Dickie's Digest - Blue Marble Days, Daylight Savings, and more COVID-19
Friends,
If you’re anything like me, you woke up this morning and immediately felt out of whack. At 1:59 AM this morning, the federal government had the nerve to snatch an hour from us without even the slightest bit of common courtesy. This universal discombobulation that occurs on the morning of daylight savings is why traffic accidents, hospital visits, and heart attacks spike and why our immune system function decreases in the week after daylight savings. This paired with the rapidly accelerating COVID-19 pandemic in the United States should lead to quite an interesting week.
Thanks to those of you who signed up over the past few days — here is this week’s edition of the Digest. As always, reach out if you find anything particularly interesting. Have an epic week!
Movie I’m Excited For —
Blue Marble Sky: A Journey to Love
Co-produced by one of my lifelong best friends @Fletcher Barnes, Blue Marble Sky is a powerful story about the shortness of life and the power of love. The journey on which Fletch embarked to produce the film will forever be an artifact of human goodness.
Blue Marble Day (blü- märbėl-dā) n: a meaningful day; one embraced with conscious gratitude and active love.
I was lucky enough to see Blue Marble Sky in person a few months ago during a private screening held by the Blue Marble team. This Thursday, March 12th, Blue Marble Sky will be released live on Youtube and Prime Video. I couldn’t be more excited for the Blue Marble team and the great things to come.
To learn more about Blue Marble, check out their website, the movie trailer, and the origin of the Blue Marble Day.
Articles I’m Reading —
Who Started Daylight Savings Time?
Anyone who has seen National Treasure knows that daylight savings was originally proposed by Ben Franklin in 1784. However, it wasn’t until 1918 that it was passed into law in the United States.
The populace’s initial reaction was much like my reaction this morning — anger.
“United by a determination to beat back the big hand of government,” daylight saving time opponents “raised holy hell, vowing to return the nation to real time, normal time, farm time, sun time—the time they liked to think of as "God’s time.’”
Will COVID-19 lead to the collapse of the United States health care system?
Part of my job the last few weeks has been gauging the economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. This chilling tweet thread lays out a compelling argument for why the entire US health care system is at risk if the exponential forecasts of the disease spread take come to fruition.
Exponential functions are hard to grasp in real time, as things appear to increase very slowly while they’re happening. Instead, we can better understand it visually. The picture below best illustrates what is happening in the US, and why the next 7-10 days could be very telling.
For new readers, the resources I am using to follow and analyze the virus are subscribing to @BNONews on Twitter, receiving this daily newsletter update from Johns Hopkins, and following this New York Times Blog for periodic global updates.
Some predictions based on my current understanding:
All sporting events in the US will be played without fans by March 20th. This means March Madness will be played without fans.
Greater than 50% of New York City will be working from home by the end of this week, March 13th.
Podcast I’m Listening To —
Joe Rogan with Pavel Tsatsouline, the Kettlebell Master
Given the COVID-19 outbreak, I’ve been looking for ways to touch fewer items at the gym, but still get good work in. This lead me to read up on kettlebell training, and that lead me to Pavel Tsatsouline.
Pavel Tsatsouline (Sat-So-Leen) is essentially the founder of kettlebell training, so it was cool to hear his thoughts on health and training. If you’re interested, here’s 101 kettlebell workouts that all look pretty brutal.
Quote I’m Thinking About —
“Not taking risks one doesn’t understand is often the best form of risk management.” ― Raghuram G. Rajan
End Note
If you’re enjoying the Digest so far, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two by forwarding it or sending them here to sign up. In a world full of noise, I’m trying to make this email the one with the most signal that you receive each week — I hope you’re enjoying it.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter or respond directly to this email to get in touch. And should you come across anything interesting this week, send it my way! I love finding new things to read through members of this newsletter.
Have an epic week,
Dickie