Lindy Letters (05/02/21)
Disclosure Project, Breaking Smart, cross-section of a cell
Hi everyone,
Writing to you from Los Angeles, CA.
My goal in writing this newsletter is to increase the number of interesting conversations that I have. It’s my way of putting ideas out into the world and seeing what resonates.
One way that I measure success is the quality of responses that I receive for my posts. I know when I’ve written something worth reading not because it gets lots of views, but when people reply with thoughtful responses.
To that end, I have a request: what can I do to engage the community more?
Right now it looks something like this:
And I want to know how can we make it look more like this:
Please reply with any ideas you might have. I’m looking forward to hearing from you :)
From me
Full-time / part-time: I love frameworks that help me understand the world in a fresh way. This post is my attempt to put a new spin on an old idea: how should we spend our time?
FI/RE is Indefinite Optimism: People really seem to like this idea: retiring early is admitting that you’re out of ideas about how to make the future better.
From the web
Disclosure Project Briefing Document (2001)
The “aliens are real” speculation has increased to a dull roar over the last 12 months. Beginning with the now famous NYT article, a large and growing number of independent sources are now credibly reporting the existence of unexplained aerial phenomena.
This briefing document from 2001 is part of the Disclosure Project, a “research project working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems.” It includes an impressive dossier of interviews and collected evidence that point to the existence of advanced technology that remains unclaimed by any world government.
Lindy score: 2039Breaking Smart (or, How Software Is Eating The World)
Venkatesh Rao (vgr on Twitter) is the author of Breaking Smart, a book about how technology is affecting the world. Venktatesh has some of the most interesting ideas out of anyone I’ve ever come across.
He’s prolific too — Breaking Smart is just one facet of his intellectual exhaust. He also has a blog (Ribbonfarm) and a Twitter feed that is chock-full of useful observations. If you’re looking for an underrated lens with which to think about the future of technology, you should read Breaking Smart.
(he’s also an LA native — Venkatesh, if you’re reading this I’d love to grab coffee)
Lindy score: 2027Okay, this is just plain cool.
New imaging techniques have given us the clearest picture yet of what is happening within a cell. The colorful, bustling image below is a cross-section of a eukaryotic cell. This amazing machine rivals a human city in complexity, despite being microscopic in size.
Better yet, the website allows you to explore various pathways by mousing over them. It’s a fantastic learning tool that gives a real sense of how our body functions.
Remember: there are over 30 trillion of these cells within each of our bodies. Isn’t biology amazing?
have a great week,
phil
Maybe you can host monthly virtual meetups for newsletter readers to discuss content of that month :)