Less Messy

Real problems are messy. Tech culture prefers to solve harder, more abstract problems that haven’t been sullied by contact with reality. So they worry about how to give Mars an earth-like climate, rather than how to give Earth an earth-like climate. They debate how to make a morally benevolent God-like AI, rather than figuring out how to put ethical guard rails around the more pedestrian AI they are introducing into every area of people’s lives.

– Maciej Cegłowski, Notes from an Emergency

Weighty

My parents are in their late 60s, but they remain in very good shape. They’re avid travelers, which regularly requires them to walk 10-15 miles in a day, with stairs and hills climbed, bags toted, etc.

Primarily, they’ve kept fit with ‘cardio’ workouts in their living room, using Leslie Sansone’s solid and much-loved Walk at Home DVDs (or, as my brother calls it, ‘frumping to the oldies.’)

However, recent research has made clear that also focusing on strength training is particularly important as we age. As one recent review paper put it:

Strength-training exercises have the ability to combat weakness and frailty and their debilitating consequences. Done regularly [it] builds muscle strength and muscle mass, and preserves bone density, independence, and vitality with age. In addition, strength training also has the ability to reduce the risk of osteoporosis and the signs and symptoms of numerous chronic diseases such as heart disease, arthritis, and type 2 diabetes, while also improving sleep and reducing depression.

In short, strength training is powerful stuff. And as further research has shown, those benefits are specific to lifting weights; it’s not sufficient to simply maintain a high level of physical activity in general.

So I suggested that my parents also consider hitting the gym once or twice a week. To which my mother replied that they do currently use dumbbells in those Sansone workouts. While that’s great, I clarified that she needed to go to the gym to focus on progressive overload. The health improvements of strength training come from consistently increasing the weight used over time; thus, if you’re using the same ten-pound dumbbells month after month, you’re no longer reaping the same benefits.

To illustrate, here’s an amazing pair of before and after MRI scans showing the increase in leg muscle mass after just twelve weeks of weight training, in a 92-year-old subject. (!!!)

If you want to live longer, healthier, then staying active (in a general, ‘use it or lose it’ sort of way) is hugely important. But adding in weight training, too, is an extremely powerful tool. And, as the scans show, it’s never too late to start.

Hotel Delmano

While I was still an undergrad at Yale, coming down regularly to NYC for my startup, I was thrilled to discover the then newly-opened Campbell Apartment. When the current Grand Central Station was built in 1913, John Campbell, who chaired the board of the New York Central Railroad, had the space built in as a private office. After his death a few decades later, the apartment was abandoned, eventually repurposed into a little-used storage closet. Then, in 1999, the architects upgrading Grand Central rediscovered the space, with its 1910’s decor, stained glass windows, etc., still intact. With a few million dollars in renovations to return it to its previous opulence, The Campbell Apartment opened as a semi-secret speakeasy. It was, in a word, perfect.

This past year, that version of the bar closed, soon to reopen as a cheesy, DJ-centric nightclub. But a slew of great, semi-secret speakeasies remain – places like Bathtub Gin, Raine’s Law Room, Angel’s Share, Employees Only, and Please Don’t Tell.

But I’m always thrilled to discover another addition to that list. So, this weekend, while out in Williamsburg, I was particularly happy to stumble across Hotel Delmano.

As my go-to restaurant review site The Infatuation put it, “Hotel Delmano is probably the best date spot in Williamsburg. It's dark, cozy, and feels like an ocean liner that sank a long time ago.” Which is precisely right:

It seems like a place where Hemingway would have been thrilled to enjoy five or six daiquiris. Though, in the picture above, we’re instead testing out the Junebug (dill-infused gin, lemon, sugar snap peas, fino sherry, suze) and the San Francisco Handshake (thyme-infused gin, st germain, lemon, fernet branca).

If you’re in Williamsburg, or even if you’re not, consider heading their way to enjoy it yourself.

Time, Money

“No person hands out their money to passers-by, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.”
– Seneca

Mise

Recently, I was talking to a friend who is trying to improve his cooking skills. Knowing that I attended culinary school, he asked if I had any tips. First and foremost, I told him, he needed to cook using ‘mise en place.’

A French term that roughly means “everything in its place,” mise en place is about setting up all of the ingredients needed before you start to cook. Like on a television cooking show, it’s placing all the prepped ingredients – peeled, chopped, ready to go – in little bowls and containers you can pull from when the time is right.

More than anything else, cooking well is about paying full attention to the food. Watching, listening, and smelling as food cooks, tasting and seasoning along the way.

If you go the route of most home cooks, you toss in the first ingredients right away, slicing and assembling the rest in parallel as you go. And though experienced chefs can make that work in a pinch, it’s far too much distraction for anyone still honing their skills.

Setting up your mise first adds only a few minutes to the total cooking time, but it pays huge dividends in the quality of food you can produce. So if you want to improve your cooking, try it out yourself. Prep first, then cook. Mise en place.