The Monday Read

What are you going to do with 2019?

My 2019 started… poorly, with me dropping my phone in the bath (goodbye phone). I now have a new one though, never fear.

The one good thing about having no phone over the winter break is that I got A LOT of reading done. Check out the book section at the bottom of this post!

Here are this week’s links:

1. This is a fantastic article to kick off the year: How to Unlock Your Creative Potential in 2019
2. This is actually pretty doable: A New Year’s Resolution That Will Actually Improve Your Life
3. Just keep swimming: Catching The Falling Knife: Investing Into A Bear Market
4. I completely agree: my life is much better now that I hang out with my jiu-jitsu buddies 3-4 times a week… Join Analog Social Media
5. We need a lot more of this all over the world: Solar, thermal… Spain’s historic hotels go green
6. I wonder how many of these we will solve in my lifetime: Hilbert’s list
7. Good news. But maybe too slow: Renewables May Prove Cheaper Than 96% of Coal Plants Worldwide by 2030
8. Very interesting, very troubling: The Digital Maginot Line
9. I don’t know if this is going to work. I hope it does. Japan has been good to me. I’m just not sure the government is doing enough to prepare: Japan to Asia: Give us your young, your skilled, your eager workers
10. I tried to have a depth year last year and failed. Might give it another go this year: Why the Depth Year Was My Best Year
11. If life gives you lemons… The Economics of Divorce
12. More background on the Ghosn thing: The savior who fell to earth
13. Environmentalism over time: WHAT HAPPENED TO 90S ENVIRONMENTALISM?
14. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things: ‘Momentum is growing’: reasons to be hopeful about the environment in 2019
15. I tend to agree: just bringing people without thinking about integrating them doesn’t seem like a great plan… Japan risks creating ‘immigration problem’ warns opposition leader
16. Ikigai! Live to work! I jest, but it still seems a bit ironic: Never retire
17. Of course, this is the real issue if Japan wants to bring in hundreds of thousands of foreign workers: Fears of exploitation as Japan prepares to admit foreign workers
18. And of course this starts from this week (although I presume it is baked into ticket prices): Japan to start collecting ¥1,000 departure tax from Monday
19. Ruh-roh: Jair Bolsonaro launches assault on Amazon rainforest protections
20. Somewhat encouraging: Age against the machine: the secret to enjoying a long life
21. Interesting and very comprehensive: What is self-improvement?
22. A strong yen and weak stock markets is a wonderful combination for people still working and investing: Yen’s recent surge a red flag for world markets and global economy in 2019
23. Ray Dalio is extremely good at explaining things (found myself reading this in his voice): To Help Put Recent Economic & Market Moves in Perspective
24. This is a wonderful very short post: How not to be stupid

What do you think? Anything good in there? My favourites this week were #1, #12, and #23…

And here are the (many) books I started/finished/bought this week:

• The Silent Dead (Tetsuya Honda). I read the English translation of this, which annoyed me. Good police procedural story though, and the characters were very vivid. Might try to read the next one in Japanese.
• Artificial Condition (Martha Wells). This is the second Murderbot story, and I enjoyed it almost as much as the first one. Wonderful readable science fiction. Looking forward to books 3 and 4 next.
• The Daily Stoic (Ryan Holiday). Really enjoying this so far. 366 quotes from notable Stoic thinkers, one for each day of the year. Six days in, I’m finding it thought-provoking and interesting.
• The Killer Collective (Barry Eisler). This was again a bit disappointing. I like Barry Eisler -the early Rain books were great and the first Livia Lone was wonderful. He just can’t leave his own characters alone though, so this book is half interesting and half just the same old in-jokes. It’s a shame he ruined Livia by crowbarring Dox into the narrative.