Travel Updates + What I Read (August 2022)
And the purchasing power parity of Portugal, complicated history lessons, and more
Hello from Lisbon!
Hot Lisboa Summer and PPP
European summer has been a nice change of scenery and Lisbon is a very dreamy city. I feel like it has the nice (sometimes sweltering) weather of LA, the urban hills and viewpoints of SF, the good food and nightlife of New York (but smaller), and the beaches of San Diego, all in one metro area. With the added benefit of the prices of Lisbon. So it’s no wonder why the city is getting gentrified and more expensive so quickly.
Though it’s a new continent it’s not been much of a change of pace in terms of work. I’ve discovered that when given the chance to work, I definitely will. And now my mornings have been freed up from distractions with the time change, I’ve been happily getting in more focus time. Also it’s been really hot so there’s no real incentive to go outside during the day.
I found two maps of European average salaries on Wikipedia. If you look at the first one you can see that the net monthly income difference (income after taxes) between Portugal and other countries countries is quite high. Denmark for example is almost 4x the average wage of Portugal.
But when you adjust it by PPP (purchasing power parity, essentially cost of living calculations), the disparity evens out a bit more.
It’ll be interesting to see how this changes over the next 10 years as Portugal turns into more of a hospitality and tourism destination. Portugal clearly understands the situation they are in and works on incentive programs to get people to move here, whether it’s offering citizenship for any foreign home buyers or waiving taxes on crypto gains.
Longform Reads + Other Content
What’s not wrong with Italy from Matt Yglesias highlights a lot of good information on Italy. Notably the lack of strict rules around housing development in Italy and the broader European nation is something the U.S. should strive for. As Matt Yglesias notes, though it may be ugly to have a random apartment complex next to a parking lot and a bunch of suburban homes or farms, it’s not much worse than many suburban and commercial developments of the U.S.
Don’t Read History for Lessons is a great two-part insight. The author dives into the background of Morris Change before he started TSMC and also provides an argument for how history can be read incorrectly. Personally I feel like most of history is getting re-written every time depending on who tells the story. So any lesson has to be taken from a grain of salt and must be informed quite contextually as the article advises.
Choose Your Table Wisely is a good way of representing how we should be constantly finding the right levels of challenges to improve. Another way to put it is that we’re the average of all of our friends, interpersonal relationships, and any spheres of influence including content consumption. If I live in a city where everyone is career focused like SF, I’ll feel a lot more different if I’m living in a place like Hawaii or Portugal.
At 88, Poker Legend Doyle Brunson Is Still Bluffing. Or Is He? is a great overview of the legendary poker player that’s seen poker change rapidly from a sketchy backroom game to the multi-media global franchise it is now. I was obsessed with online poker and the WSOP for a few years in high school so it’s cool to sometimes look back to see how the pros from 10 to 15 years ago are all still here. It’s not really a “sport” you have to retire from ever.
Zuck turns up the heat recounts some troubles that Facebook / Meta is facing as growth stalls. This is an interesting inflection point from one of the biggest businesses in the world. For me as a millennial, Facebook is the business that grew alongside my generation. And to see it reach an inflection point is rather strange as for about 15 years, I just assumed all tech companies would just grow, grow, grow, especially ones as renowned as Facebook.