February 2018

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

Prime Time

50th Known Mersenne Prime Discovered: 2^77,232,917-1

The new prime number, also known as M77232917, is calculated by multiplying together 77,232,917 twos, and then subtracting one. It is nearly one million digits larger than the previous record prime number, in a special class of extremely rare prime numbers known as Mersenne primes. It is only the 50th known Mersenne prime ever discovered, each increasingly difficult to find. Mersenne primes were named for the French monk Marin Mersenne, who studied these numbers more than 350 years ago.

Trashed

Inside the Deadly World of Private Garbage Collection

Waste and recycling work is the fifth most fatal job in America — far more deadly than serving as a police officer or a firefighter. Loggers have the highest fatality rate, followed by fishing workers, aircraft pilots and roofers. From the collection out on garbage trucks, to the processing at transfer stations and recycling centers, to the dumping at landfills, the waste industry averages about one worker fatality a week. Nationally, in 2016, 82 percent of waste-worker deaths occurred in the private sector.

From Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging:

The public is often accused of being disconnected from its military, but frankly, it’s disconnected from just about everything. Farming, mineral extraction, gas and oil production, bulk cargo transport, logging, fishing, infrastructure construction—all the industries that keep the nation going are mostly unacknowledged by the people who depend on them most. - Sebastian Junger

You Will Never See the Same

When Your Eyes Move, So Do Your Eardrums

Without moving your head, look to your left. Now look to your right. Keep flicking your eyes back and forth, left and right.

Even if you managed to keep the rest of your body completely still, your eyeballs were not the only parts of your head that just moved. Your ears did, too. Specifically, your eardrums—the thin membranes inside each of your ears—wobbled. As your eyes flitted right, both eardrums bulged to the left, one inward and one outward. They then bounced back and forth a few times, before coming to a halt. When you looked left, they bulged to the right, and oscillated again.

[…]

They also found that the eardrums start to wobble about 10 milliseconds before the eyes. This suggests that the ears aren’t reacting to what’s happening in the eyes. Instead, Groh says, “the brain is saying: I am about to move the eyes; ears, get ready.”

And while we are on the subject of hearing, find out why nature sounds can help you sleep and relax.

As life evolved on Earth, living beings developed different sensory organs to guide them toward food, alert them to danger, and find their way around the world. Without these senses, we couldn’t have survived. But sometimes, these very senses can cause our minds to get over-stimulated. When there’s too much noise, for example, it can be really distressing, but we usually can’t just turn off our hearing.

From an evolutionary standpoint, this is beneficial to us. If there’s some danger in our environment, we can act accordingly (or wake up, if we happen to be asleep). Sudden sounds jolt us into action, get our hearts pumping, and the adrenaline and cortisol soaring in our bodies so as to prepare us for fight or flight.

But living in a stream of constant, jarring noises can be highly toxic. One of the biggest problems with urban soundscapes, according to Benfield, is that people think they’ve adjusted to them.

Book ‘Em

Ryan Holiday translates stoic ideas into modern language. I highly recommend The Obstacle is the Way or Ego is the Enemy.

The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

During the good times, we strengthen ourselves and our bodies so that during the difficult times, we can depend on it. - Ryan Holiday

Get a copy here.

Sign Off

Do not hesitate to reply to this months email to share links, wisdom, or thoughts.

Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

How kind of you to make your way down here.

A bit about me: I can be interested in anything, for better or worse. I love photography, travel, golf, and baseball. My latest pursuit is learning the guitar. I write a rad newsletter that I publish monthly.