cooperation
🧑🔬A quite old Nature article about Gravitation called for more partnership between men of quite different disciplines, and no fear of incompatibility of them, after a geological wrong theory was adopted my mathematicians for a long time. Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of co-operation. I think now this cooperation would be needed between politicians and scientists (especially in tech and climate sciences).
What you see is what you hear
👂Did you know that what you see influences what you hear? This is called the McGurk Effect. Absolutely check out this video which makes you wonder how much post-processing our brain does unconsciously with all the data our senses accumulate.
Climate
🏝 A friend pointed out that my last views of climate are quite pessimistic. I agree. They are pessimistic and I think having a “positive pessimism” viewpoint, that is everything will go down hard if we don’t act soon, is the right one? If you don’t agree, just answer the mail. Sure there is a positive trend in some regards, e.g. Google is saying they are Co2 neutral and climate awareness is growing (at least in Germany). But still, this should not lead us to an optimistic viewpoint were we are not pressed to do something right now.
🐮 A new livestock feed reduces methane emissions in cattle by up to 80%. It is made from seaweed and the company already secured 13M$ in founding. thecattlesite
🚘 California is banning new gasoline cars by 2035. I like the tweet of the Californian senator „NEW: We’re facing a climate crisis. We need bold action. CA is phasing out the internal combustion engine. By 2035 every new car sold in CA will be an emission-free vehicle. Cars shouldn’t give our kids asthma. Make wildfires worse. Melt glaciers. Or raise sea levels.“ I hope some other states and countries will also implement bolder changes. And that not only regarding cars, but also power generation and industry.
🌊 „When hope is your strategy, you get caught unprepared. When you expect problems to solve themselves, you are disappointed. When you don’t listen to advice because it’s unpleasant or comes with difficult obligations, when you focus on short-term solutions or disregard risks, you’ll find even bad situations can be made worse.“ This quote from Daily Stoic is especially true with climate change. It feels like the default for most countries is not to act but to react. Not to solve problems, but to try hard to get re-elected, even if that means to implement short-term solutions or solutions that are not scientifically backed.
👾This website calculates how much Co2/view a website needs. Not sure how exactly the numbers are though.
What to do after graduation
“Love is the quality of attention we pay to things,” - J.D. McClatchy
“More business is lost every year through neglect than through any other cause.” -Rose Kennedy
“If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that.” - Jeff Bezos
👳♂️ Quitting too early is probably the number one factor for failure. If you ever aimed to do a handstand, you just did not train long enough of you can’t do one yet. If your side project did not take off maybe you just were too impatient. Don’t quit too early. While this sounds like proper advice, it still takes a lot of luck and stubbornness. So take it with a grain of salt. If however, someone has achieved what you want (e.g. handstand) than quitting or not questioning your method (i.e. don’t expect different results if you always do the same thing) is probably the point of failure.