A big update to my investing tutorial

I’ve updated my investing tutorial. A few things have changed since I wrote it in 2016.

• Cheap global currency hedged bond ETFs were introduced by iShares, SPDR and others. TER is only 0.1%, making them some of the cheapest bond ETFs on the market.
• Cheaper stock ETFs were introduced, mostly by iShares.
• Buying US-domiciled ETFs is no longer easy for European investors.

Review of The 4-Hour Body and Starting Strength

The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris

The 4-Hour Body is a book covering many topics around diet and exercise. Tim himself doesn’t recommend reading it from cover to cover, so I read about 2 thirds that were interesting to me.

The diet part is the longest. His recommendation to start the day with a high-protein meal is sound, I often do that myself (5 or 6 eggs). However, his obsession with insulin levels seems unnecessary (see Guyenet and Masterjohn). There’s plenty of people who lost a lot of weight on the diet, but I haven’t tried it, since I have the exact opposite problem.

I’ve tried the Occam’s protocol, which is a training program for maximal muscle gain. I ran it for 2 months and gained about 6 kilos of weight, some of which was fat but most was muscle. My rate of weight gain was lower than what Tim promised, which was most likely caused by the following two factors.

• I ran a few orienteering races while doing the program, but Tim doesn’t recommend any cardio. This was intentional on my side.
• I started eating as much protein as Tim suggested, but felt horrible. 7 days into the program, a blood test revealed that my kidneys couldn’t keep up with the protein intake. I immediately started eating less and then slowly increased protein intake, but I’ve started feeling strange “in the kidneys” again. This must have been the first time I was aware of my kidneys.

Part of the weight gain might have been regression to the mean, since people’s weight is typically the lowest at the end of the summer which is when I started the program. Regression to the mean could only explain half of the weight gain, though.

I’m convinced the program works, probably much better if you’re able to tolerate more protein. However, my biggest gripe is how Tim sells it. Tim likes to mention the 80/20 rule: you can get 80% of the results by only doing the important 20% of the effort. The title of the book comes from the 4 hours Tim spent in the gym during the month he gained an enormous amount of muscle mass.

The hard part of Occam’s protocol is eating enough protein and calories, which Tim mentions himself many times. I had to think constantly about food and when I managed to hit the protein target, I felt full, lethargic and overall terrible. It felt like 80% of effort for 80% of results.

When the 2 months ended, I switched to Starting Strength which in my opinion achieves what The 4-Hour Body tries to be. For example, Tim has a separate section on how to fix tight muscles by time-consuming exercises or expensive methods for which he flew to another city, but I managed to fix my tight hamstrings just by doing the exercises in Starting Strength. I got much more bang for the buck by following Starting Strength, but more on that in a separate review.

Over the years, I’ve listened to a couple of Tim’s podcasts and some of his interviews, but I have never become a big fan. After reading his book I think I know why. He's a great salesman, but the things he's selling aren't that good.

Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe

Starting Strength is a beginner barbell program with only 5 exercises (squat, deadlift, over-head press, bench press and power clean). All exercises are explained in great detail—just the squat chapter has about 60 pages.

I didn’t run the Starting Strength linear progression exactly, but rather went with Phrak’s Greyskull LP Variant recommended on Reddit. The two programs are close enough: 4 out of the 5 exercises are the same and you also do 3 sets of 5 repetitions. Weight increases and deloading are the same too.

Starting Strength focuses on strength gain. However, the best part about doing the program were bonus improvements that I didn’t expect.

