$7 Heater, Atomic Energy Toy, Build a Better Brain and Man from the Future
#29 of 10+1 Things
⚡ Welcome to #29 of 10+1 Things !
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Here are 10+1 Things that I thought were worth sharing this week:
🧟♂️ The Man from the Future
The Man from the Future is a thought experiment that I've been exploring for a while. Imagine a hypothetical scenario wherein the split of a second you're transported back to the past thousands of years ago. You're the only surviving man from the future. You're surrounded by 100 other uncivilized humans who do not have a clue about who you are, yet they obey you. You are surrounded by pristine untouched natural landscapes with abundant resources. Your cognitive abilities and memory of the future remain intact, but you're not carrying anything from the future. How will you shape your present world with the knowledge you have from the future? Is your knowledge enough to create a world as good as your future? I use this thought experiment as a way to deeply understand our history and human evolution. I thought of penning down this thought into a blog post on my blog and you can read about my crazy ideas there.
👣 Website Carbon
The internet consumes more than 400 TWh of electricity per year, more than the entire United Kingdom. Website Carbon is an online calculator that estimates how your website is impacting the planet. Electricity is used at data centres, telecom networks and by the end-user who is consuming the content. To give you a perspective, my personal blog has a carbon footprint of 0.36 g of CO2 every time someone visits it. Yearly basis, this is equivalent to the amount of C02 absorbed by 2 trees or electricity required to drive an electric car for 500+ km. Internet is growing and the only way to address this concern is by designing sustainable websites that are static, lightweight and hosted on data centres running on clean energy.
🔥 DIY Heater
A Portland-based collective called HeaterBloc has developed a cheap DIY Heater to help unsheltered people across the U.S. to stay warm in winter and costs only $7 to build. The heater consists of a jar filled with isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol). Since isopropyl alcohol burns very cleanly, it is very safe to use this heater indoors, even in a tent. A copper tubing approximately 10m long is secured into the holes at the top of the lid. The copper is bent into a loop shape, with a tiny hole at the bottom middle part of the loop. Pieces of clothes attached to the tubes act as a wick to feed the alcohol from the jar to the copper tubes. When a lighter flame is held next to the hole, it heats the coil, causing the alcohol fumes to exit through the hole, thereby creating a flame that heats the area. The collective has published the design as a how-to guide so that more people can construct these heaters.
“Our desire would be that HeaterBloc would no longer be a need.”
⏱ Martian Minutes
Matt Webb has written an interesting article that explores the meaning of local time through the example of a Martian day. A Martian day is called a sol, 39.5 minutes longer than a day on earth. This becomes quite complicated when scientists stationed on Earth has to deal with rovers on other planets where the concept of local time is different. NASA even designed a mechanical watch that deliberately lost 39.5 minutes per day, so that the team that monitors the rovers can always get a sense of Martian time without much mental calculation!
💡 100 Inventions
Every year Time magazine selects 100 inventions that are making the world better, smarter and a bit more fun. Nominations are collected from Time editors and correspondents every year for different categories ranging from AI to transportation. I've been following this list for a couple of years as it gives me a sense of the innovation happening around the world across various fields. The list is exhausting, but quite diverse ranging from an emotional support robot for children to a brand new pasta shape that has better sauceability and forkability!
👤 Silver Humans
Guardian has covered an interesting yet sad story of Indonesian men, women and children who take up the street art of _manusia silver,_ or silver humans. The pandemic has worsened the economy of countries like Indonesia and these people are covering their bodies with metallic silver paint to earn money, despite the health risks. The pandemic has resulted in 2.67 million people losing their jobs in Indonesia, causing the emergence of these silver humans who are trying to meet the ends with this dangerous act. Despite the itch and the rashes, these silver humans less than $6 a day from donations by passing traffic.
📷 Seeds of Resistance
This week I'm exploring a photography project called 'Seeds of Resistance' by Pablo Albarenga, a documentary photographer and visual storyteller who focuses mainly on human rights. In this project, he tells the story of indigenous people of Amazon who are risking their lives to protect their communities and regions from mining, agricultural expansion, logging and other activities. Through the series, he portrays the intimate bond between these indigenous people and their land. Portraits of people are taken from above and are merged with an aerial shot of territory or the land they are trying to protect. Each image is accompanied by a story of these environmental defenders and is an interesting thing to ponder upon this week.
“They [the ranchers] think the solution is to bury us, but they didn’t realize that we are seeds”.
🧵 How to Read Balance Sheet
An interesting thread by 10-K Diver, explaining how to read and understand a company's balance sheet. If you're a keen investor, the balance sheet is one of the key financial statements of a company(the other two are income and cash flow statements). The concept of the balance sheet is simplified by narrating the story of Alice and Bob who runs a candle and burrito business respectively. He has explained the assets and liabilities sides of the balance sheet in an intriguing way!
📚 Build a Better Brain
This week I'm reading a book called ‘Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age’ by neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta. The book explains the way how our brains work and what we can do to keep our brains in the best condition possible through suggestions and lifestyle choices. If you are like me, who loves to explore what is an ideal way to live, this is a must-read for you. I especially loved the 12-week program featured in the book containing practical strategies to strengthen the brain every day.
“As a primer, here are the five pillars of brain health: Move, Discover, Relax, Nourish, Connect.”
~ Resurfaced using ReadWise(Free)
Last Week's Read: Einstein's Dreams
🎬 Atomic Energy Toy
This week I've enjoyed watching a video by Atlas Obscura, exploring one of the world's most dangerous toys. The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab was a toy lab released in 1950, intended to allow children to create, watch and experience nuclear reactions using the provided radioactive material. The lab kit consisted of multiple instruments to learn and visualize nuclear reactions along with Uranium ores and low-level radiation sources. Even though the toy is literally radioactive and dangerous, it sold only 5000 units owing to a hefty price tag of $50 (equivalent to $530 in 2020).
☔️ Visualizing Rain
This last section of the newsletter explores an original thought I had, an idea I'm exploring or a dream I had:
Ever since my childhood, I've been fascinated by rain. I love watching and listening to rain, smelling the aroma of rainy earth. Monsoon is my favourite season and I've fond memories associated with it. As an aspiring visual artist, I've always wanted to express this feeling through a visual medium. For the last couple of years, I've been exploring the concept of visualizing rain and preserving that memory artistically through a visual medium. I've tried and failed using Chaldni figures and spectrograms. Are there any other means to visualize rain? Or is it a never-ending quest?
Let me know your thoughts and let's collaborate
📣 Shout outs
Weekly Wrap: Fuel your curiosity with constant moments of learning
Super Quotes: Get inspiring quotes delivered to your email every Sunday.
The Indie Creator: 3 Minute insights to crush it as an indie creator.
That’s 10+1 Things for the week.
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See you next week!
With Love,
Rishi
"You cannot define a person on just one thing. You can’t just forget all these wonderful and good things that a person has done because one thing didn’t come off the way you thought it should come off." ~ Aretha Franklin