Hey Everyone,
Welcome back to The Chomp—your weekly dose of the best content from the internet and beyond, designed to expand your mind and get you thinking. Let’s dive into it.
Quick Bites
Self-Scrutiny Applied with Kindness: Epictetus’s Enduring Wisdom on Happiness and How Philosophy Helps Us Answer the Soul’s Cry: This is—line for line—the most memorable article that I’ve read in the past few months. Do yourself a favor and give this a look, whether you have an interest in philosophy or not. I plan to return to this one frequently. (8 min)
Seneca on The Shortness of Time: Time is the most finite yet expendable resource that we have. It’s unclear how much each of us will ultimately have, but it’s quite clear that we’ll never get any of it back. This quick Farnam Street analysis on Seneca’s thought on wasting time serves as a useful reminder of how valuable time truly is. (3 min)
Deeper Dives
Why We Swing For the Fences: Earlier this week, Bill & Melinda Gates published their 2020 annual letter reflecting on the first 20 years of their foundation. To date, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent $53.8 billion across a range of initiatives primarily centered on global health & inequality and U.S. education reform. This year’s annual letter provides a clear view of the success of the foundation to date, as well as the focus of it moving forward. Climate change and gender equality are the two largest new initiatives highlighted, and it will be fascinating to follow the successes that stem from them in the coming years. (20 min)
Back to the Future: This is famed investor Peter Thiel’s recently penned book review of Ross Douthat’s upcoming social critique The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. While Thiel is considered to be somewhat of a controversial figure, it’s hard to argue with his track record of innovation. His review is incredibly well written and will get you thinking on the topic of societal progression—his closing remarks below really stuck with me. (10 min)
“It is a paradox of our time that the path to radical progress begins with moderation. Extreme optimism and fatalistic pessimism may seem to be stark opposites, but they both end in apathy. If things were sure to improve or bound to collapse, then our actions would not matter one way or the other.
Not only do our actions matter, I believe they matter eternally. If we do not find a way to take the narrow and moderate path, then we may find out that stagnation and decadence were all that kept immoderate men from stumbling into the apocalypse.”
Media
Following the Super Bowl, AT&T released statistics on the amount of data that was used on their network during the day of the big game. Fans used more than 10.2 Terabytes (TB) of data. That’s equal to taking more than 28 million selfies from the stands or streaming high-definition video for almost 2 months (55 days) straight.
Tweet of the Week
Song of the Week
Apple Music Link
Books
Currently Reading
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values(Robert Pirsig)
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York(Robert A. Caro)
This is a 1,344-page behemoth that I’m steadily making my way through. Excited to share my thoughts when I eventually finish in the next month or so.
Recently Read
Dark Age: Red Rising #5 (Pierce Brown): After recently finishing the fourth book in this series, I couldn’t wait to get started on the next book. It certainly didn’t disappoint. Pierce Brown’s writing continues to blow my mind and I can’t wait for the release of the sixth—and likely final—book to (hopefully) arrive later this year. (5/5)
Parting Thoughts
This Week in History
On February 10th, 1996, chess World Champion Garry Kasparov lost a game to the computer Deep Blue. This was the first time a computer ever defeated a world champion and has often been used as a benchmark in the advancement of computing. (Source)
“Arrogance is the banal mask for cowardice; but far more important, it is the most potent impediment to the flourishing life. Clear thinking and self-importance cannot logically coexist. – Sharon Lebell
If you found something that piqued your interest this week, please help me out in expanding the reach of The Chomp by forwarding it along to a friend or sharing it with others in your network. Until next week.
-Cody