Ramble # 77

Hi Team,

Welcome to the latest edition of Ramble, a compilation of what I have been pondering, learning and enjoying for the past month or so.

Now, grab a beverage and let’s begin.


via GIPHY


What I am Reading:

"Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag photographed from 15 feet away through soundproof glass."

"...they’d created an entity called Libermans Co. It held all the income from their enterprises; any debts, assets, and profits they might gain; and any investments they might make or companies they might start for the next thirty years. They had gathered all these elements and sold shares in the whole, offering investors, effectively, a stake in their entire financial future—shares in their life."

"But the worst parents are the ones who act as if they have done you a huge favour by sending their lovely, bright child to the school, and cannot comprehend the notion that their darling offspring has either misbehaved or under-achieved."


What I am Watching:

  • Nope

Another cool Jordan Peele movie (also directed Get Out and Us). Without giving you any spoilers, it is a cool take on a UFO movie.

  • The Debt (Netflix)

I am a sucker for cold war/Israeli spy movies, and this one involves Nazi-hunting as well. Underrated.

  • Boiling Point (Prime)

Filmed all in one take. This was actualy amazing. COVID quashed the goal to film eight takes, so they smashed out four takes and chose the best.

It. Was. Filmed. All. In. One. Take.

  • I Came By (Netflix)

This one doesn't necessarily follow the normal formula of a psychopath geting their comeuppance...


What I am Listening to:

Two Steps From Hell

  • Formed by a couple of composers in 2006 with the aim of creating epic music to licence to movie previews. The results were spectacular. They now have a stack of albums, have toured and you will have heard their music everywhere. Some of my favourites -

From the album 'Invincible'

From 'Archangel'

From 'Myth'


Lessons in Medicine:

Head over to the St Emlyn's page for a discussion on 'risk' management versus 'harm' management.

Specifically, the discussion is around the 'harm' that comes from the prolonged time that sick people are spending in Emergency Departments before they can be admitted in to a hospital.

If there are no beds in the hospital, people wait in Emergency Department cubicles. If there are no spare Emergency Department cubicles, people wait in the waiting room, or on Ambulance stretchers. If there are no free Ambulance crews...

And so on.

This is an extension of their discussion of a March 2022 paper with the bottom line:

"For every 82 admitted patients whose time to inpatient bed transfer is delayed beyond 6 to 8 hours from time of arrival at the ED, there is one extra death."

Caveats: English (NHS), cross-sectional, comparative, retrospective observational study; looked at all cause mortality at 30 days. There is no adjustment for severity of illness (people who may need to remain in ED longer for more cares or waiting for an ICU bed). And there is definitely no way to draw a causal link from this study. Correlation only.

But, makes you think...


Something I Found:

This is old, but just incredible -


What I am Experimenting With:

Numbeo

A crowd-sourced cost of living comparison site in which you can simply choose your comparison cities and click 'go'.

It is very detailed and gives some of the obvious comparisons like -  

But also includes some more granular economic indicators -

This came up in my Travel Planning research, which leads me to our next section...


Travel:

I am encouraging everyone to quit and go travelling. So I should probably have something to tell them. I dumped my thoughts onto the page a while ago so I will start including them here bit by bit.

Caveat - These will be reflective of my thinking and planning - ie went to uni for too long, got a good job as a doctor (pays well, yeah, but it's a career that takes some planning to step out of), married, no mortgage, no kids, no pets (by design, for literally this purpose)...

I want to make this clear because generalising advice like this such that it applies to everyone would be to smear it so thin that it could never apply to anyone.

So I will tell you specifically what I have done and won't feel bad if it doesn't perfectly line up with your particular circumstances. Rant done.

So - "How to Quit Your Job and Escape for a Year (and Why You Should...)"

  • Part 1 - How to Quit Your Job; Section a) - Don't Tell Anyone -

"If you feel the need to escape, first don’t tell anyone. Sure, tell your person. But don't discuss it with anyone else.

This is almost like that first rule of Fight Club...

Don't tell anyone.

Don't bring up "I had the thought of maybe going..." at parties. Don't ask the advice of your extended friend group. They very likely won't support your effort to escape. Rather they will sincerely support you to "go for that promotion at work", or "just do it, put a deposit that house you've been looking at" or whatever. All sincerely, of course. But potentially poisonous to your efforts to escape. At worst, some of your friends will be jealous of your plans and desperate for you to remain unhappy and under-fulfilled with them...at Friday drinks...every Friday...discussing interest rates and childcare costs...and sportsball...forever.

And definitely don't discuss it at work. This will become important later. Because as soon as you do, you will find reasons not to escape. Just as you are at the very beginning of an idea, just starting to mull it over, before the idea has even fermented a little, some middle management type will say something like “oh just do it later in your career when you are a bit more settled” and you will. And by then, life and career and osteoarthritis will have taken over, and you will never escape (or at least this should be your working assumption).

So, again, the first rule of quitting your job and escaping is "don't tell anyone"..."

So that is Step 1a. Next edition I will cover step 1b - "Get a Good Job".

(And I will start to compile these all somehwere as well so they aren't just floating around in the either in separate newsletters. But that is for later.)


Closing Thoughts:

Thank you once again for reading along with me.

If you found something you liked, let me know.

If you think I can do something a little smoother, please let me know.

Talk soon.

Luke.