Content I Consumed: When Americans are Happiest and Creating Jet Fuel from Air
And Erling Haaland, football's Norse god
Happy Wednesday -
I’ve been on a climate kick recently.
Climate
A number of technologies take carbon dioxide directly out of the air to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One company, Twelve, has technology that takes carbon dioxide from the air and mixes it with water and renewable energy to create sustainable jet fuel and other materials. The carbon footprint of their SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel) is 90% smaller than typical jet fuel. This technology doesn’t seem cost-competitive right now, but who knows after commercialization? Feels like the future. Twelve is recycling captured CO2 into fuel, sunglasses and more
A big-picture greenhouse gas reduction plan - This post outlines a family’s decarbonization work through their decisions around solar, EVs, and food waste. I appreciated their incremental approach. They recognize decarbonizing is a process that they will continue throughout their lives. Also FYI - solar is a good long-term investment, and you receive a 30% tax break with the IRA next year.
When you buy carbon credits, you reduce carbon-producing activity. Or that’s the idea. For instance, you pay a project to reduce deforestation and save some trees. But how do you determine that you are the only one who paid to save that particular tree? Maybe someone also paid some money to stop that tree from being cut down. So people create models to evaluate carbon credit efficacy. It sounds like Verra’s credits are suspect. Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless, analysis shows
Misc
Nathan Yau, who has a PhD in statistics from UCLA, tracked different daily activities and how happy they made us over different ages. He animates his findings over time in When Americans Are Happiest. He also looked at how much meaning we found in these activities in Where We Find Meaning Everyday. And then he put them together to see what made us the happiest with the most meaning in Happiness and Meaning in What We Do.
Wikipedia is one of my favorite products. I like it because it performs its job so well. It’s a high-trust website where I can find an objective overview of any topic. It’s impressive that volunteers edit it. Well, it just had a redesign - Wikipedia’s Redesign Is Barely Noticeable. That’s the Point.
If you follow the Premiere League, you’ve heard and seen Haaland score many goals for Man City. Unfortunately, if you just watched the World Cup, you missed him because Norway didn’t qualify. Haaland is putting up ridiculous stats and is only 22. GQ has a profile on him - Erling Haaland is football's Norse god
This post does a good job of evaluating money manager fees. Money Manager Fees: Who Gets Paid How? You shouldn’t compare fees across asset classes, compare them to fees within the asset class. Mutual funds charging 50 basis points may be overcharging. A multi-strategy fund where fees are half the gross return could be undercharging.
Podcast
Want to really understand how we make decisions using Cognitive Science? Read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. Alfie and I released a podcast on some of its highlights: The Search for Growth - Thinking Fast and Slow
Why Different is Good
A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox. The internet lets you find people that are interested in specific, niche topics. You can build an audience with these people, but only if you lean into your specific viewpoint. In turn, these audience members can broadcast your content to larger, more generalized audiences.
Differentiation - ChatGPT will make generic writing commonplace. How do you stand out? Be different. Don’t follow the playbook because everyone has the playbook. David Perell has a concept called the Personal Monopoly. “It’s your unique intersection of skills, interests, and personality traits. The internet rewards people with Personal Monopolies because it rewards differentiation.”