Random Thoughts

What is recycled gold? The word recycled is the problem. It means different things to different people. Ask 100 people what it means, and you will get 110 different answers. Some sellers of recycled gold take advantage of the innocence of the consumers too. I think a lot of people that are explaining it to the consumers don't understand it either. It's like two blind walking the street. At the end of the day, it should be about having your gold being certified responsibly and ethically sourced and non-conflict. If your suppliers have done their due diligence, and they are working with a credible third party auditor, that should be good.

Random Thoughts

At a time of geopolitical uncertainty, soaring inflation and falling stock prices, the art market is beyond booming. The explosion is fueled by a combination of an unusual number of highly desirable art becoming available, and an increase in those who can afford to buy them. The rich have got much richer. If you are mega-rich, there aren't many things you can acquire that are real trophies, that nobody else can have. Art is a real trophy.

Random Thoughts

Four materials rank highest on the scale of necessity, forming the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia are needed in larger quantities than are other essential inputs. Ammonia deserves the top position as our most important material: its synthesis is the basis of all nitrogen fertilizers, and without their applications it would be impossible to feed, at current levels, nearly half of today's nearly 8 billion people. These four materials share three common traits: they are not readily replaceable by other materials; we will need much of them in the future; and their mass-scale production depends heavily on the combustion of fossil fuels, making them major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuels remain indispensable for producing all of these materials. 

Random Thoughts

One person's trash, even in its most nauseating forms, is another person's data. Garbage, be it flushed, discarded or recycled, carries a wealth of information about people's decisions and behaviors, which you often can't get anywhere else. Those who dare to sift through this human detritus are known as garbologists, and their efforts have helped us understand everything from people's health and food choices to the workings of secretive political regimes. There's something refreshingly straightforward about studying rubbish. It gives you a very direct and very privileged window into people's actual way of life.

Random Thoughts

Harming others without cause is bad, and fairness is always good.

Random Thoughts

To everyone who finds the current world hard and difficult and somewhat confusing, I would say: Welcome to adult life.

Random Thoughts

The biggest factor associated with kindness isn't age or income, but personality.

Random Thoughts

To nurture innovation and success that lasts, the world needs more than innovation and success; it needs wisdom and empathy.

Random Thoughts

Bear Grylls has a rule of three when it comes to surviving in the wild. You can live for three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water and three weeks without food.

Random Thoughts

The most common and dramatic friendship disrupters are moving, divorce, and death. Death is irremediable.

Random Thoughts

Keep your inner idiot alive.

Random Thoughts

Start each day by reminding yourself that the world belongs equally to everyone, and resolve not to treat anyone differently because of his or her status. Act exactly the same with everyone.

Random Thoughts

New beginnings are seductive, and so is our own capacity for change. You tell yourself that, this time, you're really going to do differently, but all too often you're reminded that forever is a pretty long time to keep it up.

Random Thoughts

I always think about how we went from struggling to start fires, just a few thousand years ago, to being able to land safely on another planet. 

Random Thoughts

If two years of living in a pandemic have taught us anything, it's to expect the unexpected and prepare for anything. I'm saddened to see that the world hasn't quite yet returned to normal.

Random Thoughts

Climate change is a business opportunity, because it will require that virtually every segment of industry will have to be reinvented. Getting to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 (?) is going to require a revolution in the production of everything we produce, and a revolution in everything we consume. The process of creating fuel, food and construction materials, with all the needs that we have as humanity, it all has to be reinvented. And that's going to require a large amount of investment, a large amount of ingenuity and a large amount of innovation.

Random Thoughts

The world is in for a lot more breakthrough infections. All of the same things stand, whether it's Delta, Omicron, or any other Greek letter or non-Greek letter of SARS-CoV-2. Once you know you are infected, hang tight, limit your encounters with other people, and just take care of yourself. Use commonsense. Act responsibly.

Random Thoughts

Nap like Thomas Edison and Salvador Dali. It could spark creativity. It's an experiment that the everyday person can try out at home.

Random Thoughts

The US is the world's biggest culprit in generating plastic waste and the country urgently needs a new strategy to curb the vast amount of plastic that ends up in the oceans. The advent of cheap, versatile plastics has created a global scale deluge of plastic waste seemingly everywhere we look, with the US a leading contributor of disposable plastics that ends up entangling and choking marine life, harming ecosystems and bringing harmful pollution up through the food chain.

Random Thoughts

When life feels precarious, it's only natural to roll the dice on just about everything. It's about us.