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Notes, 2019-06-24.
An imminent parental leave (reminder: The Prepared will be curated by an excellent cast of guest editors for most of the summer) is a funny forcing function. Parenthood is unpredictable, and children are unpredictable, and in my experience there's no amount of preparation that results in any sort of comprehensive readiness on the part of the new parent. I find myself frantically trying to wrap things up, but without a firm deadline I also feel the temptation to tie each thing up just a *little* bit tighter - and even, in some cases, to take on new projects as the due date approaches.

On my previous (and first) paternity leave, I struggled with a feeling of restlessness. I anticipated going back to work, and wanted very much to have made progress on something while I was away. This was, of course, unhealthy, and as I look forward to my second shot at it I'm reminded of summer vacations as a kid, and of all of the unstructured activity that went into making me who I am today. I'm not sure how to recreate that for my daughter, and perhaps more to the point I don't know how (and to what extent) to tamp down my own sense of drive either.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be back for next week's issue and then off for about six weeks. Wish me luck :)

The most clicked link in last week's issue (~16% of opens) was a decidedly negative profile of WeWork's Adan Neumann.

Jobs.

Arup is hiring a digital services leader in NYC.
nTopology is hiring a technical trainer in NYC.
Google is hiring a supply chain manager in Austin, TX.
MIT Lincoln Laboratory is hiring a design engineer/specialist in Boston.
EPAM is hiring a mechanical engineer in Boston.
More jobs on The Prepared's job board.

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Planning & Strategy.

On nuclear power's (underrated) role in successfully decarbonizing electric power generation. "If the electricity generated by nuclear power between 1971 and 2018 had instead come from the burning of fossil fuels, humanity would have emitted an additional 63 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. To put that in perspective, all the burning of fossil fuels in the world in 2018 emitted 33.5 gigatonnes...But humanity is not building on this success. Few nuclear plants are being built, existing stock is aging, and some countries, notably Germany, are actually phasing out nuclear plants early."
Food waste contributes to 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions. "Cutting down on food waste could have nearly the same impact on reducing emissions over the next three decades as onshore wind turbines."
In a joint op-ed claiming that "we can’t know exactly what the future of work will look like," the CEOs of Uber and Lyft argue for a new labor classification besides employees and independent contractors.

Making & Manufacturing.

Simone Giertz hacks a Tesla Model 3 into a pickup truck. This has been all over the internet, and it's deserved.
A pretty nice video explanation of how to build a battery pack out of 18650 Li-ion cells.
Design considerations for a better bucket for water transportation in developing regions. There are a bunch of interesting elements here, but the one I was least expecting was the smooth underside so that the bucket can be carried on one's head.

Maintenance, Repair & Operations.

Eric Weinhoffer on workshop organization. Great throughout; my one big additional thing (which is on The Prepared's Tool Guide) is a good, flexible fastener storage system (drawer cabs + PartsBox).
Lyft spends $0.14 on AWS for every ride they serve. Some very good additional analysis in this thread re: why insourcing cloud services does *not* make much sense unless you have crazy volume and stable demand.

Distribution & Logistics.

FedEx and Dollar General (which is a remarkable operation that's kind of terrible for communities) will offer in-store pickup and drop-off of FedEx packages in 8000 Dollar General stores by 2020. The partnership seems to be focused on a) rural areas that are otherwise inaccessible via FedEx (but of course would be served by USPS) and b) e-commerce return shipping. I find these goals curious: In my neighborhood, UPS uses independent and variously funky dollar stores as a backup delivery location if I'm not home; the experience is ostensibly convenient but not exactly seamless. And while it's true that online product returns are inconvenient, I'm not sure that the answer is to rub one's e-commerce failures in the face of one's local brick-and-mortar joint.
Shopify announced its own 3PL service, saying they'd invest $1B to create a network of fulfillment centers capable of reaching 99% of the US within 2 days. As a small-time hardware product seller who has dabbled with Shopify (and hustled to stitch together a manageable fulfillment chain), this kind of vertical integration makes a ton of sense. That said, it'll be interesting to see if Shopify can handle having such different business models (e-commerce SASS and 3PL don't have a ton of overlap in therms of core competencies) under the same roof.
China will have a single, nationwide transit payment card covering 245 cities by the end of the year.

Inspection, Testing & Analysis.

Corrugated cardboard is rated by two methods: The Mullen (or burst) test and the edge crush test (ECT). Mullen testing simulates heavy loading and rough handling; in it, a sheet of cardboard is clamped in a fixture and then a diaphragm applies pressure to one face until the board ruptures. Edge crush testing, on the other hand, simulates boxes being stacked in a warehouse: A small sample of cardboard is fixtured so that it stands on one edge, and then force is applied to the other edge until the board buckles or is crushed. I searched far and wide for explainers with good visuals, and my best finds were this *perfect* video by a Chicopee, MA based company called Mullen Testers (I mean, he's burst testing scratch-off tickets and forgets to open his own valves before running the test. It's perfect!) + this charmingly poor quality video demo of an edge crush testing machine.
A very good video explanation of how SpaceX's Starlink will work and why its business model makes sense. Related, a video simulation of where and when Starlink satellites will be visible.

Tangents.

Dame Products is suing the MTA for denying their vibrator ads, while sexual health pharmaceuticals are allowed to advertise.

A Twitter thread of all of the photos taken on the Apollo 11 EVA.

Thanks as always to our recurring donors for supporting The Prepared. Thanks also to the following readers for sending links: Russ, Adam, Michal, Mat, Laura, Jordan, Cruz, Omar, Stephan, Dan.

Love, Spencer.

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