Quick Hits 5/30/24
A change of scenery...
What are you thankful for?
I’m feeling thankful for many things, but above all else, the people in my life. Many of them are incredibly supportive (like you 😃), and they are also unreasonably kind. Yet, more important than the way they interact with me are the amazing qualities, talents, and wisdom they possess.
I’m lucky to have friends and family doing so well, and leading lives that I can learn from. Some of them excel in their professional lives, some of them have incredible relationships with their loved ones. They are patient, intelligent, and don’t take themselves (or life) too seriously.
I’m thankful for the many coincidences that brought so many great people into my life, and I’m happy to be living on earth at the same time as them. After all, our existence as human beings is beyond improbable.
While I’m on the topic of gratitude, I’m unspeakably grateful for my health.
I’ve spent two of the last three weeks fighting a really strong bacterial infection, which had one or two scary moments where it seemed as if nothing was helping solve the problem. I needed to see four doctors over a ten-day span to get different opinions on the best way to treat the issue 😷🤮💊. Many of the great people I was just mentioning took amazing care of me, driving me all over and keeping me as hydrated and well-fed as possible given the circumstances.
Now that I’ve been feeling more like myself, I’m back to enjoying the incredible trip that I’m on:
These are some of the photos from my first few weeks in Ecuador. I’ll be here quite a bit longer, and I’m really hoping to share some amazing content of one of the most beautiful places in the world. I’ve been bugging my friend Sebastian (the guy who appears in my “About” page) to let me get my hands on some of the photos he has been taking. He runs a media agency in Ecuador, so he has some serious cameras and equipment for capturing the amazing landscapes here.
Frankly, the natural beauty of the country demands a professional to photograph it properly. The camera on my phone is amazing, but I have no idea what I’m doing! Keep an eye out for more 🙂.
With that, let’s get into some quick hits. I’ll have some more time soon to get back on track with a plethora of full editions of RRR!
Yerba Mate - What’s the Hype About?
Recently, right around the time Andrew Huberman started discussing the benefits of Yerba Mate, there’s been a noticeable uptick in the popularity of the herb in the U.S.
Lots of friends were selling me on the idea it was a like-for-like replacement for coffee. For that reason, I politely passed, but definitely had some curiosity and wanted to try it. I think what had stopped me before was that I wanted to try the real thing, and not some of the cold canned versions sold in the U.S. with tons of sugar. According to my research, you need a proper setup in order to consume it the right way.
Well, thankfully this past weekend I met a new friend from Argentina who is a legitimate Yerba Mate connoisseur.
I was able to try a couple of varieties - one with natural sweetness, and one that was quite bitter. Upon review, the taste was quite nice. It generally resembled the experience of drinking a strong green tea, but with a flavor that was quite earthy. As far as the caffeine buzz that everyone had told me about, it was severely overhyped. I did not drink a ton of it, but my brain chemistry felt utterly unaltered afterward.
Anyways, I’m glad to have had the experience and will maintain a healthy curiosity. Maybe our paths will cross again soon!
Super Volcanoes
I just learned last week that not so far from where I’m staying, there is a “Super Volcano” waiting to erupt.
Five hours from Quito rises the great elliptical valley of Chalupas, an enormous caldera 16 kilometers in diameter, one of the planet’s seven “megavolcanos”.
As we pass Machachi, before entering the Cotopaxi National Park, we lose contact with the urban world. Without a mobile signal or internet, it’s now the winds, the wild horses and the great imposing snow-peak that crowns the Andes mountain range that accompany us on a rough road, where only the sound to interrupt the silence is the splashing of the puddles we drive through.
Marco Córdova and Edwin Telenchana, geologists of the National Polytechnic School’s Geophysical Institute (IEGPN), guide us into the wilderness. They know every stone we tread, every mountain we pass. “One of the objectives of geology is to discover our past to better understand our present,” says Edwin.
The good news is that it most likely will keep waiting for a really long time.
It is a supervolcano because it can expel 100 km3 of pyroclastic material, unlike a younger mountain, like Cotopaxi or Chimborazo, which spout only about 10 km3. But Patricia Mothes, head of Vulcanology Deparment of the IGEPN, seems calm enough. A year ago, a monitoring station was set up for the Chalupas and no seismic movement was picked up.
I definitely am thankful for some of Earth’s incredible landscapes and mountains that were forged via these events, but I hope we don’t see another massive eruption for a while 😲😲.
“An apple skin around a flaming behemoth”.
Perplexity Pages
perplexity.ai just released a new feature that allows you to “curate” (fancy way of saying sitting back and letting AI create a ton of content) information on any topic you wish.
I first learned about Perplexity through the Liberty’s Highlights newsletter, and have been using it for a bit of everything, but primarily, as an AI-guided search engine.
It’s cool to see that they’re experimenting with new ways to have users contribute to big content libraries (a cool feature of perplexity is just checking out the “Discover” tab. There’s a lot of different ways this can go, I’ll be keeping a close eye on it.
For now, check out this page I created about the benefits of being in nature, and this page about a couple legendary chess matches between Gary Kasperov and an IBM chess computer (Deep Blue).
Some Tunes Before We Go 🎶🎵🎼🎧
Leaving Rome - Jo Jo Bennett & Mudies Allstars
Thugz Mansion - Nas (feat. 2Pac & J. Phoenix)
Talk to y’all soon!
-Tiko
Glad you like Perplexity! I find it very useful too
Incredible!