Don’t forget, I have a new climate blog and update it several times a day. Please pass the URL to people you know or to your followers: www.climatecurious.blog.
Tony Hsieh. I met him at TED India. He shouldn’t have died, but things were not right. He was suffering. A sad story is unfolding.
This would be funny if it weren’t so freakin’ true and disastrous for US energy: Pentagon Cornerstone commits U.S. rare earth policy and funding to a twice bankrupt mining project with a Chinese part owner.
What is engineered architecture, and why did Google X steal it?
Sorry to ruin your next 37 minutes and 9 seconds, but I had to do it…
Who would want to work at a company so out of touch with reality?
Imagine …
A Zoom meeting with Andy Tryba, CEO of Crossover for Work ...
Andy: “Okay people, we need to hire some new talent for a big client. I’m going to need someone who can get at least 40 questions right on a 50-question multiple-choice test in 15 minutes. Probably have to guess some of the answers because of the time constraint. Do we have someone who can do that?”
Right Hand Man: “Absolutely. Rob has all the test-prep files. I’ll ask him to start memorizing.”
Andy: “Great. Now I need someone who got good grades in school and can write 50 high-performing topic sentences in a Google spreadsheet.” …
This is the first in a series of short pieces for Family Office Insights. If you are part of a family office that hasn’t joined, I hope you will subscribe to their newsletter.
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
— Mark Twain
My name is David Siegel. I’m a lifetime serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, New York, and Europe. I’ve started more than a dozen companies, written five books, given hundreds of speeches about technology and business, and among other things I was a candidate to be the dean of Stanford business school. I am research and evidence-based. …
Insights and quick videos to stretch your brain cells
A look at the communities that extract the rare-earth metals we all have in our pockets.
I started a new blog on climate change.
Have you seen The Social Dilemma? Here’s the trailer:
Listen to Edward Snowden explain how your phone is always spying on you:
This is what I’m doing about it:
I’m raising money now. Do you know any philanthropists for me to talk to? Come learn more at my new web site for the Giordano Bruno Institute.
What is an MRNA vaccine? Learn in 8 minutes:
Apple glasses:
The future of energy is Thorium molten salt. Watch Copenhagen Atomics make progress in Europe. …
By David Siegel
Select links and thoughts on science, the scientific method, climate, decarbonization, energy, and energy policy. I update this page daily (more or less). Please link to ClimateCurious.blog. For more structured information, visit ClimateCurious.com.
Items marked with a * are particularly important.
NOTE: For 2021, I have switched to substack, where I am busy getting everything ready. Feel free to explore there and here. This URL will redirect when it’s ready: www.climatecurious.blog.
2020
The human mind is a miracle, and you will never see it spring more beautifully into action than when it is fighting against evidence that it needs to change.
— David Wong
December
Nuclear News
Three nuclear projects are now well funded and hiring:
False Alarm
I study CO2 all day long, and I believe the impact of manmade CO2 this century might be measurable with very sensitive instruments, but it won’t be anything people will notice. By 2100, we’ll be richer, the earth will be greener, wildlands will be well cared for, biodiversity will be what it is today more or less, humans will be far better off, there won’t be a mass extinction, and British wine will still be terrible. …
Does the earth modify its surface in response to warming?
by Willis Eschenbach
[TLDR: In this essay, reprinted by permission from WattsUpWithThat, Willis Eschenbach shows that the earth’s reaction to an increase in solar energy is non-linear. As sea-surface temperatures heat up, they come to a critical temperature that launches storms, cooling the surface. This natural thermostat is missing in almost all climate models.]
I ponder curious things. I got to thinking about available solar energy. That’s the amount of solar energy that remains after reflection losses.
Just under a third (~ 30%) of the incoming sunshine is reflected back into space by a combination of the clouds, the aerosols in the atmosphere, and the surface. What’s left is the solar energy that actually makes it in to warm up and power our entire planet. In this post, for shorthand I’ll call that the “available energy”, because … well, because that’s basically all of the energy we have available to run the entire circus. …
It’s time to rethink the way we run our society, our government, and our planet
Friends, tomorrow Americans will roll a big 5-sided die that has Biden on 4 sides and Trump on one side. Though it’s more likely to come up Biden, since we only roll it once, it could also come up Trump. No matter what happens …
1. The person who voted for the candidate you didn’t is not less of a person, or less caring, or more stupid. Both candidates have weaknesses, and the system is poorly designed. The entire concept of representative government will probably be replaced by something else. In an imperfect system, you get imperfect candidates. …
The price of convenience is higher than we think
If you haven’t seen The Social Dilemma, you should. It shows how technology companies have gone from making products and services to selling our data to advertisers, predicting our behavior, encouraging rage, and monopolizing our attention.
The guy behind it, Tristan Harris, has started a nonprofit called the Center for Humane Technology to advocate for fairer media and encourage companies to be less evil:
Here are the contrails of my web wanderings. If it’s here, it’s a “must read” or “must watch” …
Surprise! Swordfish are doing rather well.
Stop using Google to search for health advice! Use these evidence-based databases instead.
The amazing START terrorist database — free data to help us cross the river of myths about terrorism.
Hire me to speak at your next event:
A quick math quiz — try it!
More evidence against obstetricians in normal childbirth — study.
How to safely defuse someone who is wrong — article.
The full Debunking Handbook — PDF.
The AirBar turns your laptop screen into a tablet:
Just in case you still haven’t heard: drinking cow’s milk does you no good — NY Times…
Each month I publish the contrails of my Internet research journey. Here is another installment. Read, view, and learn …
Why you should hire people who have rebounded from failure, rather than been continuously successful — excellent piece by @idonethis
Ingredients in food, like sugar, found not addictive — study
Tim Minchin’s wonderful graduation speech hits many agility points on the mark.
How Northeastern University gamed the rankings machine and profited handsomely. Always remember that rankings are made up and as legitimate as palmistry.
Lego bricks, which originally copied another company’s product, took many years to eventually find their current form, and included several chance occurences. They were not the result of a single bright idea, but rather years of evolution and accidents. …
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