The Monday Read

End of Suga

Well, that was quick. Had some hopes for him as he wasn’t from a political dynasty (I loathe politicians that inherit their Daddy’s seat and political machine) but very much did not rise to the challenges of the last couple of years. Not going to miss Mr Suga.

Wonder who we’ll get next, and whether the voters will forgive the LDP for how they handled… well, everything for the last couple of years.

Also hopefully the next person will prioritise the environment going forward. We need some leadership on that on the world stage.

Merch

We have a merch store! It’s a bit expensive so I don’t expect anyone to buy anything but I kind of liked the concept. I bought a tumbler and a sticker to test it out, and the tumbler was pretty good quality 🙂

For the discerning gentleman or lady.

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (15,373 posts to date). There’s a thread about the November conference too 🙂

This week’s random purchases

I got some Xiaomi earbuds and they are surprisingly good for the price.

Was already a fan of Xiaomi fitness bands (I have owned three -the 2, 3, and 6 models) but these are great too.

And I hear they are starting to make cars now…

Xiaomi is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange and available through brokers in Japan. They don’t pay a dividend so I am not interested yet, but I like the products very much.

This week’s books

I continue to buy three books for every one I read: probably have a couple of hundred on my Kindle that I haven’t read yet! Going to remedy that by being stricter with myself and cutting down on random timewasting online, in favour of reading or (gasp) writing more…

Bought Minako Takekawa’s new book about upcoming changes to NISA. Seems like a brief summary of the NISA systems, a description of changes, and a basic Q&A section. I’ll do a post on the blog summarising bits I found interesting. Seems like it doesn’t have the investment advice found in her other guides, so I would stick to those if you are just getting started with NISA.

Also reread Neil Gaiman’s Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu crossover short story A Study in Emerald (full story at the link) and enjoyed it very much second time round.

I finished Good to Great, by Jim Collins and found it very useful as I think about what we are going to do with my wife’s English school next year. Picked up Barry Eisler’s latest book The Chaos Kind and flew through it in about a day. Fun, but you definitely need to have read some of his earlier books to enjoy it. Struggling to enjoy Empire State of Mind, the Jaz-Z biography. For some reason it just reads like wikipedia to me -I guess because Jaz-Z didn’t want to be involved.

This week’s links

  1. Might be good to find even more new reading material: the most translated book from each country
  2. I’ve been suffering from this myself: How to Recover from Pandemic-Induced Mind Fog
  3. Japanese jobs: Working a Lot More Than 9 to 5 in Japan – No End in Sight?
  4. Sean’s latest newsletter, and I don’t think it’s about hiking/climbing at all.
  5. I always say RetireJapan is the best English language resource about personal finance in Japan: How to Become the Best in the World at Something
  6. Set tight deadlines: Revisiting Parkinson’s Law
  7. Never got the appeal vs electricity: Hydrogen. Really?
  8. No one knows! What will the stock market do next?
  9. Great, a new thing to worry about. Although to be honest I suspect I have had some form of long Covid since last April: Long COVID: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
  10. This is an interesting graph: The kids are doing alright
  11. Getting to this point is a weird feeling: When Work No Longer Matters
  12. I am SO looking forward to this: Dune review

What do you think? Anything good in there?

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6 Responses

  1. I think you misunderstand the appeal of Hydrogen. In a perfect world H will be used to power cars AND make electricity at H-powered power stations. (It’s not one or the other.) H is the most common element on the planet and the result of burning H is water vapor.
    In a really perfect world, the extraction of H from hydrocarbons in the ground, water, or the air itself, would be powered by renewable energy.
    We all know about the Hindenburg tragedy: a hundred years later the brainiacs working on this problem think they have a solution. Let’s hope they are right.

    1. Not sure what you mean. Are you referring to the content of the article I linked to?

      My main issue with hydrogen for vehicles is the need to build an entirely new network of fueling stations, transport the hydrogen there, and then have people come to the stations to fuel their vehicles. As opposed to just plugging the vehicles into the existing electrical network. Seems extremely wasteful and at this point basically a losing proposition.

      Hydrogen for energy storage, to power ships/aircraft, or for industrial applications is a different matter (although we still don’t seem to have environmentally friendly methods to generate hydrogen yet).

      1. OK. So, let’s build electrical power stations that are powered by Hydrogen. Push the electricity along the wires that exist now. Not a problem.

        Long term, there will be a problem. Now, we will need new battery technology. Current batteries depend on “rare earths”. Right now they are rare and concentrated in unfriendly countries (mostly in China and Afghanistan). As other stocks are depleted, no doubt that exploration will find new reserves (as has occurred in Chile and Australia), but the world’s use of batteries will probably outstrip these. Plus we will have to have battery recycling systems as used batteries are an environmental disaster. Solutions create new problems.

        Agreed that distributing retail hydrogen will require an enormous buildup of infrastructure. However, go back 100 years in a time machine and try to explain to those people that every house today has copper wiring connecting it to an electrical grid that includes street lights and traffic lights. That we have ice on demand and can watch any major sporting event in the world from our living room. No one would believe you.

        One more benefit of Hydrogen. In the aftermath of a natural or manmade disaster, your car would generate enough power to keep your household fridge, lights, & aircon running. (So long as you had a car-to-house adapter.) This is science fiction TODAY: it could be science fact in 10-20 years, in a perfect world.

  2. #1 — all those wonderful titles from around the world, and the US gets tagged for something by L. Ron Hubbard… 🙁

  3. Good news on Hydrogen? From Bloomberg

    Jo Bamford, a member of the family behind one of the world’s largest construction-equipment makers, has co-founded an investment fund to focus on the hydrogen sector.

    HYCAP has raised more than 200 million pounds ($277 million) to invest primarily in British businesses as it aims to boost the production and supply of hydrogen made from renewable energy, according to a statement Monday. Bamford set up the fund with multifamily office Vedra Partners, co-founded by Max Gottschalk. Managed in the U.K., the Luxembourg-based fund is looking to raise 1 billion pounds and has already identified more than three-dozen possible investments.