14 Peaks, Einstein's Dream, Flag of Earth, IKEA Tricks and How to Survive a Fall
#28 of 10+1 Things
⚡ Welcome to #28 of 10+1 Things!
It's been a while since I've published this newsletter. My work was getting hectic, so I took a deliberate break from writing as I wanted to prioritize more on planning for 2022 and create a roadmap for the year. I wish I had done this earlier, but it's better now than never. I sat down and went through every edition of this newsletter looking closely at feedback and metrics. In terms of this newsletter, I'm aiming for a huge gain of 1200+ subs this year, essentially aiming to hit 2000+ subs by end of this year. If you like this edition, kindly consider sharing so that it reaches more people!
So without further ado, here are 10+1 things that I thought were worth sharing this week:
💡 2022: A Year of Hope
Learning from the mistakes from the past, I decided to create an actual plan for the year. I laid out the main goals that were built on the pillars of health, wealth and career. I listed down the objectives I want to achieve throughout the year to achieve these goals. After doing this exercise, I felt like this is what I was missing all these years. Irrespective of whether you achieve your goals or not, having a plan actually makes you motivated and keeps you on track.
What are your goals and plans for 2022? Have you created one yet?
🍲 Responsible Deliciousness
Food production accounts for a quarter of total global greenhouse gas emissions, where meat and dairy contribute close to 60% of that. This exciting article by Five Media looks at what top chefs around the world are doing to address this concern. These Nordic chefs who are also part of the New Nordic Movement are trying to reimagine the food and serve 'responsible deliciousness' onto our plates. The future of sustainable dining is to embrace low-carbon, plant-based dishes with minimum waste during cooking. From making ice cream from leftover sour-dough to compost baked onions, this is a very interesting read to discover what chefs are doing to fight climate change.
“To convince people to change their mindset, give them something that’s truly delicious” ~ Matt Orlando, Amass chef and restaurateur
✈️ How to Survive a Fall
Popular Mechanics has published a 3-minutes-to-impact survival guide on how to survive a 35,000 feet fall. Contrary to popular belief, water is an awful choice to survive a fall. Hitting the ocean or another water body is essentially like colliding with a sidewalk. Your best bet to survive such a fall is to land on something like snow, swamp, haystacks or thick bushes. The article also stresses the importance of what to do after you survive the fall by looking at the story of 14-year-old Juliane Koepcke, who survived a plane crash (but only 9843 ft), then survived 11 days alone in the Amazon forest, later to be rescued.
🗻 14 Peaks
If you haven't seen 14 Peaks on Netflix, I highly recommend you to watch it. It's the story of Nims Purja, a relatively unknown mountaineer from Nepal, who climbed all the 14 peaks of the world (that are higher than 8000m) in under 7 months. Polina Pompliano from The Profile has collected and combined a list of resources and learnings from Purja's journey. This is an excellent collection of resources to learn more about the mission and the challenges he faced ranging from arranging money to making people believe about his mission.
🌍 Flag of Earth
If Earth had a flag, what would it look like? When Oskar Pernefeldt was a student at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm, Sweden, he tried to answer this question with his graduation project entitled 'The International Flag of Planet Earth'. He created a striking flag of interlinked white circles on a deep blue background in an attempt to represent Earth during interplanetary journeys. The flag's mission is to remind the people of Earth that we share this planet, no matter of national boundaries; that we should take care of each other and the planet we live on.
📦 Fake Startup
While writing her popular novel ‘Startup Wife’, Tahmim Anam created a live website called Utopia, a secretive incubator with her fictional startups. One of these fictitious companies was EMTI, a subscription service that sends you an empty box of different sizes and shapes each month. The box comes with return postage and a message taken from Buddhist philosophy about letting go of painful objects and memories. Upon receiving the item, the company will dispose of the object in the most thoughtful and sustainable way. The concept of EMTI has attracted VCs and other investors attention, and some of them are even interested in funding it. The only problem is that EMTI does not exist in reality!
