Brian Johnson is my favorite teacher philosopher that is living that I've read/listened to. I've been following his newsletter and +1s since I met himBrian Johnson is my favorite teacher philosopher that is living that I've read/listened to. I've been following his newsletter and +1s since I met him in a cafe in Santa Monica in ~2007. I've consumed countless of his Notes (book summaries) and 101's on my journey, and have found his recapitulation of the masters, and just his *energy* around the topics to be infectious and immensely helpful. Brian is food for the spirit, and I can't wait to read this....more
Elon is a fascinating and unique person in our universe, and Isaacson has done another masterful job explaining his story. My main takeaway is that itElon is a fascinating and unique person in our universe, and Isaacson has done another masterful job explaining his story. My main takeaway is that it's amazing that Elon went in and re-engineered not one but two entire industries to create something new that was a fraction of the cost of prior efforts. With SpaceX, he made rockets at 10% of the cost because the governments cost-plus accounting plus lack of innovation in decades meant that rockets were ripe for reinvention and nobody knew it.
I loved learning about Elons methodology, such as that if the difference between the cost of materials of a part and it's purchase price was too high, then take it back to the drawing board. Amazing to read about him creating rocket engines at 1/10th the quoted price.
Elon is maybe the only person in the world who continually goes "all in" on every big hand. He's focused on going big because it's the only way to achieve his mission driven goals (get to mars, get off oil). For instance, not many people in the world would have made this bet:
I loved the relevation that Elon loves video games, and kind of views life as a video game. It explains many of his moves, and perhaps the way he can just turn off emotions and for instance lay off 80% of a company - it's a move he'd make if he were trying to win in a video game.
However I do worry that with Twitter, his approach to re-engineer it won't work. Social Networks are built upon layers and layers of network effects and if you undo those it does nothing but set you back. Twitters brand for instance is one of those. His Twitter saga to me read a little like it sounded like a good idea, then he tried to back out, but then he couldn't and so decided to apply the same playbook. The only thing that might save him is that Twitter's network effects are more powerful than most people think.
Still despite the Twitter saga, Elon doesn't deserve the negative press in mainstream media that he gets - SpaceX is the one of the largest private companies in existence right now and Tesla is one of the most valuable car companies. He's hardcore, and impressive. ...more
Best book I've read on this topic. Really changes your thinking on all sorts of health topics. I've followed Peter Attia's podcast for a while, but thBest book I've read on this topic. Really changes your thinking on all sorts of health topics. I've followed Peter Attia's podcast for a while, but this is an excellent summary of all his best knowledge on health. He gave me a new goal and word - healthspan! Forget living a long time, the goal is to have a healthy body for as long as possible.
But the biggest takeaway from the book is exercise is the biggest lever on healthspan. I would have thought diet and exercise were close, but no, exercise is orders of magnitude the biggest lever. And this applies to reducing risk from all the "4 horseman" as he calls them (cancer, metabolic syndrome, alzheimers and brain degenerative diseases, and cardiovascular disease).
"Study after study has found that regular exercisers live as much as a decade longer than sedentary people. Not only do habitual runners and cyclists tend to live longer, but they stay in better health, with less morbidity from causes related to metabolic dysfunction."
One benefit of exercise is that it boosts your metabolism, which basically makes your body run healthier and be better at repairing itself. Interestingly, on the subject of taking supplements, Dr Attia was mostly negative on that with one exception, that he had a whole chapter about: rapamycin. I want to learn more about this drug.
"By cleansing our cells of damaged proteins and other cellular junk, autophagy allows cells to run more cleanly and efficiently and helps make them more resistant to stress. But as we get older, autophagy declines. Impaired autophagy is thought to be an important driver of numerous aging-related phenotypes and ailments, such as neurodegeneration and osteoarthritis. Thus, I find it fascinating that this very important cellular mechanism can be triggered by certain kinds of interventions, such as a temporary reduction in nutrients (as when we are exercising or fasting)—and the drug rapamycin."
Strength is also super important, as muscle mass and bone density decay significantly after age 50, and it's very hard if not impossible to gain back later. Dr Attia recommends that whatever age you are (20s to 80s) it's best to build strength. His goal for his patients is to be in the top 5th percentile of strength for their age. Strength is another top predictor of healthspan - in a way it even defines it as if you are strong you can still hike/bike/surf/etc, and if you can't do the things you love you will lose your zest for life.
