2019 Week 4: Vegetarian

Short version: Why I don’t eat meat, some things I’m reading at the moment, and three photos from my week.

Long version:

Eating Less Meat

Since having moved to the United Kingdom, I’ve been eating less meat. The strongest motivation comes from a desire to minimise carbon impact and waste. The change has been made easy by meat substitutes being widely available and cheap (and delicious).

Evidence:
Intuitively, in order for humans to gain nutrition from an animal, that animal needs to consume either other animals or plants first. Given these processes cannot be completely efficient, there is always a lower energy cost to the environment to eat lower on the food chain. The real effect of this is described in the chart below.


High Protein Diets:
The CSIRO published a book advocating a high protein diet. It generated some controversy in part due to being funded by the meat industry. It still seems a high protein diet is healthy, but there is evidence swapping animal protein for plant protein lowers mortality overall.

More reading:
Publications from Nature and World Resources Institute about the impact of meat on climate change, which include the infographic above. Also, from a moral point of view, Consider the Lobster.

Stuff I read this week

Relevantly, restaurant reviews from the blog Vegan Eats Oxford. The Graduate Outcomes Survey was released. Matt Levine continues to write humorously about finance. Hybrid Perovskite Semiconductors are cool.

Photos: Cakes, Climbing, and Snow

Writing from home.

2019 Week 3: From Notes

Short version: I had a busy week, but made note of a few interesting things I came across.

Long version:

From Conversations

Empty trains run to Berlin’s empty airport, summaries from Bloomberg in 2015, The Economist in 2017, and BBC in 2018.

It is possible to live relatively normally without a cerebellum, a condition known as cerebellar agenesis.

There are techniques to treat mice to make them transparent, Nature News discusses this paper.

Life is more enjoyable if you make an effort to appreicate things. Example: rather than suffer through doing your laundry, enjoy that you are fortunate enough to have items you like.

From my Inbox

Google:
In 2018 I visited 150 places in 45 cities in 4 countries travelling about 35,000 km. I posted 106 photos to Google Maps which were seen 182,107 times.

Headspace:
Advice on New Year’s resolutions

Strava:

FinTech

Riding the Tube, I noticed the surge in banking start ups, particularly Viola Black running an advertising campaign referencing Monzo. It seems their SEO game is a little weak, as a google search for them has the top result being from Monzo forums. It makes sense that with Monzo and Revoult being valued over $1bn, you would see a surge in competitors, but the market seems a little saturated?

Jack Straw’s Lane, Oxford

I broke my bike last week, and had to run to pick it up this weekend. Discovered some new routes around Oxford.

2019 Week 2: Habits and Goals

Short version: Building good habits makes good behaviours easier. Australians find their history confronting. Green Tea seems to be good for you. Birds have social media in Sydney.

Long version:

Habits, Mindfulness, and Technology.

At the start of 2018 I wrote “In short: learn,  improve my routine, write more.” I’ve noticed on returning to work this year that habits which felt like hard work at the start of last year are coming much more easily. Building a good routine gradually, consistently, and trying to avoid self-flagellation when I failed, has yeilded bigger benefits than I anticipated. This has been most easily observed around physical and mental health, where I’m getting up ealier, feeling more energetic through the day, and getting more exercise in.

On the other side is a reminder how powerful bad habits are. In a vlog this week John Green spoke about discovering just how often he types reddit into a browser when he quit social media. I think handling technology that is driven by so many smart people working to grab more of our attention to sell more advertising, is hard. One way I’m going to work to improve my relationship with tech this year is to make sure I have a purpose each time I interact with it. The aim is see it and use it as a tool, rather than be guided by it to burn time.

Australian History: “Slavery by Other Means”

My friend Seb wrote two articles on Pacific Islander Labour in 19th and early 20th Century Australia. My intial response to this brutal chapter of Austalian history was to attempt to trivialise it. Thoughts like “not as bad as other slavery”, “life was harsh for everyone back then”, and “life as a labourer wouldn’t have been that bad”. I would guess these are responses to shield myself from feeling, be it empathy or disgust or guilt or simply sadness. I’m not sure if an emotional engagement with history is preferable to a clinical intellectualism, but I do think the tendancy to avoid discomfort in historical interest is harmful. The extemes are feeling so strongly we are paralysed or act irresponsibly vs being callous to injustices, but the best place to sit between the extremes is not clear to me. I think both the article and the general principle are worth consideration.

Green Tea

It seems like drinking Green Tea is pretty good for you. I think all nutritional science suffers from difficulties collecting accurate data from inherently unreliable test subjects, but a quick search of google scholar seems to come up with a compelling set of results. I’m convinced enough to be swapping out some of my coffees for the world’s most popular brew.

Social Media for Birds (and Science)

Picture of the week is an Australian white ibis or Bin Chicken. Noticable is the yellow tag, which lets you know his name is Wazza. You can help him (and research) out by posting on social media for wing tagged birds.

Writing from home.


2019 Week 1: New Year

New Year’s Review and Resolutions:
2018 was a good year. Survived an intense year at ONI, ran a sub 90 half marathon, built good habits around personal reflection.
2019 I hope I’ll be better at keeping in touch with friends, prioritise tasks more effectively, and be more active in choosing what media to consume.

Blogging:
Last year I managed 11 posts out of 52 weeks for a 21% success rate. This year I hope to do a little better by being happier with shorter posts rather than posting nothing at all (e.g. this one).

Some Travel Photos: