The Monday Read

Coming at you from a Swedish train

(actually, the Swedish train managed to wipe my entire post just as I posted it leaving me with the soul-destroying task of spending another hour re-writing it)

It seems as though last week’s Monday Read was post #500 on the blog, so Happy Anniversary to us. Only five years to go until we get to #1,000.

I’m in Sweden for the next couple of weeks, but hopefully that won’t impact our posting schedule too badly.

Here are this week’s links:

  1. Read books. Lost of them. Preferably interesting ones. How to pick which books to read
  2. And neither should you? The Mona Lisa doesn’t tweet
  3. Scary new world: This is how we radicalised the world
  4. What is best in life? Getting out: A Godfather Story
  5. ​How much money do you need? Transcendental money.
  6. Lucky I don’t have any cash: The Psychology of Sitting in Cash, Part Deux
  7. Great interview with Ray Dalio.
  8. Paul Graham on careers: What doesn’t seem like work?
  9. The US economy is doing well: Too many Teslas
  10. The perennial debate: Should I pay off my mortgage early?
  11. Make time for your loved ones, while you still can. Time is more valuable than money.
  12. Everyone has their reasons. No one is crazy.
  13. Collaborative Fund weekly links. Very meta. What we’re reading.
  14. ​Interesting short story about social media: Sort by controversial
  15. Every entrepreneur/freelancer struggles with this: How much should you charge?
  16. First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they join you: The New Retirement Plan: Save Almost Everything, Spend Virtually Nothing
  17. If the political will is there: A zero-carbon economy is within reach
  18. Inspirational tweets from Naval Ravikant: How to get rich (without getting lucky)
  19. The Japanese government stubbornly continues ignoring renewable energy: ​Japan’s nuclear industry growing, but slower than government hoped

What did you think? Anything good in there? I found all of them interesting, but #3, #8, and #11 particularly struck me.

And here are some books I finished/bought/started reading:

  • The Jiu-Jitsu Answer Man by Roy Harris. Very knowledgeable FAQ about Brazilian jiu-jitsu. This is great. It’s very  deep so I am reading it slowly. He focuses on BJJ for older people (40s and 50s) which is very much what I need.
  • Gone by Michael Grant. First in a very popular YA (young adult) series. Checked it out for my reading program (but I also not-so-secretly enjoy reading YA fiction). Really enjoyed it and will be picking up the whole series once I get back to Japan.
  • The Consuming Fire (second book in John Scalzi’s collapsing empire series). This was fun and a good read for a long train ride. Entertaining but not great. I’m looking forward to part 3 though.

​New Reacher book tomorrow -they’re not as good as they used to be but still a guilty pleasure 🙂

11 Responses

  1. How does Japan get to a zero-carbon economy without nuclear energy? I realize geothermal is under-exploited but the reality is that the 2011 tsunami saw more than 15,000 people killed by water but none from radiation. The Adair Turner article in Japan Times is written from China.

    1. By investing heavily in distributed solar, wind, wave, geothermal + storage on the production side, and building insulation/efficiency on the consumption side. They should have done it after the tsunami and could have then exported the technology. At this rate China will do it and Japan will have missed the biggest export boom of this century.
      The incredible cost of building, maintaining and decommissioning nuclear plants, plus the (admittedly tiny) chance of accidents makes them too expensive in my opinion.
      How many solar panels and batteries could the 20 trillion yen (current estimate) for the Fukushima cleanup have paid for?

      2. Given all the solar installations going up all over Tohoku, I find it difficult to argue that Japan is ignoring renewable energy. Am a big proponent of nuclear, however, as I think it is an important component of reducing our carbon footprint. Feel arguments against nuclear are based on emotion and fear rather than reality. Renewable energy and nuclear are both necessary for Japan, in my opinion.

