Issue 2148
Happy Monday!
Once again, I skipped an issue 😬. If you are anything like me, you probably didn’t notice and even if you did, you probably didn’t mind. This time I could blame travel tiredness & business again but that wasn’t it. I simply forgot that this newsletter existed until about Wednesday which brings me to my first random topic.
- Object permanence: This is the concept that just because you can't see or hear something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist which is something that most toddlers develop around the age of 2 (hence why the game peekaboo is so exciting to children younger than this). I am talking about it in the way that it is used to describe more of an 'out of sight, out of mind' situation. That is what happened to me and has honestly happened to me quite a few times with the newsletter. The goal is to write it by Sunday evening and schedule it to send Monday morning and there have been many weeks where it's the middle of the day Monday and I suddenly remember and I can sit down and write because the real deadline in my brain is Monday at midnight. I could only find information (great article here) on this topic in relation to ADHD but I have to imagine that this happens to everybody to some degree and I look forward to reading more about it as the research develops.
- I mentioned in my last newsletter that one of the best tools for travel is online banking and I want to go into more detail about that, because Wise has been SO HELPFUL to me during the past few years and even more so lately. I initially signed up for Wise because I needed to transfer money between an American and an English bank account and Wise can be used as an intermediary between international accounts and had at the time (and still does) the best conversion rates as well as the lowest fees. When I first signed up, it could do international transfers usually in 24 or so hours and these days it's instant and that is AMAZING! A few weeks ago, I started exploring a feature where you can use it as a multicurrency bank account and I have mixed feelings about it. I use another great international banking solution, Monese and that has better rates for converting GBP to EUR and back. It doesn't have a USD option though so that's where Wise comes in. I ordered their debit card before leaving for the US and while I did not get the physical card before I left, I was able to add the card to my Apple Pay so I was able to use it while in the States which was incredibly useful.
- One of the things I find so interesting about technology is that to me, its faults tend to mirror those of humans. The parts mimic various organs/body parts (I like this person's summary) and it constantly needs fuel (electricity) and when it doesn't get enough, it ceases to function. So I am deeply fascinated by this new quantum computing which uses Qubits rather than bits so essentially a bit uses binary code and can present 4 values (00, 01, 10, 11) and Qubits can present infinte values. I am not entirely sure how this all works because I am not a computer scientist. I simply find it compelling that as humans seem to be moving away from a binary style of thinking, computers are moving away from a binary style of computing. Maybe they're not related, but I love the parrallel.
That's all for this week. I hope everybody is doing well and if this upcoming week is Thanksgiving for you, have a great one!
Mandy
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