Chris Brooks Newsletter 006
Greetings from Portland, Oregon where we have a perfect blend of summer and early fall weather happening.
1. 🚘 Where I’ve been traveling
After closing down the cottages, we safely made the drive out to Oregon for a wedding and lots of friend time. Julie’s had her own set of adventures on the east coast for the past two weeks, but that’s a longer story. One awesome outcome however:
2. 📖 What I’ve been reading
Some books:
- Listened to Sea of Tranquility, a light sci-fi time travel novel. Very good.
- Listened to The Whistler by John Grisham. Average and mostly predictable.
- Read (mostly skimmed) The Grid by Gretchen Bakke about our power grid and its various sources of power. Even though I didn’t read every word I did learn some things! Main thing I learned: our inability to store reserve power makes for big problems incorporating wind and solar into our grid.
- Julie and I listened to Dave Grohl’s memoir The Storyteller which we loved though learned that he loves superlatives!
- I quickly read (by design) Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less by the Axios dudes. You probably see some influence in this newsletter. I used their email newsletter tool two years ago during their beta period for emails I sent to students. Wasn’t worth spending money for such a use, but I like the format and think it is effective.
Some notable articles:
- The thoughtful Impostor Syndrome Is a Professional Superpower:
If you always feel like you belong, you aren’t trying hard enough or reaching far enough. In the meantime, don’t feel bad about feeling bad about yourself. Embrace your inner impostor.
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We probably still have a lot to learn about obesity. It almost certainly isn’t as simple as “processed foods”, or “sitting around binging Netflix.” Plastic Might Be Making You Fat points to recent research indicating there could be causal environmental effects (in our food, water, air). I’m not saying this series makes the exact same claim, but if you want to do a deep dive into this go read A Chemical Hunger – Part I: Mysteries The series is dense but provocative.
People in the 1800s did have diets that were very different from ours. But by conventional wisdom, their diets were worse, not better. They ate more bread and almost four times more butter than we do today. They also consumed more cream, milk, and lard.
3. 🍿 What I’ve been watching
I’ve been obsessed with Larry David, watching almost nothing but Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm over the past month. Julie and I were apart for over half the month, and she detests shows like Curb… so a perfect time for me to binge.
Julie and I have also returned to Mars and For All Mankind, season 3.
4. 🔮 Can You Be Optimistic?
Consider taking this quiz on rational thinking right now. Or just consider questions like these (my answers at the bottom of the newsletter):
- Are you more likely to be happy and healthy if you are born today, or born 50 (or 500) years ago?
- To what country do most people on the planet want to emigrate?
- How are we going to deal with the ongoing problem of population growth (and over-population)?
- Is the ozone layer getting better or worse?
The answers to these questions give me optimism, even as we go through troubling times. Most generations deal with troubling times, right? At times I feel almost embarrassed to admit I’m optimistic about our future as a human society. Dr. Hannah Ritchie feels the same way:
There is an “optimism stigma” that is pervasive throughout society. It’s why I often feel embarrassed to admit that I’m an optimist. It knocks me down in people’s expectations.
Do I worry about the political climate in the United States (hell, the world)? Yes. Am I concerned about global warming, about access to clean water, etc. Of course I am! I’m also confident that we can science the shit out of these problems. Not as fast as many would like, and it is true that there are far too many people who haven’t even reached the stage of “admitting we have a problem.” People that do care about this are investing time, money, and brainpower on these problems. Dr. Ritchie goes on to say:
People mistakenly see optimism as an excuse for inaction. They think that it’s pessimism that drives change, and optimism that keeps us where we are. The opposite is true.
Yes! I have to believe that success is possible to be inspired enough to get uncomfortable and take action; take risks. That is optimism: the belief or hope that the outcome of some specific endeavor, or outcomes in general, will be positive.
Go deeper and read An end to doomerism.
5. 🐧 1 Smile to Go
Puffins around the British Isles.
My answers:
1. Much more likely! Our babies are way more likely to survive to adulthood. Across the globe you are significantly more likely to have enough food, be educated, be immunized, and have shelter than at any time in the planet’s history. Consider reading Factfulness for more data along these lines.
2. The United States, by a wide margin. The poll is a few years old, but I’d be surprised if the USA has moved much. As much as friends of mine talk about moving to Canada (I’d love it there too I suspect), most people outside of North America look to the USA as the cool place to go to.
3. It will take care of itself. Europe is already shrinking. Africa by far is where most growth will happen in the next 80 years, and that continent will almost certainly plateau as mortality rates improve. Folks have a lot of kids when survival rates are low.
4. It is healing and should be recovered over the Antarctic by 2070. Oh, and I’m not a climate change denier… quite the opposite. We can and should be doing more. But I’m optimistic about our ability to navigate through this crisis.
See you next month!
-Chris