We’re celebrating Lexi’s 1/2 Birthday today. The kids are going to bake a cake as an extracurricular activity after PE.

Here’s Bella’s COVID letter to Grade Ones doing home school.

The kids watched a Smithsonian webinar on minerals – that was a hit. Fossil Friday, last week, wasn’t as popular (but I thought it was good). Here’s the link for future online events.

Here’s a list of online events from Wide Open School.

A week’s worth of groceries for five, below.

Asymmetries

This is a wonderful concept taught by Taleb in his many writings.

Just explained in a lecture that risk management and “science” are not the same thing. Risk is about asymmetries.
With .1% error rate, few flight attendants would be alive. pic.twitter.com/mTZMi4YKaK

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) April 13, 2020

My post at the end of March about trying to fit 2019 annual run volume into April 2020, was an example of an asymmetry.

Even if you think your chance of ruin is small, whatever you gain isn’t worth running a risk of ruin.

An example from finance => recourse borrowings to buy things, you can’t use in lockdown.

An example from weightlifting => middle aged men seeking new one-rep maximums. I keep this in mind during my early morning strength sessions!

These things are all over the place – they aren’t always negative. ‘

• Wearing a mask – near nil cost, huge upside if you don’t end up in ICU.
• 20 minutes a day of walking – near nil cost, huge upside in health outcomes vs nothing.

A final tip that helps me make better decisions: always assume you will make the choice more than once.

If you can be ruined then you will be ruined, eventually.

Virus Stuff

1/ Suppression and lift strategy described in HK and Singapore.

2/ Came across a note about parts of Italy extending quarantine to 28-days, household transmission meant 14-days wasn’t being effective.

3/ 32 days into our own quarantine, I can’t see a plateau in positive test results. I’d expected to see it happen 10 days ago. With our soft lockdown, we are ticking along at 6% daily growth in Colorado.

4/ Reached out to a buddy in Hong Kong, their pools have been shut for 11 weeks, and counting. Summer swim league, local swim teams => looking doubtful for a while.

5/ Thank a politician. Yes, do it. The leader of our State House lives a couple blocks away from us. They’re working their butts off, taking heat from all sides, trying to make things better. I feel very fortunate to have good people, working hard, on Colorado’s behalf.

6/ Burglaries way up in Boulder, already. Combine that reality with a program to create more vacancies in our prison system and I expect community backlash.

Lockdown Life

Here’s a question for your lockdown life: what’s lacking?

Really drill down on your answers.

For me, lockdown is similar to the process I went through to become a better father.

Parenthood involves a feeling of having a lot taken away from me.

How do you deal with those feelings? My lockdown tactics include a written schedule, getting my mind focused on home school and starting a challenging training plan.

In our day-to-day lives, we are often drawn towards novelty or distraction. Vacations, new restaurants, new experiences, new bike routes, new deals… lots of ways to distract ourselves.

Here’s something you might want to consider, authentic connection.

It need not be with another person.

Nature is a source for me => “bad” weather, oceans, mountain vistas, forests. All of these leave me feeling with an expanded feeling.

Books are another source => learning from the best minds of the past.

Others like to challenge themselves with mathematics or coding.

If you’re locked down..

• cut off from novelty
• cut off from whatever you’ve been using to distract yourself
• cut off from authentic connection

then you may have an opportunity to see if your focus needs to change.

Happiness is the space between cravings.