Throughout my life, I’ve always had a go-to answer to the question: “Tell us something unique about yourself.”

Back in 1979, when I was born, fathers helping out in prenatal care was quite new. So new, in fact, that Canada’s national broadcaster, the CBC, decided to dedicate a three part series to the subject. But to do that, they needed an example — a couple embracing these new methods on the journey towards childbirth.

Enter Murray and Maureen, who graciously gave up their time (and some of their dignity!) to play along. You see where this is going…

By the third installment, it was time to go into labor. The television camera peered through a delivery room window to see the doctor pick me up and wash me off.

This video lived on a beta tape for decades, and was only recently gifted to me by my sister, who had found it while digitizing a huge library of home videos.

Anyway, for posterity, here it is. (And enjoy the 70s fashion!)

Like many others, I’ve been deep inside AI world for the past several months. The launch of Claude Cowork, in particular, alongside the proliferation of MCP servers has opened up all kinds of potential. I hope to share some of these ideas in the future.

For now, here’s a simple daily news roundup that I find helpful: the AI Daily Brief.

I pay and subscribe to a few dozens newsletters – most on Substack – and subscribe to even more RSS feeds that focus on what’s happening in AI. The problem: I don’t have enough time, every day, to go through all that material in addition to all the work-related stuff I need to read. So I created an agent to compile a summary of the most important items.

To do so, I gave it access to my email and Substack subscriptions, as well as my folder of RSS feeds on Inoreader. So I’ve already curated the sources — AI is taking that and compiling a summary of the most important developments. I don’t want to miss anything, so I also asked the agent to do a general news search. Lastly, I provided it with a selection of tools I use (software like Obsidian, DEVONthink, and Craft) and asked it to share any new AI-related news or workflows that have emerged using these tools.

The result is an email that I get every morning, and a corresponding web page that I’m now sharing with the world here. It will publish at 9am daily Hong Kong time.

As always, I’m open to thoughts and suggestions to make this even better. So drop me a line, and let me know what you think.

I’m one of those people who basically leaves AirPods in their ears 24/7 — but in my case, it’s not usually for music. I’ve become a certifiable podcast addict with a wide-range of shows in my queue — everything from discussions about the Vancouver Canucks to productivity software to Saturday Night Live (definitely check out Fly on the Wall if you’re an SNL fan).

Amid that sea of shows, one really stands out: Heavyweight. If you haven’t listened before, do yourself a favor and head over to Spotify right now (yes, unfortunately it’s a Spotify exclusive) and treat yourself.

My description won’t do the show justice, but I’ll try: each episode involves going deep into somebody’s past to “the moment everything changed.” It could be an issue that still nags at a person many years later, or unfinished business, or some mystery from the person’s past that they want resolved. Ultimately, they want peace of mind.

Heavyweight is hosted by This American Life alum Jonathan Goldstein (a fellow Canadian!), who has evolved into an absolute master storyteller. In fact, Goldstein was interviewed earlier this year on the Longform podcast, where the hosts called Heavyweight the best podcast out there.

The show is seasonal, with new episodes coming this fall. In the meantime, dive into the back catalog as the shows aren’t time sensitive. I’ve also included an interview featuring Goldstein below, but don’t watch it yet. Listen to a few episodes first, and then come back. You’ll get much more out of it.

Enough of me pontificating. Just trust me on this one — go have a listen. Now.

Ed Luce, one of my favorite writers at the Financial Times, looks at how English-speaking democracies have been battling Covid. Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are doing decently well, but the other two aren’t:

The pandemic record of these three English-speaking democracies belies the notion that “Anglo-Saxon cultures” are too individualistic to stick to social distancing. If New Zealanders and Australians can wear masks, so could Americans and British. Ignoring common sense never used to be an anglophone stereotype. What separates the US and the UK from other democracies is extravagant self-belief. Half a millennium of potted history tells Anglo-Americans they are destined always to be on the winning side. It blinds both to how the rest of the world increasingly views them, which is with sadness and growing mockery.

Ed Luce, Financial Times

This is bang on.

I remember coming across the word ‘schadenfreude’ pretty early on as it was adopted into English vernacular. Its quick embrace by English-speakers is evidence that we badly needed a more precise term to describe the emotion schadenfreude refers to. People just ‘got it’, because we’ve all felt it, at some point.

To build on that success, I now humbly suggest we adopt another word: “Jantelagen”.

I first came across the term ‘Jantelagen” during an episode of This Is Pop, a Netflix show on popular music, that examined Sweden’s extraordinary success in the music industry. The country’s best producers and songwriters have influenced decades of pop music around the world, from Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys to The Weeknd and Dua Lipa.

You would think, with this kind of success, Swedes would be shouting about it from the rooftops — but they aren’t. With the host of This Is Pop badgering one songwriter to list the famous artists he’s worked with, he finally blurts out the word “Jantelagen”, before adding “the law of Jante.”

Being a Canadian, I immediately got it — in the very same way I got schadenfreude. Jantelagen loosely translates to braggart, or show-off, something frowned upon in Canada, too, although not to the same degree.

