The Monday Read

Happy New Year edition

Well, that’s the end of 2019 (and the decade, depending on how you measure it). Hope it was a good one for you 🙂

Our next blog post will be planning 2020: hope you’ll join us for the ride.

This week’s links

1. New blog post by Tim Ferriss (he mostly does podcasts now unfortunately): Make before you manage
2. Very useful for people and businesses: On seeking a category
3. Unemployment insurance in Japan: I’m on Japanese Unemployment and it’s Awesome
4. A present from the wonderful Harry Browne: A gift for my daughter
5. How Japan has fared in the thirty years since the bubble
6. Stunning as ever. Looking forward to the rest of this series: Photography: Hokkaido Trip 2019
7. We need hundreds more like her: Isoko Mochizuki, the ‘troublesome’ thorn in Shinzo Abe’s side
8. I don’t own anything on this list but always feel like I should: Gear post 2020
9. This seems like a pretty bad idea: Help the rich
10. I still think this could be a net positive *if* it is handled well: Japan Shrinks by 500,000 People as Births Fall to Lowest Number Since 1874
11. Be careful out there: Stealing money from online bank accounts surging in Japan
12. Probably worth a read: Every Amazon shareholder letter as a downloadable PDF
13. Pretty bleak: Rising layoffs, AI taking jobs, crumbling infrastructure
14. It would be nice to see something at the national level too: ‘Zero Emission Tokyo Strategy’ spells out capital’s plan to take on global climate crisis
15. Not sure fixating on the market peak during the bubble is very useful: 30 years since Japan’s stock market peaked, climb back continues
16. I need to print this out and tape it to my computer: Weird hill
17. John Scalzi on how this wasn’t enjoyable: Thoughts On a Year of Exercise
18. Kind of obvious but maybe useful: 3 Simple Steps to Start a Sinking Fund
19. Indeed: There’s No Such Thing as ‘Quality’ Time

Phew. Anything good in there? I quite liked #4, #12, and #19 🙂

This week’s books:

• Trillion Dollar Coach, by Eric Schmidt. Comes recommended.
• Beating the Street, by Peter Lynch. The sequel to One Up on Wall Street.
• The Promise, by Robert Crais. More hardboiled detective hijinks.
• Range, by David Epstein. The case for generalists (I am one).
• Captain Britain and MI:13, by Paul Cornell. UK-based Marvel comic hijinks.
• Memoires d’Hadrien, by Marguerite Yourcenar. Going to see if my French still works.

Haven’t actually started any of these, but I am due to spend a couple of days at the in-laws’, so expect to get through at least a couple of them 😉