"One of the prime hallmarks of aging is that our physical capacity erodes. Our cardiorespiratory fitness declines for various reasons that begin with lower cardiac output, primarily due to reduced maximum heart rate. We lose strength and muscle mass with each passing decade, our bones grow fragile and our joints stiffen, and our balance falters, a fact that many men and women discover the hard way, by falling off a ladder or while stepping off a curb."
To improve strength, Dr Attia does and recommends consistent weight training, with a lot of focus on stability, as the most important thing is to be strong in a way that avoids injury as we do other things. He also does things like rucking, which sounds interesting and I may have to get into - the thesis here is our ancestors did a lot of carrying of heavy things, and it's really good for us therefore, but we don't do it as much anymore. Goal: be able to carry half your body weight in each hand for 1 minute.
In my half-ironman training in the past few years I've done a lot of zone 2 bike rides, and I continue to do them. But I didn't realize they were actually really good for you outside of building base cycling form. Dr Attia does multiple zone 2 workouts per week. I love this, because it gives me permission to just go a long slow bike ride and know that is improving my fitness across the board. And of course, I use those to listen to audio books and podcasts - win/win!
"As fundamental as zone 2 training is for professional cyclists, however, San Millán believes that it’s even more important for nonathletes, for two reasons. First, it builds a base of endurance for anything else you do in life, whether that is riding your bike in a one-hundred-mile century ride or playing with your kids or grandkids. The other reason is that he believes it plays a crucial role in preventing chronic disease by improving the health and efficiency of your mitochondria"
The biggest correlated predictor of longevity number that we have is VO2 max. Dr Attia says his goal is to get to the top 2 percentile of VO2 max for his age. I love this, and this is my new goal in life. My Garmin watch says I'm 90th percentile, so I have more to climb!
"It turns out that peak aerobic cardiorespiratory fitness, measured in terms of VO2 max, is perhaps the single most powerful marker for longevity."
Good tip: "Where HIIT intervals are very short, typically measured in seconds, VO2 max intervals are a bit longer, ranging from three to eight minutes—and a notch less intense." And: "The tried-and-true formula for these intervals is to go four minutes at the maximum pace you can sustain for this amount of time—not an all-out sprint, but still a very hard effort. Then ride or jog four minutes easy, which should be enough time for your heart rate to come back down to below about one hundred beats per minute. Repeat this four to six times and cool down."
Alcohol is one of my weaknesses as I love a nice bottle of wine with a nice dinner. And I've listened to podcasts on the topic and read a book about it: Drink. My French teacher (and most French in general) swear that a small amount of wine is good for you, but the science is clear - alcohol is a net negative even in small amounts. But small amounts is much better for you than large amounts, and so if you are going to drink, Dr Attia recommends:
"I strongly urge my patients to limit alcohol to fewer than seven servings per week, and ideally no more than two on any given day, and I manage to do a pretty good job adhering to this rule myself."
Dr Attia highly recommends trying a GCM, which I haven't done yet but am very interested in.
One thing I didn't know is you can't overeat protein - if you do so your body just excretes it. However if you overeat carbs or fats your body has to store those, and this is the major cause of weight gain. His chapter on how to measure your blood results and eat healthier was nothing new but a good overview.
"Putting all these changes into practice typically means eating more olive oil and avocados and nuts, cutting back on (but not necessarily eliminating) things like butter and lard, and reducing the omega-6-rich corn, soybean, and sunflower oils—while also looking for ways to increase high-omega-3 marine PUFAs from sources such as salmon and anchovies."
I have been a fan of occasionally doing 8/16 fasting as a tool for losing weight or if I just had a big late dinner the night before. But as a regular tool, despite the popularity of fasting in the last few years, Dr Attia is not a big fan, as it causes too much muscular decay. I still think its a useful occasional tool, but not a regular habit to adopt.
"As a result of this and other research, I have become convinced that frequent, prolonged fasting may be neither necessary nor wise for most patients. The cost, in terms of lost lean mass (muscle) and reduced activity levels, simply does not justify whatever benefits it may bring. My rule of thumb for any eating pattern, in fact, is that you must eat enough to maintain lean mass (muscle) and long-term activity patterns."
