Hello, I’m going to be renaming the Weekly Roundup and calling it the Sunday Sesh from now on. It’s an Australian term that refers to drinking on a Sunday. So grab a cold one and come along with me as I share some tidbits I’ve found over the week.
🎧 Podcasts:
“Fighting Fire with Fire” from How to Save a Planet
The US has been facing massive, record-breaking wildfires every year lately. This is being driven by:
- Big buildup of material to burn because small fires are taught to be put out ASAP. This has been part of the “Smoky Bear” campaign they’ve had for many decades. Small fires usually do the job of removing dry stock that can be used as fuel in larger fires
- Climate change. This is causing the dry season to be hotter and go for longer, leading to more of a building of burnable material that can easily catch fire.
This makes me wonder about Australia’s bushfires and the disaster season of 2019-20. As far as I know we don’t have the same issues carrying out controlled burning – we’ve known about this technique for many years. So could the record fires be caused by climate change alone?
As it turns out, yes. The fire was fuelled by record droughts in the area, leading to a massive amount of dry stock ready to be burned. And climate change again meant a longer, hotter and drier summer.
📚 Books:
The Dresden Files: Peace Talks (Book 16) – Jim Butcher
I’ve been reading this series of books for the last couple of years and recently finished this one, the second latest book in the series. It actually deviates for the story structure of the previous 15 books and is split into Part 1 of a story, with the 17th book being Part 2. Sort of like how the third movie in trilogies does all of the setting up for the 4th movie. The stakes are higher than ever and the odds of winning seem lower than ever in this book, as Harry, supernatural world and Chicago go up against a seemingly invincible foe.
📺 Videos:
“Following Your Dreams” | The Truth NO ONE Tells You
Some very relevant advice from a great creator. Stuff that would’ve given me better expectations going into my current line of work.
- There’s a dark side to pursuing your dreams
- It usually involves veering off of the commonly accepted path: going to school, then university, getting a job in your field, buy a house and work until your retirement. When you do this, you’re fighting against homeostasis
- The thing is, you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re gonna ask yourself “Am i doing this right? Should I be doing this?” This isn’t for everyone.
- As you change as a person, its pretty normal for people to leave your life who don’t align with that
- Financial instability: 1. You’ve gotta hustle. 2. You’ve gotten learn financial literacy
- It forces you to address your shortcomings as a person. If you have bad money management, or limiting beliefs, you’re gonna have to address these things to make it. If you’re searching for validation, then achieving your business goals aren’t gonna get you there, you’ve gotta address this first.
- You’re gonna take some L’s. You’re gonna face big failures along the way. Remind yourself that this is a long road and along the way things are gonna go wrong and you gotta be prepared for it.
Elon Musk’s Loop is a Bizarrely Stupid Idea
This guy’s channel has really blown up lately because of his logical, European and human-centric ideas around transport and urban planning. It’s really made me see a lot of Elon Musk’s ideas in a new light. Although I think the man is a genius, the buzz and fanfare around all of his ventures isn’t that warranted.
This take on his Boring tunnels is a funny one. There are more videos on his channel calling out the absurdity of his other ideas too, like the Hyperloop and Rocket Ship International Travel. They’re basically all worse, more expensive, lower capacity versions of trains and planes that are already used in most countries. These ideas start to seem out of touch with the masses and are only intent on creating transport that is better for the 1% who can afford to use it. Which is exactly against the thesis of public transport.
📃 Blog Posts:
How do you ensure that the ideas that you write about are good? That they’re well thought out, creative and interesting? It’s something I wonder about a lot as I write this blog.
Having an opinion should require seriously thinking about something. Not just repeating someone else’s opinion
The article delves into a few strategies you can try to improve your “idea-flow” – questions you can ask yourself to help ensure that ideas are solid.
- Reduce the overlap in your idea sources. If you’re getting the same opinions from people in business, entrepreneurship and marketing, then you’re likely to get the same point of view repeated over and over.
- See if you can find the premise for ideas that sound crazy, even if they don’t align with your belief system. Sometimes these “crazy” ideas may actually be well thought out, but just starting from a different premise to yours.
- Prune your sources of information, so that you don’t hear the same thing recycled in 5 different ways