Life Hacks

Short Articles on Life Hacks

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#215 – COVID-19 Preparedness Pack
Mar 22nd, 2020

1. Must View: COVID-19 Metrics Deck – Financial Times
2. Roundup News: Guardian Live
3. Deprecated: COVID-19 Dashboard, Johns Hopkins University, latest numbers & interactive map by country & region, Professor Lauren Gardner, et.al., from Jan 22nd (43,141 worldwide cases 23rd Jan, 307,278 cases 22nd Mar, with 1.2 billion daily requests for the map’s data, 2.4M cases 20th April — notice the acceleration: 7x growth in first two months, 7x growth in past month. Prediction: 8M infected by May 20th best case if worldwide lockdowns are effective in slowing spread.)
4. Must Read: Getting along with family and elderly parents during lockdown.
5. Must Read: Make your own hand sanitizer
6. Must Read: How the Pandemic will end., by Ed Yong, Mar 25th, 2020, Atlantic. This is grim reading but it seems well within the range of possibility.
7. Must Read: Imperial College of London’s paper (PDF, 20 pages, 1 page excellent summary), Impact of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand, Neil M. Ferguson, et.al., Mar 16, 2020
8. Must Skim: Summaries of all 10 Report findings from the MRC Centre for Infectious Disease Analysis (CIDA) at Imperial College London, from 17th January (Report #1) when there were only 3 known cases outside Wuhan and an upper estimate of 4000 cases in Wuhan, to 20th March (Report #10) when the pandemic is worldwide, several countries are in lockdown (Italy, Spain, France), with many more countries within and outside Europe having already launched harsh suppression measures (social distancing and home restrictions, mandatory closure of schools, universities, and non-essential services such as restaurants, bars, pubs, public transportation). Current known mortality rates: 1% under 50 years, up to 15% 80 years+.
9. Must Read: Timeline – what happened and when, Johns Hopkins University
10. Must Read: COVID-19 Basics, from Johns Hopkins University (how it is spread, how long it lasts on surfaces, more about social distancing measures)
11. Must Read: In younger infected, death can come through a blood clot inducing a stroke. Treatment is possible if the clot is removed within 6-24h. Do not delay calling an ambulance if this affects you or a loved one.

With the additional time indoors, what are you watching? If a little gut-punchingly relevant cinema is to your taste, here are a few titles:

1. World War Z (2013), Brad Pitt
2. Last Days on Mars (2013), Liev Schrieber. (And then heck, for a trip further away, Passengers (2016), Jennifer Lawrence, Laurence Fishburne)
3. I am Legend (2007), Will Smith
4. This list by Vulture, shares 68 pandemic movies. Binge away!

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#213 – Flour self-sufficiency — Milling your own grains, whole meal baking, and healthy biscuits and cakes
Mar 9th, 2020

Totally thrilled! Having been studying the mathematics of the ancient Sumerians, and their late Neolithic survival technologies (article forthcoming), and now seeing the impending COVID-19 crisis creating food shortages, I bought two days ago this amazing home grain milling machine (£72.90, Amazon UK).

Stocked up subsequently on dried rations as they keep longer than cans or fresh food. Quite varied stuff: barley grains, red kidney beans, dried lentils, popcorn kernels, brown rice, almonds. All of these grind up into fine flour in 60 seconds or lesss.

Since then have been having a blast baking very simple nutritious biscuits for my family (2 young children and me.

Recipes so far (watch this space for more!)

1. barley-almond cookies combining almond and barley flours (Sun Mar 8th)
2. corn, kidney bean, and barley cookies (Mon Mar 9th)
3. coconut and barley macaroons (Sun Mar 15th)
4. chicky-choco-oaty-boaties, combining equal parts chick-pea flour (gram flour) and oatmeal, with cocoa and orange essence for (Fri Mar 20th)
5. spelt and oat (Fri Apr 10th)
6. atta (wholemeal wheat) and oat (Sat Apr 11th)
7. atta, oat, and cocoa (Sat Apr 18th)
8. sweet atta (Mon Apr 27th) – 1/2 cup of sugar (same
9. cinammon atta (Fri May 1st) – 3 cups of flour, 1/3 cup of sugar, 3 eggs, 1 cup of milk, 1/2 cup of corn oil, plenty of cinammon (3-4 tablespoons) This forms a dough that can be rolled and cookies cut out and put on baking tray: 15 min at 170 deg.
10. chocolate atta (Wed May 6th) – note, 1/6th cup of cocoa requires an extra 1/4 cup of sugar to offset the inherent bitterness of cocoa
11. coconut macaroon filling (Sun May 3rd) – coconut flour, 1 egg, sugar, milk. Mix well. Leave it in the fridge for 2 days. Forms a delicious macaroon filling.

Basic cookie recipe has just 5 natural ingredients:
2.5 cups of flour (mix whatever kinds you like, I typically use 2 cups of a basic grain, and 0.5 cup of exotic stuff)
0.25 to 0.5 cups of sugar (I use less where the flours are basic and more with the exotics which have a stronger less child friendly taste)
2-3 eggs (more eggs, yummier)
0.5 cups of oil (I use sunflower or corn oil)
0.5 cups of milk (I use soya as it has a thicker texture)
0.2 cups of baking cocoa (unsweetened) optional
1-2 tablespoons of extract (e.g. orange, almond, lemon, etc.) optional, I use this only with high exotic blends like 50% chickpea flour due to mask their strong taste and make the results more appealing for little palattes

Mix the dry goods first in a mixing bowl. Add the wet stuff. Mix with a fork into a batter. Adjust ingredients to get the texture to a scoop-and-blob consistency, and blob onto baking tray with baking paper. Over pre-heated to 170*C. Bake for 10-15 minutes depending on how crispy vs. soft you like the insides.

