Accelerated tests, woodpecker's skulls, and renting out Blockbuster on AirBNB
another krappy newsletter #3
Hey gang,
Good evening and welcome to an after dark edition of another krappy newsletter.
One benefit to writing a weekly newsletter has been that I am reminded of how quickly some weeks pass and how slowly other weeks pass. Reminds me that time is in fact still passing even though I keep staying indoors…
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IDEA I AM WORKING ON FOR A LONG FORM POST
The pandemic as an accelerated test for the mind
In hardware reliability, we create week long tests that can simulate 5+ years of using the product. The idea is that you speed up the learning process and find/ fix design issues faster.
Take a reusable water bottle for instance. If you want to understand how your water bottle will age in five years, you could run an experiment where you open/close it the number of times that you would expect to open/close it over the next five years. From this experiment, you may start to notice that certain materials cannot withstand the consistent abuse of this motion so you change the design to withstand the abuse.
In this same way, quarantine is acting as an accelerated test on people’s minds. Five years of alone time are being condensed into five months. As a result, people are finding and fixing lifestyle design issues in weeks rather than years. Lot of people moving to new cities, starting new jobs, and taking up long lost hobbies.
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HIGH ACHIEVER BURNOUT
An interesting group of people who seem to be failing this accelerated test is “the high achieving population.” People who have the “great jobs” from the outside looking in are having mental breakdowns by the boatload (at least it appears).
Data is hard to find on this outside of anecdote, but I have been finding Twitter a good place to at least see a lot of anecdotes. Data is just what we call enough anecdotes after all.
Tweets like this appear to be resonating with people:
As well as threads about how to avoid burnout.
On top of that, I am seeing more and more tweets that sound like this one:
I met a doctor this weekend that called medicine a high-paying, dead end job. He’s frustrated by the red tape, lack of creativity, and growth opportunities.
I never thought of it that way.
Funny how all the “smartest” kids in school wanted to be doctors and lawyers.
@JonathanAGraham
My hypothesis: When you strip away the people, the free food, the social structures that remind you every day of the prestige of what you do, you are left with just the work. A lot of people are finding out that work is rough when that is all there is. The other pieces helped distract them from their thoughts about how this is not what they want to do spend their life working on.
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LAST BLOCKBUSTER ON EARTH IS NOW AN AIRBNB RENTAL
Nothing illustrates the end of an era quite like the last Blockbuster becoming an AirBNB. Out with the old and in with the new.
Would be dope to rent this bad boy out and watch the “Three Ninjas” over a box of Junior Mints.
https://www.tmz.com/2020/08/11/last-blockbuster-turned-into-airbnb-movie-rental/
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THE DESIGN OF A WOODPECKER’S SKULL
Good design is found in nature all the time. Given thousands of years of evolutionary progress, many animals come up with anatomical designs to optimize for their life patterns. Such is the case for a wood pecker. Which grew a massive tongue that wraps around its brain to avoid the effects of concussions.
This bird is legit ready to suit up and play in the NFL with this mile long tongue wrapped around its brain. Crazy that evolution dictated this anatomical structure rather than figuring out another way to eat that didn’t involve drilling into the side of a tree with your fucking nose.
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VISUALIZATION OF THE WEEK
I try to keep this visual in mind whenever I get frustrated with someone on the Internet. Just try to keep making your way up Grown-Up Mountain.
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GREAT MATH MEME ALERT
As a New Yorker who loves math, a math joke involving pizza is really my dream come true.
