Produce more than you consume

2025-07-27 08:00:00

Dangers of over-consumption

One’s life can very easily be wasted away on non-consequential, “time passing”, filler, short-term hedonistic experiences.

It’s a blessing to enjoy life’s little pleasures, but it’s perilous to lead a life consisting of only discrete pleasures and experiences that are not, or cannot be chained together in any way shape or form. Essentially, a life spent as a passive spectator through and through, observing the years scroll by.

That feels like an egregious squandering of the most precious gift we’ve been given: life. Chaining experiences together and compounding them into a product that amounts to much more than the sum of its parts is one of the most intriguing, addicting, but most of all, rewarding parts of life.

Benefits of production

Building up years of study to land to land a job that takes one out of poverty, raising a child into a full grown adult, building relationships consciously into heartwarming friendships or a loving family, writing a book or article that not only helps oneself but also many others, building a successful company based on years of networking and experiences.

They require considerable amounts of deliberate actions where different experiences are aggregated, chained and combined in novel ways that add value to a system. Value is produced.

Best of all, society rewards you for that! If something you produced is deemed to be of value and (directly or indirectly) consumed by a fellow human being, you can get compensated in currency, recognition, access, friendship, amongst others. As the products of your labor expand and compound, an even more interesting non-trivial effect starts to happen that could not have been predicted in the first place. Personally, both articles and a presentation I did resulted in interesting job offers that I didn’t plan for, nor could I have predicted.

But it’s not easy

Discipline, self reflection and the hard work to plan and aggregate different actions and experiences, are the most important ingredients to consistently produce value.

If this would be easy, everyone would be doing it by default. That’s why self help books are such a profitable business. This difficulty stems from our inherited hardwired behaviours that optimize towards immediate gratification, which served our late ancestors to such success that these traits got selected and filtered through the ages as an essential part of our species.

However, in the context of our modern societies where resources and entertainment are abundant, these traits backfire and when left to their own devices, can easily stray one into a life of misery and value bankruptcy¹.

The antidote. Self-discipline workout.

Just like any other muscle in our body, self-discipline requires consistent and intentional work to stay strong, but relying solely on will power, a scarce and fleeting resource, is often not enough. In order to protect this precious resource, one can set up an environment to block out frivolous distractions and non-consequential instant gratifications. In my case, I don’t have video streaming subscriptions (since I’ve come to realise that most series and movies add little to no value to my life), I have blocked distracting websites and videogames on my computer and expelled junk and sugary foods from home².

Remember, any time spent in over-indulging consumption, is time not spent producing value.

Instead, create the habit of self reflection and journalling, organize events (at work, with your friends or loved ones), write articles and publish videos that can be seen and judged by others (like this article), welcome accountability and reposability, clean your room. These actions are very likely accessible to you now, at (close to) zero cost. ³

Replace non-consequential consumption with fruitful production. Start anywhere, start now.

Napoleon Biography: Takeaways

2025-07-20 08:00:00

I’ve recently finished reading Napoleon: A Life, a well researched book by Andrew Roberts about the full and well travelled life of Napoleon Bonaparte, his rises and falls, and glimpses of what made the famous soldier-statesman tick. These are my main takeaways:

Leadership

Spirit de Corps

• “A general’s principle talent consists in knowing the mentality of the soldier and in winning his confidence. And, in these two respects, the French soldier is more difficult to lead than any other. He is not a machine to be put in motion but a reasonable being that must be directed”’ - Napoleon
• “More battles are lost by loss of hope than loss of blood” - Napoleon
• “It is astonishing what power words have over men” - Napoleon, speaking of the 32 demi brigade, who had his words “I was tranquil, the brave 32nd demibrigade was there” embroidered in large gold letters on its colours, which further increased their courage
• Napoleon found it essential to keep his troops moral high, which he actioned upon in different ways:
  • Napoleon was known to give electrifying pep talks (harangues) before battles
    • “One must speak to the soul. It’s the only way to electrify the men” - Napoleon
  • Napoleon had a strong sense of identification of soldier with his regiment’s corps
  • Ordered for plays and songs to be held for the troops, gave medals, made sure there was pride his platoons
  • Upon receiving petitions from his men (such as on the subject of increasing their pensions), he would act on them immediately
  • Napoleon held small gestures like removing a medal of honor from him and giving it to a soldier that he observed a particularly valiant behaviour
  • He joked around with troops, reminiscing on war stories with veterans. He would make sure to share his wine with the sentries. He was accessible. Small things perhaps, but helped build morale and breed devotion.
  • Napoleon references to the ancient world made their troops see that they were part of a larger whole, a larger part of history. Their lives, and if it comes to it, their deaths, mattered.
  • Napoleon told his troops how much their family and neighbours would honour their valiant behaviour

Leadership style

• “[A leader’s] youth is almost indispensable in commanding an army” - Napoleon
• Napoleon was first frowned upon by his peers when being given control of the army of Italy, near to his marriage with Josephine. They were not impressed by him showing unimpressive pictures of his wife, and his small stature. But as soon as he started talking about operations, logistics, asking for info and laying out the plan, they immediately saw Napoleon “grow”. Competence and diligence, above appearances.
• Napoleon’s planning and concentration of forces were crucial to his consecutive battle victories
• It was an intense environment, but his staff generally admired him. He was polite, and would forgive small mistakes
• “Fear and uncertainty accelerate the fall of empires: they are a thousand times more fatal than the dangers and losses of an ill-fated war” - Napoleon
• Julius Caesar once faced a mutiny that forced him to draw back. Caesar allowed them to be released, but addressed them as mere civilians, rather than soldiers. He won them back with this gesture. Like Julius Caesar, Napoleon was sure to admonish the troops that were under expectations.
• To his troops Napoleon was lavish in praise, but to his family, ambassadors and ministers he was acerbic. Severe to his officers, kind to the men.
• Napoleon instructed officers to hold 4 to 8 hour reviews, where the group, weapons and drills were inspected. It made soldiers used to being ready and weaponed, and showed them that their leader was attentive and cared about them.
• “You don’t need wit during times of war. You need to be precise, display backbone and simplicity” - Napoleon to Jerome, who he placed as king of Westphalia

Leading masses

• “The masses should be directed without them being aware of it”. Napoleon to Fouché
• When Napoleon centralized power and appointed the prefects, the regime was turned into a meritocratic system, where officials would be promoted according to their performance. They would need to provide statistical data and annual tours of their departments, and Napoleon made sure they were properly trained.
• “The men who have changed the world never succeeded by winning over the powerful, but always by stirring the masses. The first method is a resort to intrigue and only brings limited results. The latter is the course of genius and changes the face of the world.” - Napoleon on St Helena
• Napoleon mentioned that a nation is always what you had wit to make of it. Triumph of faction, parties, divisions, was the fault of those in authority only. No people are bad under a good government, just as troops are bad under good generals. As such, Napoleon mentioned the directory men brought France down to the level of their own blundering and were degrading her, and she was beginning to repudiate them
• After a decade of revolution, many French men were desperate for leadership, and recognized that the parliamentary process inhibited that, as did a constitution that was next to impossible to amend. So they were willing to see their representative government to be temporarily suspended, an opening that Napoleon took advantage of.
• “Confidence from below, authority from above”- Bonapartist dictum
• “Chouannerie and the émigrés are skin diseases, terrorism an internal malady” - Napoleon
• “If you treat the mob / rabble with kindness, these creatures fancy themselves invulnerable. If you hang a few, they get tired of the game, and they become submissive and humble as they ought to be” - Napoleon when defending Place de la Concorde

Governing

• States are ever more vulnerable as when they are attempting to reform themselves
• Upon unification of law codes in France, Napoleon recurrently asked: “is it fair? Is it useful?”
  • “One should not overburden with over-detailed laws. Law must do nothing but impose a general principle. It would be vain if one were to try every possible situation.” - Napoleon
• Because of labor shortages caused by constant war, wages increased by 25% during his 15 year rule.
• High inflation brings forth the opportunity for having a newcomer governing, because people are desperate for solutions, and will reward anyone who brings forth a solution. As seen with the arrival of Bonaparte to France in 1799, where inflation was high (price of bread was astronomical, but directors were immune since they paid themselves a salary linked to the value of 30k pounds of wheat). Bonaparte was seen as being a good top down zealot autocratic solution that placed a constitution with strong executive power with central control.
• Napoleon’s marriage to Marie Louise, the daughter of the Austrian leader Francis, was strategic. For some time it coerced the Austrian leader to not join the Prussians and Russians, which would reduce Napoleon’s chances for a victory