🎨 Lines (57° 59′ N, 7° 16’W)
This week I'm exploring an art project called Lines, a collaboration between Finnish artists Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho. Lines is an interactive site-specific art installation, located in Outer Hebrides, Scotland. With the help of LED lights, float switches and timers, the installation interacts with rising tidal changes by creating a line that represents the future sea-level based on current scientific estimates. The main areas of Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland are low lying islands that would be affected by rising sea levels in the future, hindering the expansion and development in the areas. Lines is a simple yet powerful visualization of the catastrophic impact of our relationship with nature and its long term effects. The work also provokes a dialogue on how the rising sea levels will affect coastal areas, their inhabitants and land usage in the future.
📚 Einstein's Dreams
This week I'm reading a fictional novel titled ‘Einstein's Dreams‘ by physicist Alan Lightman. The novel fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist troubled by his dreams while working on the Theory of Relativity in 1905. The book consists of 30 chapters, each exploring a dream Einstein had, exploring the concepts of time. This is a quick read that can be completed in less than 1.5 hours and would be highly recommended if you're interested in the concepts of relativity and time. Some of these chapters are related to relativity and some are entirely fantastical.
“In a world where time cannot be measured, there are no clocks, no calendars, no definite appointments. Events are triggered by other events, not by time.”
~ Resurfaced using ReadWise (FREE!)
🧵 IKEA Tricks
As always Trung Phas has written an exciting Twitter thread on the tricks used by IKEA to make you "buy the stuff you never planned to buy". IKEA uses a variety of psychological tricks to ensure that you spend more money in its stores. To start with, IKEA's primary business model itself is based on the concept of the IKEA effect, a trick that lures people to buy stuff that requires some effort from their end like assembling. Other tricks include placing stores strategically far away from cities to the maze-like design they follow while designing stores.
🎬 Beginning and End of Humanity
I saw this short film titled 'Beginning and End of Humanity' during the week and it blew my mind. The film tells the fictional story of a man named Clay, who finds himself at the beginning and end of everything. Concepts of artificial intelligence, mind uploading and singularity are explored in the film and their immense, complex and uncertain results are also discussed. It's really hard to comprehend what is explored in the film and is a must-watch in my opinion. In a nutshell, the film questions whether the idea of achieving everything and understanding the secrets of the universe is worth the effort?
Do watch it and let me know your thoughts on the same. I would love to start a conversation surrounding this topic.
"What was it all for?" Clay wonders to himself.
✍️ A Fragile Life
This last section of the newsletter has changed from sharing music to photos to random questions. Looking back at the metrics, I feel it is time that I reinvent this section again. Here onwards this section would feature an original thought I had over the course of the week.
2021 was very tough for me. I lost my grandmother to ALS, my cat disappeared and a close friend passed away in a road accident during the course of the year. Sometimes I wonder how fragile our lives are. We don't know which is the last moment. When I last met my friend, we laughed and partied hard. It was a wonderful memory, but I never thought it would be the last time I would be seeing him. I'm astonished by the fragility and vulnerability of life. With a definitive end, our lives are all about survival. All we can do is enjoy every moment to the fullest with love, joy, forgiveness and celebration.
📣 Shoutouts
Friday Digest: The life hacking, healthy-living, financially-freeing, Friday-only email digest.
Refind: Get smarter every day by getting 7 new links every day that makes you smarter, tailored to your interests, curated from 10k+ sources.
Deep Culture: 20 interesting things every Tuesday
That’s 10+1 Things for the week.
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See you next week!
With Love,
Rishi
"Someone who played football in high school can’t call himself an athlete forever. Someone who did something successful long ago can’t keep calling himself a success. You have to keep earning it."
~ Derek Sivers, again resurfaced using ReadWise (FREE!)
Great to have you back rishi. Your newsletter has always been intriguing, look forward to reading it ! Cheers!
Bro where have you been! Your blogs are the only interesting stuff I get to read; Good to see you back bro!