Of course, there are ways to optimize on the cost and get an even better deal… Here are the steps I found:

1. Get a free trial via a science YouTuber you like, for example, SmarterEveryDay has a dedicated page for audio books: http://www.smartereveryday.com/audible/. This way you help a person.
2. A friend who has an Audible book can send you a book for free – a great way to get recommendations. I always recommend Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene – full of cool nature examples.
3. At the end of the trial you should cancel and put “money“ as the reason. Audible will give you a discount for 3 months to keep you going – that’s what kept me hooked… It worked. :O
4. Voila!

Furthermore, if one book per month is too much – you can ask the great customer service representatives and they can change your plan to the Silver membership: one book every two months.

Also note that you can return books you did not enjoy.

And keep track of your credits – they stop accumulating when you reach 6.

• Small system camera – smaller cameras are more likely to be used. We have a Sony A6000. For selfie videos I recommend a model with a screen you can turn around to face front.
• Tripod – Gorillapod is great because it is tiny and can be hooked on things. Also usable as a handle.
• GoPro for stabilized action videos – you won’t use your phone while snowboarding or surfing.
• Portable drone, for example, DJI Mavic Air (1050 EUR incl. batteries etc)
• Panning mount for panorama timelapses
• Handheld gimbal for stabilization – quite expensive but could be useful. On the other hand, software stabilization is getting much better.

Disclaimer: I have been pessimistic about Bitcoin’s price when it was hitting 1000 USD.

Why I don’t think that the current high price will continue into the long-term future:

• Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) have only so much value as they are being used for transactions. At the moment they are not being used for day-to-day transactions and it seems unlikely that the volume of transactions will grow enough in the near future.
• Cost to create a new cryptocurrency is quite low, which means that there will be an excess supply of new currencies. More in depth explanation at Marginal Revolution.

Of course, in the medium term, people are using cryptocurrencies to gamble which is pushing the price up as more and more people get into the game. Everyone is trying to find the greater fool.

P. S. I recommend a very nice detailed look at Bitcoin from Swedbank – with charts!

However, there are people defending the harassers or attacking the victims due to some confused thinking.

The problem is pretty straightforward in my head: there are three aspects to consider – did it happen; what do you think about it; what should you do.

Did it happen? I am inclined to think that most of the allegations are true:

• Evidence is available (some of Trump’s cases)
• Many unconnected victims with little or no material gain coming forward (Louis C.K. and Trump)
• If allegations were false, I would expect allegations to be distributed more evenly (for example, accusing Roy Moore‘s opponent)

What do you think? There are 3 possible positions:

• Support harassment – pretty clear who you are as a person.
• Blame the victim – why did you talk to that man? Then again, why don’t we blame murder victims – they could have avoided meeting the murderer?
• Neutral/No opinion: would you like something like this to happen to you?
• Against harassment

What should you do? Spectrum of choices for action:

• Lock them up! (Generally not practical or, in some cases, fair)
• Shun from society, i.e. all positions of power.
• Condemn – perpetrators lose some/all of the status (like Kevin Spacey, for example)
• Mildly disapprove/Do nothing
• Support harassers in their fight against humanity

Of course, a “controversial“ (not really) issue is what to consider as harassment. I think that all unwelcome (does not mean involuntary) and inappropriate for the circumstances sexual attention is harassment, i.e. whistling on the street, inappropriate physical contact in the supermarket, etc. Furthermore, power differentials can mean that the relatively powerful should be extra careful. I am pretty sure that most people can figure out the boundaries themselves, and if they can’t – err on the side of caution.

Interesting to note that not everyone agrees on what is harassment – age is a strong differentiator.

Simple question for straight men: how would you feel if another man allegedly sexually harassed you?

Even if at the moment we are struggling to deal with climate change, we will fix this problem within 100 years.

• Thermonuclear power plants have always been in the future, but, in the end, it’s just a matter of technology. They will remove our dependence on fossil fuels and covering everything with propellers and solar cells.
• Artificial photosynthesis: sun-to-fuel. Basically, do the same things as plants do, but more efficiently, by using more of the electromagnetic spectrum and outputting fuel directly. Would also help with scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere.
• Lab grown meat! Environmentally perfect (no methane from cows, no deforestation), cheaper than “traditional” methods and ethically unambiguous.
• Vertical farming – grow green stuff inside warehouses all year round using less herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers.
• GMO: make more and better food from same amount of resources.
• Environment focused tech: CO2 scrubbers, desalinization plants should be viable once power becomes cheaper.
• Space stuff: easier access to massive amounts of raw materials in space, for example pure iron and platinum.
• Nanotechnology: use tiny robots to build stuff with no excess resource use.

Dawkins’ masterpiece Selfish Gene is incredibly interesting – gave me an understanding of why we are so sure of evolution and how it works.

I am currently reading (actually, listening) Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene: An Intimate History which focuses on the discovery of genes and gives a glimpse at the complexity of it all. And also explains how genes are not the only thing that matters.

Which brings me to a short clip of a great person.

Courtesy of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

P. S. You are an AI who/which has the task of making paperclips.

The actual numbers of casualties are rather low (not exceeding 200 per year in Western Europe for more than 20 years now) and on a long-term downward trend.

Of course, it should be zero. But that is not really possible in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, we are talking about it too much and wasting too many resources on this – the terrorists should be dealt with by the government in the same way we deal with fires, car accidents and flu outbreaks.

A broader and deeper perspective on decline in violence can be found in an excellent book by Steven Pinker The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Source of charts: Datagraver

Almost half of Americans don’t know that Puerto Ricans are US citizens.