Central command and control

• “Nothing is so important in war, than undivided command” - Napoleon
• Dangers of overbearing concentration of power with a single point of failure:
  • His controlling nature likely stifled initiative. Several of his leads were only good in his presence, but without him present, they would falter. Dupont was one of them
  • The allies successful strategy was to only attack Napoleon’s lieutenants, but avoid confrontations with Napoleon himself. Napoleon, by not scaling himself properly, caused this situation where only where he was present could the army thrive. Everywhere else, it got defeated. A big lesson.
  • Choosing the right people is crucial:
    • Some of the biggest blunders Napoleon made were about the placement of people in the wrong positions. Like Ney on a big battalion, sul on a more administrative position, and another one as war minister when he should be in the battle of Waterloo. It’s very important to play to people’s strengths
    • Like Julius Caesar, Napoleon was betrayed and placed in bad position by people who previously wronged him but he didn’t persecute, like Talleyrand and Fouché, who were openly planning a cue against Napoleon’s empire and negotiating peace terms in 1814.
  • During the Russian campaign, he was regularly lied to by his senior officers, since no one wanted to be Napoleon’s line of fire. There is an example of a deception that involved 3 of them, one of them being Murat. Napoleon was once very close to his men, but in this campaign, where he needed their support the most, he was often lied to. For example on the number of provisions available for men, 10 days were communicated, when they were close to none.

Leanness

• Napoleon’s core system allowed him to be quick and flexible, living off the land instead of relying on vulnerable supply lines. This flexibility allowed it to outmaneuver the enemy and exploit its slowness.
  • This leanness is comparable to what fast moving startups do to adapt to new challenges, by reorganizing their organization quickly and effectively, allowing it to change course very quickly, and concentrate power of the crucial aspects of the business
  • As a contemporary counter-example, Kmart was not able to move fast and adapt, leading to its bankruptcy after Wallmart innovated with a store logistics network design that made it much more efficient. Kmart needed to have change fast and efficiently for that to happen, but instead just kept doing the same, with mostly superficial changes like barcode scanners that were did not yield the same impact because it did not have an evolved network to leverage them

Behaviour

Energy. Urgency. Moving fast.

• His father died at 38 when Napoleon was 15 years old. Napoleon’s urgency, drive and boundless energy might be partly explained by that, in that he foreseen that his life too, would be short.
• Napoleon was energetic and injected immediate energy wherever he went. Everything around Napoleon happened at a tremendous pace. He hated wasting a minute in a day. Napoleon read newspapers or had texts read to him while he was in a hot bath, being shaved, or in the carriage with his wife Josephine.
  • “If you want to dine well, dine with Cambacérès. If you want to dine badly, dine with Lebrun. If you want to dine quickly, dine with me” - Napoleon to a general
    • Napoleon often took only 10 minutes to eat, except for family suppers on Sundays, where he might spend half an hour.
    • Everything in his palace revolved around work. He dined when he could.
    • He never drank spirits, and there are no examples of him being drunk.
  • Napoleon also didn’t take the time in his love making: “the matter was over within 3 minutes”
• “If you make war, wage with energy and severity. It’s only means of making it shorter and less deplorable for mankind” - Napoleon
• “Impatience” is the word that appears when other people portray Napoleon
• In the beginning, he moved fast with his armies because he didn’t have resources to do sieges. That need led to rapid movement that caught the enemy off balance. He did have many problems just having his men fed and shod:
  • He had a consistent concern to have his men well shod, such that he ordered Prussians to exchange their boots with the french, since they would not be needing then anyway
  • He sent multiple letters requesting for supplies, specially footwear for soldiers
    • He likely didn’t say that an army marches on his stomach, but surely knew that they marched on their feet
    • He had a chief of staff writing his dictations that was crucial. He transposed his rapid fires and raw wishes into well defined, polite and diplomatic plans and commands. He was so proficient that he managed to convince his wife to share a chateau with his mistress, and vice versa.
• “Energy, energy!” - Napoleon to his brother, who he made king and found to lack energy and drive
• “Activite, activite, vitesse. Je me recommended a Vous” (translated to “activity, activity, speed. I’m counting on you”) - Napoleon postscript of a message to his lieutenant

Preparation

• Napoleon would take care to know the terrain, topology and other details of the places he would fight or invade. Before the Russian campaign, he ordered for very detailed descriptions to be made of the territory. Everything from road length to depth of river. Every possible detail.
• He was more keen to glean information directly from the place, rather than hear its dignitaries’ speeches. As an example, he once left a dignitary haranguing to the air as Napoleon moved to his next destination.

Seizing the opportunity

• “Winning is not enough if one doesn’t take advantage of success.” - Napoleon
• “All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.” - Napoleon
• “I’ve destroyed the Austrian army simply by marches” - Napoleon
• There is immense value in initiative and making sure your advantage is not lost and you don’t need to cross the same bridge twice. After the defeat in Russia, the army’s weak position exposed Napoleon to allied assaults, forcing him to lose territories. When trying to get them back, the allies used the tactics previously used by Napoleon against the allies, making them work against him. If Napoleon would have kept those territories and army, then he wouldn’t have needed to be in this very tough spot.
  • As a learning, do a decisive victory, and don’t take it for granted and leave it to chance. Keep your advantage, stay lean, don’t allow bloat to creep into the organization, don’t get too comfortable in a high stakes environment. Past performance gains don’t mean you’ll get the same results in the future, using the same strategy and tactics.
  • Napoleon also made the mistake of not keeping his forces concentrated, contradicting his own war maxims, and allowed for lesser political concerns to take over, like focusing on taking over Berlin to punish Prussia which was of low strategic value
  • The corp system that Napoleon introduced was replicated, and his tactics were exploited and studied by enemies, losing one of his main leverages.

Taking risks. Decisiveness.

• “If the art of war was only the art of not risking anything, glory would be prey to mediocrity. We need a full triumph!” - Napoleon
• ”(…) If one is not ready to take risks when the time is ripe, one ends up doing nothing” - Napoleon on Waterloo
• “When the house is crumbling, is it time to busy oneself in the garden? A change here is indispensable” - Napoleon to Mamond
• “There is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men. To have lived without glory, without leaving a trace of existence, is not to have lived at all.” - Napoleon

Persist, don’t drop the ball

• “The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only the second; hardship, poverty and want, are the best schools for a soldier.” - Napoleon war maxim
• “A general-in-chief should ask himself frequently during the day: What should I do if the enemy’s army appears now in my front, or on my right, or my left? If he has any difficulty in answering these questions, his position is bad, and he should seek to remedy it.” - Napoleon war maxim
• “I have never been seduced by prosperity; adversity shall find me superior to its blows” - Napoleon
• “Posterity would never have seen the measure of your spirit, if it had not seen it in misfortune” - Napoleon
• “True heroism consists of being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape the may challenge to the combat” - Napoleon (1815)

Continuous improvement

• He was not embarrassed by his initial little knowledge he had about the details of general administration. He asked many questions, asked for the definition and meaning of the most common words, he provoked discussion, and kept it going until his opinion was formed
  • “Sometimes in these discussions I have said things that a quarter of an hour later I have found to be all wrong. I have no wish to pass for being worth more than I really am” - Napoleon
  • “He brought to the discussions a clarity, a precision, a strength of reason and range of views that astonished us” - consulate about Napoleon
  • He quickly taught himself to ask short questions that demanded direct answers like “How far along are we with the Arc of Triumph?” or “Will I walk on the Seine bridge upon my return?”
  • Napoleon allowed strong discussions to be held in the counsel because he believed to be the strongest debater in the whole conseil. He allowed himself to be attacked because he knew how to defend himself.
  • Napoleon liked to talk in a familiar way, was fond of discussions but didn’t impose his opinions, and made no pretension of superiority, either of intelligence or rank.

