139 - L1F3 Update 💬💬
Hey there, ! How've you been? It's been a while since we've had a chat! Hope you've been doing well <3
Me? Well, what a freakin' few MONTHS I've had. The key summary phrase is 'Slow and Steady'
Shall we summarise?:
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Got COVID, hated it, have some lingering impacts re: exhaustion, tiredness, energy levels and lung capacity. I've got some Chinese medicine to try and sort it all out - when I went, he was all like 'yo do you have X Y Z symptoms' AND I DID. AND HE ONLY TOOK MY PULSE - dude these guys are Chinese wizards. Fear them. Otherwise, recovery is slow, but steady. Every day I'm getting a bit better, which is nice :)
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Went to Hobart a month or so ago with the family, ate some really good honey cake, ate some GREAT oysters, and spent the time chilling out together. A really fun time and I enjoyed the weather, the quiet vibe, and the markets that we went to.
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Spent a bunch of time with Steph (we both got COVID) and played some incredibly fun mahjong. She's a BEAST winning like 5 hands in a row with 6 fan or higher. AH-MAZING.
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Getting requotes from renovators - it's still going D: - but it's progressing, and now have to go looking for appliances and make decisions on things. It's getting there! Just slow and steady.
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Birthday is in 2 weeks - not 30 yet but feeling it already? This COVID thing is such a killer. Slow and...you guessed it, steady.
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Finding ways to get back into exercise - the lockdowns got me to zero, COVID got me below zero, so now we're just slowly standing back up and getting #healthy. It's a bit up and down with exercise unfortunately, but we're getting there :)
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Planning some travel later this year - hopefully sooner rather than later but it's alllll about the timing. With the renovations, work, and the war in Europe, it's a bit hard to know where to go. Also that CA$H MONEY that I need. Man, things are just too hard.
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Writing a lot more and going out a lot less because of these health issues, which has actually been kinda nice. Spending a lot of time brainstorming some fiction ideas (one is called Space Godfather(?!)), writing for the newsletter (I have like a 5 post backlog? It's insane!) so trying to pursue that as well.
Chat soon :)
Let me know if you have any feedback for the newsletter!
✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Severance - on Apple+, a Black-Mirror-esque series which asks the question 'what would happen if you could separate your work life and your home life entirely?'. Adam Scott stars as a 'severed' employee alongside a wonderfully weird cast and mysterious story. The worldbuilding is fantastic, and the impacts on the actual characters themselves seems very real and well thought through. This one appealed to me mainly because I love this sci-fi stuff and exploration in a well-told way. The best sci-fi holds up a mirror to the present day, and this series does it quite well. Highly recommended!
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The Scout Mindset - by Julia Galef. A really great non-fiction read that contends that seeing things as they really are and seeking truth investigatively (like a scout) should be used more often than the 'soldier mindset' i.e. motivated reasoning. There are a few really good techniques (testing your biases to see if you think something is true, or you want it to be true). I found it went through a lot of cognitive biases in a fresh way, and gave some more specific guides for people to learn how to think better. Anecdotes were whatever - it's a non-fiction self-help book what do you expect! - but it's a great concept nonetheless. Recommended!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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A Mathematical Formula that tells you when to show up at a party - including factors such as: how punctual are your friends? Do you expect everyone will show up on time? Is it awkward being there too early? How excited are you about the party? Maths is just so fun, isn't it?
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The strange business of hole-in-one insurance - who insures those big competitions where you try to hit a hole-in-one? What else can I insure?!
Among the many events Gilmartin has insured prizes for:
- Half-court shots during halftime at basketball games
- Guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar
- Guessing the exact weight of a giant pumpkin
- Throwing a frisbee through the sunroof of a car
- Making a 7-10 split in bowling
- Rubber duck races
- Tossing a cookie into a bowl of milk
- Guessing the Dow Jones average on a set day in the future
- Tossing an olive into a martini glass from across a bar
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North Koreans are jailbreaking phones to access forbidden media - no matter where you are, there are people who are curious and want to find ways to do what they want. This might even just be changing your background on a phone, or getting an image back that you accidentally filed somewhere random.