Hello there!
10000 steps, iPod, Micromort, Ibn Battuta, Intrinsic Values
Hello there! It’s been a while. I hope all is well with you.
We’ve been visiting local parks and easy trail walks off late. Here’s a picture of the Taipei 101 taken from a nearby ecological park in mid-April.
In other sad news, Covid has finally caught up with Taiwan — we are getting a daily average of 300 cases, after a couple of clusters in Taipei and New Taipei City caused community transmission. We’ve been sheltering in place and working from home since the past couple of weeks. It’s nothing to worry about — people here are disciplined with wearing masks and staying at home, so we should be out of the woods in three months.
How have you been?
Life has gotten in the way in recent times, and hence the long break from this newsletter.
Let’s resume with some cool stuff from the internet. Click on the coloured text to open the links.
Developing and launching the iPod in 2001 took just 41 weeks, from the very first meeting (no team, no prototype, no design) to iPods shipping to customers.
In February 2020, shares in Zoom Technologies rose by 50%. Unfortunately, it was the wrong company. The video conferencing company’s stock is listed as ZM not ZOOM, and the other Zoom has been out of business for years.
When Ibn Battuta visited China in 1345, facial recognition was already in use. All visiting foreigners had their portraits discretely painted and posted on the walls of the bazaar. “If a stranger commits any offence… they send his portrait far and wide.”
In just eight years, the British National Grid went from being 40% coal powered to 2% coal powered.
This 2011 episode of This American Life, titled “The Invention of Money”, is a crash history about money as a useful fiction, beginning with the giant limestone discs used as money on the island of Yap.
In Warsaw’s Gruba Kaśka water plant there are eight clams with sensors attached to their shells. If the clams close because they don’t like the taste of the water, the city’s supply is automatically shut off.
In 2017 Google and Facebook lost $100 million between them to one scammer who sent them fake invoices.
A micromort is a one-in-a-million chance of death. Just being alive is about 24 micromorts per day, skydiving is 8 micromorts per jump.
The goal of walking 10,000 steps per day may have originated when a Japanese pedometer manufacturer noticed that the 万 symbol (which means 10,000) looks a little like someone walking. The actual health merits of that number ‘have never been validated by research.’
This Intrinsic Values Test from Clearer Thinking helps you learn what beliefs and principles are most valuable to you. These “intrinsic values” are things you would still value even if you got nothing back from it. I learned my values align more with Aristotelian philosophy.
I’ll share more such links in the coming weeks. Yea or nay?
I’ll leave you with my favourite song from Coke Studio which I’ve been humming on repeat. Have a great week!