  2. I would contest the statement that nobody died from radiation. Its quite a complex task to attribute an illness such as cancer and to point at fukushima as the cause. Conversely saying that all cancers stem from fukushima is just as false. The asurd nature of death certificates in Japan will further muddy the waters as well.
    The established energy business model has very little incentive to change. They have decades of momentum and expenditures all pointing towards further “profitablity” based upon a flawed methodology of assets and consumption. Add to it that the decision makers of these companies are by and large from a generation that still believes the fax to be earth shattering. They aren’t criminal, just misinformed and sadly incapabale of thinking outside the concrete walls of the box they inhabit.
    The longer I live here, the more I am convinced that Japan is all about yesterday, the US about today and Africa is tomorrow. Iceland generates plenty of power and the system was build by a Japanese company. If Iceland can do it, why can’t Japan ?

    1. The population of Japan does happen to be a mere 374.8 times larger than that of Iceland. That might be a small factor to take into consideration when comparing the two nations.

    2. Cancer rates in Japan after Fukushima are one of the most studied issues in public health. The cancer of greatest interest is thyroid cancer because of the rise seen after Chernobyl so there were mass screening programs around Fukushima. A review of the data so far concluded:
      “According to the studies reported until now, it is difficult at this point to attribute thyroid cancers in Fukushima to the direct effects of radiation exposure. The reasons are as follows. Exposure doses in Fukushima are significantly lower than those in Chernobyl (65). There is no apparent regional difference in the rate of thyroid cancer cases among the residential areas at the time of the earthquake and, hence, exposure status of the patients (50,66). The mean age of the subjects diagnosed with thyroid cancer was 10–15 years at the time of accident, while there were no cases in younger children (aged 0–5 years for the first four years), who are more vulnerable to radiation exposure (67–69).”
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5770131/
      The installed geothermal capacity for Iceland (665 MWe) is larger than Japan (525-535 MWe) but there are a number of projects coming online soon or planned now that it is possible to build plants in national parks. http://geothermal.jogmec.go.jp/report/file/session_160602_01.pdf

  3. In my like basket: #2, #6 (another example of Ben Carlson’s excellent advice)
    

    Regret that #3 is too politically biased to take seriously. I’m not the only one making this observation, see the number of people saying roughly the same thing in the comments. And for the length of the article, it never mentions when social media has been used by the left, including by Obama, who did many of the same things during his presidential runs.
    I can understand the feeling behind #12, but personally would never consider spending good money on lottery tickets.
    #17 adheres to the standard “sky is falling” script we hear after every IPCC report. But that’s the hallmark of the environmental movement, it’s all they have left since the planet isn’t reflecting the disasters that they’ve been forecasting for decades. Anyone who makes the statement “a zero-carbon economy is undoubtedly technically feasible and easily affordable” isn’t intellectually serious.
    Regretfully, renewable energy isn’t currently able to match the energy content of the other energy sources, even when made cheaper by government subsidies. Once it does, you can bet your bottom dollar that energy companies will be the first ones to invest heavily in it, since they will know before the rest of us that it’s profitable.

  4. I found #10 an interesting read as it is very relevant to us. We have recently refinance our home loan and will be making slightly smaller money mortgage payments. We do plan on making yearly lump sum early payments to pay off the loan faster. But I’m not sure how much. With interest rates comparatively low should we put the extra money to work else where ? The lure of being totally debt free sooner is very attractive though. I know it depends case by case but what are your thoughts on paying off mortgages earlier?

    1. My take on that is that it is largely psychological. I have seen someone run the numbers for paying off loans versus investing, and it comes out similar.
      At the end of the day, will you feel better having reduced or paid off your mortgage? Or will you feel better having invested?
      Personally I have just started making overpayments to my mortgage. It’s kind of nice to see it go down, but we are only paying 30,000 yen a month anyway so it doesn’t make much difference either way.
      The most important thing is to have a mortgage you can comfortably pay.

    2. I thought #10 gave a good rundown of both sides of the argument. I paid it off early even though my interest rate was only around 1.7%. I didn’t qualify for the tax deduction in Japan (I did get the US tax deduction but it was replacing the standard deduction) and I felt that life as an expat was uncertain enough that I didn’t want to have to plan for monthly housing payments. My bank wanted me to limit how often I made early payments so I saved up to do them just after each summer bonus season. Having paid off the mortgage I find I’m in a position to cash flow my kids’ college expenses and am more comfortable being 100% in equities with no fixed income/bond investments to soften the blow of market volatility.