USA’s Wildcard

Today I learned about the petrodollar and how it’s usage is declining.

In short, an agreement dating back to the 70s means oil-producing countries sell oil in dollars, driving up demand for the currency. The dollars are then recycled by purchasing weapons or treasury bills from the US. It provides the US with a carefully crafted strength.

The network effects kick in because the cost of a country doing business differently is a deterrent. Essentially, you want to be part of the club and while the upside may be average, the downside can be limitless due to the powerful adversaries one would make.

The PetroYuan is increasing it’s dominance. It’s frightening to think about the conspicuous forms of the inevitable clash

Equanimity

As I get older, I identify less as my current state and I identify more as a person who transitions through states. My change in perspective has reduced my anxieties and anger significantly. “This too shall pass” vibes. The more my self image is focused on superficial things, the more I will take things personally. What I am angry about tends to be a reflection of myself more than the current state of affairs.

I don’t believe in reincarnation but it is a helpful thought experiment to think about what benefits and drawbacks your particular incarnation of life holds and how those might be different if you were incarnated elsewhere.

Remote Working can Work

Work is work, no matter if it’s remote, hybrid, or full-time office. Hire good people, entrust them with executing on core business needs, allow them to choose however they make the magic happen.

Won’t it be extremely evident if any option doesn’t yield results?

What is the average mpg of waste-collection trucks?

Can we create and install simple sensors that track the capacity of a household bin (the big ones outside), so the truck only stops where it needs to?

Can the latter be done at less financial and environmental cost than the former?

Machines are learning by themselves – to predict outcomes and make autonomous decisions – but can they unlearn things too?

How does an MRI scan work?

Most of the human body is made up of water (hydrogen and oxygen atoms). At the centre of each hydrogen atom is an even smaller particle called a proton. Protons are like tiny magnets and are very sensitive to magnetic fields.

When you lie under the powerful scanner magnets, the protons in your body line up in the same direction, in the same way that a magnet can pull the needle of a compass.

Short bursts of radio waves are then sent to certain areas of the body, knocking the protons out of alignment. However, when the radio waves are turned off, the protons realign and send out radio signals, picked up by the MRI receivers. These signals provide information about the exact location of the protons in the body.

They also help to distinguish between the various types of tissue in the body, because the protons in different types of tissue realign at different speeds and produce distinct signals. More here.

Priced In

Henry Cavendish

In the course of a long life, Henry Cavendish made a string of significant discoveries —among much else he was the first person to isolate hydrogen and the first to combine hydrogen and oxygen to form water — but almost nothing he did was entirely divorced from strangeness. To the continuing exasperation of his fellow scientists, he often alluded in published work to the results of contingent experiments that he had not told anyone about.

In his secretiveness he didn’t merely resemble Newton, but actively exceeded him. His experiments with electrical conductivity were a century ahead of their time, but unfortunately remained undiscovered until that century had passed. Indeed the greater part of what he did wasn’t known until the late nineteenth century when the Cambridge physicist James Clerk Maxwell took on the task of editing Cavendish’s papers, by which time credit had nearly always been given to others.