Welcome back to the Stove Top weekly newsletter. As usual, each edition has a few brief stories and finishes with a mix of interesting links, hot takes, and good reads.

Enjoy.

Nuclear Good

I saw a cool thread on nuclear energy the other day, and because I’m on vacation in Mexico right now and don’t feel like writing anything special here, I’m just gonna reprint it verbatim. Shoutout Matt Loszak for the thread.

Nuclear energy:

• Is statistically as safe as solar and wind

• All the nuclear waste ever produced could fit on a single football field stacked only 10 yards high

• Breeder reactors can create more fuel than they consume

• There’s enough nuclear fuel on Earth to power humanity’s growth for 4 billion years

• 1 barrel of Uranium has the same energy content as 2 million barrels of oil

• France and Ontario fully decarbonized their grid in just 10 years after going nuclear.

• Nuclear saves millions of lives by producing medical isotopes for hospitals around the world.

It’s time to go nuclear AND renewable.

Don’t Be A Freelancer

Again, on vacation and feeling lazy. So here’s a repost from Twitter on why you shouldn’t be a freelancer, as well as an announcement for my new project raffleleader.com:

I've been a freelance writer for almost 2 years now. I've written for millions of people, made friends, and made more money than I ever could've dreamed from a first "job".

But I find myself wanting out more and more, and the reasons are probably familiar to many of you:

1) It's not scalable. I make ~$12k a month right now. I spend 6.5-7.5 hours a day doing client work. At my peak, it was $16k, and I was spending somewhere between 9 and 10 hours a day on client work.

I can probably keep raising my prices until I get to the $20k range, but for what? Unless I start an agency, there really isn't much room to run here, and I'd rather stab my eyes out than start an agency.

Unfortunately, there is a ceiling to how much freelance writers can make.

2) It makes doing my own writing harder. I love writing. I would love if I could make a living off my own writing. But contrary to popular belief, freelance writing makes this harder, not easier.

Nat Eliason put it best. Paraphrasing here, but when you do something for 6, 7, 8 hours a day, the last thing you want to do when you finish work is to go do more work. Especially writing. You only have so much creative energy.

If I ever want to be a legit writer, I'm going to have to drop the whole freelance thing.

3) I'm not learning anything. 

Frankly, my work isn't pushing me anymore. Freelance writing is like most jobs. There's a big learning curve at the start where you pick up new skills, and then the rest of the time is spent applying those skills to the job.

At this point, I'm really good at being a freelance writer, but I'm not learning anything new. I'm doing the same things at the same time every week.

I need a new challenge. I need something that will push me, is scalable, and will one day leave me enough time and creative energy to really pursue writing.

So, I bought a SaaS, and now I'm building it.

Enter https://raffleleader.com

More Work, Less Socializing

When I took my first trips in January and February, I didn’t have shit going on. My job freaking sucked, my living situation sucked, and I had no girl. So, when I traveled, I went ham. I met as many people as possible and did as many things as possible.

When I traveled again over the summer, life had improved. I still hated my job, but at least I was making good money at this point. My living situation had improved, and I now had a girl. So the nature of the trip changed. I still met a ton of people and had a lot of fun, but it was different. I wasn’t seeking it out as much. If I went to a city and didn’t spend the night taking pills at a rave, it wasn’t the end of the world.

On this trip, I still have the job I freaking hate, but I now also have a job I really enjoy. I still have the girl. And my living situation is as good as it’s ever been. So, even though I’m in the same place I was in January (Isla Mujeres, couldn’t recommend it enough), the way I’m having fun couldn’t be more different. I now just want to read on the beach, chill by the pool, write, and do work for Raffle Leader. Meeting people and getting fucked up is the least of my concerns.

Maybe this is the natural order of things. The better your life is, the less you need to compensate with artificial dopamine rushes. I’ve always thought that a fair amount of depression can be healed by getting more money or getting more hoes. 

But, I also think I may be taking it too far. During most conversations with strangers I want to just go back to my book, or my work, or my girlfriend, or my beach chair. And I absolutely can’t stand networking, which I think is pretty clearly my biggest career limiter. There has to be a balance between solitude and socialization out there. And that’s what I’m going to try to find.

Extras

• Apparently, how you voted for Brexit is correlated with how intelligent you are. Take a guess at what the “more intelligent” people voted for.

• Gas prices are at their lowest levels since January.

• The real estate market is a frightful place. 

• The US is trying to beef up the power grid.

• Wind and solar continue to boom, and renewable energy is on track to (at least) triple by 2030.

• Solar is actually growing faster than any other energy source.

• And there’s a good reason for that.

• Saudi Arabia, naturally, doesn’t like that.

• Explain the vibecession without explaining the vibecession.

• Korean demographics are in biiggggg trouble.

• Ukraine is now detaining former top officials.

• Global censorship is not as far away as you think.

• Kill Section 702.

• Child safety is nothing more than a trojan horse.

• So far AI has threatened wages, not jobs.

• There are a lot of Chinese students in America, but very few American students in China. Wonder why.

• Reminder that the DEA has on-demand access to trillions of phone records.

• And 13 federal departments now have tools capable of extracting personal data from phones.

• Republican states might have a brain drain problem.

• The French government is recommending people stop using foreign chat apps in the name of security flaws. Likely story.

• Captain America and Winter Soldier might literally become reality soon.

• Meta, defenders of America. 

• Cities are now enacting ordinances written entirely by ChatGPT.

• And politicians are signing agreements with fictional countries. Maybe they aren’t smarter than us after all?

• The drums of war are growing louder in South America. This is probably going to become more common around the world as Pax Americana ends.

• Sometimes, you don’t have to build that technology.

• 53% of parents are put off from having more kids because of climate change. Relatedly, one in five people in Michigan choose not to have kids. I think choosing not to have kids is fine, but choosing not to have kids because of climate change is really stupid. We’re not going to get out of that mess without more smart people, which means more people in general.

• End spying on college campuses.

Until next time, ✌️

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