• Improved hamstrings flexibility: I suffered from tight hamstrings whenever I played hockey or rode a bike. I’ve tried massages, foam rolling, hot baths and stretching, always achieving only a short-term effect. Just before starting the program I couldn’t touch my toes and now I can press all my fingers against the ground (no palms yet). And no, stretching is not part of the program, so such a huge progress was very surprising to me.
• Much less muscle soreness: I used to have too much muscle soreness from my semi-regular sport training, but now that is not an issue anymore. I also don’t remember this being promised anywhere, so that’s another surprise.
• Muscle/weight gain: Even though it’s primary a strength program, I’ve gained about 1 kilogram per month on the program.
• More strength everywhere: I used to subconsciously search for things to lean against while standing. These days, standing is just easy. Also, free-ride skiing used to be very hard on my legs, but now it feels at least 3 times easier. This is not that surprising, as the exercises hit almost all the muscles.

In the end Starting Strength fulfills the goals of The 4-Hour Body much better, at least for me. Only 5 exercises packaged in a simple-to-follow program feel like the 20% of effort that bring me 80% of results. Yes, my hamstrings could get more flexible by doing more specific work, but as it is now it’s all good.

Note that Mark Rippetoe can be dogmatic, e.g. he repeatedly says in the book that the squat works your hamstrings a lot, but there’s now good scientific evidence that that’s not true. Starting Strength is a great start but it’s definitely not the end.

Conclusion

I’m now well in my 30s and I think now is the right time to get serious about health. Thanks to a lot of trial and error in the last 5 years, I’ve conquered regular insomnia and migraines. Barbell training is another great addition, especially the squat and deadlift feel like cheat codes to life.

The conventional thinking is that your health deteriorates with age but I’d like to keep improving as long as possible. What if there are more cheat codes to be discovered?

Poľana – mať stará ohromných stínov

Poľana is an inactive stratovolcano in Slovakia not discovered by tourists. I’ve never been there, so I’ve decided to do a multi-day hike there with Ivan and Roman.

Friday

We got off the bus in Strelníky right at sunset. With our headlamps on, we hiked the steep slope to the shelter Partizán nad Mincou.

Hiking towards the shelter

The shelter was empty, so we had a very luxurious stay. At 4AM, we were woken up by a dormouse climbing the walls above us. We managed to scare it off and went back to sleep.

Saturday

In the beginning of our hike we had good views of the surrounding areas. Then we entered the forest and didn’t have views, but the forest was beautiful on its own.

Poľana forest

We ate lunch at the top of Strunga, with excellent views of the whole caldera. When Ivan read Andrej Sládkovič’s poem Detvan, I had goosebumps.

Poľana caldera seen from Strunga

The title of this post is the second line of the poem: Poľana – old mother of great shadows. Once the goosebumps went away, we all concluded that the poem is basically about sex, just like 90% of literature.

In the late afternoon we finally met the first hikers around the highest peak of the mountain range – Poľana at 1458 m. We slept at útuľňa Javorinka, a recently renovated shelter with awesome views.

Útuľňa Javorinka

Sunset

Sunday

I woke everyone up at 4:30 AM to catch the sunrise. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy. However, the Sun rose at the 55-degree bearing over Kráľova hoľa 55 kilometers away. That was an impressive coincidence.

Sunrise over Kráľová hoľa

We went to bed again for 2 more hours and then descended to Hriňová.

Old shepherd's shelter

Small farms of Hriňová, Slovak Tuscany

We ran out of water and tried to get it from the 3 different water sources, but we either couldn’t find them or they were dry. Luckily, we were saved by the helpful people in Zánemecká. From here on, we continued on the bus or train.

The end

After this trip, I only had one question in my head: Why haven't I been to Poľana sooner? It’s not too busy, has a lot of well-preserved nature and awesome tourist shelters.

Small selection of my photos is on Flickr and a bigger album on Google Photos.

Book Review: The Old Man, the Sea and the PhD by Martin Lukačišin

The best thing about The Old Man, the Sea and the PhD is that it’s very short. I read it while travelling to the airport and waiting at the security check. It reads very well and it’s packed with ideas. Each idea is presented using a parable which makes them very easy to remember.

The last chapter likens the life of a PhD student to Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea, which is where the name of the book comes from. I found this analogy the best and most memorable.

