#059: Last 25 Years in Review, Don't Die From Heart Disease, "When Will I Ever Need to Use This?"

Hi All!

We are pleased to welcome you this Thanksgiving Day to the latest edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

This week we will take a look at a journal that recaps the last quarter century of human progress, a website dedicated to helping prevent heart disease, how to build an educational math system to accomplish big goals, and more.

Let's dive in:

The Last 25 Years in Review

I recently came across a non-profit called the Long Now Foundation, which describes itself as 'an organization focused on promoting long-term thinking and responsibility over a 10,000-year timeframe'. Their mission is to provide a counterpoint to short-term thinking in modern society and to foster long-term responsibility.

It's been involved with a couple interesting initiatives since its foundation in 1996, like the 10,000 Year Clock, Rosetta Project, and Long Bets Project, but their latest announcement really caught my attention.

They are releasing a journal containing the comprehensive lessons of the last 25 years called Pace Layers. The inaugural issue is a "282-page compendium of ideas, art, and insights" that cover the 'elements of a durable civilization', focusing on commerce, infrastructure, governance, culture, nature, and fashion.

I'm most intrigued by what patterns Long Now notices, and what the main takeaways are for maximizing the next 25 years of this century.

Don't Die From Heart Disease

​Jared Hecht is a Venture Partner at Union Square Ventures and recently shared a very important website containing all of his research and insights on heart disease. It's called MyTicker.com, and it's easily one of the most approachable guides on managing heart health.

As the leading cause of death worldwide, heart disease is something we should all be aware of. Hecht does a great job outlining the most essential pieces of actionable insights, like what biomarkers and imaging diagnostics to look at, as well as best medicinal and behavioral treatments to follow.

It's simple, straightforward, and very worth the 10-15 minutes it takes to look through the whole document in order to plan keeping your heart healthy.

The Wonderful World of Steph Ango

One of my favorite blogs I have come across recently is from Steph Ango. He is the CEO of Obsidian, and first caught my attention on Twitter by an interesting personal challenge he is attempting. He noted that he is on a mission to make a piece of furniture for every room in his house that reuses the same pattern of joinery, door handles, and material proportions. His library came out beautifully, with videos in the carpenter's workshop and the final product in the house.

But that's not all. Steph's website also contains interesting essays like the six definitions of love, choosing optimism, and scars are beautiful. He lists out all 27 of his lifetime projects. The site even has a few of his personal recipes for good measure.

I can't wait to explore the site more, and give the deluxe chocolate chip cookies recipe a try this holiday season!

Book Website That Gives Random Book Without Title

If you're looking for a new book to read this winter, but don't know where to start, we may have found the perfect site for you. It's called Recommend Me a Book, and essentially it gives you a page from a book without the name of the author or book title, and let's you 'sample' a bit of the prose.

What makes the site great, is that it allows you to filter for the types of books you're interested in. You can sort by all the classic genres and book types like fiction vs non-fiction, self-published vs traditionally published, classic vs non-classic, and graphic novels vs non-graphic novels.

"When Will I Ever Need to Use This?"

In the spirit of holiday today in the United States, we are very thankful for Justin Skycak, the Director of Analytics of Math Academy, and his recent shoutout of us on Twitter!

One of the most common situations young students find themselves in, is questioning what they are learning - "When am I going to get to use these math skills that I'm learning in some legitimately awesome real-life context?" Justin helps answer this question in one of his latest tweets.

His solution is something called a 'multistep task'. Here he describes it:

The 'cool context' of these multistep tasks is essential and varies by the end goal of the student. Maybe they want to launch rockets? Model bioinformatic data? Build a chatbot AI? Map out how to colonize a planet? All of these projects, Skycak describes, can be solved by multistep tasks.

We are thankful for Math Academy and the promise of a brighter, superhero-like students. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Always wishing you the best,

J.B.