My Content List #23 | Thurs 10/8/20

Opening Rant: On Validation

When’s the last time you caught yourself seeking validation, in some sense? Your skills, your knowledge, your worth?

From whom are you seeking validation? A coworker, a superior, a peer, teammate, a friend, a romantic partner? … Yourself?

It sometimes feels inescapable, that pesky recursive trap of seeking. Validation seeking spans personal and professional levels, the inward and the outward.

This practice — or, better yet — ingrained behavior lurks in plain sight, yet it is so habituated into the human psyche that it can escape detection too often. At least it does vis a vis “social” validation: there is an evolutionary basis for our desire to seek acceptance, signal norm adherence for group inclusion, etc.. We do this by engaging in self-presentation behaviors: accentuating certain personality aspects or beliefs to convey a desired impression. This happens on a continuum of authenticity, in that sometimes this behavioral “filtering” can have more OR less overlap with our quote-unquote true selves. My favorite schematic is invoked here (yet again) — the Venn Diagram.

This signifies that the gap between the authentic and desired self mediates the extent to which we engage in validation seeking; the Desired Self (right) circle ebbs and flows. Gets you thinking… When is impression management sincere (i.e. I genuinely possess this characteristic, interest, skill, etc.), inauthentic (i.e. I want to fit in with that crowd, so I have to amplify X attribute and/or hide Y interest) , or even aspirational (i.e. To fit in, I need to become totally different from who/what I’ve been)? What’s more, even inauthentic and aspirational types of validation seeking happen almost passively; it takes real attentiveness to catch oneself from slipping into such patterns.

On the wrong end of this, seeking inauthentic micro-validations can easily perpetuate, taking an individual increasingly farther from who or what they are in actuality. This can have a dizzying effect on the spirit, perhaps leading some to feel “untethered” to any true version of themselves. That’s when the True Self (left circle) starts to lose its roots.

I was recently introduced to the concepts of “Maximizing” and “Satisficing”, which are personality-driven decision making styles that can — apparently — be reliably quantified across a spectrum. On one end (the “Maximizers”), individuals focus more on “objective” or outward-comparing standards; on the other (the “Satisficers”), individuals seek alignment with their own personal standards. I would hypothesize that Maximizers engage in a lot more negatively-connoted validation seeking, which can be taxing to the soul. Perhaps it’s better, in the long run, to skew towards self-imposed standards, measuring up against only past versions of oneself.

There’s an almost egoistic vibe here, some Kantian shit… can we ever escape the desire to validate ourselves? Even if we’re seeking validation purely for ourselves? All one can really hope for is awareness of the marginal implications of validation-seeking; small acts will compound quickly.

Anyway, back to the world of aspirational validation-seeking… Think now about validation in a different context — the entrepreneur’s constant quest for “product-market fit.”

I’m currently taking my first formal entrepreneurship class— yes, I too wondered whether it could be taught in a (Zoom) classroom, but my Professor’s been phenomenal thus far [see article below entitled “Beware of Corporate Promises”]. In class, we’ve talked a lot about minimum viable product (MVP) testing and product-market fit. Much ink has been spilt on those topics, by many smarter than I. So it goes without saying that I’m no expert, but a few things feel pretty universal in this regard…

In the world of startups, validation isn’t just something; it’s EVERYTHING. If entrepreneurs aren’t constantly probing for engagement from customers and adapting their product/service to meet market needs, they’re doing it wrong. Validation (in the form of, say, engagement with a beta test) is tracked obsessively, and rightly so: the entrepreneurs and startups that distribute their offering most widely are ones who can assess →adapt → validate, then REPEAT!

Yet another Venn diagram… Image Credit

That’s how product-market fit happens, based on my understanding; it’s an active process. It’s earned, not given. When fit happens, scale follows.

Much like the realm of social validation, entrepreneurial validation seems never-ending and ubiquitous.

But here’s where they diverge… Social validation (as said above) often lurks beneath the surface of consciousness; we do it without much intentionality, even when we (occasionally) stray further from authentic selves. Entrepreneurial validation requires so much painstaking effort, and at times a fundamental reinvention.

While such extreme validation seeking is necessary for startups, I believe it has the potential to cause more harm than good when it comes to the self. Hopefully folks stop and think before “reinventing” oneself for social gain; if enough marginal validation-seeking occurs, at some point one may gaze in the mirror and wonder who the hell is staring back.

