Biking across the golden gate bridge when the fog and wind is blowing through from the Pacific is one of the most immersive (and scary) experiences ever. Highly recommend!
It's amazing to me that the World's Fair gave us so many iconic and wonderful structures, all of which are probably too impractical to build otherwise: the Eiffel Tower, Space Needle, Unisphere, Palace of Fine Arts, etc. It's unrealistic, but it's worth having a new world's fair just for an excuse to build another one of these!
The pavilions were truly incredible (from what I remember, Saudi Arabia comes to mind, just look at that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_2010_pavilions#Saudi_Arab...) but like the article says, it felt more like each country's branding exercise rather than any unified vision of the future.
This sounds promising as there doesn't appear to be many natural or artificial substitutes to imitate the feel or taste of the meat like there are in current no-kill red meat products.
Similar to Doordash and other companies who have seen increased usage due to the lockdown, I wonder if all of the new cyclists and runners will revert to not using Strava as much post-lockdown. I guess cash in while you can!
> China's strategy seems simple enough. Close off borders of a region
Have a couple of issues with your points.
1. China did not close its borders soon enough, even though the government was aware of the possibility of a large scale incident. This led to the virus's spread to every other continent other than Antarctica.
2. China has the "benefit" of a central government with a citizen database where privacy has no consideration. Combine that with mostly vertical housing, it's easy to make sure no one is able to go outside except for those selected to be a resource liaison. This is impossible in a place like California.
In my own experience in SV, companies just want good engineers. If you have good experience and good projects recruiters will still find you, despite having a gap.
Saying that it's the "best thing I've done in my life" is way too dramatic, but at this point in my career it has been the best thing I've done because of how much I've grown personally.
I don't consider myself a good writer so your point is very helpful.
Appreciate the feedback @acconrad. I understand that I'm extremely fortunate, and I try to point that out in the introduction of my article. Like @whack commented, I'm sharing my personal experience---both the good and the bad---and all the better if there's an element to it that a reader can relate to.
As for your other point, does the best thing for a career have to make it _materially_ better? For me personally, the time off and self-reflection has been a better learning experience than if I hadn't quit, especially the ideas regarding agency and productivity, and these are things that will stay with me into whatever I do next.
I don't doubt that people with 40 hour workweeks can do the little that I've done, but if you see the goals that I set out for myself these were just a minor aspect of what I wanted to accomplish.
Netlify has a free plan for hosting personal sites. Though I could do things manually, the continuous integration, free SSL, and Hugo integration make deploying my personal site as easy as anything I've ever seen.