Dr Attia's last chapter was on mental health, where he was quite vulnerable and shared his own issues with abuse and depression, which led to a lot of anger. I think a lot of successful people are driven by trying to prove something in this way. Was a really good reminder that we all are probably not spending enough time paying attention to our mental health - it's as important as exercising, eating well, and sleeping well. So those are the big 4!
Overall, great overview and one I may be re-reading parts of it. I was already applying a lot of this, some of it I was aware of but not applying so great reminder. And I learned some new things too. But mostly and overall, it's a strong case for living healthy now. If we are healthy now, we can find all kinds of things in the future to look forward to doing.
"“I think people get old when they stop thinking about the future,” Ric told me. “If you want to find someone’s true age, listen to them. If they talk about the past and they talk about all the things that happened that they did, they’ve gotten old. If they think about their dreams, their aspirations, what they’re still looking forward to—they’re young.” Here’s to staying young, even as we grow older." ...more
A spellbinding story, highly recommended. Despite having read lots of headlines about the "opioid epidemic" I really appreciated and enjoyed learning A spellbinding story, highly recommended. Despite having read lots of headlines about the "opioid epidemic" I really appreciated and enjoyed learning more about this.
For instance, I had no idea that OxyContin/etc are just basically heroin with some time delayed engineering in the pill, which can be undone by crushing the pill. No wonder it took off. It's a case of big business having the lobbying power to buy their way into seeing an illegal drug made and sold legally.
I found it fascinating to learn about how vertically integrated Arthur Sackler built his empire. He owned or backed/controlled the media companies that created the narrative on the drugs that he made. He made Valium huge, then his own drug (Oxy). No wonder he was able to dup the world. Reminds of the story of sugar in The Case Against Sugar.
But one of the most amazing things about this story is the timeline. It took ~15 years between when Oxy was revealed to be bad for people to when something was done about it. And even now, it continues to be given out. And then when something was done, it was going after the profits the Sacklers made. And they will leave the process as still billionaires...
I'm trying to learn as much as I can about the crypto space as I'm working on a new web3 project, and I have enjoyed the authors podcast. In fact, mosI'm trying to learn as much as I can about the crypto space as I'm working on a new web3 project, and I have enjoyed the authors podcast. In fact, most writing about crypto seems to be in podcasts and blogs and there are very few well researched insightful books. But this definitely hits the bar - a well researched and engaging story of the founding of Ethereum and many of it's struggles getting off the ground.
Fascinating to read about the founding story. I didn't know Vitalik had 7 cofounders for instance! But I think that really helped Ethereum grow from a project to an ecosystem, as things like Consensys have driven it forward more than I realized.
Fascinating to hear the stories about Devcon, and how Vitalik maintained control as a 22 year old. I thought there was way too much description around the drama of Ming Chan however.
A big takeaway from the description of The DAO is just how fragile coding with money on the line is. Hackers are constantly looking for bugs/loopholes in ways that most software engineers are not used to. And of course, we are reminded of this with hacks literally every week these days. Interestingly, the author claimed to have identified The DAO hacker just as the book came out, I guess to help grease promotion, but a compelling story!...more
Beautifully written book that gives you a taste of 1970 Provence and food culture. Amazing to see how French food culture got to the US, which had jusBeautifully written book that gives you a taste of 1970 Provence and food culture. Amazing to see how French food culture got to the US, which had just undergone a big wave of microwaves and packaged foods in the 1950s/60s....more
Fascinating insider story of how COVID-19 was mishandled by the US government, the CDC, and the WHO. Michael Lewis's tactic that has worked in his pasFascinating insider story of how COVID-19 was mishandled by the US government, the CDC, and the WHO. Michael Lewis's tactic that has worked in his past books (Moneyball, The Big Short) worked great with Dr Charity Dean and others - he went deep into the character of this health worker from Santa Barbara, and through her told the story of ineptitude. My only criticism is I think he could have focused more on the global picture, as it was not just every state in the US fighting this thing differently, it was (and is) every country in the world. Maybe that would be good for a sequel...
Hilarious by the way that Charity Dean started in Santa Barbara, and the book describes her visiting the old age home where my grandmother lives!
