Nov 1, 2021

The Monday 6 – November 1, 2021

By Kyle Petzinger • Issue #35 • View online

Happy November!

Sometime today or tomorrow, the CDC advisory panel should recommend & approve for emergency use the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5-11. I do wish there was an off-ramp of all-day in-school masking for vaccinated children, but I think this is an important step in COVID-19 transforming from being a pandemic to being endemic.

Here are this week’s 6:

1. Easily Generate Excel Project Timelines

Maybe you’ll find this as handy as I do. Spreadsheet Timeline has one function: generate a project timeline (basically a simple Gantt chart) for use in Excel.

Unfortunately, our primary project management tool at work doesn’t give me the way to visualize by date like this natively, so I find myself generating timelines in Excel to make due.

Spreadsheet Timeline

Instantly generate a timeline to put in your spreadsheet.

spreadsheettimeline.com • Share

2. Ryan Holiday On Learning From Mistakes

Author & podcaster Ryan Holiday (I’ve shared his excellent Daily Dad podcast in March) puts out a yearly public letter on his birthday, reflecting on his past and how he can learn from it.

Ryan and I are only 6 months apart and I identify with a lot of his learnings from this year.

34 Mistakes on the Way to 34 Years Old

This year, at 34, I thought I’d focus exclusively on my failures and what they’ve taught me.

ryanholiday.net • Share

A couple that stood out to me, emphasis mine:

That’s another lesson learned the hard way: Don’t say “Maybe” when you really want to say “no.” Just say no. The only person making a big deal about it is you. Just say no. How many events/meetings/wastes of time are you going to agree to and then regret before you learn this?

Just because someone you don’t respect holds a certain position, doesn’t mean the position is incorrect. And vice versa. One of the toughest things to do in this life is to think for yourself, to come up with your own judgements on issues, stripped of bias or preconceived notions. Almost every time I have looked for a shortcut—whenever I have not done the work—I’ve come to regret my views.

3. California Condors Can Have Virgin Births (?!)

This is nuts. From The Washington Post:

Researchers with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance said genetic testing confirmed that two male chicks hatched in 2001 and 2009 from unfertilized eggs were related to their mothers. Neither was related to a male.

I’m biased, but I always like it when the San Diego Zoo makes national headlines. 😊

Study finds California condors can have "virgin births"

The researchers said they believe it is the first case of asexual reproduction in any avian species where the female had access to a mate.

www.washingtonpost.com • Share

4. COVID's Almost Incomprehensible Age Striation

The CDC finally released (albeit limited) deeper data on vaccinated vs unvaccinated outcomes (cases and deaths), broken down by age and vaccine brand.

Two things jump out to me:

The huge drop in cases/deaths among vaccinated people as a whole
How striated outcomes are by age.

Axios produced an easy-to-understand chart that underscores both points:

Data: CDC. (Data includes 30% of Americans across 16 jurisdictions: AL, AZ, AR, CO, CT, FL, GA, ID, LA, MA, MI, NE, NM, NYC, Seattle/King County, UT and WI.) Chart: Danielle Alberti/Axios

You can play with the data yourself here:

CDC COVID Data Tracker

Rates of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by Vaccination Status

covid.cdc.gov • Share

5. A New Look At Jupiter

Jupiter has always been my favorite planet. I think it started in the 2nd grade when I was assigned to do a report on a planet and put out this banger:

© 1994ish Kyle Petzinger. "Here is a picture of Jupiter taken from outer space." I'm so proud of my drop shadow on the title. *chef's kiss*

I remember having a killer section on the Great Red Spot, but maybe I’ll save that for a future edition of the Monday 6.

Anyway, NASA’s Juno spacecraft (launched in 2011 and entered Jupiter’s orbit in 2016) just collected a new microwave radiometer image of Jupiter (shown on the left below) that paints the gas giant as never seen before.

The AP article shared below also shares new info on that infamous Great Red Spot:

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm so big it could swallow Earth, extends surprisingly deep beneath the planet’s cloud tops, scientists reported Thursday.

Jupiter's monster storm not just wide but surprisingly deep

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has discovered that the monster storm, though shrinking, still has a depth of between 200 miles (350 kilometers) and 300 miles or so (500 kilometers.) When combined with its width of 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers), the Great Red Spot resembles a fat pancake in new 3D images of the planet.

apnews.com • Share

6. What Happened To Channel 37?

My best guess for the last time I used an analog TV was probably over ten years ago.

I do miss the simplicity of TV back in the day: turn it on, find the channel you want to watch, done. Now it’s: turn on the TV, find the app, find the show within the app, etc. Get off my lawn.

But I digress. This Vice story about why channel 37 doesn’t exist is fascinating and worth reading if random quirks of history fascinate you as much as they do to me. From the piece:

It’s a tale that centers around channel 37, which was a giant block of static in most parts of the world during the 20th century.

The reason for that was simple: it couldn’t fend off its scientific competition.

Why Channel 37 Doesn’t Exist (And What It Has to Do With Aliens)

Since the advent of analog TVs, channel 37 has always been static. Here’s why.

www.vice.com • Share

That’s it for this week. If you found anything useful or fun, let me know! And if you have any suggestions, shoot them my way. 😊 See you next week!

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By Kyle Petzinger

Every Monday, you'll receive the 6 articles, podcasts, tools, products, and more that I found interesting that past week.

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