Over ambition

• “One must never ask of fortune more than she can grant” - Napoleon on Saint Helena
• One needs to know when to stop. Know when you’ve reached your peak, stop, and maintain your position (which is incredibly hard by itself):
  • Relying on fortune is a risky endeavour. Napoleon was lucky several times. Once you are lucky too many times, you might come under the impression that fortune is on your side. But the more times you roll the dice, the higher the chances that you’ll get a disastrous result
  • His dream to be like Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great blinded him, as was seen in his pursuits in Egypt, that he was fascinated there because Alexander the Great was there. Different times, different factors come into play.
• Napoleon could have held his empire at its peak, and only he could bring it down. He had an army to fight off the Russians at the border, and could have French limited territorial expansion. The downfall was self-inflicted.
  • Invading Spain was a blunder. He should have kept her as an allie, to avoid France being surrounded on three fronts.
  • Napoleon had the entire Europe at his control. Instead of a Russian invasion, he could have held the borders and defended them as needed. Even if he had to abdicate some territories, he should have stopped there, and tried to make peace with Spain and Britain, and end the continental blockade.
  • When the Russian invasion was failing, Napoleon should have backtracked from going to Moscow. It was greedy to expect that Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, would accept peace.
  • As the empire was on its decline, Napoleon was given the opportunity to sue for peace by Metternich, by losing Warsaw and other territories, but would still hold Italy and avoid further battles and men being killed, and having France’s borders reduced to even less than was proposed in this offer.
• As a consequence of the empire’s defeats in Russia and Leipzig, and subsequent invasion of France:
  • The patriotic republican anthems (that Napoleon had previously banned) no longer worked. The French surrendered without a fight. With a town surrendering to a single horseman for example.
  • “Public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield. There is nothing more fickle, more vague, or more powerful; yet capricious as it is, it is nevertheless much more often true, reasonable, and just, than we imagine” - Napoleon, upon the allied invasion to France

Complacency

• Upon the Russian invasion, the empire’s army structure seemed to show several signs of complacency:
  • When invading Russia, one of the generals brought a personal chef, fancy clothes, Napoleon HQ had 50 carriages carried by 650 horses, had a multi national army ordered by his step son to lead an important maneuver that should have been done by an experienced general. Because it was such a big army, the Russians did not want to counterattack, leading Napoleon to stretch his supply lines. This compromised speed and leanness (which was a crucial piece of Napoleon’s war tactics), having an immense cost to sustain this vast army.

Perception. Deception.

• Data manipulation:
  • It’s a principle of war that you should over-inflate the communicated number of available units, and this practice got so out of control that Napoleon snapped at a poem sincerely lauding him for defeating armies thrice his size, which was actually true since he only 30 thousand units. The problem was that it did not align with his inflated battle reports where he communicated to have a 300 thousand unit army.
  • He would pepper his troops addresses with statistics and their achievements.
• “We must speak to the eyes” - Napoleon on luxuries, in its imperial days
• “My health is very good” - repeated at exhaustion by Napoleon on his closing remarks, even when his health was not the best.
• “Truth is so precious that it deserves to be protected by bodyguards of lies” - Churchill
• “The historian, like the orator, must persuade. He must convince.” - Napoleon
• On the day of the Coup of 18 Brumaire, there was an extraordinarily early meeting that the objecting elders didn’t know about where highly consequential decisions were made in the presence of elders that were believed to not compromise the coup. Extraordinarily “extraordinary” early meetings are one of the oldest tricks in politics.

Religion and War

Religion

• “Wishing to be an atheist does not make you one” - Napoleon
• “If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.” - Napoleon
• “In religion I do not see the mystery of the Incarnation, but the mystery of the social order. It associates with Heaven an idea of equality that keeps rich men from being massacred by the poor…Society is impossible without inequality, inequality intolerable without a code of morality, and a code of morality unacceptable without religion.” - Napoleon on the social value of religion
  • Napoleon viewed the idea of god to be useful to maintain good order, to keep men in the path of virtue and to keep them from crime. To robbers and galley slaves physical restrictions to be imposed. To enlightened people, moral ones.
• Napoleon believed the major problem with Christianity was that it did not excite courage, since it took too much care to go to heaven, and that christianity and its promises of afterlife detract men from this life, diminishing its practical value.
• Napoleon mentioned that no man is considered just and virtuous if he doesn’t know where he came and where he is going. Simple reason cannot guide them in this matter. Without religion, one continuously walks in darkness.
• “We should not deprive the poor merely because they are poor, of that which consoles their poverty. Religion is a kind of vaccination which, by satisfying our love for the marvelous, keeps out of the hands of charlatans and conjurers.” - Napoleon, about priests charging more than 6 francs per funerals
• “Fighting is a soldier’s religion; I never changed that. The other is the affair of women and priests. As for me, I always adopt the religion of the country I am in.” - Napoleon
• “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” - Edward Gibbon

Cruelties of war

• “To cannon, all men are equal” - Napoleon
• In the battle of Borodino in Russia near Moscow, the combined killed and wounded were equivalent to a fully laden jumbo jet crashing into a 6 square miles area every 5 minutes, during the 10 hours of the battle.
• Ahmed Jezzar, also known as “The Butcher”, was known for his cruel punishments, such as nailing horse shoes in the feet of enemies. At the same time, Ahmed also enjoyed doing origami for his guests.
• Half a million men were lost by France after the Russian war, and Russia had 200k killed and about 300k wounded.

The Person

Who was Napoleon

• Napoleon as a name was not common at the time, but not unheard of.
• Napoleon was protective and concerned about his family. His siblings went on to be kings, nobles and leaders appointed by him, which several times proved to be unfruitful.
• His mothers’ father was the governor of Ajaccio, and his father Carlo was close to Pasquale Paoli, who fought for the independence of Córsega.
• Napoleon attended the royal nursery, because his father applied to be noble and sat on the royal assembly.
• Napoleon was well read and voracious reader of biographies and history. At age 9, he apparently read the 800-page La Nouvelle Héloïse, a novel about love and redemption, and said ‘It turned my head.’
• Napoleon had a disdain for human rights, free press, equal outcome, and parliamentarism. He was favorable towards central power, order, education and military values.
• Napoleon took a leave from the military to resolve the debts from his father that threatened to bankrupt his mother.
• Nomenclature was important for Napoleon, and renamed several places. For example, Place Louis XV to Place de la Concorde.
• Focus on the important things: Napoleon was excellent at prioritization, dealing immediately with urgent matters
• In times of difficulty, he was a master of his nerves. He had immense self control, he trained himself to not let his emotions betray themselves. This was seen at the time as a classical virtue
• Towards his later years, Napoleon was more lethargic and less performant, likely because of ailments like hemorrhoids that likely were the reason for him to not ride horseback in Waterloo. He had a potbelly at that point, was overweight, and was less energetic, and didn’t have many proper nights sleep.
• In Kalinengrad, he joked that he had found a new element: earth, wind, fire, earth, water and, mud
• “The soul wears out the body” - Napoleon

Relationships

• “Love is the occupation of the idle man, the amusement of a busy one, and the shipwreck of a sovereign.” - Napoleon, after Désirée rejected him.
• “A soldier must remain faithful to his wife, but must only think to return to her when there is nothing else to do” - Napoleon
• “The prettiest women are the hardest to make love to” - Napoleon on the way to Saint Helena
• “The French are like women: you must stay away from them for too long” - Napoleon, after the retreat from Russia.
• The only letters he did not dictate were the ones to his wife and mistresses, and when he needed to sign a document.
• Napoleon was ruthless. He divorced Josephine because he didn’t have a male heir yet, and no sons. And he didn’t want to fall into a situation like Caesar or Alexander the Great, where upon their death, everything descended into chaos. It was the best for his dynasty, and for France, in his view
  • Napoleon divorced from Josphine, who received 2 million francs per year, two properties, and was allowed to keep the title of empress. “She wept, but she took”
  • Although it was a grandson from Josephine that would become the next emperor of France, and her direct descendents today sit on the thrones of several countries. Napoleon’s, held none.
• A friend of Josephine was known to have slept with so many ministers that she was considered government property.
• Josephine only disclosed her debts when she had Napoleon’s ring around her finger.
• Napoleon’s relationships were brittle. When Napoleon started to fall and France was invaded, Marie Louise (his wife at the time) seemed to be in denial, only worried about futile matters and etiquette, in an attempt to drown out the earthquake outside, and the clash between Napoleon and her father (the leader of Austria). Also, Joseph, Napoleon’s brother, was wooing her, and eventually she had relations with another man later on.
  • Talleyrand, previously Napoleon’s foreign minister, sent a letter to Alexander from Russia saying that Napoleon’s Paris defenses were weak, which was a decisive piece of information that led to the last kneel of Napoleon’s defenses. Talleyrand had already proved to not be trustworthy by Napoleon, yet no decisive reprimand at the time was made by Napoleon.

