Eater's Manual, Intellectual Orgasm, Melting Glaciers and Stress Journal.
Eater's Manual, Intellectual Orgasm, Melting Glaciers and Stress Journal.
#10 of 10+1 Things
Hello,
Welcome to Issue #10 of 10+1 Things.
Here are 10+1 Things that I thought were worth sharing this week:
📔Stress Journal
I've been maintaining a Stress Journal for the last 2 months. The idea of a stress journal is simple. Any time you face anxiety or stress, write down the date and note about the feeling and what triggered it. I usually give it a score out of five to indicate how much it bothers me. Whenever I'm entering a new entry, I go through all the previous entries and cross out those that don't bother me anymore. This practice has helped me to get a bigger perspective of things that bothers me.
[Read more about stress journaling on my blog]
👚Known Supply
The $3 trillion apparel industry is complicated and many consumers are not aware of the conditions of the factories where the products are made. California based apparel brand Known Supply is bridging this gap by introducing consumers to the makers of their clothes. When a customer places an order, the company informs the customer about the person who made their product. Each piece of garment is signed by the individual who made the item. All makers are listed on the website and customers can read more about the makers and can even send a thank you note to them.
[Read more about Known Supply's story]
💭Targeted Dream Ads
In the 7th edition of this newsletter, we talked about Space billboards and how advertisements will eventually reach space. Brace yourself as companies are trying to reach further and deep to target your dreams. Brands from Xbox to Coors to Burger King are now teaming up with scientists to engineer advertisements into consumers dream by audio and video clips. Early this year Coors, which has mountains and waterfalls on its logo, had 18 people featuring waterfalls, mountains and beer before going to sleep. The whole process was documented in a Youtube video and 5 participants were reported to be dreaming about Coors beer. The study is not published yet but gives us a glimpse on how advertisers are targeting our dreams.
[Read more about the study ]
Mark my words, soon you would see a fleet of startups competing in the so-called 'DreamTech' space!
🏭Counting Carbon
Future planet a new section of BBC covering climate change and the environment has tried to calculate the footprint of every article they publish. The carbon footprint of digital journalism comes from mainly two components; emissions from reporter's transport and emissions from digital infrastructure. Calculating the carbon footprint of digital systems are quite complicated as it involves multiple servers, consumers located in multiple geographies and varying reader trends. The digital emissions from the story which explained the process was estimated to have emissions of 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view.
[Read more about how carbon is counted]
🥼Lab Rat in Amazon Stores
Science writer Eva Amsen from Mixture has written a great analogy between humans and lab rats through her experience in visiting one of the Amazon Fresh Stores in London. Amazon Fresh Stores in UK or Amazon Go stores in the USA are advanced shopping stores where you can grab anything from the store and walk out without paying anything at the cash register or self-checkout. These ultra-modern supermarkets are equipped with an array of sensors like deep sensing cameras and weight sensors. These sensors track every movement and charge you based on what you have taken into your Amazon account. Eva compares this with the study of rodents in lab experiments. Rats are monitored using cameras and sensors to measure how often and how long they step on the exercise wheel for studying behavioural patterns. Just like rats in a laboratory, we are being monitored by these machines every second we spend inside.
[Read more about Eva's experience on Mixture]
🌏20,000 years of Temperature
One of the most common things mentioned by the opponents of climate change is "The Climate has always changed". Yes, it is true that climate has always changed but the important factor to consider is how fast the climate has changed. The Forever Project has visualized Earth's temperature back to 20,050 BCE using data from climate models, estimates reconstructed from ice cores, and recorded observations, to compare the temperature to the 1961-1990 average. The interactive website features an interesting timeline showcasing major events on earth and human history. If you go down to check the last 100 years of data, it is quite evident that our atmosphere has warmed up very fast unlike other centuries.
[Check out 20,000 years of Earth's Temperature]
📷Melting Glaciers
'Counting the Costs' is a photography project by Dillon Marsh addressing the rising concerns over the shrinking of glaciers in India and Nepal, home to some of the highest mountains on the planet. By combining photography with CGI, Dillon has presented a new way to visualize the losing mass of these glaciers. The rate at which glaciers were losing mass was calculated using scientific reports. Based on the data, using CGI, accurate ice models were created and blended into typical human environments in India and Nepal. The photo above represents 92.58 cubic meters – the average volume of ice lost on Neh Nar glacier in Kashmir every hour.
[Check out more photos on his website]
🖼Restoring Rothko
During the week I have enjoyed watching the small documentary Restoring Rothko. Filmed over 18 months, it is the story behind the restoration of Mark Rothko's art piece 'Black on Maroon'. The painting was vandalized in 2012 when black ink was applied to the lower right corner. A project was developed to research methods to safely remove the ink and treat the damage so as to restore the artwork. The project team spent nine months researching various methods to remove ink from the canvas by using test canvases with multiple solvents and cleaning methods. The project ran from November 2012 to May 2014 and you can read more about the project here.
“You may or may not be a fan of abstract art but destroying another person's work, that others spend time enjoying is a shit thing to do. Period.”
~ Top Comment on Yotube
🧵Intellectual Orgasm
In a Twitter thread, Thinkingbat has listed down nine interesting free courses available on the internet to feed your curiosity. Taught by professors from Yale, Stanford, Harvard, etc the list of courses range from microeconomics to behavioural biology to public speaking and much more. I'm currently watching the lecture collections on Human Behavioral Biology by Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky mentioned in the thread.
📚Eater's Manual
I came across a tiny book called Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan. The book distils Pollan's wisdom of food and diet into 64 simple rules for eating healthily and happily. The book is small and I finished it in less than an hour. The whole book can be distilled into seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Check out the book on Amazon or read my summary of the book.
My favourite excerpt from the book is:
French paradox: the mystery (at least to nutritionists) of a population that eats all sorts of supposedly lethal fatty foods, and washes them down with red wine, but which is nevertheless healthier, slimmer, and slightly longer-lived than we are.
🎸Kauan
I have been playing on loop the album called Kaiho by a Russian band called Kauan. Kauan is a post-rock, atmospheric doom metal band often using Finnish lyrics. According to the band, "On Kaiho, as KAUAN step out of their past, songwriter and founding member Anton Belov explores the transition from idyllic childhood to the care-laden weight of adulthood, fondly and tenderly bringing the faded memories of days long gone to life."
Isn't it fascinating that I'm listening to Kaiho from India, made by a band from Russia, singing in Finnish and based in Ukraine?
Listen to Kaiho on Spotify, YouTube Music or Apple Music.
That’s 10+1 Things for the week.
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See you next week!
With Love,
Rishi
Quote of the week: "The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. And don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it." ~ Steve Jobs
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