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Hi you!
As the US, UK, Israel, and others get closer to full vaccination, there’s a palpable sense of hope in the air.
I’m excited! I’m also torn over how to empathize with folks who aren’t there yet. On a recent Rootie call, there was a clear divide between optimistic Americans and the rest of the world who were going back into lockdown.
Countries with the highest incomes are getting vaccinated 25 times faster than those with the lowest. Pakistan and Nigeria have roughly 5% of the world’s population combined, but less than 0.2% of the vaccinations. See the graph below from Bloomberg that shows this inequality:
So how should you feel when you’re being vaccinated? Happy and relieved? Or guilty that poorer folks don’t have the vaccine yet?
There’s no right answer here, of course. But here’s what’s been helpful for me:
1. When you get the vaccine (which just happened for me!), be happy and sad and relieved and all the things.
2. Give yourself a bit of time to process, reflect, and heal. Put down what you are carrying. Allow yourself to be a toad:
3. And then, re-empathize. Think of the billions of folks without the vaccine yet, many of whom won’t get it until the end of 2022 (!). Get excited by creating mRNA factories around the world.
Search for support when you need it, and provide support when you don’t. Share your gifts with the world, whatever those may be.
LINKS
1) Yahoo Answers is shutting down. RIP. At least it gave us this gem:
2) I “like” how these harvest timelines make the climate crisis more concrete. So crazy that we’re just at the beginning of this 30-plus-year shift.
3) Julia Galef’s Youtube channel is back and it’s still good: Is Bayesian thinking a sham? (No.)
4) As more colleges ban test scores for admission, remember that almost all tests simply register inequities, they don’t create them. If we move to something like college essays, those “have a stronger correlation to reported household income than SAT scores.”
There’s always a balance between creating equal opportunity at the top of the funnel vs. using affirmative action to fix inequality at the bottom.
5) Babylon Bee: To Save Time, MPAA Will Now Just Warn You When A Film Doesn't Have Tons Of Nudity, Swearing, And Violence
6) The Onion: New Arkansas Bill Would Require Teen Residents To Keep Genitals On Full Display At All Times
7) Rhys: Social Justice Activist's Left Brain Cancels Right
JOBS AND OPPORTUNITIES
VaccinateCA is a great nonprofit that helps gets shots in arms in CA. They are hiring engineers. @patio11 has a funny line on their market and compensation:
Normally this would be the point where a startup CEO would tell you your equity is going to be worth a lot of money, but instead our organization is trying to blow through our funding as quickly as possible while driving our TAM to zero.
There’s a new Zcash-style privacy coin, IronFish. It will allow folks to run nodes directly from the browser. Their CEO Elena is an excellent and fun person. They’re hiring a bunch of engineers.
Initialized Capital (a great VC crew) is hiring a Head of Community.
Automated giving project Momentum (which we discussed in #18) is hiring engineers.
GitHub is looking for a product lead to grow GitHub Sponsors. Email bdresser@github.com if you’re interested.
OpenMind helps develop scalable behavioral interventions to help people bridge political divides. They’re hiring a Research Director.
MUSIC
My friend Vanessa shared this beautiful song in a recent blog of hers:
It simply reminds us to put down what we are carrying. Let it go.
Hope you have a good week! Warmth, Rhys
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