Inside the Box: Everything I did with an Arduino Starter Kit

2025-07-15 08:00:00

Earlier this year I saw a Tech Ingredients episode where a laser gimbal automatically tracks drones and shoots them down. I was fascinated by their motion control mechanism, specially the usage of a PI Controller, a high-frequency clock Teensy microcontroller, and their integration with custom hardware and a machine vision powered tracker.

Soon after I was researching the underlying electronics and how to experiment upon their concepts. The most obvious microcontroller to drive these would be an Arduino, but several recommendations pointed towards acquiring a kit rather than a single microcontroller, and the Elegoo Arduino Uno R3 Starter Kit seemed the best.

The kit contains over 200 components and an extensive guided tutorial, which I’ve completed (except for the last section using an extra expansion shield). In this article, I’ll go through the highlights of this journey, delightful deviations along the way, and exploration of core electronics concepts. Let’s dive in!

LEDs

Hello World: Light up a LED

I’ve been involved with electronics in different ways throughout my life, but surprisingly I hadn’t yet done its Hello World equivalent, which is to light up a LED. This simple exercise it by itself incredibly interesting that opened a series of questions:

• Q: Why is a resistor needed? A: High current and increased temperature damage its delicate heterojunction structures, which eventually cause it to burnout
• Q: What happens if the polarity is inverted? A: Similar to a normal diode, current will not flow and the LED will not light up. As long as this reverse power is not high, the LED will not burn and can still be used with correct polarity afterwards
• Q: How to interpret its data sheet? A: There are several interesting aspects its datasheet, like the LED’s wavelength curve, operating current and voltage, etc

RGB LED [Code]

RGB LEDs package a red, green and blue LED inside it that can be controlled independently, allowing for wide range color representation using three pulse width modulation (PWM) outputs from the Arduino.

PWM is a technique used to control the average power delivered to an electrical device by varying the width of pulses in a digital signal, which when done fast enough in a visual output such as a LED, is perceived to the human eye as being of a smooth continuous amplitude, instead of a stream of single bursts.

Progressively changing the colors of a RGB LED

8 LEDs controlled via 74HC595 [Code]

We can attach an 74HC595 IC to extend the number of outputs possible by an Arduino, at the cost of some latency.

When writing the desired values for each of the inputs into 74HC595, they won’t be externalized until its latch is activated. Once the latch is triggered, all of the stored inputs will be externalized in one go. Very similar purpose of double buffering in video. A flicker free experience.

We are essentially controlling a piece of very limited external memory.

8 LEDs controlled via 74HC595

Smooth LED intensity fade out using capacitors

Capacitors are essentially energy stores (i.e. batteries) that with consistent charge and discharge times. By placing a condenser (or two, as in this video, so that their capacitance is summed up) in parallel with a LED, when powering the circuit both the LED immediately lights up and the condenser(s) charge in tandem. Once the main power source is removed, the condenser(s) start to smoothly discharge into the LED, creating a smooth fade out of their intensity.

Smooth LED intensity variation using Capacitors

Display

One Unit Segment Display: Digit Countdown [Code]

We can control this single unit seven segment display at the segment level, and in this example we sequentially write a set of segment sets that we perceive as digits.

Digit Countdown

One Unit Segment Display: Custom Patterns [Code]

We can also create any patterns, in whichever sequence and timing we so desire. Here are three examples of some custom patterns.

Rotation Pattern

Figure Eight Pattern

Alternating Pattern

Four Unit Segment Display: Same Character for All [Code]

Expanding on the above, if we write the same patterns as above on a four unit segment display, we see these replicated on all units.

Same Character for All

Four Unit Segment Display: Distinct Characters [Code]

In order for each of the units to present their specific segment pattern, we need to write the pattern and then select which of the units should have this pattern written to, wait for a short amount of time, and then move to the next unit, where we will do the exact same thing, only this time selecting the unit(s) that should have this pattern written.

Distinct Characters

LED Matrix: Scrolling [Code]

This LED Matrix accepts an explicit bitmap, where each of the pixels is either enabled or disabled. To achieve a scrolling effect we set an offset based on value received via the potentiometer.

Scrolling through a bitmap

LCD Display: Showing a Long String [Code]

The scrolling effect is achieved by leveraging a functionality from the LiquidCrystal library. Here we are using a string of normal characters, but custom characters can also be used.

Scrolling through a long string

Sound

Buzzer

From the guide: “We should be careful not to use the UNO R3 board analogWrite() function to generate a pulse to the active buzzer, because the pulse output of analogWrite() is fixed (500Hz)”. I’ve used analogWrite(), and this is the result:

Varying the pitch of a buzzer

Making the buzzer sound like an 8-bit engine [Code]

By adjusting the frequency in which the buzzer is discretely triggered, we can achieve a perceived effect similar to PWM used above for controlling LEDs intensity, only this time to allude to a certain sound pitch, which in this case is quite similar to the sonority from older computer / console games.

“8bit” engine sound using a buzzer

Sensing Sound [Code]

I’ve burned the on-board LED (13) while voice fiddling with this integration, since one of the dupont wires touched a wrong spot of the board while going through this.

The red LED represents audio peaks, the yellow LED represents audio troughs.

Detecting snapping of fingers and voice

Spatial Sensors

Tilt ball switch [Code]

This component consists of a very conductive sphere that is free to move inside the component’s cylindrical shape. One face of the cylinder conducts electricity, and the opposite does not.

Tilting the component to elicit its change of state

Ultrasonic sensor to measure distances [Code]

I wondered why an external module was required to calculate distances, so I’ve implemented an algorithm from scratch that took into account the speed of sound and the time taken by an ultrasonic pulse to be received back by the sensor. I’ve validated the measurements using a real life ruler, and they were actually accurate! No external code modules required.

Distance measurement using custom algorithm built from scratch

Passive infrared sensor (PIR) Motion Sensor [Code]

This is a sensor commonly used to detect movement from heat emitting, like people, and then trigger a side-effect, such as a hall light. Its output is a simple binary HIGH or LOW.

Detecting motion via PIR sensor

MPU-6050: Accelerometer and Gyroscope Plotting [Code]

Used the Arduino’s Serial Plotter Tool to visualize the inputs from the MPU-6050 module that bundles an accelerometer, gyro and temperature sensor.

Accelerometer and Gyroscope Plotting

MPU-6050: Interrupt signals [Code]

Going through the datasheets of the gyro module, I’ve noticed that the module could be commanded to dispatch an interrupt signal whenever a certain threshold of movement was detected. This could be useful for low power systems for example, where this interrupt would signal that relevant movement data is starting and the main controller should be fully active.

The objective of this experiment was to make the blue LED blink whenever the gyro was disturbed, but this resulted in a mostly unpredictable output, where the root cause is likely to lie on the incorrect combination of commands needed to set up the module. Further exploration would be needed here.

Attempting to get an interrupt signal when movement starts

Environmental Sensors

Light intensity measurement via photoresistor [Code]

A photoresistor is a light-sensitive resistor whose resistance decreases when light falls on its surface, if we place wire in connected from one of Arduino’s analog inputs between the photoresistor and another fixed value resistor, we are able to detect the resulting voltage caused the photoresistor’s variable resistance.

Light intensity shown on LCD display

Temperature measurement [Code]

With the exact same setup as above (save from the slight tweak of the script), by replacing the photoresistor with a thermistor (which yet another variable resistor, only this time changing its resistance based on temperature) we are able to measure ambient temperature, which I manipulate by using my hand’s warmth and the cooling it off by blowing air into the thermistor.

Temperature shown on LCD display

Water level sensor [Code]

This consisted of some nervous plunging of the water level sensor into a tea mug, near my computer 😬

Water level sensor change as it is further submerged under water

Actuators

BJT Transistor driven DC motor: Controlled via On/Off Button [Code]

The Arduino is made to drive logical circuits with low output currents, so when we want to control a high power circuit, we want our Arduino microcontroller to control the “valve”, but not the “pipes” themselves. This is a perfect application for a transistor (or relays, as we’ll see below), where the transistor functions as a “valve” that either lets current flow through freely, or block it completely.

