16 Lessons, Emoji Bathroom, Swede Dreams & Waste Map

#58 of 10+1 Things | Abu Dhabi

⚡ Welcome to #58 of 10+1 Things!

Thanks a lot to everyone who bought me coffees($1 or ₹75) last week!
Also, a warm welcome to everyone who is new here from Meco!

I had an ordinary week with not much happening. To be honest, I was not as productive as I wanted to be. I was supposed to sign a project with a client, but that didn’t happen this week, so that was a bummer.

Working alone as a freelancer, life has been full of ups and downs.

Coming to health, I had a solid week of strength workouts with my trainer. I realized that I never trained to failure before. Now I know what it means to train to failure, so that’s a big takeaway once my personal training sessions end, and I can focus more on muscle growth.

On the newsletter front, I spent some time culling subscribers who were not active for a long time. I want to keep the list clean with more active subscribers, so yeah, probably will clean the list a bit more in the coming week.

I also had an interesting call with Dvorah Graeser, one of my readers. We had an interesting conversation on AI, the Middle East market, and long-distance running! My calendar is open twice a week for informal chats—feel free to reach out if you want to catch up!

Without further ado, here are 10+1 Things that I thought were worth sharing this week:

⌚️ 16 Lessons

David A. Patterson shares 16 life lessons from his five decades in computing. He divides them into two parts—one focused on people and the other on career. The career lessons emphasize the importance of passion, teamwork, and focusing on what truly matters instead of just urgent tasks. The people-focused lessons highlight family, happiness, and valuing relationships over achievements. He also stresses the power of honest feedback, bold decisions, and finishing what you start. Simple but solid advice from someone who’s been there and done that!

֎ ChatGPT is not bad

I used to believe that using ChatGPT personally was bad for the planet due to the energy and water needed for training and running data centers—I even shared an article on this before. But Andy Masley’s post breaks it down, showing that its impact is negligible compared to everyday activities like video streaming or even eating a burger. He argues that focusing on AI emissions distracts from real climate issues and the systemic changes needed in the energy sector. It’s a great read if you want a more grounded perspective on AI and the environment!

💡 How to Improve WFH Lighting

An interesting guide by Rusty on how to improve your WFH lighting and reduce eye strain. He explains why bad lighting can cause fatigue, how natural and artificial light affect your eyes, and what simple changes can make a big difference. He even shows how his setup looked before and after using 3D renders! From diffusing harsh sunlight to picking the right bulbs, Rusty shares easy fixes to make your workspace more comfortable. If you spend hours in front of a screen, this one’s worth a read!

🚻 Emoji Bathroom

Emoji Bathroom is a quirky, experimental meme site where you're given two emojis and asked: Which one is the men’s room? It’s a playful dig at restaurants that try way too hard with restroom signs. The site highlights how we assign meaning to everyday symbols, touching on gender, history, and social expectations—all through the least serious medium: emojis. It features stats too! Every hour, the matchups refresh, so if you don’t like the choices, check back later!

📿The Drop

I was casually browsing Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and The Drop caught my eye. It’s a wearable nutrition tracker you can wear as a pendant or pin. With a 4K camera and AI model running locally, it detects when you’re eating and sends food images to the cloud to analyze calories, macros, and nutrients. I didn’t really like the design, to be honest, but the utility sounds promising. The founders are Harvard and ETH Zurich grads, and the company is backed by Y Combinator, so it doesn’t look like a scam. As someone who has failed multiple times in logging and tracking calories, this sounds like a game changer, if it works as expected.

💬 Pointless Hobbies

I had archived this thread on Tildes where people shared their most pointless hobbies, and some of them were truly unexpected. I didn’t know mechanical keyboards were a full-blown hobby, but people spend hundreds on custom boards and keycaps. Lego, board games, and TTRPG books seem to be common money pits, while others are into niche obsessions like fountain pens, fancy flashlights, and even indie perfumes. Some really unique ones stood out—collecting kimonos, wacky earrings, and even flashlights (seriously, how many do you need?). Then there’s crystal specimen collecting, because apparently, you can never have too many shiny rocks!

While I was typing this, I remembered that almost 10 years back, I had a hobby where I would collect soil samples from every new place I visited. I vaguely remember ordering some glass bottles with corks from AliExpress to store them.! Now that I think about it, it would have been a cool hobby—sad that I didn’t pursue it further. What’s your weird hobby?

📚 Valuable Humans in Transit

I think I’m on a short book spree! I had so much fun reading Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by qntm this week. If you don’t know, qntm is a sci-fi writer who explores deep, hypothetical scenarios and pushes science, technology, and logic to their limits. The stories in this collection are weird, thought-provoking, and often terrifyingly plausible. For instance, ‘Lena’ is written as a Wikipedia entry and tells a haunting story about digital braintaping, while ‘The Difference’ follows a man trapped in solitary confinement, trying to convince gamers that he’s a real person. It’s a short read(<100p), but every story packs a punch—perfect for anyone who loves mind-bending sci-fi!

Last Week’s Read: The Underachiever's Manifesto

🌌A Random Universe

I recently learned about the lava lamps at Cloudflare’s office and their role in generating randomness for cryptography. Apparently, Cloudflare uses these to ensure that the seeds are truly random since the motion of lava lamps is chaotic and cannot be predicted. This got me thinking about how randomness shapes everything—from evolution to history and major events. Read my reflections on the power of randomness.

♻️ Waste Map

This interesting visualization by Paper Boss ranks every country in the world by waste produced and recycled. Before even looking at the data, I assumed the UAE—where I live—would be high on the list, given its rapid urban development and consumer-driven lifestyle. Surprisingly, Bahrain—a small gulf island nation with just 1.6 million people—takes the top spot, generating 907 kg of waste per person annually! Comoros, a country I admittedly don’t know much about, comes in second, which is surprising given its small size. On the recycling front, Germany leads the way, recycling 47% of its waste, thanks to a deeply ingrained culture of sorting and sustainability.

📇 Typewriter Art

This week, I'm exploring the unique artwork of James Cook, who uses a typewriter to create stunning visual pieces. Instead of traditional art tools, Cook arranges letters, numbers, and symbols to form intricate drawings, from cityscapes to portraits. His journey began as a college project but soon turned into a full-time career, with commissions from around the world. Each piece is meticulously crafted, often taking hours of focused work, and sometimes includes hidden messages or personal references. Cook likens his typewriter to a musical instrument, relying on muscle memory to master its keys. If you wish to commission or support his work, prints are available to purchase on his website.

🎬 Mechanical Computer

I had so much fun watching this interesting short video about the Curta mechanical calculator, the only handheld mechanical calculator ever made. In the video, Steve shows how this ingenious device, invented by Curt Herzstark during World War II, performs addition and multiplication using a simple handle. What’s even cooler is how it uses a technique called the Nine’s complement to perform subtraction, taking advantage of an overflow error. Steve also demonstrates how the calculator handles complex problems like 765 × 204 by leveraging place value. It’s an incredible piece of engineering history that’s both fascinating and surprisingly functional!

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That’s 10+1 Things for the week!

Which one was your favourite this week?
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With Love,
Rishi

“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success
– Nikola Tesla