One of the big things that at this point is lost on many of us, is that in ~Jan 2020, there was a chance to lock down quick on the virus and contain it. And because of the total lack of leadership, that chance was lost. This book describes how the Bush administration (I had thought it was Obama, but nope), had even put into place a plan, which had a lot of research behind it, for how to handle this very thing. But it was dismantled by the Trump and the CDC.
We also had no shot at containment because we were not fast to have tests. We could have been had there been leadership prioritizing that, but there wasn't. This was really where we lost the game.
I found this quote very interesting - I wonder how the world will react to this? I would bet many countries will now stockpile and/or build in country manufacturing, though that doesn't seem like it should be the answer. Though in country manufacturing for the vaccine has certainly mattered.
Walter Isaacson is a true storyteller, and this book yet another compelling, fast to read, educational, biography. He goes deep into the fascinating aWalter Isaacson is a true storyteller, and this book yet another compelling, fast to read, educational, biography. He goes deep into the fascinating and burgeoning world of CRISPR to explain it and its origins. And it's clear that CRISPR is changing the world, and will be something we are all familiar with in the decades to come.
The moral dilemmas CRISPR brings are large, and the book appropriately spends a lot of time on them. So far, most scientists and governments have approached it from the perspective that horrible genetic diseases (eg sickle cell) should be cured, but we shouldn't use it it for other purposes. So, Gattaca and designer babies are possible, but nobody is working on it. However, as the rogue scientist in China showed when he successfully birthed human babies after removing their HIV susceptible genes, it's only a matter of time before other rogue scientists show up. Eg, who knows what's happening in Russia right now...
I really enjoyed the story of how CRISPR was discovered. Isaacson puts a lot of onus on the trait of curiosity across all his biologies (Steve Jobs, Leonardo Da Vinci, etc). And Jennifer Doudna was only a pioneer and discoverer of CRISPR's uses because she was being curious and exploring the bounds of science.
Very interesting too to learn that lots of animal breeders, cattle farmers, etc are using CRISPR and see lot's of opportunities to use it more.
The drama between scientists discovering CRISPR and the patent wars was an interesting peek inside a world I knew little about. It added to the story, but maybe could have been condensed slightly. OTOH, I get it, he was covering a space not just a person, and needed to tread carefully, which I think he did....more
Overall, very useful and helpful book that made me think harder about my habits around alcohol. My major takeaways that I'm enacting:
1. Two days in aOverall, very useful and helpful book that made me think harder about my habits around alcohol. My major takeaways that I'm enacting:
1. Two days in a row of drinking is extremely bad for you as your body doesn't have time to recover and you don't sleep well, it's a downward spiral. Avoid this if at all possible, and go light the second day if you decide to drink. 2. Binge drinking, or getting "wasted" is very bad for you, much better to limit how much you do this. 3. Occasional breaks from alcohol of 2-4 are very, very good for you as they establish the habit of not drinking, and tend to lower your drinking after you do drink again. It can take a few weeks to remove all effects of alcohol from your system and let your liver fully recover. 4. Have a glass of water for every glass of alcohol, and a big one before bed.
Other interesting tidbits:
Alcohol is a huge dopamine stimulant, which is in part why it feels so good, and why we might crave it when stressed.
I didn't realize that in the old days, beer and wine had much less alcohol in them than they do today (3-4% vs 5-8% today for beer). In middle ages I think it was even less, which is why people could drink it so often.
Drinking while driving is a huge cause of death. In the US we have a .08% limit, which is actually not even that safe. Many countries in Europe have .05%, and many in Scandinavia have .02% (basically sober).
A good way to drink consciously is to count your drinks and plan them for the week. If you know you will be drinking 2 nights in a given week, and then plan to have no more than 4 drinks on each of those nights, you are more likely to not exceed/overdrink.