During my time in academia, I wanted to write similar thoughts in a blog post (or two) but I always deleted what I wrote, since I didn’t believe that academia could be fixed and thus my drafts were pure rants. The author is slightly more optimistic and tries to provide solutions, though he still admits that the book is very negative about academia.

I think academia will never get fixed, since it’s stuck in a bad equilibrium, just like schools, medicine, politics or airport security checks. We think academia is about science, schools are about education, medicine is about health, politics about improving lives of ordinary people and airport checks are about security. However, all of them are primarily about something else and the stated purpose is at best a secondary side-effect.

The real issue with academia—in my opinion—is that it’s primary about academics gaining prestige and status among other academics. Science ends up being a secondary side-effect of this process. The author hints at it in the very last paragraph of the book but unfortunately doesn’t expand on the idea. For this reason, I recommend complementing The Old Man, the Sea and the PhD with Elephant in The Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. You’ll have a better understanding why the life of a PhD student is as miserable as Martin Lukačišin describes it.

Note: this review has also been published on Amazon.

Loptoši™ 2017: Slovakia off the beaten path

The theme of Loptoši™ 2017 was discovering Slovakia off the beaten path, with a focus on the east and mid-south.

The trip started with a streak of bad luck. A few hours before the trip we’ve discovered that our car rental has been canceled. And half of our crew (Palo and Roman) suffered from stomach flu in the first days of the trip.

In the end it was a great trip, full of interesting places and experiences. Instead of covering it chronologically, let me describe the 3 most memorable places.

Stužica, primeval forest

Stužica is a primeval forest that hasn’t been touched for 100 years by humans. I’ve been to forests that looked like they have been vacuumed, but I prefer messy unmanaged forest with trees left to decompose. We’ve experienced Stužica during wet and foggy weather, which created just the right atmosphere. Stužica thus became the top experience of the trip for me.

Trees left to decompose

Hiking in the fog

Železník, former mining town

Železník lies deep in the forest high up on a mountain. The mountain used to be one of the largest sources of iron in the area. It was a prosperous lively small village/town, but now there’s very few people left. If you speak Slovak, you can watch a documentary about Železník.

When we arrived there, the Sun was about to set and Ivan was reading out loud an article about Železník from Čierne Diery. His captivating voice, the abandoned structures around us and the great view gave me goose bumps.

Old phone booth and post office

Sunset seen from Železník

Inside blast furnace near Železník

Čierny Váh, the biggest battery in the country

The Čierny Váh pumped-storage plant is a few tonnes of concrete in nature. A top of a hill has been replaced by a water reservoir.

View from the air. Photo by Achernar.sk.

People say that nature should be preserved, but this structure has enormous benefits. During the night, it takes the overflow electric power from power plants that are slow to turn off, like nuclear power plants, and uses it to pump water 400 meters higher. During the day, the water flows back down, generating energy. It’s basically a giant battery and the most powerful power plant in the country.

We could have preserved this particular piece of nature and instead built a plant that’s easier to turn off and start, like a coal plant, but the environmental consequences would have been much higher. Čierny Váh is still the least environmentally harmful solution.

Photos

A selection of my photos is on Flickr and an album merged from multiple people is on Google Photos.

Travelling by teleport to Tuscany

There exists a mode of transport that is as good as teleport: first you go to the teleport station and then you wake up at your destination. Sometimes you can even take your car with you. It’s called night train (overnight ferries also qualify).

In the last two years I've used night trains a lot, mostly because I find them more convenient and less stressful than flying. And they also emit fewer harmful gases.

Some night trains transport cars, which allows you to make a one-way road trip like this one:

Tuscany 2017

Me and Veronika had a great time in Tuscany, ate very tasty food, rested on the beach and loaded on vitamin D before the winter. Some places were crowded but you can avoid that if you go early in the morning.