Juxtaposing these concepts, I think, provides illuminating insight into the differences between human nature and business. An optimal topic to noodle on, for a wannabe behavioral economist like me. And perhaps, if you’ve read this far, you find them intriguing too…

With that, enjoy the latest Content List.

Got something to contribute? Think my reasoning is flawed?

Drop me a note; I’d love to hear from you!

Follow me @James R. Shecter. Or don’t.

My Content List #23 | Thurs 10/8/20

Articles

The Pervasive, Head-Scratching, Risk-Exploding Problem With Venture Capital | Institutional Investor

‘We’re №28! And Dropping!’ | Nicholas Kristof / NYTimes

• Reminiscent of my rant in CL #19 America the Phoenix
• “The United States, despite its immense wealth, military power and cultural influence, ranks 28th — having slipped from 19th in 2011. The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece.
• The United States ranks №1 in the world in quality of universities, but №91 in access to quality basic education. The U.S. leads the world in medical technology, yet we are №97 in access to quality health care.
• The Social Progress Index finds that Americans have health statistics similar to those of people in Chile, Jordan and Albania, while kids in the United States get an education roughly on par with what children get in Uzbekistan and Mongolia. A majority of countries have lower homicide rates, and most other advanced countries have lower traffic fatality rates and better sanitation and internet access.”

Why Fake News Prospers — and How to Deal With it. | Steve Glaveski

• “As Italian programmer, Alberto Brandolini, put it, “the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it”. This is also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, or Brandolini’s Law.”

The Memos | Bessemer Venture Parners

• “Like the knight’s sword, the firefighter’s hose, and the lumberjack’s ax, venture capitalists courageously wield the memo. For VCs, learning from mistakes is easy. In fact, we make so many that we’re experts on what not to do. What’s hard is to learn from success. How did we spot those baby unicorns in the wild? Did we just get lucky? Because we really want to find more of them. To glean patterns from those particularly beneficial early-stage decisions (and sometimes just to nourish our fragile egos), we find it helpful to publish and scrutinize the Investment Recommendation Memoranda that we circulated years ago. One pattern that consistently emerges is that Bessemer’s best investment decisions centered on people. In retrospect, the early products themselves are barely recognizable today. Rather, passionate, analytical and relentless founders zigged and zagged their way to that elusive “product-market fit”, and these memos provide a glimpse of those winning entrepreneurs before they were famous. They are the prequels of our heroes, as inspirational to us as The Hobbit, Solo, Batman Begins, and Better Call Saul.”

Harvard’s Chetty Finds Economic Carnage in Wealthiest ZIP Codes | Bloomberg

• Chetty is a baller… Also worth checking out his site that allows users to track the economic impacts of COVID-19 on people, businesses, and communities across the United States in real time.

The Clocklike Regularity of Major Life Changes | The Atlantic

• “Even better, research shows that we tend to see past events — even unwanted ones — as net positives over time. Though our brains have a tendency to focus on negative emotions in the present, over the years unpleasant feelings fade more than pleasant feelings do, a phenomenon known as “fading affect bias.” This may sound like a cognitive error, but it really isn’t. Almost every transition — even the most challenging ones — bears some positive fruit; it just may take time to see it and feel its effects.”
• Related: Why building a muscle for uncertainty is the most important thing you can do

A Primer on Algorithms and Bias | Farnam Street

• “Part of getting to a world where algorithms provide great benefit is to remember how diverse our world really is and make sure we get data that reflects the realities of that diversity. We can either actively change the algorithm, or we change the data set. And if we do the latter, we need to make sure we aren’t feeding our algorithms data that, for example, excludes half the population. As Criado Perez writes, “when we exclude half of humanity from the production of knowledge, we lose out on potentially transformative insights.””

The Cheating Scandal That Ripped the Poker World Apart | Wired

• “The Plaintiffs have reason to believe the mechanisms through which these myriad acts of wire fraud were carried out by Mr. Postle, John Does 1–10 and Jane Does 1–10 involved Mr. Postle’s cellular telephone being grasped by his left hand while concealed under the poker table and/or Mr. Postle’s baseball cap being imbedded [sic] with a communications device creating an artificial bulge in its lining (that is notably absent in photographs of the same baseball cap on Mr. Postle when he is not playing on Stones Live Poker).”

