Sunday Reading
This might be clunky in list form, but this is thoughts on various things I read on Sunday.
1. "Early Retirement Extreme" 1
That is the title of a book by Jacob Lunder Fisker, I read a sort of review or summary of the book by Zhengyi Shen.
2. "Early Retirement Extreme" 2
The big ideas here relate to breaking the mold of normal, to pursue self awareness that gets you out of mindless work, consumer debt traps, being a slave to your job, managing chronic illness with medication and living an uninteresting life. The reviewer seems to see Fisker as believing there is nefarious construct to these things and maybe there is.
3. "Early Retirement Extreme" 3
The concepts appeal to me even if I am less certain about nefarious origins of the standard American lifestyle. I take this as a list things deviate away from the mainstream. Live below your means to avoid being a "wage slave," take a 15 year mortgage as a faster path to financial freedom, cut carbs and lift weights to avoid being a slave to prescriptions and find the self awareness to do interesting things.
4. "Early Retirement Extreme" 4
“A society that worships conformity has zero apparent degrees of freedom." That line is intellectually appealing, I've framed this in previous lists as knowing where to be orthogonal to society.
There was a nod to multiple streams of income with a reference to being a renaissance man.
5. Want to Live Longer and Healthier? Peter Attia Has a Plan.
This was an interview in the NY Times. I am familiar with Attia, his message is very similar to what I have come to believe but there are other sources I prefer over him.
6. Odd slant from the interviewer
The interviewer was David Marchese and maybe he's known for this but he challenged Attia in a way that felt overly personal or familiar even attempting to diagnose Attia's psychological motivations for possibly being extreme in his views about diet and exercise. Some things with Attia do seem extreme, others less so.
7. I want people like Attia to be "extreme"
A phrase I am claiming originality for back to the early days of my blogging is "take bits of process from various sources to create your own process." There's a mutual fund manager named John Hussman who appears to be bearish all the time. Another famous bear is Jeremy Grantham. Taking them as making market predictions doesn't have much value, they're only "right" every few years but they always do a good job of framing the prevailing bear case to then pull what you think relevant in determining what you should or should not do.
People like Attia put it all on the table and do so with consistency. Take what is useful.
8. How extreme is he really?
Maybe the answer here is that I am pretty extreme which has some truth to it, so a little introspection prompt from the interview. Where I consume and share this topic constantly he is less extreme than others might conclude. He does seem to obsess on some things, I have a groove that I maintain that I don't think is truly obsessive might maybe.
9. Read him or others like him
There is a lot to learn, take what is useful for you. The short version is cut carbs and lift weights. That combo solves countless medical issues.
10. 72 Hours
It looks like the impact from Tropical Storm Hillary in most of Arizona will be marginal. Our county emergency manager put out the following slide on Twitter and Facebook about how to be self sufficient during a weather event. They say 72 hours is about how long it takes to restore power for non-catastrophic events. The Lahaina Fire would be an example of a catastrophe. If you can add a portable generator (you'll need gasoline) to the mix, you can last a lot longer than 72 hours.
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