The kit comes included with two models of NPN bipolar junction transistor (BJT) transistors: the PN2222 and S8050. Both are often used interchangeably (as seen in this video), but the PN2222 has a higher voltage rating for collector-to-emitter voltage (60V vs 25V), which in this case is not relevant, since we are not surpassing the 5V barrier. In these, the base is the “valve”, and collector and emitter function as the “pipes”.

Note here I am not using a flyback diode to protect the circuit from back EMF voltage spikes caused when the DC motor is switched off, which is not the wisest idea when performing multiple tests. I was not aware of that effect at the time, and fortunately no harm was done.

DC Motor controlled via On/Off Button

BJT Transistor driven LED and DC motor: Controlled via Potentiometer [Code]

Same setup as above, only this time we are driving a LED instead of a DC motor.

LED controlled via Potentiometer

DC motor controlled via Potentiometer

L293D driven DC Motor using battery power [Code]

L293D is a neat IC that packs inside everyone one needs to drive inductive loads such as relays, solenoids, DC and bipolar stepping motors, along with bidirectional drive and overcurrent and kickback protection (so no flyback diode needed).

Notice that when attempting to drive the DC motor at low power it struggles to start its rotation, but once power is increased of a slight nudge is given, it quickly starts to rotate freely.

L293D driven DC Motor using battery power

L293D + Relay driven DC Motor [Code]

Relays are larger and have slower switching speeds when compared to transistors, but handle higher currents and voltages and provide good electrical isolation.

As a fun fact, in older cars, “tick-tock” heard when activating the turn signal are actually the sound of the respective relay closing and opening the circuit to light up the blinker. Those relays are very similar to the one used here, and a similar noise can be heard in the video, as the relay closes and opens the circuit that powers the DC motor

L293D + Relay driven DC Motor

Resistor and Capacitor (RC) circuit for delayed triggering

When setting up a Resistor and Capacitor (RC) circuit, we can take advantage of its predictable charging curve to delay the activation of a transistor, which in turn can activate another set of components. Depending if the transistor is a BJT (current-controlled) or a MOSFET (voltage-controlled), they would have different current or voltage thresholds at which they allow current to flow between the collector and emitter (BJT), or drain and source (MOSFET).

In this case, a bipolar junction transistor (BJT) has its base connected to RC circuit, and upon its activation a LED and/or a DC motor are activated. Notice that the DC motor either does not have enough power to start, or barely has a delay once a smaller resistor is placed on the RC circuit, which I think to be caused by having low capacitance capacitors, and not having the ideal resistor being used on RC circuit, but this would warrant further exploration and a deeper understanding of the problem.

Delayed LED lighting via RC Circuit + BJT Transistor

Delayed LED lighting and DC Motor via RC Circuit + Single BJT Transistor

Delayed LED lighting and DC Motor via RC Circuit + Two BJT Transistors

Servo Motor controlled via Potentiometer [Code]

Servo motors are used in applications requiring precise and controlled movement, where the motor’s position, speed, and torque need to be accurately controlled. In this example a button is used to switch between the state where the servo’s position is synced position defined by the potentiometer, and the state where a default servo motor position is set.

Notice as well how the slight voltage noise created when manipulating the detached potentiometer input wire, and the effect it has on the servo that is attempting to sync with these received values.

Servo Motor controlled via Potentiometer

Stepper Motor: Automatic Control [Code]

The stepping motor is a clever piece of engineering that enables precision movement without the need of external feedback.

In this setup the motor is controlled fully by an automated script, and since the 9V battery was starting to die, it was powered via power adapter.

Stepper Motor: Automatic Control

Stepper Motor: Rotary Encoder Control, using ELEGOO script [Code]

To the above we add a rotary encoder to send precise commands of how much we want the stepper to move. This rotary encoder is the same you’ll find in several appliances such as mouse wheels, car radio knobs and washing machines.

Notice that the movement is quite jerky, and no matter how much we move the rotary encoder, only the most recent movements are actually accounted for.

Stepper Motor: Rotary Encoder Control, using ELEGOO script

Stepper Motor: Rotary Encoder Control, with Extra Precision [Code]

To fix the above behaviour, this script takes into account all the movements from the rotary encoder to establish a target rotation angle that every cycle the stepper motor is correcting itself towards.

Notice that in the beginning of the video the two LEDs are lighting up as the rotary encoder is manipulated, so that we can see which are the signals captured by our script. These signals consist of a predictable gray code sequence that lets us perceive with high accuracy whether it is rotating right or left.

Once the two demonstration LEDs are disconnected, we’ll have signals coming through our Arduino inputs, that we interpret leveraging the above concepts, plus we also make sure to trigger device interrupts not only for one of the inputs (as in the script above), but for both inputs, so that we can capture all movements.

Stepper Motor: Rotary Encoder Control, with Extra Precision

Stepper Motor: IR Remote Control [Code]

Combining the IR sensor and remote above, we can also control this stepper motor using this remote control mechanism.

Stepper Motor: IR Remote Control

Communication Interfaces

How Arduino Keypad Works under the hood, from scratch, without extra libraries

One of the peripherals you can provide as input to Arduino is a 16 button keypad that provides a useful human interface component for microcontroller projects.

This keypad module comes included in the Elegoo UNO R3 Starter Kit, which also comes with its respective tutorial and library that helps facilitates its usage.

In this video we will code from scratch an implementation that will use this keypad module, without using extra libraries, and we will go through the respective concepts and circuits, including how pull-up resistors work (which are accessible via INPUT_PULLUP)

How Arduino Keypad Works under the hood

Supporting code:

• Using one column source code (as seen in the video)
• Using two columns source code

Note that the code resorts to a fair amount of duplication, but this is explicitly show how the entire mechanism works, without occluding via abstractions

IR Signal Replication [Code]

While exploring how common infrared communication protocols are used in every day appliances, I wondered if it was possible punch in custom light pulses via a red LED source that could be interpreted as valid signals by the IR receiver, and started by pulsing it in 25ms intervals in order comply with the 38khz signal modulation expectation on the IR receiver (1 second / 38000 Hz ~= 25ms).

Turns out this would never work with a normal red LED, since its wavelength sits around the 640nm peak, whereas we would need a 900nm to 1000nm wavelength for an IR receiver to pick that signal.

In this attempt, I am comparing the continuous pulsing by the red LED vs the pulsing generated by a standard IR remote. An interesting follow up would be to attempt the same setup, but with a IR LED emitter instead.

IR Signal Replication Attempt

RFID Card Reader [Code]

This video shows what the MIFARE content dump from the two cards included with the kit, but the setup is able to read minimal information from other sources, like credit cards or electronic passports.

Note that this module reference voltage works best when connected to the Arduino’s VIn output, instead of Arduino’s 3.3v power output.

Content dump of the information read from the two cards included with the kit

Joystick [Code]

This joystick module is essentially the same used in several game controllers, and its usage is fairly straighforward using an Arduino.

Joystick module demonstration

Communication and Storage

Transmitting Serial Information via TX output [Code]

This might come as obvious to many, but only after using Serial.print() on different Arduino scripts as a debugging mechanism, did I realize that this command actually sends structured information not only to the host via USB (computer), but also via Arduino’s TX output.

This video/script are very simple: they write very long strings and individual bytes to the serial interface, using a very low baud rate, so that their individual bits can be roughly seen upon the right yellow LED that is attached to the TX output. The left green LED stays enabled before we start sending commands to the serial interface, and is disabled once the writing phase is completed.

Notice that even after all writes were committed, there are still bits flowing through the TX output. This goes on until Arduino’s internal serial communication buffer is completely flushed.

Left green LED stays enabled during writing phase. Yellow LED represents single bits in the TX communication stream

Writing individual bits and feeding them back via RX input [Code]

Building up on the above, if we write individual bits by carefully timing the a normal pin output’s LOW and HIGH to comply with the UART standard to form 8 bit packets, feed these through a wire to the Arduino’s Rx pin, read the resulting serial communication receive buffer, and then finally write these contents into the serial port, we are able to see these logged into the serial monitor.

This was one of the most 🤯 while fiddling around with the Arduino.

