taste games, marketing to AI's & why there is so little solar energy in Africa
CC#78 - Retiring at Age 31, the Solar Eclipse' impact on AirBnb & Hopes for Decoupling
Hey there and welcome to ✨ CuratedCuriosity - a bi-weekly newsletter delivering inspiration from all over the internet to the notoriously curious.
Things I Enjoyed Reading.
🎲 Taste games or why I avoid midrange beer
When we change our minds we usually like to have some ‘rational’ reason in mind that justifies this change - rarely someone would admit that they changed their mind about sth to fit in with other people. But isn’t it somehow weird that we do feel ‘guilty’ when (un)consciously adjusting our taste to the people surrounding us? An entertaining take on how Bordieu’s cultural capital theory translates to nowadays everyday life (and probably at least a partial explanation why I am writing this newsletter).
One interpretation of Bourdieu is that we like things when it benefits us to like them. Tastes are just a matter of:
Understanding the consequences of liking stuff in your social context, and
Having the cultural knowledge to know how to like things “correctly”.Basically, your brain does game theory: Do the cool people around you like potatoes? Would you benefit from liking potatoes? Do you understand potato consumption rituals well-enough to blend in at the hot potato salons? Then: Start liking potatoes.
Unsettlingly, this is mostly supposed to be unconscious. We’re social creatures, we sense what we should become to get ahead, and then we become it, all without involving fickle rationality.
🌍 Why Isn’t Solar Scaling in Africa?
Naivley thinking it seems obvious that a lot of solar panels should be built in Africa. Why is it not happening? Yes, there are a lot of inefficiencies that make solar development a lot more costly in Africa than in the U.S. but theoretically this is exactly where institutions like the world bank should step in. However, seemingly their initiatives did not really pan out as planned…
The biggest takeaway is about openness. Transparency is a core principle of sound development policy and, supposedly, of World Bank operations. Yet in hindsight it is clear that Scaling Solar was not transparent enough — and was in some cases explicitly misleading — about aspects of the program, especially how free assistance or subsidized capital was used. In fact, most of what we know about the initiative is because of the transparency of one of its funders — the U.S. government13 — rather than because the Bank was open. The impact of such opacity has been substantial. By hiding or denying the various ways it nudged Zambia’s solar farm along, the Bank failed not just to provide a recipe that could be replicated, but to even reveal the key ingredients.
Think of it this way: What if I told you, “You, too, can get rich by following a few simple steps I used to build my successful business!” but I failed to share that I started with a gift from my rich uncle? You’d rightly accuse me of selling snake oil. The World Bank sold Scaling Solar in a similar way: super cheap solar, easy to follow steps. Yet without being open about the free or below-market help for project preparation, legal support, land acquisition, financing cost, and more, the sales pitch was misleading.
🧓 Ashish Kumar Was a Top PSLE Scorer. Now, He’s a 31-Year-Old Retiree.
This is a story about a guy who retired at age 31. I found it interesting to read about his motivations for doing so as well as his general way of thinking about life.
“My work was meaningful. But in the end, something other than myself determined what time I got up every morning and how I spent the finite hours of this one and only life I have.”
‘Happily free’ is Ashish’s LinkedIn tagline. It’s almost as if he’s proclaiming to the world that, as a retiree, he has finally escaped the matrix—and with more than enough time to spare.
“I think it’s terrifying to wait until you’re 60 to give yourself permission to be free. By that time, already looking backwards, not forwards. A lot of life to remember; not that much left to live.”
Work is the furthest thing from Ashish’s mind these days. He leans back in his chair and sips his iced latte, unconcerned. After all, he doesn’t have anywhere to be or anywhere to go for the day.
He simply has to be.
Food for Thought.
🤖 Is ‘marketing to AIs’ the new SEO optimisation?
💼 Should we be afraid or happy about AI potentially taking our jobs?
🧠 IQ test scores of the defendants in the Nuremberg trials
Random Stuff.
☀️ The coverage area of tomorrow’s solar eclipse - based on AirBnB bookings.
🛌 Seemingly people in America are feeling more rested when waking up in the morning, once they get older (based on answers to the American Time Use Survey). Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally?) there is a strong positive correlation with the survey’s responses on life satisfaction.
📈 Some positive news to start the week - since the beginning of the 2000s multiple countries successful achieved economic growth while reducing CO2 emissions. Seems like there is hope that at least partial ‘decoupling’ is possible.
Personal Update.
Took a bit of a break over Easter to travel to New York with a friend. Certainly an overwhelming city in many ways.
Also got to go hiking in the White Mountains, took a boat trip in Boston harbour on the rainest day of they year so far (yayy), watched a college ice hockey game and visited an actual U.S. American castle (built in the 1920s).
Really hope spring will start here soon - still windy and cold all the time (makes me slightly miss Europe…)