ADAPT #1

Gus Balbontin
September 01, 2023

By Gus Balbontin

Yew!

The ADAPT newsletter is ready to launch!

It's only taken me 5 years, but I am finally going to send all my subscribers regular provocations and novelty to stay adaptable and on top of your game! There will be a bit of personal stuff, education, books, startups, tech, maybe buttons (for those who know my obsession with them!) and more.

It will never take you more than 5 min to read I promise! (today’s has a read time of 3 minutes)

If you want to stick around you can reply to this email with a “YEW!”

If you are really not interested at all in receiving the ADAPT newsletter, click here to UNSUBSCRIBE and done! You’ll never hear from me again.

Let´s go!

Today at a Glance:

Awe: a book about life
Deal Flow: turning C02 into protein
Action: cook this meal
Personal: inspired by my pretty wife
Test: I haven’t been able to do this yet, what about you?

AWE

Amazing book I am reading right now called Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark. So many good parts in this book but let me share one that for some reason made a penny drop for me: it took almost 400,000 years for the first atoms to form after the Big Bang ….This is a fairly well known fact but for some reason I never clicked that since the Big Bang particles have been binding and aggregating in all sorts of weird and wonderful forms including us. Most of the hydrogen in the universe (and helium which we are running out of, story for another day) formed way back then. You are about 10% hydrogen, likely those atoms are almost as old as the universe. Fuck that’s rad.

DEAL FLOW

You know I spend a lot of time looking for startups and scientific breakthroughs to help with climate change. I came across this tech a few days ago (thanks @beckydowning) and felt it was conceptually cool! I won’t go into detail, I’ll leave it up to you to research, but effectively they turn CO2 emissions into single cell proteins to create animal feed. Think of it, agriculture is critical to humans (food!) but equally one of the culprits of our climate crisis. If we can grab emissions from power plants and turn them into food, we help reduce the impact. This solution will not capture and sequester CO2 (which we also need to do!) this will just reduce emissions so we eventually have to sequester less :-) - anyway have a read and explore www.deepbranch.com

ACTION

This week cook one meal from scratch you have never cooked before from a country that starts with the same letter as your first name. My name is Gus, I should cook something from Ghana for example! No reason needed except for novelty that as you know I always bang on about. So, remember, small simple now, no need to do a feast, just a simple meal.

PERSONAL

Pretty Wife recently ran City2Surf in Sydney - exactly 12 months after breaking her leg and needing surgery, a plate and 7 screws. Sooo inspiring and motivating to see her go from “you may not be able to walk properly again” to “watch me fucking run” ❤️ Sometimes you don´t need to go far to find inspiration, look around you and pay attention.

TEST

Test Meditation. I haven’t been able to yet! I am so bad at it! It’s like I need a Gus to kick my ass hahaha! I’m going to try again, been wanting to do it for about 2 months and haven’t been able to do it regularly. Small simple now Gus, small simple now.

My recommendations:

Of course the first one I am going to recommend is my amazing team…do you or someone you know need help?

The amazing crew at neu21.com will help you create an UNSTOPPABLE organisation.

NEU combines creativity, innovation, and insight to create cultures that can’t be ignored.

To have impact.

To build the future.

And to make work more fun!