Writing individual bits and feeding them back via RX input

Sending information from the host to Arduino [Code]

Using the Serial Monitor, we can easily send packets of information to the Arduino via Serial communication. In this script, Arduino reads from the serial communication buffer an enables or disables a LED if the corresponding received information is a zero or a one.

Sending information from the host to Arduino

Using internal EEPROM to persist information [Code]

Building on the above setup, we integrate ATmega’s integrated EEPROM to persist information. This means that even after a power outage that information is still available, as seen in the video below.

Using internal EEPROM to persist information

Sending information from the host to Arduino + 74CH95 to drive LEDs [Code]

We can attach an 74HC595 IC to extend the number of outputs possible by an Arduino, and do the same as above but for extra outputs. The setup supports 7 different LEDS, but only 3 are shown in the video, and for this specific example there is no real gain from using 74CH95 IC, other than demonstrating its usage.

Serial read side effects using 3 LEDs and 74HC595

Time

Real Time Clock (RTC) Module Square Wave Output [Code]

I was curious about the RTC module’s square wave output, and found a YouTube video on how to send a command to the module that forces the square wave pin (SQW) to output a 1Hz square wave, meaning that the cycle of this wave repeats every second.

In the video, this signal is first connected to a LED, which leads it to blink every second, and then the output is directed towards Arduino’s pin 8, thus showing this cycle’s result on the serial output.

Square Wave Output visible first on LED, then on serial output logs

Integration

Putting it all together: the Timer [Code]

The time project is the opus maximus of the provided tutorials provided by Elegoo, but there were components which were not working directly, namely the interrupt library, so I’ve adapted the provided example to use the built in Arduino interrupt library, and changed some of the connections, leading to a beautiful culmination of all the the lessons from above.

Timer Integration

Bluetooth Headphones Safety

2025-02-22 08:00:00

After nearly 4 years of continuous usage at work, taking calls and listening to audiobooks during long walks, my wired in-ear Bose QuietComfort 20 MK2 Active Noise Cancelling Earphones are finally starting to become faulty¹, so I went on a search for a replacement.

Searching for replacement wired ANC earbuds

To my surprise, not only have these types of earphones been discontinued by Bose, but the selection of wired in-ear active noise cancelling headphones is incredibly slim. After an extensive search, I’ve found Asus ROG Cetra II and Bang Olufsen B4, which appear to offer inferior quality in terms of Active Noise Cancelling (ANC), when compared to recent highly rated Bose, Sony or Apple headphones, which are either wireless or are over-ear / on-ear. Quality in-ear² ANC earbuds are almost exclusively wireless.

Health

I understand the popularity of wireless earbuds. They are extremely practical and neat. It is not surprising that penetration of bluetooth headphones has jumped considerably in recent years, but given that I use my headphones for several hours each day, it is not an enticing proposition to have two wireless devices extremely close to my brain, even if they output a low amount of EMF radiation. The (cumulative) dose makes the poison.

Several experts ³⁴⁵ claim there is no danger in prolonged usage of these devices, because they don’t emit ionizing radiation, but it has been reported both in studies and anecdotally that exposure to high levels of EMF radiation might have detrimental effects long term.

I’ve found it challenging to uncover quality studies that correlate the usage of bluetooth headphones and health effects. I assume this correlation is hard to experiment upon with statistically significant results, due to how long this exposure needs to happen, and other confounding environmental and behavioural factors. Regardless, one of these studies draws a significant link between the usage of bluetooth headset and thyroid nodules.

Unknowns Risks

Widespread adoption of these devices is still relatively recent, and we should be humble enough to acknowledge that we don’t have the full picture clearly laid out of the all repercussions related to their long term usage, especially when in close proximity to one of the most valuable organs of our body, our brain.

It’s not what is known that concerns me, but rather what is not known. Until proven the contrary, I will continue to play it safe, and avoid using wireless earbuds.

Hopefully a larger swath of the population will increasingly exercise caution and awareness on this issue, signalling manufacturers to drive the supply of competitive good quality wired in-ear ANC headphones that empower the consumer to make the best choice for their use case, and their health.

The Story of the Human Body Book: Lessons

2025-02-10 08:00:00

I’ve recently finished reading The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease, a book from Daniel Lieberman of how the human body evolved over millions of years, that I would recommend all Humans to read. These are are my main takeaways:

Why we are, the way we are

It is all about how energy is used

Us humans and other living beings are essentially organisms that use energy to reproduce and maintain ourselves.

• Natural selection prunes off organisms that don’t use energy in a way that is suited to their conditions and environment.
• Every energy transformation feature / trait has a cost. For example: walking upright allows one to walk using less energy, but lacks the speed of a quadruped.

Long Distance Walking / Running Machines

What drove selection for bipedalism

Hominid bipedalism was likely to have been initially selected to help the first hominids forage and obtain food more effectively in the face of major climate change

Between 10 and 5 million years ago, the earth climate cooled considerably, and overall effect in Africa that caused rainforests to shrink and woodlands to expand. If you were to be in the heart of the rainforest, you likely wouldn’t have noticed much of a difference, but if you were in the margins, this change must have been stressful. As the forest shrinks and becomes woodland, ripe fruits become less abundant, more dispersed and more seasonal. These changes would require you to travel farther to get the same amount of food.

Walking on two legs is more energy efficient for longer routes. Main trade off is less speed, because we could not gallop. We are 3x more efficient moving a distance of 6km than a chimp.

The consequences of bipedalism

Not only was endurance walking useful, but also long distance running was likely selected for scavenging. Running to fresh carcasses, running with food and, persistence hunting, where a big animal is followed by running and walking on sun. They need to find shades and pant, and eventually collapse due to heat stroke.

• We are unique in that we have sweat glands all over the body. Other apes mostly have on the palms of their hands. And we. Don’t have fur, allowing the air to come in contact with sweat and cool your body down. This is essential for long distance running and walking.
  • Other animals have fur that reflects solar radiation, but does it allow body to cool down through sweat

Other features that help us to run effectively. Some of them not specially helpful for walking, like shorter toes:

• Big gluteus maximus muscles, mostly active when running.
• Nuchal ligament is a back neck ligament that connects head to arm that helps stabilize the head while running. It was developed independently in humans and other animals well adapted for running.
• Big semi circular inner ear canals to have more signals to allow for stabilization of our inner systems, such eye actions to compensate for the jiggle.
• Predominance of slow twitch fibers in legs. More endurance, thus compromising speed.
• Narrow waists, wide shoulders, shorter toes.
• Long noses are selected for walking long distances without drying up. Nose humidifies air coming into the lungs, which is necessary, and retains moisture going out. Trade-off is that lungs have to work a bit harder.

All of these walking and running adaptations made us clumsy climbing trees, like shorter toes, but also freed up our hands to interact with the world, create the first tools and throw objects (we are especially good at throwing, having shoulders and upper body that makes it ideal for it), which not only provided some protection, but also allowed us to obtain and process fallback / lower quality foods (which were essential due to scarcity from global cooling climate).

Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun ― Noël Coward

Better dexterity, tools, cognition, less digestive cost, more energy availability

In the average adult human, the brain represents about 2% of the body weight, but accounts to about 20% of total energy consumption.

As the ability to create and use tools allowed the gathering and processing of fallback foods, more usable energy was able to be extracted. Processing foods to smaller chunks, or cooking it, largely increases how much energy can be obtained during digestion, but also requires less intense chewing (we didn’t need as bigger teeth as australopithecus, which resulted in use losing the snout due to less space being needed in the head) and shorter intestines, which reduce energy required for digestion, increases surplus energy to be used by the brain. These factors selected hominids with better manual dexterity and better cognition.

Our manual dexterity, and what it unlocks, plays a big role in our evolution.

Energy hungry brain, and relation with fat

If our brain¹ is deprived of glucose for even 1 minute or two, it causes irreparable damage. This likely selected humans to become unusually fat. 400 to 500 calories daily, are for the brain alone. Extra intense thought only increases hourly usage by 5 calories per hour.

Hunter gatherer mothers have to expend about 2.3k calories for themselves alone to raise kids. Babies are unusually fat. 60 percent of their energy consumption is for the brain. It takes 12M calories to grow a child into a full grown adult. Twice as much as those needed for a chimpanzee.

Our way of living affected the size of our gut so profoundly, that now we are pretty much dependent on cooking to get the caloric intake we need for our body and brain.

