Content I Consumed: Iron-Air batteries and Madoff
And scandals in the USMNT
This January seems particularly wet in the Bay. Hopefully, we continue to get rain to fix our fraught situation.
Climate
Biologist Paul Ehrlich believed hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 70s. This didn’t happen. This article goes into why some environmentalist projections can be so off and why sometimes these cries of concern are necessary. Why Paul Ehrlich got everything wrong
Form Energy just announced a long-duration iron-air battery factory in West Virginia. Their batteries are cheaper than lithium alternatives and could be the way that we store renewable energy in the grid at scale. Interestingly, they use rust to store and discharge energy. Batteries That Store Energy Using Rusting Iron Could Help Decarbonize the Grid
Project Drawdown outlines the different solutions to our climate crisis. It points to the sectors, timescales, and geographies we need to prioritize to achieve drawdown - the point at which the levels of greenhouse gases stop climbing.
Soccer
Rob Mcelhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought a soccer team in the English National League and made a documentary about it called Welcome to Wrexham. It’s great. You learn about the community, the players, and the soccer club. Beyond the results on the pitch, it’s been a game-changer for the community. It’s always sunny in Wrexham, where Hollywood takeover has breathed new life into community. And it is also a commercial success: Ryan Reynolds' Wrexham documentary netting over £400,000 every episode
I don’t follow the USMNT unless it is World Cup time. However, it sounds like the men’s team has since had some drama among old friends. Gregg Berhalter and the Reyna family, explained: Making sense of the U.S. Soccer drama. I’d rather you read the article than attempt to paraphrase it.
Podcast
Alfie and I chat about building my company, Wavelength, and some lessons I learned in the process - Wavelength.
Misc
I read a lot about SBF this fall. He was invariably compared to Madoff. I got the comparison, but I had never explored the Madoff scam. Netflix just debuted a great 4 episode documentary about it: Bernie Madoff Gets the Serial-Killer Treatment in *Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street. A core thesis of the documentary is the massive gaps in oversight by the SEC. Also, did you know that Madoff’s remains have never been claimed by his family? They want nothing to do with him.
Dynomight has another interesting piece on why we should be weirder in our lives. And one way to be weirder is to buy things that you like in greater quantities. Buy more copies. For instance, if there is a dish that everyone loves at a restaurant, why share only one of that dish? Why not buy more than one?
This article on self-determination theory details the different types of motivation and how to select goals so that you are the most engaged. With the right goals and motivation, you will get the greatest satisfaction. The crucial link between motivation and self-awareness. Pieces like these help me take a step back and question whether I’m pursuing the right goals.
A lot has been written about what will happen to CS and programming given the advent of CoPilot and other AI code assistants. This article gives a good overview of how programming evolved and where we are going: The End of Programming.