Don't drink to drown your sorrows. I love this quote: "I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim. Frida Kahlo"...more
Amazing book, and even more amazing that it's a historical nonfiction and all TRUE! And I couldn't put it down it was so compelling and well written. Amazing book, and even more amazing that it's a historical nonfiction and all TRUE! And I couldn't put it down it was so compelling and well written. I'm a huge fan of the spy genre in general, and I think this is one of the best I've read. You certainly get a very real sense of what it is like to be a spy and what Gordievsky's life must have been like. ...more
I'm not giving this book 5 stars because I'm friends with Jennifer and David, who I met through their amazing work at WorldReader.org. Though if I do I'm not giving this book 5 stars because I'm friends with Jennifer and David, who I met through their amazing work at WorldReader.org. Though if I do have a criticism of the book, it's that it doesn't talk enough about everything that organization has done and is doing, helping kids all over the world get sucked into the magic of reading good books.
But I liked this book for two reasons: The first is that it was fascinating to learn more about their journey and how they handled it. The second is that it's bold - but I think important - to talk about wealth. Wealth is not glitzy, and it doesn't make you happy - but I think most people have the opposite impressions.
Fascinating book about the French resistance and WWII and how hard they struggled, constantly getting caught and then rebooting the network. Marie-MadFascinating book about the French resistance and WWII and how hard they struggled, constantly getting caught and then rebooting the network. Marie-Madeleine was an impressive woman - the number of times she had to show grit to keep the network alive when it seemed dead, not seeing her kids much at all for 4 years, losing her lover to the gestapo. Sounded hard for the Germans to control a country where almost everyone is willing to be a spy.
I got a real sense for the "two Frances" - the Vichy/Petain one, and the DeGaulle/resistance one. I liked this quote:
An enthralling tale of WWII told through journals of Churchill, his inner circle, and even some of Hitler and Goebbells and some of their circle. I'llAn enthralling tale of WWII told through journals of Churchill, his inner circle, and even some of Hitler and Goebbells and some of their circle. I'll read anything Erik Larson writes - history or historical fiction, as he tells a story really well.
My main takeaway was how strong a case there was for Churchill being "the right man" to be PM during the war. Indeed, he was only PM during the war. But he was a true master of messaging and speeches, and inspiring the British public to not lose faith despite being bombed like crazy during the Blitz for a period of over a year! This was critical, and I think almost entirely due to Churchill and his radio sessions and speeches.
But that poster could easily have been rewritten "Keep calm and wait for the United States" because another impressive bit that shone through in the book is that Churchill knew that England couldn't win otherwise, but that didn't stop him from trying. A tough line to balance as he couldn't appear desperate to his people or to Roosevelt, but he also must have felt desperate at times. Very smart of him to invite Roosevelts man Harriman over and give him so much access.
Highly recommended and it reads nice and fast - my only criticism is that it really skipped through the end of the war (after the US declared) - perhaps another volume is coming?...more
Fascinating book about the limits of human endurance, well researched and backed by science. Worth reading, but if your goal is to learn how to becomeFascinating book about the limits of human endurance, well researched and backed by science. Worth reading, but if your goal is to learn how to become a faster athlete, it ambles a lot and doesn't really focus on that question as much. That said, lots of interesting tidbits.
First, some basics - oxygen in the bloodstream fuels us up to a point, and with increased oxygen we get increased performance. That is only up to a point, of course, which is called your VO2max - as you approach that point you start to burn carbohydrates, which produce lactic acid, fatigue your muscles, and make you slow down or stop.
Disappointingly to me, the book didn't go as much into how to improve your endurance or train up to elite levels. With one exception - it focused a lot on mental stamina, which the author seemed obsessed by. It gave a lot of interesting examples of people who have done remarkable things by pushing boundaries (a guy lifing a car off a cyclist trapped underneath, a woman who drowned saving her son in dangerous surf by treading water for hours). And to be fair, it is an interesting question of how the mind regulates us and how you can learn to push those limits. Because we all rate limit ourselves - if you go out for a 5 mile run at the 4 mile mark you start to feel it because you know you are almost there - versus if you go out for a 10 mile run, at mile 4 you feel fine - because your brain regulates it. So if it's all in your head, can you improve mental endurance to affect that? The answer is it sounds like you can, but it's a nascent field.
Drugs can also help endurance - a placebo pill will boost performance by several percentage points, as will caffeine, Tylenol, or even crystal meth (which puts a whole new lens on the Blitzkrieg). Swishing gatorade or anything with carbs in your mouth and spitting it out also improves performance by a few points, which speaks to mental power.