The Pandemic Is a ‘Mental Health Crisis’ for Parents | NYTimes

• ““This is a chronic destabilizing force to our lives, and to families and parents and children,” said Pooja Lakshmin, M.D., a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at George Washington University School of Medicine. “We need to be treating this as a mental health crisis, and one that does not have an end we can see.” Though many parents of young children across demographics are feeling increased levels of stress, two subgroups may be particularly at risk for clinical levels of anxiety and depression right now: women who are pregnant or recently gave birth, and parents who are struggling financially to meet their children’s basic needs.”

Privacy Playbook: Building a best-in-class privacy program without a FAANG engineering budget | Benjamin Brook

• “On the reputation front, consumer awareness of privacy is growing, and so is the standard that consumers expect. Our survey of over 1,000 Americans found that nearly all Americans (98%) agree that data privacy is important and that it will be even more critical 5 years into the future (94%). And good experiences translate into positive perceptions-62% of Americans also rate companies that provide instant access to a user’s data as trustworthy, 58% say transparent, and 55% deem them to be helpful.
  It’s no secret that the FAANG crew are prioritizing these vectors daily. Apple continues to run a multimillion dollar advertising campaign on their privacy-centric values, and Facebook is now pushing for greater data portability. But is it possible to build a strong corporate privacy program and tech stack without dedicated teams, a budget with more than a few zeroes, and a board-level prioritization mandate?”

The Cyber-Avengers Protecting Hospitals from Ransomware | Wired

• “The ransomware attack, called WannaCry, didn’t specifically target hospitals in the UK. In fact, it infected more than 200,000 computers worldwide. But many British hospitals had been running older, more vulnerable Windows operating systems, and once the worm got in, it quickly jumped from computer to computer, encrypting files as it went. Email systems went offline. Doctors couldn’t access patient records. Blood test analysis devices and MRI scanners became inoperable, and staff scrambled to cancel surgeries and other appointments — 19,000 in all. The attack cost the National Health Service well over $100 million.”

Beware the Power of Retail Investors | The Economist

• “Who bears most responsibility for the volatility? First, small-trader flow is much larger in size, although it was likely dispersed among more listed companies. Second, and more importantly, although both types of buyer purchased options, the trades differ greatly. The options bought by SoftBank are reported to be long-term (three- or six-month) bets on the biggest tech firms, like Amazon and Microsoft. They were also “delta-hedged”, as is typical for institutional investors, meaning that at the same time as SoftBank bought the options, its bankers also sold the underlying stocks in proportion to the exposure the option gave them. This is important, because it means that the marketmakers who sold SoftBank the options did not immediately have to hedge their position by buying up shares in, say, Microsoft or Amazon.”

Trends in Digital Health | RockHealth

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court’s Feminist Icon, Is Dead at 87 | NYTimes

The Origin and Evolution of Startup Studios | Jules Ehrhardt

What Young, Healthy People Have to Fear From COVID-19 | The Atlantic

• In sum, it’s the longer-term symptoms that seem most worrisome (and unknown…)
• “As my colleague Ed Yong explained, many COVID-19 patients experience protracted illness. These “long-haulers” suffer from a diabolical grab bag of symptoms, including chronic fatigue, shortness of breath, unrelenting fevers, gastrointestinal problems, lost sense of smell, hallucinations, short-term-memory loss, bulging veins, bruising, gynecological problems, and an erratic heartbeat. And according to the neuroscientist David Putrino, chronic patients are typically young (the average age in his survey is 44), female, and formerly healthy.”

Disney’s $30 Billion Opportunity to Fix Remote Learning | Scott Galloway

• “Just as Andrew Yang proposed a leveling up via Universal Basic Income, Disney is in a position to lead several firms in an effort to provide Universal Disney Instruction (“UDI”). To be clear, I don’t believe this is structurally sustainable, and we should not depend on companies to solve problems the government should address (educating our children). But we are in a crisis, and the White Moronacy that has infected Pennsylvania Avenue creates a need so great that many/most subscribers to D2 would be willing to sponsor a UDI household. If 50% of children fall off the map in STEM, we are 50% less likely to solve climate change, find vaccines for future pathogens, or develop apps that help us find a mate or the fastest route to an In-N-Out Burger.”

