90 - Predictions ☑️
Hey there, !
It's just about to be my birthday (yay me) so I thought it would be fun to make some predictions about where the world / I am gonna be in a year's time.
It's half a fun thing to do for a newsletter, and half that it's good to start learning how to think more probabilistically so that I can get better at forecasting and making decisions based on information.
Luckily I didn't predict whether I'd have my birthday party as planned this year...
Here goes!
World Events
- Bitcoin hits AU$200,000 - 65%
- Vince buys an NFT - 25% (definitely a world event)
- A war is waged over water rights somewhere in the world - 25%
- A non-vaccinatable COVID variant arises - 33%
- A general purpose AI has been created - 5%
Personal
- I get the COVID vaccine - 95%
- I have renovated the bathroom in my new place - 90%
- I have renovated the kitchen in my new place - 70%
- Feleafcia is still alive - 65%
- This newsletter is still regularly updated on a weekly schedule - 60%
- I have started a second newsletter / blog / other content stream - 50%
- I am addicted to an online game - 10%
- I can deadlift 150kg - 33%
- I travel to the UK to see Steph - 45%
- Steph returns to Australia - 30%
- I have 3D printed boardgame parts for 5+ games - 80%
- I spend more than 3 days at home per week for work - 75%
- I drive to work - 20%
- I write and finish a book - 5%
- I purchase 10 or less Kickstarter games - 10%
- I sell or give away 10 or more boardgames - 70%
- I have joined a choir - 30%
- I have joined a chess club - 30%
- I have joined a boardgame meetup group - 10%
- I cut my own fruit like a real adult after dinner for myself - -50%
Chat soon :)
Let me know if you have any feedback for the newsletter!
✔️ Real Life Recommendations
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Lulu's Char Kway Teow - it's quick, it's easy to order, the price:value ratio is very high, and the amount of spice is exactly right. I cannot believe that such a great place has been sitting under my nose for so long! I will have to try some of the other flavours another time, but the classic Char Kway Teow, medium spice - just hits so freaking well. EXTREME RECOMMEND.
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Fury - fantastic film that I hadn't watched for whatever reason - it's an intense war film, showing the gamut from a newbie joining a tank squad, to tank combat, to moments of civility within the war, to the fleeting relationship we have with life. Yeah, it's a war movie, but it's incredibly well acted and the characters come to life incredibly quickly. Loved this one.
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Are some personalities just better? - yeah, mine. But also, this is a really interesting data analysis concerning the belief that 'with different personalities must come trade-offs, right?'...
So, uhh, where are the tradeoffs? People who are extroverted, agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, and open seem to do better at basically everything.
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The Botanist who Defied Stalin - how much do you care about plants? Enough to defy a totalitarian dictator while he's rising to power?
Like virtually everyone in Leningrad, the 16 scientists remaining at the VIR were slowly starving to death during the siege, the difference being that in arms reach they had an abundance of rice and other forage that could save them. But, they understood that these samples, the genetic diversity they captured, and all that they had taught science, were priceless. What’s more, the seeds had come to stand for Vavilov himself and his Herculean efforts. And so they never ate any of them.
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Yale's 367-year-old water bond still pays interest - when they say that a stock's value is the present value of future cash flows, I don't know if they took into account that it might live for 367 years...the rich get richer hey?
Timothy Young, the library’s curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts, has travelled to Amsterdam this week to visit Stichtse Rijnlanden, a Dutch water authority, and collect 12 years of interest on the bond. Collecting the back interest maintains the bond’s status as a functioning artifact from the Golden Age of Dutch finance. The water authority paid Young 136.20 euros in interest, the equivalent of $153.