The Executive Edition (1/9/2022)

This is the first executive edition of 2022. We can’t thank you enough for being a subscriber. Sending our best regards and good energy for the year.

-Colin and Noah

Dakar Road Race

Friend of WITI Laurent messaged us on Whatsapp with a few images from a friend doing the Dakar Road Race:

What we’re reading:

How Gabon is protecting its forests
The Times with a 2021 tech preview
Checking the Boomkat compilation of London pirate radio adverts
How Brian Collins is changing his design studio
Why I wear black

On Arrival Services

I’ve crossed a lot of borders during COVID, and it is interesting to see how different airports handle the paperwork, processes, and arrivals. Some airport staff scrutinize your tests, some don’t even cast a glance. A few countries have streamlined arrival services (I was impressed with Amman, Jordan, and Oman) but others have printed out pieces of paperwork and mortgage application style confusion. To get through quicker, I have been availing myself of arrival services: in Doha, there’s Al Haha. In Dubai, there’s Marhaba, in Jordan, there’s Tikram. For a nominal fee of 50 dollars and up, you’re met at the jetbridge and ferried through the testing program, immigration, and customs. Given the chaos and unpredictability of most airports lately, it is money well spent. (CJN)

On Attention

For a long while now I’ve had a WITI topic sitting around my topic list that just says “against attention.” I don’t know quite what I want to say, but I’ve always struggled with ideas around the attention economy. The argument, if you haven’t encountered it, is roughly that as information has ceased to be a limited resource thanks to digital technology the best way to understand modernity is by looking at attention as our scarcest resource. Lots of very smart people write and think about this and I’ve tried hard to come around to their point of view, but I always kind of fall off around what to take away from the concept. Mostly, it seems to me that attention has always been limited to our waking hours, so I’m not sure there’s something fundamentally new about our relationship between our attention and the environment. But it’s hard to find counter-arguments and enough smart people are into the idea that I just assume I’m missing something.

I was interested to see Sentiers link off to a piece arguing against attention as a scarce resource. Here’s the gist:

So here is a proposition for you to consider: you and I have exactly as much attention as we need. In fact, I’d invite you to do more than consider it. Take it out for a spin in the world. See if proceeding on this assumption doesn’t change how you experience life, maybe not radically, but perhaps for the better. And the implicit corollary should also be borne in mind. If I have exactly as much attention as I need, then in those moments when I feel as if I don’t, the problem is not that I don’t have enough attention. It lies elsewhere. (There is an additional consideration, which is that I’ve failed to cultivate my attention, but, again, this is not a question of scarcity.) In any case, I obviously can’t make any promises, but, you may find, as I have of late, that refusing the assumption of scarcity can be surprisingly liberating.

Like I said, this is filed away as a thought in progress (I added the link to my “against attention” WITI topic for future writing). Generally, though, it’s reassuring to see someone else who doesn’t find attention to be a helpful way to think about this stuff. (NRB)

Wood Burning

In my dive into the world of ventilation, I’ve gotten more interested generally into air quality. This has brought me around to PM 2.5 (small particle pollution) and its many harmful effects. One fascinating fact about PM 2.5: wood burning is a huge source. In the UK, for instance, The Guardian reports “domestic wood burning in both closed stoves and open fires was responsible for 38% of the pollution particles under 2.5 microns in size (PM2.5) in 2019, the latest year for which data is available. The report said PM2.5 emissions from this source had more than doubled since 2003, to 41,000 tonnes a year, and increased by 1% between 2018 and 2019. Road traffic caused 12% of PM2.5 in 2019.” What’s more, all that comes from just 8% of the population. The same patterns hold in the US.

To be clear: I see this problem as separate from general issues of climate change. Those are very clearly most driven by industrial behavior, not individual (despite what oil and gas companies may wnat you to believe). (NRB)

Rally Edition Followup

If you, like me, wanted more rally after reading this week’s Pacenotes Edition, here’s some YouTube I followed things up with.

Start with this primer on Group B, which was included in the Quick Links. Group B was the class of cars with the fewest rules in the 80s and 90s. This Goodwood rally history is a nice companion. Want more pacenotes stuff? How Rally-Car Drivers Avoid Crashes | Turn By Turn and Why Do Rally Drivers Need Co-Drivers? | WRC 2019. General interest: How Compact Cars Can Jump Football Fields In Rally Races and just general videos from the WRC channel. Finally, this is pretty wild: in 2005 a team lost a wheel and the co-driver had to hang off the side of the car to balance things. (NRB)

Remarks complete. Nothing follows.

Colin and Noah