Welcome to this week’s update. Well as you expect, the number of active cases is up again in the world compared to last week. – 3,298,242. And the number who have died is at 407,406. No big spikes of new cases in Australia. Number of active across Australia is at 454.
Victoria hasn’t moved, the number of active cases is still 73, hard to say if those were the exact same 73 people or not. If you were wondering where those active cases are in Victoria, I have overlaid active cases (the number) with Population Density (the blue colour). Interestingly the city center has a high amount (good thing we are not traveling to the city daily) along with the northern area of Hume.
The WHO has finally endorsed the wearing of mask after months of debating about the quality of evidence, they have said that masks are an easy and inexpensive preventive measure. I mean FFS, do not look to centralised authority to save you, everyone needs to apply their own critical thinking in the current age. Here’s the thing, my parents are in the demographics that is vulnerable to COVID, so do i tell them install a contact tracing app, and if you come into contact with someone with COVID you can find out through the app that you might die cause there’s no cure, or do we tell them to just wear a mask when they go out cause we don’t want you getting COVID in the first place. Often central authority gets it wrong. ie:
The Impact of COVID on the Chinatowns of Australia. It reminded me that we lost Shark Fin house yumcha recently too.
The people of Paris are out, can see some waiters wearing mask
Markets and Economics
Here’s a Honest Government Ad about Economic Recovery.
I thought this graph of total assets at the central banks was interesting. It also comes with this tweet storm that’s worth reading.
Watch this, if you’re interested in which areas have mortgage and rental stress in Australia.
AUDUSD – Big spike up to almost 70 cents, but the chart looks like it’s lost momentum.
ASX 200 – We have now retracted pass the 50% line back towards the all time highs.
Sweet light crude futures are trading at 38 USD a barrel. I managed to pour petrol at 99 cents on the weekend. And a petrol station just 100 meters down the road was at 1.35. Insane times.
State of the World.
Probably the most impactful image of what is happening in the US at the moment
I think there’s some institutional or systemic problem. On the other side of the fence, what’s wrong with these people?
Stuff is falling apart in Britain as seen here and who the hell throws a bike at a horse. Obviously the following tweet didn’t age very well.
Also the US is selling their consulate staff quarters in Hong Kong, I think that’s a reflection of where the US thinks HK is headed.
How to prepare for the coming depression.
According to Lori Gottlieb – psychotherapist and author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, before you diagnose someone with depression, you should first check that they are not surrounded by arseholes. Well we are not talking about that kind of depression today, I’m referring to the economic downturn type.
It’s the time when people are being more hopeful, hopeful of returning, hopeful that things will recover. In my opinion, this is the time to prepare, because as you saw with supermarkets going empty when a crisis hits, there’s little to no room to maneuver. And look maybe nothing will come out of it, and life continues, but being a bit more prepared shouldn’t negatively affect your life. But also form your own opinion,what would i know.
So here are some link that you can read up on,
–How to prepare for what comes next
–Expect Creative Destruction – watch the video if you haven’t read the book.
–How to prepare for Armageddon.
–Some stuff that you can do. With my favorite author – Yuval Noah Harari
Some of my key take away.
Reassess your asset allocation – I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of what percentage is at each different institution and in what asset class.
Hold Sound Money. – Have a portion of your own personal asset allocation towards some gold, silver, bitcoin where supply is limited, and can’t be increased by central authority.
Keep up your fitness and health – No one should be sick or in poor health as much as it can be helped in a crisis. So make sure you go for those runs, and lift some weights when the gyms reopen. Even if we don’t end up in as deep a crisis, there’s no down side with being fit.
Reduce Debt – In the bursting of a debt bubble, having debt (or excess debt) needs to be reassessed if that’s the most sound idea.
Focus on cash flow. – During a crisis, it would be a very bad position to not have personal cash flow.
Reduce expense – Is that extra thing an unnecessary expense, can it wait until we’re in more certain times. On top of that, I have found some things like electronics to be more expensive since there’s a supply chain issue. A few friends have moved back in with parents in recent years for lifestyle reasons, which I can see greatly increase the happiness of grandparents and grand kids being able to connect.
