Friday Five

This is the first of what will be an on-going series of five interesting things that I've recently seen, read, or been reminded of. It's sort of a continuation of a previous Quite Interesting recurring series I started but never managed to continue because collecting a series of similarly themed articles in a reasonable timeframe is pretty impractical.

It's hard not to admire the strength and generosity of the couple behind Living In the Wait. For people going through infertility, not only must you endure the processes (physiological and psychological) that are arduous as it is, but your life is essentially on hold while it all happens. You're just waiting for the next chapter of your life to start. I personally have not had to experience this, but the author Melissa has. And one of the things she found was the lack of support and resources available to others in a similar position. So she took it upon herself to build a community for others also Living in the Wait.

A young teen cooked more than 1000 meals for the homeless. This was a couple years ago now, but he started doing it for the service component of the Duke of Edinburgh program, and just kept going. He never missed a week. Not sure if he's still contributing to his local community, but it's quite a milestone for someone so young.

This was a fascinating account of the Bilibid Prison Bakehouse. Another old one, but such an engaging read, not just about the cake being so exceptional, but the social system behind the walls, and the way the bakehouse helps inmates and serves the outer community as well. There doesn't seem to be any more coverage about the bakehouse since the time of the article on Pepper, at least in English search results, but I hope it's still running.

I recently read that Nerdalize filed for bankruptcy. It's somewhat disappointing (though I suppose not entirely surprising) to hear this because their business model was pretty interesting. There was coverage a couple years ago about their plan to develop wall heaters powered by servers. Private premises would house the servers in exchange for heating (generated by the server), and companies could save on data services by not having to use dedicated data centres. Sounds like there wasn't enough demand, and there would have a been a number of obstacles to overcome with data security and maintenance logistics, but it was a clever way to approach the problem.

There are several occasions when I feel I give too many f*cks. Mark Manson wrote an article that became a book about the Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (language warning). It's a good reminder of how to approach everything in general, and reminds me of a talk I attended at uni given by a Buddhist monk. She never articulated it quite in the same way, and I might write about it in more detail one day, but the key point was, before you react, consider "Does this matter?". And if it does, "Why?" and "Should it?". It's probably the most meaningful lecture I ever attended.

So that's me this week. What's piqued your interest lately?