The Monday Mix (01/03/2021
Happy Monday!
Today is the first day of meteorological spring! A joyous occasion as the days get longer and warmer.
Things have been more of the same for me this week. I’ve been working on various projects, writing my daily essay for Ship30for30 and reading as much as I can.
Here’s what I want to share with you this week.
100 Very Short Rules for a Better Life - Ryan Holiday is one of my favourite writers. No matter what he writes about, it’s always an interesting read.
This is one of his shortest and most concise pieces of work, but it’s gold. There are some gems on this list. Rules we should all follow to lead a better life.
WTF Happened in 1971 - This is an interesting site. The slew of graphs is mindboggling and terrifying in equal measure.
As the name of the site suggests, something happened in 1971. The value of this site is the various graphs. If you want an idea of how things have changed in 50 years, you only have to scroll down to an image that shows a new house costs $25,200!
One of the most interesting graphs is at the bottom and shows that the number of physicians in America has barely changed since 1971, yet the number of administrators has skyrocketed. This ties in with the article around ‘Bullshit Jobs’ I shared last week. A rise in these jobs shouldn’t happen in a capitalist system that’s supposed to root out inefficiencies in the market.
Yet that’s not happened. Whatever happened in 1971, we’re no closer to solving the problem.
The True Toll of the Chernobyl Disaster - I bought a book about Chernobyl the other month which I’m yet to read. This disaster has always fascinated me for several reasons.
The devastation in Pripyat and the surrounding area. How it came to happen in the first place and the negative impact it had on nuclear energy. In our age of climate crisis, nuclear power offers a source of energy which is considerably cleaner than fossil fuels.
Yet, no government wants to build new nuclear power stations. Chernobyl and other accidents such as Fukushima play a large part in this. Disposing of nuclear waste isn’t easy, nor is decommissioning nuclear power plants, but it’s a lot better than pumping millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.
I wrote an article about this back in 2019.
I can only imagine what it must have been like to respond to the disaster and live nearby in the days that followed. It’s unlikely we’ll ever know the true toll of the disaster, but we do know it may have struck a fatal blow for nuclear energy.
Beneath The Blue - This is a brilliant interactive piece on how plastic pollution is affecting the environment. The problem is much worse than thought and if big businesses get their way, it may get a whole lot worse!
Book I’m reading
Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra. A rip-roaring book which goes back in time to try and understand how we all became so angry and happy to vote for demagogues. Fascinating so far.
Quote I’m pondering
“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” - Seneca
That’s all for this week. I’ll continue to send some of the essays I’ve been writing for the Ship30for30 here too in the next few days.
Until next time,
Tom