Category: Everything else

We go to our local Costco every weekend. It is always crowded.

When we get to the billing counter, we know to expect a long queue on the other side waiting to buy hot dogs and pizza.

The Costco Hot Dog is the stuff of legend. It was launched in 1985 for $1.50. That price has stayed the same since – for forty years! Costco founder Jim Sinegal reportedly told Costco CEO Craig Jelinek in 2013 that he’d kill him if he raised prices on the Hot Dog.

Costco sells 150 million to 200 million hot dogs annually. They could easily raise the price a couple of dollars and add a sizeable chunk of change to their top and bottom line.

But they choose to treat it as a symbol of what their brand is about – low prices and exceptional value. That’s clearly worth a lot more than the couple hundred million dollars they’d make.

Values aren’t values until they cost you money.

We saw “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” a few months ago. It is a remarkable tale of William’s ingenuity and perseverance amidst severe famine in Malawi.

The story is set in 2002 when William’s family struggles to survive as farmers in Malawi – preventing him from continuing his education. However, he discovers a book about energy production and gets inspired to learn English to understand the content. That then leads to him gathering materials from junkyards – improvising discarded items like plastic pipes and bicycle parts – to build his windmill.

After a seemingly unending set of setbacks and skepticism, he finally builds a functional windmill that generates electricity for his home and village. That in turn improves powers a water pump that improves agricultural productivity.

Stories like this never fail to get me thinking about privilege. The amount of privilege we have is proportional to the number of essentials that people around the world worry about that we don’t have to think about.

It also reminded me about the massive role energy infrastructure play in enabling privilege. Access to energy is a gamechanger.

And, finally, if a plucky boy in Malawi never gave up on his desire to make a difference to his community, there’s so much more I can do as well.

There are few things I hate more than filling up visa applications. I get the problem that rich countries face – they have too many people looking to get in and stay illegally. I get the importance of rigorous checks.

That said, I think the solutions today are completely broken – especially for tourist visas.

Here’s the solution I wish existed for tourist visas –

(1) The ideal solution would be one global database – it would be like a visa credit score. It contains a record of all past travel and has one central repository of the stuff we’re asked for. Every time we travel, we just upload the key documents in one place – bank balances, insurances, etc. We print the latest and submit.

A key feature would be the ability to link individual accounts to families so we can manage it all in one place vs. having to go through a separate ID/application for each person.

Ideally we’d have a private company ink partnerships with authorities across companies. But it won’t come easy – I understand that.

(2) The other alternative that I think would be implementable would be for countries to just pick a nation that has rigorous checks. I appreciate nations that say – if you’ve got a US visa, then you get visa on arrival.

Great, that works too.

And while you’re at it, charge everyone equally. I understand it is a source of revenue. But it is ironic that richer nation visitors are subsidized by visitors from poorer nations who pay exorbitant visa fees. For context, a family of 4 might pay well over $800 for the privilege of submitting visa applications to go the UK or New Zealand.

I’m not holding my breath for anything to change anytime soon. I don’t plan on running for politics in this lifetime either.

But if I did, this would be on the agenda.

Failure is a better teacher than success because it creates the conditions for reflection on what we might have done wrong.

The key, for us, is to not wait for failure to create the conditions for reflections and learning.

There’s a simple parenting rule – the values you pass on to your kids are the values they discern from your actions. There is little correlation with the values you might intend to pass on or talk about.

Applies just as much to any leadership role. You can, for example, talk about long-term thinking all you want. But if all you reward is short-term thinking, it is what you will get.

When profiling stories of exceptional people, Shane Parrish on the Farnam Street blog often writes about how they acquired “a taste for saltwater.” A taste for saltwater is his analogy for their ability to deal with discomfort.

A predictable trait in people who’ve accomplished something exceptional is their capacity to endure discomfort.

Researchers at Wash U shared some fascinating findings on the indirect impact of fructose on cancer.

Fructose is ubiquitous via “high fructose corn syrup” – the sweetener used in most ultra-processed food. Interestingly, fructose does not directly aide the growth of cancer cells.

Instead, the liver converts fructose into nutrients that cancer cells use. Fructose effectively accelerates cancer/tumor growth by 2x.

Fructose consumption has grown 15x per person in the past century. That’s a lot of cancer acceleration enabled by this growth.

The negative impact of ultra-processed foods in our diet is becoming clearer as time progresses. Studies like this go a long way in understanding the exact nature of their impact.

Dusky langurs are an endangered species of monkey. As a student in Penang in Malaysia, Jo Leen Yap noticed how often these dusty langurs – especially mothers with young babies – died attempting to cross busy roads. These crossings were deadly either because of electrocution or because cars ran over them.

She created awareness during her Doctoral studies and led a group to build a bridge out of recycled fire hoses.

They soon learnt that the langurs were hesitant to use it and reinforced it further.

This “Bridge to Coexist” has led to the researchers capturing more 7000 langur crossings since – with zero deaths recorded.

They’re now getting to work on more such bridges.

We can’t always do the big things.

But we can always do the small things with extraordinary care.

And in time, the small things become the big things.

This is a textbook example of that.

Inspirational stuff.

Analyst Nat Bullard shared an insightful presentation on the state of decarbonization. I picked out a few charts that stuck with me.

That chart makes clear the biggest challenge that we face as humans – a rapidly warming climate.

Fossil fuel emissions were unfortunately at a record high.

Wind and solar are growing faster than any generation source.

Their costs are still declining.

China accounts for 4 in 10 cars sold. And plug in hybrids and battery powered EVs have crossed internal combustion engines.

Plastics are a massive source of emissions.

Energy is actually a tiny part of AI cost.

And a fascinating look at history.

“Don’t let the fear of striking out stop you from playing the game.” | Babe Ruth

Deciding to play is deciding to deal with all the fear, pain, and embarrassment that comes with it.