Bakes about 60 small and nutritious cookies, which in my family, then last 4-5 days, as they become part of breakfast and snack times.

The grinder is easy to set up, a snap to use, and easy to clean with the brush (I have not felt the need to clean it with water).

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#184 – Leadership Toolbox: The Dance Floor and the Balcony
Fri 12th July, 2019

This metaphor of the Dance Floor and the Balcony, by Ronald Heifetz (Leadership on the Line, 2002, Harvard Business School Press), is one worth reflecting on each day.

“Let’s say you are dancing in a big ballroom. . . . Most of your attention focuses on your dance partner, and you reserve whatever is left to make sure you don’t collide with dancers close by. . . . When someone asks you later about the dance, you exclaim, ‘The band played great, and the place surged with dancers.’

“But, if you had gone up to the balcony and looked down on the dance floor, you might have seen a very different picture. You would have noticed all sorts of patterns. . . you might have noticed that when slow music played, only some people danced; when the tempo increased, others stepped onto the floor; and some people never seemed to dance at all. . . . the dancers all clustered at one end of the floor, as far away from the band as possible. . . . You might have reported that participation was sporadic, the band played too loud, and you only danced to fast music.

“. . .The only way you can gain both a clearer view of reality and some perspective on the bigger picture is by distancing yourself from the fray. . . .

“If you want to affect what is happening, you must return to the dance floor.”*

“Each day you need to be both among the dancers and up on the balcony. That’s where the magic and insight is, going back and forth between the two, using one to enhance the other. To do that takes discipline, can be tiring, and takes time. The pressure of daily life tends to keep us on the dance floor.

“How to shift between the dance floor and the balcony:
“Pencil in some quiet time each day to step outside the daily grind and review what you are doing against where you would like to be going. Create an opportunity amongst the demands of the day to stop and reflect. Think about how your time each day is split between the ‘dance floor’ and the ‘balcony’. The split will be different for different people on any given day. It’s about asking yourself if you are aligning what you are doing, with what you want.”

Sources:

• Book: Heifetz, R., and Linsky, M. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002
• Article 1: https://gettingchangeright.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/the-dance-floor-and-the-balcony/
• Article 2: https://www.resiliencedevelopmentcompany.com/single-post/2016/05/11/Get-Off-The-Dance-Floor-On-To-The-Balcony

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#183 – Virtual Currencies – Facebook’s plan with the Libra Association
Tue 25th June, 2019
The opportunity for Facebook and a handful of partner companies (Visa, Mastercard, Vodafone, Uber) is clear: build up a customer funded reserve of government bonds and national currencies, where interest accumulates for the association, and ordinary users gain transaction free management of ability to buy and sell.

What lies beneath is the accumulation of power and the ability to influence macroeconomic policy on a scale that is bigger than all central banks together.

This article presents how this might play out.
The Atlantic, Eric Posner, 25th June 2019.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/dont-trust-libra-facebooks-new-cryptocurrency/592450/

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#182 – Revelation, Enlightenment, Inspiritation – the case of Nietzsche
Sun 16th June, 2019
Nietzsche’s life and works are an interesting example of a man with unflinching conviction in his specialism. What I find most interesting is his account of the enlightenment he experienced in autumn 1888 which he describes in his autobiography Ecce Homo:

“Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word
inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige of superstition in one, it would hardly be possible to set aside completely the idea that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece or medium of an almighty power. The idea of revelation in the sense that something becomes suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy, which profoundly convulses and upsets one—describes simply the matter of fact. One hears—one does not seek; one takes—one does not ask who gives: a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with necessity, unhesitatingly—I have never had any choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy such that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one’s steps either rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of a endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes;—there is a depth of happiness in which the painfullest and gloomiest do not operate as antitheses, but as conditioned, as demanded in the sense of necessary shades of colour in such an overflow of light. There is an instinct for rhythmic relations which embraces wide areas of forms (length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its pressure and tension). Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The involuntariness of the figures and similes is the most remarkable thing; one loses all perception of what constitutes the figure and what constitutes the simile; everything seems to present itself as the readiest, the correctest and the simplest means of expression. It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra’s own phrases, as if all things came unto one, and would fain be similes: ‘Here do all things come caressingly to thy talk and flatter thee, for they want to ride upon thy back. On every simile dost thou here ride to every truth. Here fly open unto thee all being’s words and word-cabinets; here all being wanteth to become words, here all becoming wanteth to learn of thee how to talk.’ This is my experience of inspiration. I do not doubt but that one would have to go back thousands of years in order to find some one who could say to me: It is mine also!—” – Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Zarathustra, Section 3 (p.101)

I leave it to you to decide if this is authentic. What is clearly evident is the egoism in his last line. There is no reason why he should conclude no such experience happened to anyone else apart from himself since whichever ancient personality he is attributing a similar experience.

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