Evolving To Lead & Empower Others | David Fu

• “I believe that anyone — empowered with the right values, mindsets, skillsets, opportunities — is capable of overcoming challenges like trauma, poverty, racism, displacement to become self-actualizing individuals…”

Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane — A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups | First Round Capital

Epic Games Primers | Matthew Ball

• Matt’s pieces are typically quite lengthy, and I’ve only just gotten around to perusing this series published in early summer…
• “Compared to Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google, which are worth $600B to $1.4T, Epic’s valuation is modest. However, Epic has the potential to become one of the largest, most influential tech companies in the world. This might seem hyperbolic to those who know Epic only as the marker of the hit video game Fortnite: Battle Royale. In fact, even long-time fans of Epic’s games might find such a pronouncement odd given Fortnite has generated more revenue in three years than the rest of Epic has in almost as many decades. But behind the scenes, it looks increasingly likely that Epic will be at the very center of society’s digital future.”

Caffeine Clash: Who will win the brewing battle between Japan and America? | The Economist

• “America consumes only around a fifth as much canned and bottled coffee as Japan does. But Americans are developing a taste for it. The market has expanded by 78% since 2014. Margins are more energising than in Japan. This should be a gift to ready-to-drink coffee’s Japanese pioneers. It hasn’t been.”

The Coming Crisis of Legitimacy | The Atlantic

• “No matter who wins the election, millions of Americans are likely to doubt that its outcome is fair. Less than two months from now, American democracy could face one of the biggest tests of its legitimacy in living memory.”

A Black Venture Capitalist Sees Challenges as an Investing Edge | NYTimes

• “Black start-up founders face far more difficulty raising money than their white competitors. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a charity based in Missouri that promotes education and entrepreneurship, surveyed more than 500 founders and found that outside investors and lenders put up about two-thirds of the money that white start-up owners use to start their businesses, while Black owners had to put up more than half themselves. On average, 17 percent of the funding to white start-ups came from investors, compared with 1.5 percent for Black founders. “I see the pain, the frustration, of: ‘Can you see me? I am viable,’” said Philip Gaskin, the foundation’s vice president for entrepreneurship, who works with Black business owners to help them raise capital. “The inequities have been there for a long time.”

OnlyFans and the Evolution of the Influencer | Rex Woodbury

How Nvidia’s CEO Cooked Up America’s Biggest Semiconductor Company | WSJ

• In Jensen We Trust…
• “The deal is a milestone in an extraordinary run over the past few years, one that has transformed Nvidia from a niche maker of high-end graphics chips for gamers into the most valuable U.S. chip company. “I couldn’t have dreamed two years ago that I’d be sitting here,” Mr. Huang told The Wall Street Journal this week. Nvidia’s market value has soared to $319.8 billion, surpassing Intel’s valuation of $214.5 billion, even though Nvidia had $10.92 billion in annual sales in its latest fiscal year, compared with $71.97 billion for Intel. Nvidia’s bet on some of the hottest fields in tech, videogaming and artificial intelligence, have fueled investor enthusiasm, while Intel has stumbled with some of its most advanced chips.”

The Big and the Small | Wait But Why

• I’m a sucker for these “how tiny are we in relation to the size of our universe” types of graphics. This one didn’t disappoint…

How Slack Became Boring | Marker x Rob Walker

• “Sometimes you’re better off being the humdrum company that quietly works its way toward surprising success, rather than the splashy startup that’s stuck with living up to its own hype”
• “Zoom is again a useful contrast: For many, Zoom was an unfamiliar tool that suddenly served an obvious and newly important function, and the company leaned into courting a wider audience. Slack was still Slack — something white-collar workers had been hearing about for years. Many already used it, or the similar Microsoft Teams, which arrived a few years after Slack and has turned into a real competitor. (Slack has filed a complaint against Microsoft, alleging anti-competitive behavior, with the European Commission.) Excitable predictions of a Slack-transformed workplace have given way to workaday grousing that it can be yet another distraction — a way that “workers end up checking messages about work, rather than doing any,” as one recent critique put it.”

Google’s Sundar Pichai Is a Really Nice Guy. Is That Enough? | WSJ

• “Mr. Pichai has largely avoided outright conflict in a company that thrives on it. He has built allies across the company, having taken on projects across Google’s myriad arms, as well as in the executive suite, including a few trips to Burning Man with Mr. Page. He is quiet in most meetings and silent in others, frequently answering questions indirectly or asking for more time to make decisions in private. He can be seen pacing the halls, alone with his thoughts, before big meetings, employees say. “He got the CEO job,” says Mr. Desai, “because he was the only person who didn’t want the CEO job.””

