🔥 The Fireside #22

The last three weeks have easily been the busyest/craziest of my life: I have launched a product I've been working on for almost a year, closed  an investment deal (can’t share the details yet) and bought a new car. And as if this wasn't enough, we (Vicky and I) drove down to Frome, a town we have never seen, found a beautiful cottage and put an offer in that was accepted.

As Vladimir Lenin famously said: "there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen".

PS: In the last Fireside I mentioned how my in-laws’ dog gave birth to a litter of four puppies… well, Vicky and I have decided to keep one. Her name is Luna and of course, she eats E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

On to the Fireside…


🏃🏻‍♂️ Keep Running!

One of the hardest truths of life is that you need to keep moving... just to stay in place. No one’s ever safe. No one can ever rest.

🐒 Human Behavioral Biology

I found this series of free videos from Stanford University about human behavioural biology. The videos are excellent and the lessons will blow your mind away.

👩‍🔬 Beware The Man Of One Study

Why I stopped citing “studies” when trying to make a point and you should too.

💵 How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio

Simple (but not simplistic) 30 minute video that explains everything you need to know about how the world economy works, including why interest rates go up and down, why the economy is cyclical (growth followed by recession followed by growth) and what to expect in the next 10 years.

🌎 The Big Picture

From an historical point of view, where are we as a civilisation? A fair warning: this essay will upset and demoralise you.

💸 Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

Detractors of UBI (Universal Basic Income)  say it will incentivise people to be lazy and potentially destroy the foundation of capitalism itself. But with the global (and in particular Western) GDP growth inexorably slowing down, Tim Robinson argues UBI is not just the right thing to do, it’s also the only option we have to avoid recession.


★ Other things from the interweb

(That may or may not make you look smart at dinner parties)

📽 DAU

Dau is an insane "art" project started in 2008 that involved 352,000 people over 6 years simulating living in USSR.  These non professional actors were cut off from the outside world and fully immersed in this alternative reality, followed by camers day and night, even in intimate moments. The whole story has no script, so everyone is improvising.