Here are the top 20 countries in the world when it comes to land area:
I would have thought Mongolia was much higher…
How about Kazakhstan in the top 10? That really surprised me. For good measure they also have over 19M people 😮😮😮.
Some more things to know about Kazakhstan and it’s economic situation are here.
Reading about other countries with huge amounts of land and people helps add context in my mind for just how big the world is.
Another such thing that helped me consider the scale of our planet; I work with some folks in Malaysia and recently started looking into how I would get to Kuala Lumpur if I wanted to visit.
I’m not all that accustomed to seeing “d” in the estimated travel time 😂.
In Recent Times…
What a couple of weeks it’s been. I’ve been struggling mightily to find some quiet time 😪. It feels like to compensate for how much time I’ve had to spend being “on”, I’ve sort of been cruising on low power mode. Not my favorite way to operate!
In any event, since the last time you’ve heard from me, I’ve learned how to ski in a cold version of trial by fire. Let’s call it trial by ice 🥶🥶🧊. My thought is that some sort of winter sport / outdoor activity can help me a lot during the cold months.
I’ve also started a new basketball league that seems to be super competitive. It’s giving me a ton of inspiration to work on my game and unlock new athleticism.
It feels really nice to have these sorts of mini-goals in my life. It adds some commonsense structure to my free-time while also supplying the important ups and downs of non-linear progress.
Yes, progress should not just be a straight arrow from A to B. This framework is important to remember.
If you’re someone who’s scared of “failure”, the inevitable half-steps backwards are going to repel you from what needs to be done to make progress in your endeavors. Embracing some adversity has transformative potential 🚀🚀.
Content of the Week 📖🎙📺
“The Intellectual Obesity Crisis” by Gurwinder
You know a piece of writing is great when every last word is resonating at full voltage in your soul.
One of the core concepts I’ve internalized for a long time without putting a name on it, is what Gurwinder calls, “junk info”.
Like fast food, junk info is cheap to produce and satisfying to consume, but high in additives and low in nutrition. It's also potentially addictive and, if consumed excessively, highly dangerous.
Junk info is often false info, but it isn't junk because it's false. It's junk because it has no practical use; it doesn't make your life better, and it doesn't improve your understanding. Even lies can be nourishing; the works of Dostoevsky are fiction, yet can teach you more about humans than any psychology textbook. Meanwhile, most verified facts do nothing to improve your life or understanding, and are, to paraphrase Nietzsche, as useful as knowledge of the chemical composition of water to someone who is drowning.
What’s scary, in my opinion, is that junk info can be disguised as helpful, and well-capable of improving your understanding of something. Not disguised in the sense that it’s false, but disguised in the sense that you personally have no meaningful way of applying the knowledge to create value for yourself or others.
What’s worse, is there are only imperfect methods of knowing what information will eventually be useful to you! The sheer horror…
Please read the whole thing, it is so timely.
My Top 5 Ski Runs of 2023 - GoPro POV [4K] by Abe Kislevitz
When he asks, “are you kidding me” to start the first run, I felt like I was on an episode of MTV’s Punked. Is he kidding us?
I cannot believe that people actually do this stuff, but nonetheless, I’m happy he survived and put it on YouTube for our enjoyment.
Think about the non-linear progress (AKA broken bones and pain) that must go into building the confidence to execute these runs at speed! When he turns the camera around on the replay of the last run you can get even more appreciation for the speed he picks up at certain junctures…
How Infrastructure Shapes History - Canadian Pacific Rail 🍁🚂
I was listening to Bill Ackman on the Lex Fridman Podcast earlier this week, and he made a comment that drew my curiosity. Without quoting directly, it was along the lines of how Canadian Pacific (a company of which Ackman’s Pershing Square owns a significant portion) forged an important part of North American history.
After some research, what seemed like an incredibly profound and even bold statement now feels rather obvious.
Like many great infrastructure projects, the development of the railways over time attracted huge scores of workers from different parts of the world, shaping part of the Canadian economy as well as its culture.
The building of the railways were also a key driver of rapid population growth of the Prarie Provinces in the early 20th century.
The completion of the rail also fulfilled a key condition allowing British Columbia to join the rest of Canada.
