16: Notes To Self

Yo!

I just spent the 5 days obsessively reading Project Hail Mary & Dark Matter — 2 of the best sci-fi books I’ve ever read. Highly recommend.

Here is your weekly dose of 5 things I’m pondering and exploring. Click on each link to dive further on that topic.

1. A Simple Graph To Guide The Arc Of Any Story (Kurt Vonnegut)

If you know where you’re generally going with a story, the details will come easily.

PS: I stole this idea from Kurt Vonnegut’s — a prolific writer who produced 14 novels over his 50-year career, several being critically acclaimed NYT bestsellers.

2. Fun Fact: Mass Has A Ridiculous Amount Of Energy In It

You can generate 12 kWh from 1 kg of mineral oil. Meanwhile, 1kg of uranium-235 (energy source of nuclear in power plants) can generate around 24,000,000 kWh — enough power to support a 100,000 person city for a year!

Ridiculous! Even crazier than that is the amount of energy we leave on the table when we convert that mass to electricity.

According to Einstein’s mass-energy equation (e=mc^2), we’re still leaving about 24,976,000,000 kWh of energy on the table (1,000x energy to what we converted).

Mind boggling!

3. Another Fun Fact: Pendulum’s Were Super Helpful For People Back In The Day (Project Hail Mary)

The time it takes for a pendulum to swing forward and backward (aka the period) won’t change, no matter how wide it swings.

If it’s got a lot of energy, it’ll swing farther and faster, but the period will still be the same.

Mechanical clocks take advantage of this to accurately keep time.

The period ends up being driven by two things, and two things only: the length of the pendulum and gravity. As long as you have that, you can measure time!

Pretty cool to think about next to you see one of those old grandfather clocks.

4. World Population Growth (Our World In Data)

Apart from the invention of fertilizer (to grow more crops) & transportation methods (to spread us across more land), what other changes do you think led to this increase?

5. A Charlie Munger Quote I Like (RIP to the goat)

“Deserve what you want.”

If you want something (ex: significant other or great job or nice lifestyle), you better make sure you work hard enough to be worthy of that desire.

4 words to keep yourself honest.

Thanks for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday! If you liked this edition, send it over to a friend who would like it too 🤝 

Cheers,

Luke

PS: Have a topic you think I’d like learning about? Send it to me here.

PPS: Got questions you want me to answer? I made an anonymous form for that.

PPPS: you can find more rabbit holes here & my writing here.