Summer in the air
It’s getting warm (and humid!) up here in Sendai. Get the feeling this is going to be a long, hot summer.
Might be a good time to review our top ten tips to cope with summer heat here in Japan 🙂
Here are this week’s links
- If we’re going to subsidise energy, why not subsidise renewable energy? Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending
- Wow. Hope I am still able to work in my eighties and nineties: Still at it
- Harrowing to think about. The Sorrow and the Shame of the Accidental Killer
- Wonderful podcast with the Mad Fientist interviewing Ramit Sethi (I will teach you to be rich).
- I would prefer the government make and enforce laws rather than ‘urge’ things. Perhaps they could switch to urging me to pay tax? Gov’t to urge firms to hire employees until age 70 amid labor crunch
- I know what I would do… What should I do with my inheritance?
- How many have you mastered? Realistic Personal Finance Hacks
- Do this before it is too late: Aging population spurs drive to tidy nation’s cluttered homes
Short but sweet this week. Anything good in there? I was struck by #2, #3, and #4.
Also managed to read some books!
- One Word Kill: this is a D&D themed sci-fi YA novel by Mark Lawrence. I loved his Prince of Thorns series (definitely not YA), but this is just okay so far (although I am enjoying the D&D references). Will probably read the next two too.
- Go: a Japanese novel by Kazuki Kaneshiro translated into English. Got it free on Kindle. So far so good, but I’m only a couple of chapters in.
- Nightmare in Pink: the next book in this hard-boiled detective series by the author of Cape Fear. Pretty good stuff!
- Shadow and Bone: pretty dull fantasy YA seemingly aimed at teenage girls. Not my cup of tea 😉
Something interesting to me is that the people featured in “Still at it” are mostly “makers”. Their jobs consists in creating something tangible in the real world and interacting with physical matter. Flowers, food, wood, metal…
You see nobody who’s in the pure “intellectual”, “service only” fields: lawyers, product manager, sales, marketing, etc… <– those are all the soul sucking jobs that are often mentioned from people who are badly trying to retire early.
The one exception in the article is maybe the doctor.
Awesome selection of articles as always. (Although to be honest I'm getting a bit tired of collaborative fund. Their articles always appear to be in depth, but as I read them I often realize they're just stretching bullet points to full articles that bore me. This week's article is a good example of that)
Great point. And when I think about the kinds of work I would be interested in doing once I don’t need to work fully for a living, they are things like writing, coaching, teaching. Hopefully there will still be demand for those things in our AI-dominated future!
Heh, I kind of get what you mean about Collaborative Fund. In their defence they do put out a lot of articles though 🙂
Great spread of links as always. I’m doing a lesson discussing ageism and aging workers this week and will pass on the “Still at it” link to my students. As fond as I am of teaching though, I can’t imagine wanting to do it full time into my 70s—unless it was mostly seminar classes where I could sit down.
I agree that Collaborative fund is basically expanded bullet points, but it makes for a nice light read over breakfast. Particularly liked the idea of defining savings as “the gap between your ego and your income”.