Short version: I read Peter Thiel’s notes on startups, had a couple college formal dinners, cycled in the Cotswolds, and bought some protein powder.
Long version:
Zero to One
Peter Thiel is founder of PayPal, and an early investor in Facebook, which have made him a billionaire. In 2012 he taught a course about startups at Stanford, which via Blake Master’s notes became the book Zero to One.
I will update this post later with my thoughts on the book and other missing sections.
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.
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.