Diversify your income sources and skill set. – It reduces your reliance on one skill set to generate an income. And also interesting things happen at the intersection of two skills sets because it takes more effort to be amazing at 1 skill set to have an impact, but if you can be just great at two different things then that’s where innovation happens. That’s how liquid paper was invented. The lady was a writer and also a painter, and got tired of crossing out her mistakes and having the page look ugly, so she used white paint from her painting.
More and more I find people who don’t have this straight line career path. The family member who was a banker at the bank of china, who then became a baker in south America to now looking to be a wheat farmer. The family member who was a successful national sales manager is now more happy as a plumber. The lady who I will call my running coach who went from something in the fashion / textiles to brocante to a travel tour guide.
Anyway for those on the path to learning to program, I thought this article might help on how to go from learning a language to actually coding.
Read up on history – Obviously the only people who went through the great depression are either dead or have dementia, so our sources will have to be books. I have two in my wish list that I haven’t gotten around to yet. They include America’s Great Depression by Murray Rothbard, and When Money Dies: The Nightmare of deficit spending, devaulations, and hyperinflation in Weimar Germany – By Adam Fergusson.
Strengthening your social relationship – It is the community of people that you keep around that helps you through crisis. Even in not times of crisis, it’s nice to have a network to tap into even if it’s just to chat.
Australia’s economy – we have an economy that’s really no more complex than Ghana. We do construction, dig stuff up and export it, and have financial services. There’s so much room for us to do better
Shortage of things – Remember all those supermarket issues. Maybe a good idea to keep that stock of stuff for the moment, just in case. If you normally eat it anyway, you might as well have it in stock at home. At worst you can donate it to a food bank later. If you can grow your own veggies, maybe look into that. As much as possible I feel that being self-reliant is better where possible.
Anyway Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Take the time to educate yourself and seek alternative views
Other Stuff
Some people have asked me questions about the work phone and dual sims etc and how to manage which data stream, and contacts and personal photos back up. And I’ve been thinking about it and to be honest, my only suggestion to not mix business with pleasure. It makes it technologically a messy divorce when you decide to leave the company one day. Yes if you’re going to use the camera then use the camera, it’s a great camera. However my plan is to turn the work phone on when I’m at work, and turn it off and throw it in a faraday bag when I’m not. Since last year I don’t have work email on my personal phone anymore, and I haven’t really missed anything. Don’t have FOMO, turn off people! It’s for your own mental health that you don’t sporadically check your work email at 2am. If you intentionally check it then that’s different, you own that and do it with intent.
And while I’m at it, here’s something to try, don’t take your phone to the bedroom, leave it in the bathroom. That feeling tomorrow when you wake up will be liberating as you actually appreciate the sun rise, instead of the blue light from your screen. Ok you may say that you use it for the alarm. I haven’t used an alarm in years, and yet I have never missed a 5:30am meeting for a beach rd ride. And I know what you’re thinking but how will I know it’s time to wake up? Here’s something to try then, tonight say to yourself that you will wake up at 6am tomorrow no matter what and really commit to it. You will find that your body will wake you up a few mins before that time tomorrow. Years and years ago before I had a smartphone it used to annoy Jess that I would set the alarm for 10 mins before I intended to wake up, hit snooze, and then when it went off again, hit snooze again.
Update in my networking powers, I put in a new switch at home. I was running out of places to plug cables into. (if you’re wondering, the thing on top is a raspberry pi that running as a DNS server using software called PiHole, it’s basically a black hole that blocks all advertising and trackers meaning everything loads faster. It’s not hard to setup – or at least i didn’t think it was hard to set up, but did require SSH into the device and then basically following some Linux commands)
I also got a new router and it’s been life changing because the wifi is so much more reach.
Fuji has suspended the sale of bikes to police in the US because they were being used in violent tactics that the company didn’t intend for them to be used. Having said that I spent part of the weekend looking for new bar tape and tires for my bike, and the choices are terrible. I also watched this video for this guy who brought an unnamed carbon bike frame, and it makes me extremely nervous. Otherwise I can keep dreaming about US Titanium. I like firefly bikes, but it’s exxy. I mean look at the colour co-ordination between the hubs and the chris king headset. (They have all their bike builds on flicker for those who are interested).
Someone wanted a Tuesday morning video last time, so I’m going to share that with you today as well. – One Life, No Regrets. Enjoy the shorter work week.