Ice baths are something that many people I know and have read about swear by - but apparently the science says they are neutral - IE have no measurable impact on performance. (Curious if there are other takes on this?).
Your body starts to run out of fuel about about an hour of intense exercise, so even in a half marathon it's good to fuel - you can only absorb about 250 calories an hour though. Sports drinks like gatorade or gels.
But the best advice that I at least gleaned as a combo of improving mental belief and pushing your limits there:
Inspiring book about one of the greatest ironman races, by two of its greatest champions. I found this very helpful to better understand the sport, anInspiring book about one of the greatest ironman races, by two of its greatest champions. I found this very helpful to better understand the sport, and the mindsets of some of its champions.
And to get it out of the way, yes I knew that Dave Scott and Mark Allen had jointly posted a letter objecting that the book was inaccurate, and shouldn't be published. While this is not uncommon in publishing, it did make me read some of the characterizations of them with an open mind. For instance, he strongly painted Dave as being manic depressive. However their objections don't seem based on the book getting anything major wrong, so I think it's still a good telling of an amazing story, and recommended.
One of my biggest takeaways is that Ironman is a crazy hard distance. Well duh! But massive respect to those who can train enough to finish let alone race such distances. Dave and Mark and top athletes had to make this their job, working out 30-40 hours per week - which is an insane time commitment.
But it was interesting to read about some of the approaches to training and endurance racing that the book describes. For instance, Allen using Phil Maffetone's go slower to go faster low heartrate focus on aerobic workouts, was very interesting, and I have more to learn about that. There were also some good tidbits like this, that I've read bits about before but were interesting to see:
Reading about how they both pushed themselves hard and through the pain that endurance training and racing brings was very interesting, especially how much of it is mental. This makes sense when I think about it, because I feel just as tired at the end of a 3 mile run as at the end of a 7 mile run, and the difference is likely just my brain wanting to be done. And if you are The Man (Dave Scott) - you push through that mental pain:
A good capture of French food culture by a Canadian author who moved to France for a year and was forced to learn the hard way. Some of her learnings A good capture of French food culture by a Canadian author who moved to France for a year and was forced to learn the hard way. Some of her learnings didn't apply to me - eg I was shocked at how much snacking she had her kids doing in Vancouver - like 4-5 snacks per day - crazy! But some of her tips were very helpful, and are confirmed by my experiences in France so far (I've been here for 4 months).
There is a lot here, and I encourage people to check out my notes. But my top takeaways are:
1. A kid has to try a new food ~10 times before they will start to like it. So the goal is getting them to try a taste of new foods. To this end, don't serve the kids different food than adults get - don't cook them a special meal - they need to learn to eat what adults eat and to try everything. This is probably the biggest takeaway of the book (and is its title) - that you can get kids to eat everything by getting them to try new foods. You can also help this process be easier by introducing the new foods in easy to consume formats designed for this (eg leek soup to get used to leeks).
2. The French prioritize healthy eating. Buying food in a French market is a pleasure, whereas going to a grocery store in the US is a chore. In France you can ask vendors where stuff comes from and what is best and they always have an answer, that sometimes leads you to new discoveries. In the US, you can ask the teenager at the grocery store those questions, but you won't get the same experience. The government has strict rules around food that ensures this, and that is something that I wish the US could enact, but it won't for reasons that I won't go into.
3. The French have a culture of eating slowly and enjoying their food. Lunches and dinners are at the table, and eaten together, with plenty of time for conversation. They also make sure to have plenty of variety at the table. This makes food more enjoyable and is healthier for digestion. It's also very health for families! The fact that many stores in France are closed from noon to 2 or 3pm is super annoying, but this is part of the culture of food and family. This is at odds with the culture of fast food and multi-tasking while eating that we have in the US. In French schools, the cantine (dining hall) the kids are served food by teachers, who make sure the kids get some of everything, and educate the kids about what everything is - and there is only one menu!
4. The French only have 4 meals a day, and do not snack at all outside these. Breakfast (which is small and literally called petit dejeune or "small lunch"), lunch (often the largest meal of the day), goûter (afternoon snack at 3 or 4pm), and dinner. So there is a snack, but it's planned, and importantly, it's also done with fresh, health foods, not processed foods. As I learned in The Obesity Code, snacking and particular midnight snacking are particularly bad for you. A particularly important bit is to not allow snacking before a meal, because kids certainly won't eat something new if they aren't hungry. Also, water is a food group!