I won't bore you with all the details, but feel free to look at the (few) photos below or read my captions in the complete photo album on Google Photos (to see the captions, press “i” on your keyboard). A smaller selection of my photos is also on Flickr.

Photos

Car is loaded on the train, ready for a 1000-kilometer journey.

After sunset on our balcony in Castagneto Carducci

In Piombino. The highest mountain is Monte Capanne on Elba. The low mountains on the horizon is Corsica.

First row on the beach

Siena

San Gimignano full of tourists

Happy to be in Florence

Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore with a shade from The Baptistery of St. John.

Ponte Vecchio at night 

Inside a fancy perfume store (Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella)

Come join me in my bathtub

Florence gives you wings

We drove through a supercell storm and then saw another one in the distance. The top of the anvil and flanking line are clearly visible.

Shoes of Ljubljana

Music Recommendations #3

The first two editions of Music Recommendations were sent to my friends via e-mail, so you won’t find them on this blog.

I sent my last recommendations in 2013, so there’s a lot of music that I’ve discovered since then. Some of it is older than 2013.

I’ve only listed albums that I think are worth listening to, so all my ratings are at least 7/10. You can listen to all albums in one Spotify playlist.

Two Fingers – Six Rhythms 10/10

Last.fm tags: to listen, grime, electronic, idm, dubstep, bass

I often hear people say, “There hasn’t been anything new in the music scene since the 80’s/90’s.” To which I typically reply, “Have you listened to Amon Tobin?” This work under Two Fingers is no exception. Make sure you have bass on full blast while listening to this.

Bonus: listen to Two Fingers DJ set from 2013 on Soundcloud or Mixcloud.

Metronomy – Nights Out 9/10

Last.fm tags: electronic, poptron, electro, british

When my brother first listened to this, he asked, “What are these guys smoking?” I said I had no idea, but it’s great music. Very crazy and full of contradictory rhythms.

The Kills – Blood Pressures 9/10

Last.fm tags: indie rock, garage rock, alternative

After the end of The White Stripes, this is my go-to rock band. They have great vocals and the style of the songs varies a lot.

Black Sun Empire – From the Shadows 9/10

Last.fm tags: drum and bass, neurofunk, darkstep, dubstep

I thought drum’n’bass was dead but then I found Black Sun Empire. This album is dark, which makes it hard to listen to at times. It usually lifts my mood, though.

Jungle – Jungle 9/10

Last.fm tags: electronic, psychedelic, jungle, techno, soul, dancehall

The slowest album on the list. Great for evening chill-out.

Mujuice – Mistakes and Regrets 9/10

Last.fm tags: electronic, idm, minimal, russian, glitch, experimental

Mujuice blew my mind years ago at Wilsonic music festival and continues to do so to this day.

The Knife – Shaking the Habitual 8/10

Last.fm tags: electronic, experimental, dark ambient

Such a dark and strange album. I keep changing my mind about it. 4 years later I still haven’t been able to fully digest it. Getting used to it takes a lot of time.

Bonobo – North Borders 8/10

Last.fm tags: downtempo, electronic, chillout, trip-hop

Nothing can ever beat Bonobo’s album Days to Come, but he still keeps his standard.

Caribou – Our Love 8/10

Last.fm tags: electronic, experimental, indie, poptron

After Swim, which is an album out of this world, Our Love was a disappointment, but still worth listening to. I think I like Caribou more when they play faster than this.

Skalpel – Transit 8/10

Last.fm tags: jazz, nu-jazz, ninja tune, electronic

This album makes for a great background music. Worse than the old ones, but they also kind of keep their standard.

Clark – Totems Flare 8/10

Last.fm tags: idm, electronic, warp

I originally thought Clark would be very boring, but this album proved me wrong.

FM Belfast – How to Make Friends 7/10

Last.fm tags: poptron, electronic, synthpop, indie

This is dance music that even Richard Štefanec is willing to listen to. Unfortunately, the few very good songs are accompanied by many mediocre ones.