Category: Everything else

I thought leaded gasoline was a thing of the past. It was banned in automobiles after clear causal impact to brain development in children.

However, it turns out that lead wasn’t banned in small airports. The consequence, as a Quartz investigation revealed, is that it is still used for refueling in every small airport in the United States- every two small airports that finally banned leaded fuel.

When I first dug in here, it blew my mind. Airplane owners in Santa Clara county fought the county rule when this was implemented in January. Would they have done so if their kids were exposed to the lead next to the airport?

It got me thinking about the power of economic incentives in driving behavior. It is why our track record of doing the right thing is poor. We only make that choice if it is cheap or convenient.

It is why we’ll likely not see enough written about the causes of the tremendous flooding at the iconic Yellowstone national park – one among many environmental crises facing many US national parks who are dealing with extreme weather and melting glaciers. This is the case the world over – melting glaciers have even caused Nepali authorities to begin moving base camp on Mt. Everest.

It is pretty dire.

But I don’t think it is too late either. Or at least I’ve come to realize that such optimism is important.

On the bright side, the Indian Government announced plans to conduct its first offshore wind auction with 10-12 Gigawatts capacity. For context, the largest wind auction in the US sold rights for ~6 GW. It is great news for decarbonization. Similarly, the University of Chicago released data that China has reduced air pollution by 40% in the last 7 years (it took the US thirty years to achieve a reduction at this scale).

And there was good news closer to home too. Grid-scale energy storage in the US quadrupled in the past year.

All these installations will make clean energy cheaper. Until it becomes the only choice.

Here’s to less lead, less pollution, and more free energy from the wind and the sun.

I experienced two types of shopping experiences recently. On the one hand, there was an experience that involved clothing that felt like it might take weeks to resolve online.

So, we ended up at a brick-and-mortar store and had it all wrapped up in 30 minutes.

On the flip side, we were looking for something for the home at a store nearby. We tried guessing the size we needed, got it wrong, and had to go back and return it. We decided that Amazon would be the way to go for this one.

With clear item descriptions, reviews, and easy returns, Amazon has nailed the customer experience in so many types of shopping experiences. But it hasn’t replaced our weekly grocery run. It will struggle to replace certain kinds of clothing experiences as well.

The answer appears to be “hybrid” or “something in the middle.”

It is a word I’ve developed appreciation for of late. For those of us who don’t build physical goods, I think the days of requiring 5 days in the office are over. But it is still nice to be back in the office once a week. There are certain meetings that are best done in person.

Again, the answer isn’t this or that. It is something in the middle.

As with so many knotty questions in this life.

I needed a reminder of the “Good? Bad? Who knows?” story today.

---

There was a farmer in ancient China who used an old horse in his fields. One day, the horse escaped into the hills and when the farmer’s neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

A week later, the horse returned with a herd of wild horses from the hills, and the neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. He replied, “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?”

Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone again sympathized with the farmer over his bad luck. But the farmer’s reaction was, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and drafted every able-bodied youth they found. When they saw the farmer’s son with his broken leg, they let him stay.

Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?

---

I experienced a mishap today in what has felt like a couple weeks littered with a string of mishaps. A phase of bad luck possibly?

Then again, bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?

Every time I get a new kind of paper notice or bill, I save it until I find the organization’s /paperless site or paperless option on my account.

My guess – I don’t have data on this – is that I’m not alone. And it makes me wonder – what if paperless were the default option for anyone below the age of 50 (or 40)?

Perhaps we should do away with the “paper by default” assumption. It’s past time. And it’s cheaper too.

When in doubt, rethink those defaults.

We’ve been working through a cocktail of COVID-19 inspired disruption in the past week. It’s hard not to be awestruck at the power of an unseen set of microbes in bringing us to our knees.

I am grateful we got tagged now with less severe variants vs. before. But, more than ever, a week like this reminded me of 2 things –

(1) Being with people who care about you – parents and partners especially – when you are sick is a gift.

(2) When our health is “normal”, it is a really big deal. It is amazing how easy it is to take for granted.

Normal is a blessing we don’t think about and enjoy enough.

A simple way to think about appreciating the people around us – be the kind of person that doesn’t need a person to be absent to realize their value.

On projects that matter, the right question is not – “will our plans change?”

It is – “When will we need to change our plans? And how will we respond to it?”

Change is the only constant.

I was about to write out a post sharing an observation about something someone did that wasn’t helpful.

Until I realized I did something similar in another context.

It is very easy to give advice.

Living it is a completely different matter.

When we’re young, we tend to think of life as a series of exams. At every step, the questions get harder and the feeling of achievement of making it to the other side feels correspondingly larger.

Over time, I’ve come to realize that doing the laundry/dishes or cleaning our home is a better analogy for life.

Regardless of how well you do it today, you’ll never conquer laundry or doing the dishes. More will always be waiting at the other end – whether you like it or not.

You can learn just as much as you decide to learn.

And you can find just as much joy as you want to find.

Similar to one metric that matters (OMTM), there’s often just one thing that matters on our priority list for our day to be productive/successful.

It is the thing we delay getting started on, the one we try to put away for as long as possible.

The secret to being consistently productive is to recognize the “one thing that matters” and tackle it first thing.