Exercise is not great to lose fat (unless you don’t succumb to overeating after exercise) but it’s good to prevent fat gain. It increases muscle (and not fat) sensitivity to insulin and makes the muscles more readily available to store energy, and also increases the number of mitochondria that burn fat and sugar.

• A lean man that doesn’t exercise has twice the risk of dying, compared to obese men that engaged in regular physical activity

High offspring investment

Life is fundamentally a way of using energy to make more life.

• If the environment is risky: quick returns are favored, where little investment is made during life, but a lot during reproduction. Such as spiders, salmon that lay a lot of eggs, hoping that a lucky few will survive
• But when resources are predictable and infant mortality is low, it is feasible to mature slowly and invest a lot in raising the few offspring. This is the strategy of humans, elephants and apes.

Cost of clear speech: choking

What good is it to have a good idea, if you can’t communicate it? One of the main features we developed as humans was our ability to use speech to clearly communicate thoughts, ideas, plans, and other information.

The price is that we are the only mammal that can risk asphyxiation when swallowing something too large or imprecisely², because of the big common space behind the tongue through which food and air both travel to get either into the esophagus or trachea, a consequence of our short and retracted faces and selection of anatomy that favors clear speech. As a result, food sometimes gets lodged on the back of the throat, blocking the airway.

When you are having lunch with friends, consider that you are doing two things: speaking clearly, and swallowing a little dangerously.

Diseases

We’ve created a system that makes people sick through a surplus of energy, and keeps them alive without needing to turn down the energy flow

Lieberman presents the concepts of Mismatch diseases and Dysevolution:

• Mismatch diseases: Diseases that occur because our bodies are poorly or inadequately adapted to environments in which we now live. An example would be eating large amounts of sugar or being very physically inactive leads to problems like diabetes or heart disease that then make us sick
• Dysevolution: Form of cultural evolution where the symptoms of a mismatch disease are treated, but not the cause. One example of this is cavities, which are treated with dentists, and not by removing the sugar from our diet, which is the underlying cause. Lieberman emphasizes that mismatched diseases and their causes must be understood fully to treat the true cause.

Too much energy surplus

Our ancestors ate fruits as sweet as carrots, but as energy dense foods had their availability increased³, more humans moved from subsistence farming and physically strenuous jobs to lower physical effort jobs (in the USA, only 11 per cent are actually factory workers. The rest are in management, services, wealth management and banking services), the same mechanisms that made us effective is storing energy and craving certain foods, are also the ones that have become maladapted to our current environment.

It has been only about 300 generations since we’ve been subsistence farmers, which didn’t give enough time for natural selection and body adaptations to develop.

Sugar and fat absorption mechanisms and effects

Your body can use glucose as energy readily, but fructose can only be worked as fat or in the liver.

• When the liver is flooded with too much fructose, too quickly, it is overwhelmed and converts most of the fructose into fat, triglycerides. Some of this fat fills up the liver and causes inflammation, which blocks the action of insulin in the liver.
• Chain reaction occurs, in that the liver releases stores of glucose into the bloodstream, driving the pancreas to release more insulin, shuttling extra glucose and fat into cells. The rest of fat created by the liver is dumped into the bloodstream, where it ends up in fat cells, your arteries, and other potentially bad places.
  • Visceral fat is more hormone sensitive than other fat cells, resulting that its stores are dumped fat more readily than other fat cells, and since it sits close to the liver, it tends to clog up the liver and constrain its glucagon function when it dumps fat.
• Sugar is 50 percent fructose; fruits also have it. An apple for example has 13g of sugar. 30 percent is glucose, the rest is fructose.

Comparing an apple to a highly processed fruit roll, apart from nutritional differences:

• Fiber covering the apple (the skin) prevents the full absorption of sugar. Fiber makes food stay longer in the stomach, generating signals that release appetite suppressing hormones.
  • Speed of eating and amount of fiber is important. That’s why salads and low glycemic foods should come first in your meal
• An apple gives your pancreas time to realize how much insulin to release. On the other hand, high glycemic, calorie dense foods are easily and quickly absorbed in the digestive process, prompting the pancreas to produce a lot of insulin, which it often overshoots, plunging blood sugar levels, which in turn makes us hungry.

Height as a measure of extra caloric availability and health

• Maximum height is constrained by genes, but available energy will limit actual height. Because if you spend most of your energy fighting diseases and toiling in the fields, then you won’t have extra calories to gain height.
  • It was seen for populations that turned to subsistence farming, like in Asia and America, to have had their height shortened. For example, subsistence farming children spent about 4 or 6 hours working, as compared to children of hunter gatherers that would spend about 1 to 2 hours working in tasks like gathering firewood and helping in domestic tasks.
• Tall people are naturally selected in hot climates, because of higher surface area to release heat. Colder climates select for shorter ones, because they can retain more heat.

Too much Stress

• Stress is an ancient adaptation to save you from dangerous situations, and activates energy reserves when you need them.
  • If a Lion roars nearby, a car nearly runs you over, or if you go for a run, your brain triggers your adrenal glands (which sit on top of your kidneys), to secrete a small dosage of the hormone cortisol.
• Cortisol does not cause stress. It is released when you are stressed.
• One of cortisol’s functions is to cause liver and fat cells (specially visceral fat cells) to release glucose into the bloodstream. It increases heart rate and blood pressure, makes you more alert and prevents sleep, and makes you crave for calorie rich foods.
  • Chain reaction for long bouts of stress: as you crave more energy rich foods and consume them, this increases insulin levels, which inhibits the brain’s response to leptin (fat cells release it to increase satiety), as such, the stressed brain thinks you are starving, so activates reflexes to make you hungry and other reflexes ot make you less active.

Too little Sleep

• Insufficient sleep promotes stress and stress promotes insufficient sleep. Higher income populations get on average more sleep, likely because of having of less challenges of making ends meet and less stress
  • Sleep deprivation is sometimes caused by elevated levels of stress, thus more cortisol.
  • Sleep deprivation elevates the ghrelin hormone, a hunger hormone that stimulates appetite.
• Only until recently did we do start sleeping alone or with a single partner the child detached from parents during sleep, and in stimulus deprived environments
  • On the other hand, hunter gatherers used to sleep in relatively noisy environments, woke up at about 7h, took a one hour nap in the middle of the day, and then went to sleep at 9pm, where they would get two sleeps. Likely an adaptation, that prevented predator under vigilance
  • But now we have entertainment and lights that are able to keep us awake far beyond 9pm, in sensory deprived environments, with less exercise, excess calories, and stress

Too Crowded

Villages, cities, are our human fortresses from the wild. Because we have that fortress, we don’t need to carry arms and be attentive to outer animal threats, like lions. Mostly. There were costs to these though:

• High concentration of humans in low⁴ sanitation⁵ environments facilitated the spread of these diseases, and close contact with animals gave rise to diseases such as influenza, coming from pigs.
• Before the 1900s, the death rates in cities such as London were higher than in rural areas, so they needed a large influx of rural immigrants to keep them going. Which they did, because of a larger scope of opportunities and wealth.
• Cows’ digestive systems were adapted to eat grass, but in the crowded industrial complexes they are fed grains, and as a consequence they have to be constantly medicated with antibiotics, to counter their chronic diarrhea and diseases coming from these crowded, filthy environments.
  • Antibiotics given to industrially raised animals because microbes also consume energy. So this makes them fatter

Cancer

There is a positive correlation between cancer development in reproductive organs and high energy balance.

• Women’s bodies adapted towards delivering as many children as possible, and are maladapted towards having a high energy balance:
  • High exposure to estrogen incentives cell division in breast, ovaries, and uterus, in preparation of a fertilized embryo. Chances to develop cancer in these organs increases substantially from the number of menstrual cycles, and decreases as the number of children the woman bears.
    • During the menstrual cycle the levels of estrogen and progesterone rise significantly
    • While nursing, chances of having cancer go down, as there is less exposure to reproductive hormones, and likely breast feeding aids flushing memory ducts.
  • For women, the incidence of breast cancer was observed to be higher in nuns (hence, the nuns disease)
  • Women in contemporary USA have about 350-400 menstrual cycles, start menstruating at 12, 13, and then stop at early fifties
    • Hunter gatherers have about 150 cycles, and start menstruating at 16. They spent most of their life being pregnant or nursing, while barely having energy to do so.
  • Obese women can have 40 per cent more estrogen, because of the role of fat in the endocrine system. So after menopause being obese is correlated with cancer in women
• For men, higher exposure to testosterone throughout their life is correlated with prostate cancer. But correlation is not as strong as in women.

