50 Cogs, Bottle Parking, Digital Roll & Proof of Corn
#75 of 10+1 Things | Abu Dhabi
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Last week was meh with lots of client work, very little exercise and a small farewell party for a friend moving to Dubai.
I’m in my 30s and I drink maybe once a month, even that has become very rare.
Boy, your body changes over time. I had a couple of drinks over the weekend and that sort of ruined my momentum in terms of fitness and had a domino effect over the week.
I also wanted to share something annoying I experienced!
As some of you know, I run something called ‘Unoffice Hours’ on my blog, dedicating 2 hours a week to talk to random strangers about random topics.
So far all my experiences have been super good and I’ve had amazing conversations.
Last Monday, somebody booked a slot for the 2nd week of May and I was excited. A few hours later it got cancelled, which is normal. But when I was cleaning my inbox I noticed the reason:
It was a fake booking just to pitch their product.
While they got my attention, I’m never going to recommend a company that employs these kind of dirty tactics.
I posted about it on X, and boom, got an automated AI reply from someone else trying to sell something.
Dead internet theory is real.
Without further ado, here are 10+1 Things worth sharing:
🏀 The Happiest I’ve Ever Been: Ben reflects on how a volunteer coaching gig for a middle school basketball team turned out to be the happiest he’s ever been. Not his tech job, not side projects. Coaching kids in a gym. Sometimes happiness has nothing to do with screens.
✨ 50 Tiny Cogs: Interesting list of 50 tiny things by Zach that give his life meaning. Finding a new personal website to poke around on, the lovely tidiness of indented code, the faint vanilla smell from a paperback book. Makes you want to sit down and write your own list.
📊 Portraits of Population: India’s 1971 and 1981 census had artists hand-draw charts to explain population data to everyday people. Each state had its own style, so you get everything from pictograms of fishermen to hand-illustrated age pyramids. Folks at Diagram Chasing dug up and archived nearly 700 of these visualizations, all searchable and filterable.
🌽 Proof of Corn: Fred Wilson told Seth that AI can't do anything in the physical world. So Seth used Claude to grow actual corn in Iowa. Not driving tractors, but doing what a farm manager does: finding land, hiring people, making decisions. The site tracks every decision and dollar spent. The corn goes on sale at a NYC farmers market in August, expected to net a profit of $1,467. Fingers crossed!
📷 Digital Film Roll: This felt like black magic when I saw it on Kickstarter. It’s a digital sensor shaped like a film roll that you load into your old analog camera. Insert it like film, close the back, shoot digitally. It works with most 35mm cameras like Nikon F3, Canon AE-1, Leica M, you name it.
🔭 Pocket Telescope: Lucas Sifoni built a tiny 3D-printed telescope that fits in his jacket pocket. It uses carbon rods that arch to lock the structure in place, a parabolic mirror, and a lycra cover to keep dew off. The whole thing is collapsible and actually works for stargazing. Files are also available for free for you to build!
💼 The End of the Office: Andrew Yang wrote a piece on what AI is doing to white collar jobs and he’s calling it “the Fuckening.” Bold name aside, he makes some interesting points about how offices, colleges, and downtowns will look very different in a few years. Worth a read.
🧠 How to Reverse Brain Rot: Amanda summarizes Cal Newport's five ways to improve cognitive fitness: read every day, don't avoid writing, go on thinking walks without your phone, keep your phone plugged in at home, and learn a hard skill. Simple stuff but a good checklist!
📸 Drunk Japanese Men: Photographer Pawel Jaszczuk spent 10 years photographing drunk Japanese salarymen sleeping on the streets of Tokyo after missing the last train home. The photos look like fashion magazine shoots but the message is darker. There’s even a Japanese word for it: karoshi, death by overwork.
♻️ Bottle Parking: In Norway you get a small amount of money for recycling bottles and cans, so they’re often collected by homeless people who have to dig through trash to find them. Jake Hayward built a simple “bottle parking” spot where people can leave their bottles instead. Such a small, thoughtful idea.
That’s 10+1 Things for the week!
Which one was your favourite this week?
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See you next week!
With Love,
Rishi
"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
- Seneca
That digital film roll is so cool! I almost want it so I have the excuse of buying a Leica