I enjoyed learning about the development of Canadian Pacific. It got me excited because I feel an important shift happening, at least here in the U.S. - there is a growing desire to build impactful infrastructure.
If Canadian Pacific is a canary in the coalmine of how infrastructure can shape history, I feel that important history could be starting to form in this very moment.
Recommendation: Investment Talk by Conor Mac
I’ve been a free subscriber of Investment Talk for quite some time (I can’t figure out exactly how long, but it’s one of my first subs since I joined Substack).
It’s been a great wealth of information for me and I wanted to take the time to recommend it to my subscribers here at Ramblings, Readings, and Rebounds.
According to Conor himself:
Investment Talk is where I write articles about the stock market, the companies within it, and human behaviour. I focus on writing about what I find interesting, in a way that will be both enjoyable and informative to the reader.
Even if you’re not an active participant in markets, reading about investing, as well as a healthy curiosity about business are both rich foundations on which you can build lots of practical knowledge.
If you’re unsure, start by becoming a free subscriber. What is there to lose?
NBA Notes 🏀🧺
I am starting to pay close attention to the teams who are likely to reach the playoffs. Which of them have reliable styles of play, repeatable patterns of high quality offense and defense, and exude the qualities of “contenders” rather than the qualities of a team likely to fold at the first sign of playoff adversity. Here are some major takeaways:
I am still a Clippers-skeptic
Outside of Kawhi Leonard, I’m a little underwhelmed at the offering of the other Clippers players given their roles. Paul George seems like he can’t get by anyone, and therefore is settling for low-quality jump shots for most of his offense. James Harden still has plenty of moments where he looks entirely careless with the ball and without it. Those two things specifically are cause for concern within the confines of a playoff series, where Kawhi will no doubt need some help keeping up with the firepower of other teams.
I’m not buying the recent Golden State surge
They’ve certainly found their footing, and I previously wrote about how I still have belief in them. However, this belief is something I’ll have to carry with me into next season where they’ll make the obviously needed roster changes. They are so small, and it’s just not going to be something they can overcome in the playoffs. I’ve seen far too many four-guard lineups, and for that reason, I have to write them off as serious contenders.
Why isn’t OKC getting enough love?
The Thunder are being written off by most pundits, and I can’t quite figure out why. I think it has something to do with how young they are, but they play with a maturity well-beyond what is normal for players of their age. They possess everything needed to make a deep playoff run.
The East ought to run through Boston
The Celtics are plain and simple much better than everyone else in their conference. If they come up short this year by not reaching the NBA Finals, it would be close to a catastrophe. Watch them dismantle the surging Dallas Mavericks in the second half of their recent game.
Final Notes
Long Form Junto Club #1 Coming Soon
As I wrote about in RRR17, I’ll be incorporating Junto Club discussions separate from standard editions of RRR. This is going to allow me to unpack all the information, context, and thoughts necessary to provide meaningful work around important topics.
My first deep dive will be an opinion piece on why I’m optimistic about the future of humanity. I’m so excited to share it with you all 😃.
Stop Butchering Kiwis 🚫
Two questions for you:
How often do you eat Kiwis?
How do you eat them?
If you’re like the old me, you rarely buy a Kiwi yourself, because you haven’t been taught the proper way to get the skin off easily. The effort needed to research the proper technique, combined with executing it, hasn’t been worth it. You walk right by the Kiwis without another thought.
Well, for me, that all changed when I learned that Kiwi skin is entirely edible. Not only that, but it is packed with important vitamins, fiber, and other good stuff. I bought a few, tried eating them with the skin on, and am happy to report they taste even better this way. Simply cut the ends off (they have a hard to chew spot from where they were on the vine), and enjoy.
Not only that, but I think that misconceptions about how you should eat a Kiwi have created a real market inefficiency. I suspect demand for Kiwis is very low relative to how healthy and enjoyable they are. Thus, I was able to buy ten of them just this morning at a very reasonable price. I cannot do that with other, more popular types of fruit.
Thanks so much for reading, and have a great week ahead!
-Tiko
Conor's a good guy! 💚 🥃
Too kind Tiko, really appreciate this. Made my week!