A Friendly Reminder about Daylight Saving Time
Because it really shouldn’t still be a thing.
Rants Various and Sundry
Category: Various and Sundry
Various and Sundry
It’s Not a Balloon, it’s an AIRSHIP!
As one person in the CNBC video below points out, there’s something almost magical about watching airships in flight… sort of the inverse of what you feel when someone says, “dirigible,” which I swear makes me think of required safety trainings, possibly involving protective gear. So I’ve paid attention to the articles here and there, now and then, that say airships might be making a comeback, including ones specifically to haul freight. And then, I…
Various and Sundry
Who are You Apart from Your Job?
There have been a bunch of articles about “The Great Resignation” over the past year or so, but this piece by Maggie Mertens for The Atlantic feels especially on point. I’ve written a decent amount about job satisfaction, often referencing the concept of “ikigai,” and this article gets at some of those notions in the context of said job re-alignment.
Various and Sundry
Jon Stewart, Financial Theories, & A Whole Pantry of Canned Worms To Open
Just like last Friday, I have a longer video to share and –if your curiosity is like mine– there’s a whole host of topics you’ll want to read/watch/study more after checking out this hour.
Various and Sundry
Hobbies: Only by Imperial Decree
Hobbies, those interests to pursue without it being a “side gig” and often without the need to be at all expert at them, were something I started focusing on, ironically, in the Before Times. I believed (and still believe), it’s very healthy to have some pursuit that is not monetized, potentially not judged and evaluated like job performance might, and perhaps free of some of the wacky things outside of your control that one can’t…
Various and Sundry
John Hodgman, John Cleese, and Some Great Conversation
Thanks to Workflowy, I have notes jotted down going back over a decade. When people mention a book, a film, a game, et cetera, I add it to a section called “Stuff to Check Out.” That section includes an almost inexhaustible supply of articles and random videos (different from films) I make note of to check out sometime in the future. Well, clearly I need check out stuff a bit more frequently because this comes…
Various and Sundry
“It’s Trek Jim, but not as we know it.”
I’m well overdue to add to my Star Trek rankings even though there’s no end in sight for new series and new seasons coming out of the franchise making updated rankings something of a Sisyphean task. Not only that, I fully plan to continue adding “viewing guides” like I did for Enterprise, for people who want to boldly explore a Star Trek series or introduce someone to it: all without being bogged down in a…
Various and Sundry
Satisfaction & Stepping Off the World’s Treadmill
Monday posts have been about motivations and resolutions and worldviews so far this year, so why stop now? From that standpoint, Arthur Brooks’ piece for The Atlantic was a welcome read (or, if you so desire, a 41-minute listen). What I appreciated was the time Brooks took in defining why we human animals are on this neverending treadmill for satisfaction. The societal pressures are, I would hope to most people, rather self-evident. The evolutionary arguments…
Various and Sundry
Say, Why Did Norway and Sweden Break Up?
I’m still looking for a longer video that answers my questions about 1905 attitudes regarding lutefisk vs. surströmming and how that factored into Norwegian independence, but this works for now.
Various and Sundry
Shipping Ships and How Long Said Ships Ship
From the same folks who had the piece on the airline industry I posted back in January comes another illuminating piece about the container ships that dominate shipping via the oceans these days. One notion I found especially interesting was the one that posited that “perfect” systems –by which I read systems that are optimized as perfectly as factors allow– can be more susceptible to issues than imperfect –or non-optimized systems. That’s not necessarily an…