Hej Sweden:

Often times, when people at first have little and suddenly an excessive amount of something special – a lot of success, money or fame – they have the tendency to brag about it.

Swedes on the other hand remain relatively unnoticed when they reach something extraordinary. They are less prone to bragging. This is because they follow a common rule called the Jantelagen, literally translated: law of Jante. Basically it says that “You are not better than anyone else“.

I absolutely love this.

One of the songs I listened to when I was younger contained the phrase, “halfway to coal, halfway to diamond,” a reminder that anybody could end up at the top — or the bottom – quickly. It’s not that life is dependent on luck, it’s that we don’t entirely control our destiny. A bit of humility recognizes one’s good fortune, and that is usually followed by gratitude — something we all seem to lack these days.

July 1 is Canada Day. It’s a fun, energetic and beer-filled day for people inside Canada, but almost completely unknown outside of the country’s borders (except for Canadians abroad). The small Canadian celebrations here in Hong Kong usually have to compete with another major anniversary on the same day: the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, or “Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day” (just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) This has traditionally made planning social events for July 1 rather difficult!

There’s actually a third anniversary on July 1 that usually flies under the radar: the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.

I am a person who loves to work late into the night. I’m busy during the day, with phone calls and text messages and assignments and meetings, so my productivity and focus is lower than it should be. Once the sun sets and everyone goes to bed, a peaceful calm descends, creating a serene environment for reading, working, studying, whatever it might be.

The problem with working late is the waking up part. If you start work in the afternoon, then fine. But, if like me, you still need to wake up relatively early in the morning to head to work, then you’ve probably suffered from sleepiness or even dozed off from time to time.

We already know that sleep is imperative to our health, energy, thinking, and other cognitive abilities, but cheating on a full night’s rest is easy to do because it seems like the consequences will be short term: “I’ll be tired tomorrow. I can deal with it.” But it looks like that’s the wrong answer.

I first heard of a possible link between Alzheimer’s and lack of sleep many years ago. Since then, I’ve heard unscientific anecdotes about how many people in seniors’ care homes with dementia had demanding careers and senior positions with lots of responsibility. There was already speculation that years of just a few hours’ sleep may have caught up to them.

Then I saw this from the New York Times: Sleeping Too Little in Middle-Age May Raise Dementia Risk, Study Finds. It’s the first large study to draw such a strong connection between sleep and memory loss:

It followed nearly 8,000 people in Britain for about 25 years, beginning when they were 50 years old. It found that those who consistently reported sleeping six hours or less on an average weeknight were about 30 percent more likely than people who regularly got seven hours sleep (defined as “normal” sleep in the study) to be diagnosed with dementia nearly three decades later.

“It would be really unlikely that almost three decades earlier, this sleep was a symptom of dementia, so it’s a great study in providing strong evidence that sleep is really a risk factor,” said Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

If you take pride at how much you can accomplish on such little sleep, read this — now. The article details how the study was conducted and how other variables that could have impacted the results were removed, so you can make up your own conclusions.

It’s a scary read, but better to come across it now than when it’s too late.

This was just too funny not to share.

A satirical Twitter account (which I’m very late to discovering) called VC’s Congratulating Themselves makes fun of VCs for their gaffes, adoration of money, ginormous egos, and occasional tone-deaf public statements. It’s definitely worth following for a bit of humor while doomscrolling.

Jason Calacanis, a well-known investor who has literally made billions betting on startups, is unquestionably successful. But in the Silicon Valley VC world, it’s not enough to be rich and successful — they want to make sure you know how rich and successful they are.

Enjoy.

Early Uber – Official Trailer (HD) pic.twitter.com/eEQ1IVDBP1

— VCs Congratulating Themselves 👏👏👏 (@VCBrags) July 9, 2020

I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed by the new documentary White Noise, which was recently released by The Atlantic. I first learned of the doc from an article in the same publication titled “Why the Alt-Right’s Most Famous Woman Disappeared” by Daniel Lombroso, which profiled a young woman named Lauren Southern. Despite following news and politics pretty closely, it was the first time I had come across her name. What surprised me, though, is she hails from Surrey, British Columbia, which is part of Greater Vancouver. She grew up in the same environment I did.

Chinese President Xi Jinping blasting the United States and calling for solidarity in the fight against COVID-19 at the United Nations on September 22 (emphasis added by me):

All countries are closely connected and we share a common future. No country can gain from others’ difficulties or maintain stability by taking advantage of others’ troubles. To pursue a beggar-thy-neighbor policy or just watch from a safe distance when others are in danger will eventually land one in the same trouble faced by others. This is why we should embrace the vision of a community with a shared future in which everyone is bound together. We should reject attempts to build blocs to keep others out and oppose a zero-sum approach. We should see each other as members of the same big family, pursue win-win cooperation, and rise above ideological disputes and do not fall into the trap of “clash of civilizations”. More importantly, we should respect a country’s independent choice of development path and model.

So who in China made an ‘independent choice’ about any of those things?