5. To enjoy food, enjoy local food. This means buying and cooking local products, something the French call Terrior. So the veggies and meats you find in France in a given season won't be the same as at home, but the key is to search out and find those fresh, local products and enjoy them. That is a the key to enjoying where you live, great food, and is a great bonding activity with family and friends.
I wanted to better understand why so many smart people think Bitcoin, and more to the point, decentralization, are going to be so huge. This seemed liI wanted to better understand why so many smart people think Bitcoin, and more to the point, decentralization, are going to be so huge. This seemed like a good thing to read as it's always good to get the fundamentals. I remember when I started working on the internet I read the original white paper on Google's Pagerank, and I think that is still a highly relevant document. I would bet this whitepaper will in 20 years be on the same order of magnitude - perhaps even more so.
For instance, before reading this my mental model was a bitcoin is like a digital dollar. But now, I better understand that a coin is really a chain of digital signatures.
“We define an electronic coin as a chain of digital signatures. Each owner transfers the coin to the next by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner and adding these to the end of the coin. A payee can verify the signatures to verify the chain of ownership.“
It was really clear that Bitcoin was created and designed for the purpose of facilitating electronic transfers in a better way than exists today. If you buy something in cash, your transaction is over. If you buy something with a bank card or credit card, that transaction can take days or weeks to finalize because it can be disputed. This "trust based model" has a whole range of downstream impacts that makes moving money around slow, not to mention sometimes costly.
Bitcoin is a protocol and this shone through in the paper as well. It describes how the blockchains and timestamps work, as well as the network nodes, and how the whole thing is secure with enough nodes. Some smart people I've heard have often compared Bitcoin to other protocols like SMTP.
A bit old, but a great overview and tour through French wines. Fascinating to see that even then the wines that tasted best were not the big names, buA bit old, but a great overview and tour through French wines. Fascinating to see that even then the wines that tasted best were not the big names, but the ones who were doing it "the old way" and not using huge modern technology that filtered the wine. But this of course doesn't scale so less and less of these are around.
One fascinating thing to me was how much Kermit railed against the big, bold, strong reds. Because those are my favorites!
But he points out time and time again that a good wine should pair with what it will be eaten with. And this means one can drink a wide variety of wines, depending on what is being eaten. This, along with many of the examples he gives has helped push my thinking a little about what wines to buy.
Another interesting bit was the examples he gave about how much shipping and storage matters. He would give examples of shipping wine via ordinary methods that arrived flat, and how it only tasted the same if shipping correctly.
Another bit I loved learning about was how much the terroir affects the taste of the grapes. Not just the soil either, but how much sunlight, and even things like nearby plants like sage, rosemary, lavender, thyme - he gave a great example of how one wine one year suddenly stopped tasting like blackberries, and he asked the vintner what happened, and learned that the wineries neighbor had removed some blackberry bushes that bordered their properties. Fascinating.
Wines it mentions to try: * Meursault: white and mineral * Domaine Tempier: best reds in Provence * Domaine de la Gautière: just outside the border of Côtes du Rhône but just as good * Northern Rhone: There are but a handful, including some of France’s noblest: Saint-Péray, Cornas, Saint-Joseph, Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, Condrieu, Château Grillet, and Côte Rôtie * Cote Rotie: A Côte Rôtie is by no means light stuff; it is a substantial wine, but what is unusual is this saplike quality combined with a certain finesse, a certain delicacy. Top it off with that amazing perfume of Syrah fruit grown in this special terroir and you have a wine set apart from all others. Anyone can make a heavy, oaky wine. All you need is a new barrel and sugary (or sugared) grape juice. But a Côte Rôtie that tastes like Côte Rôtie can come only from the terroir of the roasted slope and from the traditional vinification developed over the centuries in the cellars of Ampuis. * Bergundy: Savigny or Pernand, a Mercurey or Rully. Volnay or Pommard, Chambolle or Nuits. * Today, from all the appellations of the northern Rhône that produce white wine, there is only one sure thing year in and year out, and that is the quality of the Chave Hermitage blanc
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