#11: Motivation, Miss Excel, WD-40, Electricity, fungal infections, and more!

Hi curious human!

Once again, I’m going to share some cool things that I came across on the internet. But before that, I want to start with a little motivational speech. Hope you don’t mind ;)

Also, this is going to be the last newsletter for 2021. Thank you for all the support this year! Thanks for watching my videos and keeping up with all the weird things I share in this newsletter 😉

Stay safe, keep learning, and enjoy the holidays.

I hope to see you back in 2022!

Xavier

I started my YouTube channel in 2016. It was something that I wanted to do for a long time, but I kept coming up with excuses. Nobody will watch my videos. I don’t know how to edit videos. I don’t have the equipment. There are already a lot of videos on YouTube…

This is what Steven Pressfield calls resistance. It’s what sits between the life we have and the life we want to have. It’s especially powerful when we have to do something that doesn’t yield immediate results (no instant gratification).

But then, during a cold and dark winter’s day, I finally said “screw it, let’s give it a go”. I recorded my screen, started talking and made my first video tutorial. Was it a great video? No. But it was a starting point! I stopped making excuses and did it as best as I could.

The point I’m trying to make is that if you have a goal in life, just start. Don’t wait for the perfect opportunity to come along, they rarely do. Don’t make excuses for why you cannot do something.

And above all: don’t fear what others will think of you. The book The War of Art sums it up nicely:

Being in the arena is certainly challenging. But it’s oh so rewarding.

Struggling with an Excel spreadsheet and complicated formulas? Miss Excel could help you! She’s an “influencer” and shares tips & tricks on how to master Excel. She has over a million followers, has her own Excel course, and grosses six figures in revenue PER DAY! Read article →

There are a few things that every DIY'er needs in his toolbox: duct tape and WD-40. This post takes us through the history of WD-40, which was created to prevent rust on aircraft. Read article →

Blockchains are amazing, but they consume a lot of electricity to create consensus amongst participants. The Solana project has been using proof-of-stake as an alternative consensus algorithm, and they claim that Solana transactions use 3.8 million times (!) less energy than Bitcoin transactions. Read article →

Ever wondered how the mighty Roman Empire used public toilets? Me neither, but this was a fascinating read nonetheless! Read article →

One of my favorite YouTube channels uploaded a video that explains how electricity works. I thought I knew a thing or two about that, but no… Electricity doesn’t flow through wires. It flows around the wires. Watch the video →

Last week I started reading “Immune”, a book about our immune system written by the founder of the Kurzgesagt YouTube channel. I haven’t finished the book yet, but I’m already super fascinated. Check out the book →

Research suggests that our body temperature is dropping. We don’t really know why, but there’s a theory. High body temperatures help us fight infections (which is why you get fever) but thanks to modern medicine we’re less sick. So the high body temperature becomes less of an advantage and more of a burden. Read article →

We often talk about climate change, but did you know it can make us more susceptible to fungal infections? Our warm blood has protected us from most fungi because they don’t like the heat. With climate change, however, some strains are adapting to higher temperatures, and that’s a problem! We don’t have good tools to fight fungal infections, because life-threatening fungal infections have been rare in humans. Read article →

Measles is the most contagious virus known and still kills over 100,000 people per year. But the disease itself isn’t deadly. Instead, the virus resets your immune system and makes it “forget” how to fight off infections you had already conquered. This then leads to complications and other infections. Scientists are still trying to understand how the virus does this and how they can use it to their advantage, for instance, to fight off auto-immune diseases. Read article →