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My Life in Weeks

weeks.ginatrapani.org

251–260 of 272 posts

Re: My Life in Weeks

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

70k invested per year, I think I could be done in a decade. I had a really good year where I just neglected to set my 401k up. So much money wasted on taxes. I'm not really trying to retire in the US, I don't intend on having a family. I think a million or so, might be enough. 5% yield on 700k is 35k per year which is enough to live well in much of the world.

Reliable 5% yield while keeping the base the same value (rising with inflation)? Possible, but not without risk. And if you want to protect against that risk, i.e. accept that some investments will fail [0], you need a bigger amount, imho. Or accept that you will get less, not 35k per year. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/

That's a good point. But if I'm realistic with my own mortality I'd be happy if I reached 70.

Assuming I retire at 40, and need to make 700k last 30 years, that's 23k per year with no yield. Even a modest 3% yield slows the burn rate so my money would still outlast me.

Or I'll be 73 writing Python which might not be so bad...

Re: My Life in Weeks

#252

From this view it's clear how wasteful ontogeny is. All of that physical and psychological development takes too much valuable time and investment. And we haven't even gotten to Gina's retirement years yet. Clearly the future is in using 3D bioprinting to build fully formed adults as if sprung from the brow of Zeus. Skill and memory transfer are a technical problem only as long as we cling to our bias against our art…

Are you serious?

I'm always surprised by comments like yours. Do you see anything in that post that points to it being serious?

Re: My Life in Weeks

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is something one says on their deathbed when they have had a good life. I can assure you the reaction at hand is not limited to those you suggest. I know because I faced my own mortality, if only for a brief moment of time, far earlier than I ever expected and earlier than most would prefer I think. And when I did, this exact realisation hit me like a freight train. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a more p…

I was briefly diagnosed with "99.9% sure it's cancer" before it turned out to be benign. Say about 2-3 weeks. In those few weeks my main regrets were a) not having done many of the things on my bucket list, and b) not having children or not going to be live long enough to see them grow up. I'm someone with recurring nightmare about career goals and such. However at that time, work only crossed my mind briefly and was…

> I was briefly diagnosed with "99.9% sure it's cancer" before it turned out to be benign. Say about 2-3 weeks.

This is similar to my situation, except I was told, “We’re 99.9% sure it’s not cancer, so relax bro, don’t even worry about it.” Apparently, my age made it incredibly unlikely. “We’d be far more concerned if you were an older gentleman.”

Imagine my surprise when I got called back and they told me the complete opposite.

It worked out in the end as apparently they caught it so early that it had only just turned into cancer. If they had found it even weeks or months earlier, it would not have been cancer yet, just precancerous apparently. This claim seems dubious to me, I mean, how do you tell that? However, I am not a doctor, so what do I know. I do worry sometimes though that perhaps they overstated it and blew up my life over nothing.

I was told to consider myself lucky it was caught when it was as apparently it almost never happens. Again, a claim...that I don't know is accurate, or just something they told me to get me to relax.

You also might think that after something like that, that if something else occurred with my body, people might pay me more heed when I raised it? Well, you would be mistaken. Because I walked right into a goddamn spinal cord injury (incomplete at least, you gotta take the small wins) because they did exactly the same thing again. "Its just stress, probably working too hard, just dont think about it."

Turns out no amount of relaxing is going to walk back severe central canal stenosis resulting in severe cervical myelopathy with significant spinal cord signal change.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#254
post #218
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Norwegian, but never got used to this, and to this day (I turn 50 this year) my mum will try to communicate time with me using week numbers, and I have to tell her to use dates.

Week numbers are very useful for static holiday periods like the kid's school fall vacation and winter vacation. In my area, they are always in week 8 and week 40, and as such it's easier to plan accordingly. And my summer vacation is usually weeks 28-30. Just make sure to turn on week number in your calendar applications, then it might be more useful to you.

Then I still need to consult my calendars, while dates I can relate to the current date without that extra step.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although there used to be a time you could be a "successful blogger" and make enough money from advertising that you could focus on it full time. Those days are long behind us.

Those days brought us to successful blogs/websites to be acquired by bigger corp and then enshittified. Moreover, what used to be a successful blogger is now a successful YouTuber, no? Because generally speaking, masses prefer to watch and listen to things rather then read.

Or maybe a successful Substack author?

Re: My Life in Weeks

#256

Weeks is the most terrifying unit of time to think in. Short enough so you have a good sense of how long it feels but long enough to add up quickly.

Fun fact: Nordic countries use week numbers for all sorts of planning, e.g. vacation period, school events, company planning, statistics reporting, ... All calendars show week numbers.

Not so fun fact: Corporate Germany also uses week numbers and some paper pushers and some project managers have adapted, most nerds (incl. me) will never come to terms with it and have to look it up once a month. Also what do you mean by "all calendars" - the last paper one I owned I bought at an art fair in 2018ish ;)

Re: My Life in Weeks

#257

Very cool, thank you so much for sharing! One thing that hit me as a European is that you consider president inaugurations interesting enough to put in there! I mean, its a great point of reference, but still interesting to me. I couldn't tell you from when to when Merkel was chancellor, and I couldn't care less.

For me, I employ presidential terms as memorable 4 year labels, much the same as Olympiads (Beijing 2008, Sydney 2000, Barcelona 1992). It’s got zero to do with (geo) political influence. The Olympiads work as point in time “beats”, while presidential terms are “long tones”. Weird memory functions.

The news in the media (and outside) is so full of this that I might even be better at naming US presidents and their terms in reverse than German chancellors. The two term limit helps, to be fair. We're only on the fourth since I was born, vs 8 (counting non-consecutives) in the US. (Like, of course I can name ours, but not the exact years)

Re: My Life in Weeks

#258

Is it safe to publish your life in public? Even at a weekly precision? What about privacy & security? Genuinely asking. Could anyone take advantage of it?

I think a lot depends on whether you have very low online profile or if you have a wikipedia page with your date of birth and you've been blogging for 20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Trapani

Compare with Americans' often voiced concern of doxing (I'm not saying it's unfounded) and yet other jurisdictions demand that you put your name and address on your online publications even as a private citizen/solo business.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#259
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: Nordic countries use week numbers for all sorts of planning, e.g. vacation period, school events, company planning, statistics reporting, ... All calendars show week numbers.

Not so fun fact: Corporate Germany also uses week numbers and some paper pushers and some project managers have adapted, most nerds (incl. me) will never come to terms with it and have to look it up once a month. Also what do you mean by "all calendars" - the last paper one I owned I bought at an art fair in 2018ish ;)

If you work at a 'real' paper pusher office they have a three month calendars with week numbers hanging at every office wall, gifted from the wholesale and office center!

(You can activate week numbers in Office Outlook as well. Or go to ukenummer.no for simple display)

Re: My Life in Weeks

#260

Weeks is the most terrifying unit of time to think in. Short enough so you have a good sense of how long it feels but long enough to add up quickly.

It's so common but at the same so confusing that we have a dedicated website in Sweden to keep track https://vecka.nu/

We have that in Finland too: https://viikkonumero.fi/

That one also lets you look up other weeks by number, which is occasionally useful. But the calmer design of https://vecka.nu is very pleasant!

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