Cosy Sunday Reads v.5
This week: How to Run, History Lessons from the 20th century, envisioning cloud nation-states and an actual conspiracy
Howdy Cowboys & -girls,
This time around I decided to give you a head start and post the Cosy Sunday Reads a day ahead. That way you actually get the chance to read them on a Sunday. Well, grab your preferred entertainment device and bring yourself in a horizontal position. Time for some brain stimulation:
Book: 80/20 Running - Matt Fitzgerald (ca. 7h read)
Running is hard! This is one of the realisations I had while training last year. How can something so fundamentally to humans be so hard? I assume that our modern lifestyles have changed our physic significantly. While increasing the running distance on my runs last year, I noticed increasing pains and tensions in my whole body. While I am a generally fit person, running long distances doesn’t seem to come naturally to me. After signing up for a marathon this year, I decided to step it up and become scientific about the training. 80/20 Running helped me a lot in understanding how to train correctly for any distance. It also helped in creating a proper training plan for my marathon goal. Highly recommend to anybody who loves to get in some regular runs. Thanks to my brother for his initial recommendation!
Video: Archipel Gulag - Arte Docuseries (3 episodes - 50 min watch)
This one is unfortunately only for German speakers. Arte presents a three-part docu-series, detailing the horrific system of the Soviet Gulags. Archipel Gulag mixes videos from the 1920 - 1960 with witness descriptions to convey the monstrous nature of those camps. While the 20th century had many horrific events that are burned into our collective conscious, I feel like the story of the Gulag is not touched upon enough. Throughout its existence, 18 million people passed through the internment system with roughly 1.6 Million people dying. In the peak-years around the second world war 25% of inmates died each year. This is documentary is not for the light-hearted as it vividly describes the horrors humans are able to inflict upon each other.
Podcast: Interview with Balaji Srinivasan - Tim Ferris Show (ca. 3:45h listen)
Balaji was the Co-Founder and CTO of Coinbase before he left in 2019. His talk with Tim touches a wide variety of topics. While the title sounds like a pure crypto podcast, it is actually more of discussion about the future of society and technology. Balaji, a knowledgeable futurist in large variety of topics, talks about the possibility of cloud nation states, the future of India, how to collaborate in a decentralised world and much more. Lastly, he also presents his own work with 1729.com. This projects aims to provide people in non-western countries a lift out of poverty via skill-based tasks paid in Bitcoin. A very inspiring talk!
Video: This is why we can’t have nice things - Veritacium (17min watch)
Derek Muller has an awesome channel on youtube around everything relating to science and technology called Veritacium. In a recent instalment, he takes a look at planned obsolescence. A practice that is widely used by companies to reduce the lifespan of their products. Started in the early 20th century, lightbulb manufacturers were the first to collectively decide to create planned obsolescence of lightbulbs to increase demand for their products. A practice that has remained part of business strategies up until today.
Podcast: Hardcore History - Dan Carlin (Each Episodes 3-6h listen)
Dan Carlin has been praised by many people among others Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Tim Ferris for his podcast “Hardcore History”. And rightly so! Dan is an amazing storyteller who has the uncanny ability to make any epoch of history a fascinating topic. From explaining the amazing accomplishments of the Syrian empire to the near-apocalyptic outcomes of the cold war. His own excitement for history turns anybody listening into a history buff. I recently listened to the Cold War Episode “(Blitz) The Destroyer of Worlds” while running and I was shocked by how close the world was to a nuclear holocaust. I can highly recommend anybody to give his podcast a try!
Sunday Quote:
“The cliché is the handrail of the crippled mind” - Spike Milligan