I’ve taken my sweet time on this one. Multiple work projects, holidays, and a vacation.

The Final Frontier

Asteroid mining startup AstroForge will test its metal refinery tech in space this year – Finally, we are looking at the resources outside our own atmosphere!

243 | Joseph Silk on Science on the Moon — Sean Carroll’s Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas – Another discussion of getting humanity into space using the Moon as our jumping-off point.

Science Stuff

An Ancient Battle Is Playing Out in the DNA of Every Embryo – Interesting read.

Patient undergoes double neural bypass surgery | Popular Science – Some amazing work in using implants and AI to repair spinal damage.
This Prosthetic Limb Actually Attaches to the Wearer’s Nerves | WIRED UK – Amazing work with direct neural drive of prosthetics that allows finer motor control.

World Issues

Could the non-free regimes of the world be looking at long-term self-immolation?

859: Bradley Schurman | Demographic Collapse in Russia, China & the USA (The Jordan Harbinger Show) – An interesting listen on how some of the major superpowers might be facing population collapse. Will it be a bad thing? It depends.
How much trouble is China’s economy in? – It sounds like China’s economy could be taking a downturn, but leadership appears to be confident in a recovery. But how long will that recovery last?

Why U.S. credit rating was downgraded and debt is rising – The Washington Post – The US has dropped from AAA to AA+ bond rating due to how our elected officials are handling budget negotiations.  I wondered when the repeated crises would come back to bite us. Maybe it’s time we push both parties to work together instead of fighting.

IT

The Cloud Is a Prison. Can the Local-First Software Movement Set Us Free? | WIRED – I like the idea of local-first considering the impacts of our cloud services going offline, or just getting crappier and more expensive.

Some good articles on Microsoft 365 that I found over the week:
Practical Protection: Five Things To Know About Microsoft 365 Auditing – TL;DR – you don’t get most audit logging unless you pay for it.
Resolving the Five Most Common Conditional Access Misconfigurations – A great high-level look at leveraging conditional access policies for Microsoft Online.

NSA Releases Guide to Harden Cisco Next Generation Firewalls – The NSA published a comprehensive set of Firepower hardening advice.  I suggest anyone running Cisco Firepower devices take a look.  Most of the recommendations are standard practice, but it also explains how to properly build your ACLs.

My zsh shell takes forever to open sometimes – why?
Speeding Up My Shell (Oh My Zsh) | Matthew J. Clemente – In-depth review of Matthew’s attempts to speed up his zsh shell.
Speeding up zsh and Oh-My-Zsh | JonLuca’s Blog – another take on improving zsh load times.

Leadership

The Right Way to Hold People Accountable – Great article on the right way to hold people accountable.
17 Reasons NOT To Be A Manager – Got this from Daniel Miessler’s newsletter this week. This is a spot-on view of the differences between being a technical individual contributor versus management.  I’ve found much of this spot on with my leadership journey.

Health

These 8 habits could add up to 24 years to your life, study says | CNN – Another good find from Daniel Miessler this week.  Seems there is still hope for the fortysomething crowd after all.
A lack of sleep blocks brain-boosting benefits from exercise, study says | CNN – It looks like not sleeping well or enough can undo everything else you are working towards healthwise.
AMA #9: Kratom Risks, Does Infrared Sauna Work & Journaling Benefits – Huberman Lab – Overcast – Andrew Huberman tells you all about Kratom, including the very serious risks.  TL;DR – don’t do it.