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https://twitter.com/ag_guy04/status/1611023399509266432

From Why Not Mars by Maciej Cegłowski

"At this point, it is hard to not find life on Earth. Microbes have been discovered living in cloud tops[28], inside nuclear reactor cores[29], and in aerosols high in the stratosphere[30]. Bacteria not only stay viable for years on the space station hull, but sometimes do better out there[31] than inside the spacecraft. Environments long thought to be sterile, like anoxic brines at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea[32], are in fact as rich in microbial life as a gas station hot dog. Even microbes trapped for millions of years in salt crystals[33] or Antarctic ice[34] have shown they can wake up and get back to metabolizing[35] without so much as a cup of coffee."

As Ceglowski points out, this should make us pretty confident that microbial life already exists on Mars, if only from a stray asteroid.

As of 2020, the average undergraduate GPA at Harvard is 2020. From Aden Barton in The Crimson via Orin Kerr.

“If grade inflation continues at its 2021-2022 pace, for example, the average GPA of the Class of 2028 would be over 4.0.”

When I saw that David Epstein (who’s writing I love) was writing about Frances Hesselbein again, I sort of rolled my eyes. She is at the center of his book Range (which I love — probably the book that impacted me most in the past 5 years).

But his remembrance of her is too good not to share. My favorite nuggets:

• Her life philosophy as: “doing what’s needed at the time.”

• She repeatedly declines offers to move up through the ranks of the Girl Scouts, ultimately becoming the CEO and turning the organization around; reading between the lines, it seems like in some ways declining advancement gives her more space to maneuver as she isn’t invested in protecting her reputation.

• The ending quote: “Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.”

Long but so worth the read. The story of how a band of volunteers who became the go to data source for vaccine availability in the US, even being relied upon by Google Maps as their go-to data source, saving lives in the process.

Some things I thought and felt while reading it:

• A deep sense of admiration and inspiration. This is American ingenuity at its finest. Solving the problem in front of you however you can, never being satisfied. A lot of the best aspects of the Stripe culture are also on display.

• Sadness or a sense of missing out. Why didn’t I know this existed? Why didn’t I help out? I told my wife, in what was perhaps an over reaction, that I felt like I had missed my chance to do something that matters by not participating in this.

• I think this does a good job of making the case that in practice simplicity and equity go hand-in-hand even if the additional complexity is meant to increase equity. Another way to say this is that if your goal is equity, you need to have a high bar for additional complexity.

• Such a startlingly good example of “do the simple thing first.” Before you build a real time system for national vaccine tracking, call pharmacies and make a list.

• I have some skepticism towards the claim that pharmacy websites were “broken by design.” I would’ve liked to have seen more there.

• I agree with this wholeheartedly: “We as a society accepted so much mediocrity during the pandemic, and we do to this day.”