Author: Daniel

  • “Love by Design” by Sara Nasserzadeh

    • We pack so much on the “magic” of love
    • Couples need to have a shared future facing vision
    • “We expect love to hurt”
    • True love can overcome everything
    • Coupledom is fairly universal
    • Courtly love (“love” for peace) became romantic love
    • Increasingly, we want to marry for love and love alone
    • Happy couples are all the same, miserable couples are all miserable for different reasons
    • “Love” works better when thought as a range of actions than a feeling
    • Quirks are an advantage to us but others might not appreciate them
    • Thinking
      • Abstract thinking, big picture, connecting dots
      • Information processing
      • Organizing things
      • Facilitation happens through doing something Sikhs
    • Attachment
      • Anxious
      • Avoidant
      • Secure
    • America is a low context society, where detail needs to be communicated frequently
    • Attracting can be built over time
    • We reference “people like us” to predict future behavior earlier
    • More of a “Puzzle of Attraction” than a law
    • It is important to understand why someone is attractive to you so you can track those needs as they change over time
    • Losing attraction can happen because we no longer need the things they offer or they no longer offer the things we need
    • (We see this often as couples “grow apart”, literally picking up new things that are not aligned with their partners)
    • “I respect others because I am a respective person”
    • Trust is earned
    • Physical associations can be important
    • Dropping the ball us more damaging than asking for help
    • Work together to manage your ‘couple brand’
    • Avoid self-identifying with other people’s pain
    • Compassion is about feeling in their behalf
    • “What you cannot tolerate in yourself,  you won’t be able to tolerate in others.”
    • Avoiding conflict is not ideal
    • Ask your partner to talk about the thing, include why it matters to you
    • “Authenticity” is often an excuse to be rude or mean
    • The opposite of pleasure is comfort

  • “How to prevent the next pandemic” by Bill Gates

    • There is really no substitute for preparation
    • WHO should have people embedded in government agencies to closely coordinate efforts
    • Being able to survey local health is critical to detecting hotspots
    • “If it looks like you are overreacting, you are probably doing it right”
    • Context matters, so adapt as needed
    • Contact tracing has been around for a while
    • Vaccines are a lot harder to prove quality than a drug
      • Generally, a vaccine requires biological processing to prove it works; regular medication can use a simple chemical reaction
    • We should plan to flood the market with a given vaccine so we do not have to worry about who is getting it
    • Not having wide spread diagnostics impairs the ability to get good data
    • Laying the ground work is very important before things happen
  • “The Chimp Paradox” by Dr Steve Peter’s

    • Human (frontal), chimp (limbic or emotional), and computer
    • The chimp is not good or bad, it just is
    • “You are not responsible for the chimp but you are responsible for managing it.”
    • The chimp puts together ideas through emotions
    • The chimp often does the thinking first
    • “Fight, flight, or flock” needs an action or decision
    • There are always leopards about in the trees

    Note: I did not complete this book.

  • “Chip War” by Chris Miller

    • There is only one factory in the world that can fabricate Apple’s newest processors
    • It all comes down to making switches
    • Semiconductors work by limiting electron flow when no field is applied
    • “Chips” are chipped off a large wafer
    • Early chips focused on meeting military needs but took off as prices dropped
    • Sony had a vision for the use of chips
    • Japan had a vision for what was possible with the new chips
    • The French scoffed at the Japanese as “transistor salesmen”
    • “The best weapons are cheap and familiar.”
    • Intel started with a generalized DRAM which helped them for the world with cheap, effective chips
    • The military started Silicone Valley but consumers sustained it
    • The Japanese became known for superior implementation
    • Japanese conglomerates were able to leverage their breadth into cheap loans
    • US firms lobbied hard to get congress to subsidize their research
    • Simplot (of potato fame) jumped into the memory market as it become a commodity
    • Pivoting chip design from a manual, fabrication-centric process to a systematic one, was important to designing with speed
    • The USSR struggled to design and manufacture chips
      • Even when they could, they did not have the US’s global network for mass production
    • Taiwan crafted an industry of printing anyone’s chips, without fear of competition
    • China “woke up” and started changing from “1st machine imported, 2nd machine imported, 3rd machine imported” to “1st machine imported, 2nd machine China built, 3rd machine exported”
    • ASML started growing by investing in new lithography technologies
    • Intel fostered extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) but did not want to get into fabrication itself
    • Intel saw mobile devices coming but refused to explore it because the PC business was too good
      • (Being worried about margin seems ridiculous. Instead, growing new businesses is best when the margins are good.)
    • Graphics helped fabless solutions succeed
    • Nvidia developed free software that allowed generalized compute on their chips
    • Qualcomm and Nvidia really benefited from fabless solutions too
    • ASML flexed its Supply Chain Management skills as much as R&D skills
    • EUV is so precise that new techniques were needed, you so not just imprint the pattern
    • Intel did not adopt EUV as quickly as others, leaving them mostly out of the market by the time they picked it up
    • Beam forming directs radio signals only towards your phone helping improve signals in a crowded space
    • Military efforts are leaning ever more into tech
    • The US tried to just “run faster” but that was not adequate for the China strategy
    • Building a single-country chip supply chain is impractical given the level of technical skill it requires
    • The post-COVID chip shortage was not about capacity (we produced more chips than ever) but that previous chip orders were cancelled, losing their “spot” in the production line
  • “Magic Pill” by Johann Hari

    • GLP-1 helps us feel full
    • “Snack” and “quick” food started to appear in the mid-70’s
    • “Fresh food rots quickly”
      • Sugar and fat slows bacteria
      • Salt preserves it longer
    • “Processed” food is made to look like “real” food with coloring and agents
    • Chewing breaks our eating enough for brain signals to catch up
    • Artificial sweetener deprives your body of the energy the taste told it to expect
    • High fat and sugar only naturally occurs in breast milk
    • We have highly developed senses of taste which are totally confused in the modern world
    • Diabetes complications are medically much worse than HIV complications
    • GLP-1 stimulants are a medical solution to a societal problem
    • The biological weight set-point is acquired over time
    • “You can’t run off a bad diet.”
    • They tend to dampen all chemical addiction
    • We eat “junk food” as an antidepressant
    • Eating can be because we do not know how to self-soothe
    • “Overweight is overseen”
    • Taking away overeating will expose any underlying mental issues