Ways of Looking #3 (November '24)
In this issue: the best travel monitor setup, Rolfing, and the real science behind EMFs.
Welcome to Ways of Looking. Roughly every month, I send my friends a few things I’m enjoying — content, products, and experiments — and summaries of anything I’ve written recently.
About me: I’m a three-time founder (Eco, CoinList, Sidewire) based in Austin, TX. I’m currently spending time on: Eco, exploring the home health & environmental toxins space, supporting FreeWorld, hacking on a few products, and investing in and advising great companies and founders.
Check out my more regular writing and reply to this email anytime. Thanks for reading.
— Andy
What I’m enjoying
Product: the Ten One Mountie+ plus a generic portable monitor like this ARZOPA one is the best solution I’ve found for a two-monitor travel setup. I put my computer on the Roost laptop stand, attach the monitor with the Mountie+, and plug in a USB hub with a keyboard and mouse attached. The whole kit fits in a small laptop sleeve, so it’s easy to carry it around during the day while traveling.
Article: The New Light Is Bad, by Tom Scocca. A really excellent (and entertaining) introduction to why modern LED lighting isn’t so great. “All light is not the same” is something you can’t unsee.
I’m testing a bunch of different lightbulbs and will probably have an essay this month or next breaking them down.
Experiment: Rolfing with a great practitioner is the most impactful bodywork I have ever done. It’s similar to massage, but focused on reorganizing and adjusting your fascia (connective tissue) rather than muscles. I have tried Rolfing in the past without much success. But I recently found an exceptional Rolfer and it has been transformative. I am literally walking differently than before and my body feels more balanced.
One Rolfing insight that stuck with me: we think of our bodies as an archipelago of disconnected organs and muscles — roughly “oh yeah, the stomach is there… and then there’s some space… and then the diaphragm is up there…” — but in practice, there’s not just space. There’s connective tissue all over the place that ties the parts of our bodies together and fills the “space”, and that connective tissue gets patterned in unnatural ways throughout our life, and then never really attended to.
Book: A History of the Jews, by Paul Johnson. It’s a tome, but very readable and highly insightful, covering 4,000 years of history. If you’re curious about Jewish culture, religion, or are a Jew yourself and want a deeper understanding of the historical context of the religion and practices, it is well worth reading. Thanks Anthony for the rec.
App: Pocket Casts is great for podcasts. I used to use Spotify, but it drove me nuts how there’s just a single global queue for music and podcasts — I often go back and forth between the two and would rather them be totally separate. Pocket Casts solved my problem, and has a bunch of nice podcast-specific affordances.
What I’ve written
What are EMFs? A rational, skeptical, curious person’s guide — the public narrative is that health risks from “EMFs” are nonexistent. Is that true? This essay unpacks the science behind what EMFs actually are, and how to think about the risks.
Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.
— Andy