Milder than usual
This winter seems a lot warmer than usual. I remember most years needing a hat and gloves in January, but this year I can walk around outside without them. It’s quite pleasant if you ignore the hints of climate change…
Here are this week’s links:
- Ten-day golden week this year: are you stoked or indifferent? Love it or hate it? 10-day Golden Week holiday draws mixed reactions
- Life happens when you are making other plans: These people left their jobs behind to retire early — then life got in the way. Here’s how they coped with FIRE plans gone wrong
- No surprises here: 10 Things Investors Can Expect in 2019
- Better watch out for that rising sea level: Global warming of oceans equivalent to an atomic bomb per second
- Nice intro post: “I wanted the unreasonable”
- Carlos Ghosn’s statement: The Lament Of Carlos Ghosn: The Man Who Loved Nissan Has His Day In Court
- This needs to happen soon if it is going to happen at all: The Green New Deal Rises Again
- Makes sense to me: Things I’m Pretty Sure About
- The main reason I would like to see electric vehicles everywhere: Toxic fumes threaten our children. We have to take on the pollution lobby
- Semi-hopeful? The diet coke of hopeful? Katharine Hayhoe: ‘A thermometer is not liberal or conservative’
- This is worth going over regularly: Updating My Favorite Performance Chart for 2018
- Nice to see Sebastian writing again: On Appetites
- Good to see people becoming better informed: Japan’s younger ‘Watanabes’ seek more diverse portfolios
- Interesting story: Hallucinations and $100,000: the poker player who shut himself in a pitch-black room for weeks
- Puts a lot of things in perspective: ‘I saw things I’d never imagined’: Caracas street children – in pictures
- Funnily enough, I just started reading this book: Two Skills That Normally Don’t Go Together
- Oh well. I guess we didn’t really need a climate conducive to human civilisation. Scientists Call for Drastic Drop in Emissions. U.S. Appears to Have Gone the Other Way.
- This is incredible. Like Oceans 11, but in Japan with octogenarians… Suckered.
- This doesn’t really make sense to me: if you get too many emails, get rid of some (all my work emails go straight to the bin now -it doesn’t seem to have made any difference over the last two years… Don’t Reply to Your Emails
- Systems, not goals: Mindless Resolutions
- I wonder how viable the industry is without subsidies? In 2019, how hungry is Japan for whale meat?
- Japan seems to have given the world a new word for social disfunction (after karoshi): The dangers of a digital life
- Don’t forget about dividends: Stocks Down, Yields Up
What do you think? Anything good in there? I particularly enjoyed #15, #18, and #21 🙂
And here are some books I bought/started reading/finished reading this week:
- Lethal White (Robert Galbraith, AKA J.K.Rowling). This is book 4 in the excellent Cormoran Strike series. Love these mystery/detective stories with a splash or romantic tension.
- Ship Breaker (Paolo Bacigalupi). Eco apocalyptic science fiction. I loved his Wind-up Girl and Water Knife. He really nails the details of a near future devastated by climate change.
- Exit Strategy (Martha Wells). The fourth Murderbot book. I love these science fiction books written from the perspective of a security android. The first three were excellent so I’m looking forward to finishing the series with this one.
- The Hard Things About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz). Autobiographical book from billionaire entrepreneur Horowitz. Very readable so far.
- Chop Wood Carry Water (Joshua Medcalf). This is a slightly hokey self-help book based around a main character who wants to become a ‘samurai archer’ and has a cryptic yet jovial sensei called Akira. The author doesn’t seem to have much of a Japanese background as most of the book is based on Christian or Western philosophy. Kind of forgettable.