More exercise results in lower chances of cancer. Likely because the energy spent there is not otherwise spent on reproductive hormones that have these side effects.

• There is compelling evidence that routine physical activity is associated with reductions in the incidence of specific cancers, in particular breast and colon cancer. Physically active men and women exhibited a 30%–40% reduction in the relative risk of colon cancer, and physically active women a 20%–30% reduction in the relative risk of breast cancer compared with their inactive counterparts.

Use it, or lose it; No strain, no gain

Imagine you are tasked with building a robot that is aimed to accomplish a task in the future that is unknown. You can either create a series of specialized robots (e.g. only able to swim, to dig, jump, etc), or a single one that adapts to multiple situations. When you don’t know what the robot will do, the latter works best. That is how animals and plants work. But if you don’t use it, you lose it.

Bone loss

• Bones are a reserve of calcium, an essential component to the body. If there is not enough calcium, osteoclasts start dissolving them at a higher rate.
• Most people will reach their peak bone mass between the ages of 25 and 30, then it keeps going away. Specially struts in spongy bones like vertebrae and joints. They don’t come back.
• Just having a supply of calcium and vitamin D is not enough. You also need to load your bones, otherwise the osteoblasts will not kick in to start building bone.
  • High intensity weight bearing can stop or even moderately reverse some loss.

Teeth problems

If you don’t chew enough when you are young, teeth will become misaligned, and overcrowding happens, leading to issues on wisdom tooth growth for example. The body needs that stress.

Allergies and hygiene hypothesis

Hygiene hypothesis states that early childhood exposure to particular microorganisms (such as the gut flora and helminth parasites) protects against allergies by properly tuning the immune system. In particular, a lack of such exposure is thought to lead to poor immune tolerance. There are two main hypothesis for it:

• First hypothesis is that T helper 1 cells are not busy enough⁶, which increases the number of T helper 2 cells. With more sterilized environments, children’s immune systems are less busy, having more of these T helper 2 cells swimming unemployed, leading to a higher probability that they react to a non-threatening component. First reaction is mild, but the immune system keeps a memory, so the following time that component is detected, it’s devastating.
• Second hypothesis is microbiome destabilization, the “old friends” hypothesis. Microbes have evolved to cohabit with others and us in a cold war kind of environment. Once you start killing several of them with antibiotics and cleaning products, you destabilize their equilibrium
  • There is a case to be made that possible treatments would be to have fezes or filth
  • And it also follows that after antibiotic treatments, that probiotics are taken

We frequently mistake comfort for wellbeing

Hannah Arendt introduced the expression and concept of the banality of evil, where a common person does nefarious actions, since they became accepted and normalized in their society.

Actions that we perceive as normal, such as usage of cancer inducing sodium nitrate in foods (which stems for a trade-off between structural economic gain and health), wearing comfortable shoes, reading and sitting, are in fact not normal when seen through the lenses of long term evolution.

Comfortable shoes

Our feet have adapted for us to efficiently run and walk, but highly cushioned, constraining shoes deform and inhibit our feet from fulfilling their purpose

• Habitual barefoot people have much lower incidence of flat foot, which very likely is due to the high usage of the foot arch, which is restrained on comfortable shoes with arch support, which instead overload the plantar fascia, leading to plantar fasciitis
• A constrained toe box restrains how much stability the foot can provide, and an unbalanced foot leads to an unbalanced knee, hip, body.
• I’ve personally transitioned to using barefoot shoes daily and when hiking, and can only recommend them after using them for more than one year.
  • One common question is if these are appropriate on hard terrain. Turns out that your foot already has a built in mechanism, which is to forefoot / midfoot strike, instead of heel strike. Try to jump to see how your foot automatically lands using the ball of your foot, and how softly you land, when compared to a (dangerous) similar jump landing on your heel.
  • Going barefoot or using minimal shoes, provides you full perception of the terrain and impact, so you’ll adapt towards hitting the ground more softly, and not using heel strikes as much.

Reading

Myopia is a formerly rare evolutionary mismatch that is exacerbated by modern environments. In the USA and Europe, about one third of all children (aged 7 to 17) become nearsighted.

Evidence suggests that being nearsighted used to be very rare: that less than three per cent prevalence amongst hunter gatherers and populations that practices subsistence agriculture. In 1813, it was noted that amongst the Queen’s guards, many were myopic. On the hand, from the 10k foot guard, less than half dozen were myopic.

The mechanisms of how myopia are still not fully understood, but two main causes are suggested:

• Close work, forcing long bouts of close focus. Singapore study found that students who read more than 2 books per week had strong myopia.
• Children spending more time outdoors have lower incidence of myopia. Brightness of light and visual stimuli appear to have a beneficial effect.

Sitting

While sitting in different positions to rest after strenuous activity has been around for much of our species, only until recently have we been multiple hours sitting in a chair, day after day, which is a risk factor towards:

• Muscle atrophy and shortening: calf muscle shortening also happens for high heels usage
• Lower back pain. To prevent this issue, make sure to maintain a strong back via moderate intensity load, but not too much load, like furniture movers.

How to solve these issues

One solution would be to wait for natural selection to sort out these problems, which is very unlikely due to the high rate of change in our societies and environments, in short time windows. As the commander of the Albigensian Crusade said, on a mission to eliminate heretics: “Kill them all; let God sort them out.”

We are all subject to influence by advertising, availability and peer pressure, but we can be nudged to acquire behaviours that benefit us. Daniel Lieberman suggests:

• We should invest in prevention over treatment
• Although adults have the right to get sick, children need guidance. How different is it to restrict fast foods to them, to restricting which movies they are able to attend? Or availability of alcohol to them?
• Just like nature obliged us to do the right thing and evolved our behaviours, government has the right and duty to have information to do rational decisions and nudge or even push us to do so:
  • Question is how much and where and when
  • Government shouldn’t prevent you from smoking, but “you are free to do as wish, as long as I don’t have to pay for it”

Culture does not allow us to transcend biology

Culture is roughly everything we do and monkeys don’t. ― FitzRoy Richard Somerset

Clever as we are, we cannot modify our human bodies any more than superficial ways. And it’s arrogant to think we can engineer body parts any better than nature did. There will be no Pasteur for mismatched diseases.

We should come to terms that:

• We are fat, furless, bipedal primates that crave sugar, salt, fat and starch.
• We crave comfort, but our bodies are endurance athlete machines.
• As Voltaire wrote: “Let us cultivate our garden”. We must cultivate our body.

2024 Lookback

2024-12-31 08:00:00

It’s time to wrap up and celebrate 2024, an eventful year that fueled my yearning for internal growth and curiosity, with challenges and lessons I am grateful for.

I’ve recently built a set of Grafana dashboards to track my personal goals, which I’ve been finding incredibly interesting to explore and visualise (something that might be interesting to share in a later post).

Final Tally

There are other metrics I track, but specifically to 2024 content creation, these are the final statistics¹:

• 17 posts on this blog, 16 of them being notes (not counting this one), and one of them being a full blog article sharing how to build a personal local (Llama3 8B) LLM, extended with WhatsApp and Obsidian data
• 10 YouTube videos on my main channel. 8 of them being long form, the other 2 being shorts.
• 5 YouTube videos on Out and About, a recently created channel where I share random experiences on activities such as walking / hiking around or driving.

Notice that the tracked metrics are on the volume of content produced, not their number of views, subscribers, likes. Although keeping track of topline metrics makes sense for a full fledged business, I chose instead to track what I can control, which is my output. At the end of the day, this is a hobby, a labor of love.

If I can influence someone’s life for the better, that will already fill my heart to the brim. This, added to how important posting these contents has become to consolidate and structure my thoughts, and serendipitous opportunities they randomly opened, make this an incredibly satisfying endeavor.

I’ve experienced time and time again that consistency eventually bears wonderful fruits. Who knows which doors might open one day later? I don’t, but I’m curious to find out.

2025, one day away

With 2024 wrapped up, let’s welcome 2025. I’ve pinned down next year’s goals and will be looking forward to sharing what I learn along the way. Happy new year, and see you on the other side! 🫡