20220201

Did my first sets of squats at the gym today since maybe 2018-2019(!). It felt great and I’ve got a friend who is quite good at it to teach me good technique so that I can lift more and not hurt myself in the process. It has been so so nice to be able to exercise again. It’s sort of like how when you’re sick you realize just how great it is to not be sick, but when you’re no longer sick you forget how bad being sick was. When you aren’t exercising you forget how good it can feel and the various positive impacts that has elsewhere in your life. So far my legs don’t feel too awful - we’ll see how that changes in the morning!

I realized that I didn’t get to two of the items I had discussed with my advisors in our last meeting. So I clearly need a better system to remind me of the tasks we care about at hand and make progress on all of them instead of going into deep rabbit holes on few of them as I did this week. Something to be more conscious of now!

Daily Listening This is a really beautiful edit that I listened to today, and I’ve been enjoying listening to Cody Currie’s stuff on shuffle as well thanks to finding him through this.

Daily Reading More Freedom’s Forge - learning about the origins of the famous Liberty Ships. It’s kind of funny - the US kept increasing the number they wanted to order every other day. Shipyards that were still under construction were getting orders to double the number of slips (I think slips are the place where a new ship can be made). The sheer scope of the production they were getting ready to build was insane. Many of these shipyards were being made by the organizations that made the Hoover Dam which was an interesting connection. Not surprising, in hindsight, given that the big engineering groups almost surely would be utilized in the war effort. The author is making the case that much of the success of America’s current ramp up comes from the free market approach to production and decentralization of decision making. The US just put up the money and let the industry get to work. I’d like to see a skeptical take of this, but the anecdotes of how the various companies/contractors are able to more effectively figure out construction and design of various military goods makes it seem plausible. Of course those are anecdotes…