Parenting Advice
I sought advice from a friend of mind and he shared some parenting wisdom:
Many times saying ‘Yes’ is the easier thing to do. It relieves tension and people walk away happy. But it opens you up to new conversations down the road – especially when things don’t turn out the way you think they will. On the other hand, ‘No’ is a recurring theme in parenting. You get good at having that conversation – and you have a pretty good idea about how that’s going to turn out.
Anonymous Friend
There’s a quote I like that goes something like this “Being a parent allows you to forgive your own parents for their mistakes”.
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Imitate >>> Innovate
For those worried that they will be defined by their failures, you just might be. And that could be a good thing:
Ironically, the more we imitate others, the more we discover how we’re different. There’s a long lineage of comedians who tried to copy each other, failed, and became great themselves: Johnny Carson tried to copy Jack Benny, but failed and won six Emmy awards. Then, David Letterman tried to copy Johnny Carson, but failed and became one of America’s great television hosts. Reflecting on his own influences, Conan O’Brien said: ‘It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.’ All of them learned that imitation reveals our identity, especially when we fall short of those we admire.
David Perell
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The Climes They Are a Changin’
There’s an interesting piece in the NY Times about a gardening columnist in Alaska, whose career spans multiple decades. It details how his advice has changed as the conditions in the northern-most state have changed.
Here’s a bit about okra:
In 1996, he noted that Alaska was the only state in the country that couldn’t grow okra. In 2014, he mused that that might soon be possible. In 2019, it happened. ‘Salmon and halibut gumbo could be the new Alaska dish,’ he later wrote.
New York Times
Here’s another passage describing the columnist’s hesitation in responding to letters pouring in, asking about what to plant to replace dying spruce trees…
But he wasn’t sure what to tell them. Before his conversion to no-till, organic, microbe-focused gardening, he spent 25 years telling readers to douse their plants with poisons and chemicals; to plant Mayday trees, an invasive species no longer sold in Anchorage; to rake their lawns. Giving advice is ‘a terrible responsibility,’ he told me later. ‘It’s got to be used properly. I didn’t use it properly.’ Now people were asking him what they should plant to replace wild trees, and he didn’t know what to say. Suddenly, in Anchorage, the small experiment of the garden had been subsumed by the bigger, global experiment.
But despite his doubts, the gardening guru had to show up. That week’s column was about the spruce trees. ‘We need to talk as friends regarding replacements,’ he wrote. ‘We need to have community discussions. You sure don’t want a cranky, arthritic, guilt-ridden (for past advice that was nonorganic), moralistic, organic-garden columnist making decisions that determine what Southcentral communities will look like for the next 100 years.’
New York Times
Ironically, the columnist indirectly provides some of the best advice of all. We should all be a bit more humble in the advice that we offer, and keep in mind that the advice we do give might just be wrong.
On a related note, if you live in the South there’s a good chance you’ve encountered a Bradford pear tree. The sale of these trees will soon be banned in South Carolina.
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That’s it in an Oyster Shell
The species naturally filters water in order to absorb nutrients and grow their shells. But scientists have discovered that a byproduct of this oyster growth process is that harmful pollutants such as phosphorus, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and nitrogen from fertilizers, which are difficult to remove from water and can persist for decades if left alone, are also extracted from the sea.
Reasons To Be Cheerful
The article goes on to talk about how oysters shells containing these materials could potentially be removed and upcycled for use in construction materials.
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Twice as Much and Twice as Long
Someone once told me (half kidding) that renovation projects take twice as long and cost twice as much as you think. Here’s why there may be some truth to that statement…
…the tails on construction cost distributions appear to be fat. On the Jahrens Navy study, around 80% of the projects were within 10% of their design budget (pretty dang good, if KPMG is to be believed). On a normal distribution, this would mean that fewer than 0.5% of projects should be expected to exceed their budget by 20% or more. But the actual rate was 25 times higher than that.
What this means is what everyone who works in construction knows intuitively – a project that goes extremely well might come in 10 or 20% under budget. But a project that goes badly could be 100% over budget or more.
Construction Physics, “Why Its Hard to Innovate In Construction“
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Good Quote
“Someone once told me abundance is the enemy of appreciation.”
(H/T A Wealth of Common Sense)
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Patents Pending
South Africa granted a patent related to a “food container based on fractal geometry”…to a machine. This is the first known patent granted to an AI system. Whether or not you think a patent should be granted to something that isn’t “living” is kind of beside the point. The fascinating thing is that computers may develop ideas that we (humans) may not be capable of conceiving.
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The Just-About-Possible
…that’s really where you want to be working. Not in possible. Not the impossible. But in the just-about-possible. You have to have a few failures to know where the edge of possibility lies.
Es Devlin, Master Class, “Scale and Architecture”