Aristotle's Recipe, Galactic Greeting Card, Photographing Tear and Zero Power Cooler.
#14 of 10+1 Things
Hello!
Welcome to Issue #14 of 10+1 Things.
Thanks to all the wonderful souls who bought me coffees last week!
Here are 10+1 things that I thought were worth sharing this week:
📜 Aristotle's Recipe
I'm reading a lot lately on topics surrounding philosophies and happened to read this great article Titled: Aristotle's Recipe for a Meaningful, Happy Life by a Substack newsletter called Life Mostly Full. The article summarizes Aristotle's recipe for a meaningful life from Edith Hall's book. In a nutshell, Aristotle’s recipe for happiness revolves around looking at and modifying your ambitions, behaviour, and responses to the world.
[Read more about Aristotle's Recipe]
🌍 Visualizing Biomass
Mark Belan from Visual Capitalist has created a wonderful visualization of all biomass in one single graphic. Our planet is home to over 8.7 million species but is very hard to comprehend the magnitude and breadth of this diversity of life. Biomass is measured in Carbon as it is the primary component of all life forms. Each cube shown in the graphic represents 1 million metric tons of carbon. It is really interesting to see that as a species we are very insignificant (just 0.01%) in terms of weight compared to other species on this planet. Plants make up the majority of biomass on earth, followed by Bacteria, which I never imagined
[Check out the Visualization]
💡 50 Ideas to change your life
David Perell is one of my inspirations for content writing and he has published a short post on 50 ideas that changed his life. These are 50 guiding principles that enlighten David's intellectual life. From Paradox of Abundance to Penny Problem Gap, the short read helps you think better and inspire your curiosity. This is one article that I have bookmarked and I try to take notes and study more on each idea mentioned in the list.
[Read more about 50 Ideas]
I really loved the Mimetic Theory of Desire and Planck’s Principle.
What's your favourite idea from the list?
🌡Zero Power Cooler
Bangladesh is a country where more than 70% of the population lives in corrugated tin houses, amplifying the heat. In summers the temperature can go as high as 45 deg C and Ashis Paul from Grey Dhaka has designed the world's first "zero electricity" air-conditioner called Eco-Cooler. Inspired by his daughter's physics class, Eco-Cooler is made using repurposed plastic bottles cut in half and mounted on a board. When hot air enters the open end of the bottle, it is compressed at the neck of the bottle. This makes the air cooler and thereby cools the house when it exits inside. Trials have shown that the cooler is able to reduce the temperature up to 5 deg C.
[Check out Eco-Cooler]
💭 Divergent Thinking
Divergent Thinking is the ability to generate diverse solutions to open-ended problems. To measure divergent thinking and verbal creativity, a team of researchers have created a quick test. The task involves thinking of 10 words that are as different from each other as possible. People who are more creative tend to generate words that are quite different from each other and the test measures this to compute the score. Creativity is a very complex process, and the test has its own limitations as it measures only one type of creativity.
[Check out the Test]
Have you tried the test? What's your score?
🚀 Galactic Greeting Card
Pioneer Plaques, also known as galactic greeting cards, are a pair of golden plaques with pictorial messages that were placed in Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space probes. These plaques were the brainchild of Carl Sagan, who wanted any intelligent alien civilization which intercepted the space probes to know about humankind and how to contact us. The plaque shows nude figures of a human male and female, hydrogen the most abundant element in the universe, solar system and more symbols to depict the origin of spacecraft. It is a beautiful piece of design where the whole story of humankind is simplified into few symbols, but telling the story of human exploration and relentless pursuit of discovery.[Read more about Pioneer Plaque Design]
“It will be the oldest artefact of mankind. A billion years from now, mountain building and erosion will have destroyed everything on the Earth, but this plaque will remain intact” ~ Carl Sagan
I'm so intrigued by the concept and design of the plaque. I'm even thinking of this as my first tattoo!
🎞 Accidental Genius
I have enjoyed watching a small documentary called Meet the Accidental Genius by Great Big Story. The story looks into the life of Jason Padgett, who was a victim of a vicious beating outside a karaoke bar in Tacoma, Washington. Upon regaining his consciousness, Padgett sight was altered due to a condition called savant syndrome. The trauma caused due to the injury altered his brain cells and opened his eyes to an entirely new world. He sees patterns and strobes in everyday things that normal people do not see. He draws these fractal patterns and currently is a mathematical and philosophical artist. This short film is a great look into the hidden power of the mind and the secrets of the brain, yet to be unveiled by science.
[Check out the video]
🎨 Topography of Tears
Topography of Tears is a visual investigation of tears photographed through an optical microscope at 100x magnification by Rose Lynnfisher. Tears when photographed at this magnification, appear as a view of the world from an aeroplane, at dunes, skyscrapers or shorelines, resembling an aerial photograph. Rather than documenting the biological properties of her tears, the artist reflects on the existential and poetic nature of tears. She calls tears as "the medium of our most primal language in moments as unrelenting as death, as basic as hunger, and as complex as a rite of passage."
[Read the book about the project]
[Check more photos from the project ]
🧵 Mystery of Obesity
I found this exciting Twitter thread talking about the mysteries surrounding Obesity. Until 1975, there was not a single country in the world with an obesity rate higher than 15%. Also, sugar consumption has declined worldwide, but obesity and diabetes rates have increased rapidly. Animals quickly become overweight on a diet of human snack foods but tend to remain lean on a diet of animal chow, even when the chow is also high-fat and nutritionally matched. There are no conclusive answers to these mysteries but the thread concludes with a theory that obesity is caused by environmental contaminants, compounds in our water, food, air, at our jobs and in our homes, that change how our bodies regulate weight.
[Read more about the Mystery of Obesity]
📚 Eat that Frog
I have started reading a book called Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy. I came to know about the book from Warikoo's newsletter and thought of giving it a try over the weekend. There is no groundbreaking discovery in the book but is a good quick read on procrastination and how to get things done. If you're new to the world of productivity and self-help, this book is a great starting point!
[Check out the book]
🎧What I'm listening to
It's raining a lot here in Kerala, India and I'm enjoying the weather by listening to Büşra Kayıkçı, a Turkish pianist and composer. I've been looping her debut album called Eskizler, which means “the first sketches during the starting of a project.”
Eskizler - Büşra Kayıkçı
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Tidal
That’s 10+1 Things for the week.
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See you next week!
With Love,
Rishi
Quote of the Week
"The idea that what you major in is what you will do for the rest of your life, and that college represents the best years of your life , are two of what we call dysfunctional beliefs—the myths that prevent so many people from designing the life they want."
~ From Designing Your Life, resurfaced using ReadWise
Moving forward, one out of 11 stories featured on 10+1 Things will be selected from interesting stories submitted by the readers of this newsletter. If you have an interesting story or article to share, please use this form or reply to this email. Every featured story will be credited with a shoutout!
Excellent post this week, Rishikesh. My creativity test score: ‘Your score is 90.9, higher than 97.33% of the people who have completed this task’
Great post