The Week #7

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  • Saw this tweet about how the size of a highway interchange in in Houston is the same size as the city center of Siena, Italy (population 30k). Everything's bigger in Texas, but some things are jut ridiculous.

  • I tried Yakisoba bread for the first time in all my years in Japan. I remembering seeing it for the first time in Nagoya in 2006 at the 7-11 near the language school I was studying at, but never thought to try it. It's pretty good - but since it's carbs on carbs, you still want some protein to fill you up.

  • I wrote an article about how to build environmentally sustainable digital products. There's a lot more about this topic that I want to talk about and explore. It's also something that most software engineers probably don't think much about in their daily work, as energy efficiency is seen as a hardware issue.

  • Thinking about sustainability, I love the efforts like these off-grid solar powered websites. That might be offline part of the time goes against our fast-food-fast-fashion-always-on culture is so refreshing (albeit disappointing if it's down when you want to access it). It's like the Slow movement for micro-computers.

  • I saw this article about the results of Finland's experiment with Universal Basic Income and it's good to see that UBI doesn't effect the willingness to work, as many detractors say.

  • Although it's due to extenuating circumstances, Covid-cash is not dissimilar to an UBI experiment. While we are fortunate enough to have not been effected by the economic blowback (yet, who knows what the future brings 🤞🏻), it did bring a sense of security much like UBI.