Our pandemic-induced bubble is slowly opening back up. The kids are back in school in person on Thursdays and Fridays. More of our friends and family are getting vaccinated. I’m doing multiple pick-ups and drop-offs. The days are getting longer and warmer.
I started summer camp planning yesterday, and 7yo cheered when he heard camp hours were 9-3. Clearly he’s not used to being away from the house for that long anymore.
Source: NASA
I recently finished Invent and Wander, a collection of Jeff Bezos’ writings. One of Bezos’ gifts is his communication style: he uses stories and plain language to get his points across and make them stick. While the book got a bit repetitive at times (he re-uses anecdotes in speeches), the chapter I liked best was about his aspirations for space.
“If the world economy and population are to keep expanding, space is the only way to go,” Bezos says. His goal is to reduce the cost to access space (Blue Origin, like SpaceX, is developing reusable launch vehicles) and stoke innovation, similar to what cloud computing did for apps and web services. He envisions millions of people living in manmade space colonies and heavy industry being done off planet. He has no idea how that will be done and is okay with that; he wants to build the underlying infrastructure to make it possible.
Here Bezos cites the example of Amazon, a company that benefited from all that was built by generations before him: credit cards for payments, computers for the Internet, railroads and the postal service to ship goods. “When the infrastructure is in place for future space entrepreneurs, just as it was for me in 1994 to start Amazon, you will see amazing things happen, and it will happen fast,” he says.
It makes sense then that the mission of Blue Origin states “we’re committed to building a road to space so our children can build the future.”
Other notes from this week:
I follow the British Royal family and even had a crush on Prince William growing up, but watching Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah took the shine off the monarchy for me. Meghan was incredibly brave to share her struggles with mental health and the racism she faced. William’s response to a reporter, “we’re not a racist family” seems exactly what someone blind to his own privilege would say. Maybe that’s why the family motto is “never complain, never explain.”
We’re on season 4 of Kim’s Convenience. It took awhile for me to get into but this show has really grown on me. Bummed there won’t be a 6th season.