A psychoanalytic reading of social media and the death drive | Max Read

• “Rather than wondering ponderously if this is “cancel culture” or whatever, we might ask ourselves: Why the fuck were all these people tweeting? What were they thinking? What were they hoping to accomplish? What was the cost-benefit analysis that led them to think continued participation in social media was a good idea? Liberal and left-wing tech critics like to suggest that we post, even against our own self-interest, thanks to nefarious software design that has been built in service of a multibillion-dollar advertising industry. The right wing has a tendency to blame the incentives encouraged by a hardwired social hierarchy, in which “blue checks” “virtue-signal” to improve their standing within social platforms, even to the point of self-sabotage. Neither answer seems particularly satisfying. Viewing anecdotes of sudden social combustion according to comprehensive, deterministic accounts of neurochemical response, social dynamics, and platform incentives can certainly be clarifying, but such theories are incomplete.”

Learnings From the Top Early-Stage VCs in 2020 | Fan Wen

What sets apart countries that successfully handled the pandemic? Failure. | Fareed Zakaria

• “Many Asia-Pacific countries have succeeded against covid-19 — South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia. All were hit by SARS or witnessed its economic damage, and they learned from the experience. The only non-Asian country with a SARS outbreak was Canada, and it, too, changed its procedures after 2003 and took precautions…. Consider, on the other hand, countries that have handled covid-19 badly. Anthropologist Martha Lincoln, writing in Nature, points out that several of these countries tend to think of themselves as exceptional in some way. She notes that the United States, Britain, Brazil and Chile all have strong national narratives that see themselves as separate, distinct and better than others. The United States is notorious for this attitude, but that is, after all, also the motivation behind Britain’s desire to leave the European Union. Brazil, meanwhile, believes it enjoys good fortune because “God is Brazilian,” and Chile is smug about being the region’s economic superstar.”

Charting the COVID Effect on FinTech | a16z

The Race to Redesign Sugar | New Yorker

• “Until the late eighteenth century, when sugar production started to become mechanized, most people consumed very little of what nutritionists call “free” or “added” sugars — sweeteners other than, say, the lactose naturally present in milk and the fructose naturally present in fruit. In 1800, an average American would have lived and died never having encountered a single manufactured candy, let alone the array of sugar-sweetened yogurts, snacks, sauces, dressings, cereals, and drinks that now line supermarket shelves. Today, that average American ingests more than nineteen teaspoons of added sugar every day. Not only does most of that never come into contact with our taste buds; our sweet receptors are also less effective than those for other tastes. Our tongues can detect bitterness at concentrations as low as a few parts per million, but, for a glass of water to taste sweet, we have to add nearly a teaspoon of sugar.”

Why Are There Still So Few Black CEOs? | WSJ

How to Test Your Assumptions | MIT Review

• “For a new business to succeed, many assumptions have to prove true. Testing assumptions in a logical order gives the team the best chance of making course corrections early — and not wasting time and money. In this essay, I outline a method for (1) identifying the assumptions or unknowns and (2) resolving these assumptions on the basis of three parameters: severity, probability, and cost of resolution.”

The Pandemic, From the Virus’s Point of View | NYTimes

• “Viruses have no malice against us. They have no purposes, no schemes. They follow the same simple Darwinian imperatives as do rats or any other creature driven by a genome: to extend themselves as much as possible in abundance, in geographical space and in time. Their primal instinct is to do just what God commanded to his newly created humans in Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it.””

Are Founders Allowed to Lie? | Alex Danco

• “The most important pillar of the Silicon Valley Social Contract is that founders are not like other people. Founders are not even like CEOs. CEO is a title that is earned; the CEO is peers with everyone else in the company in that anyone, theoretically, could work their way up and become CEO. Founders are not like that. “Founder” is a title that can only be claimed in one way: by founding the company. They stand apart, like kings. How do you get to be the King? You get to be king if everyone believes you’re the king. And one powerful way that kings can continually remind their subjects who’s the king is through taboos. When you see the King violate a taboo, but no one else is allowed to, it reinforces that they are different from you. Look at Trump, and how every time some accusation gets bounced off him, his power just grows. Look at Elon, and how every time he breaks some rule and gets away with it, it just reinforces that he is the King of Tesla.”

Greed is Good. Except When It’s Bad | NYTimes

• “The shareholder-primacy view of the corporation — which gives little voice to the workers, customers and communities that are impacted by corporate decisions — has been the modus operandi of United States capitalism. Why did this view become so dominant? One rationale was a practical one. Rather than being asked to balance multiple, often conflicting, interests among stakeholders, the manager is given a simple objective function. More important, though, was the naïve belief, dominant in the Chicago school at the time, that what is good for shareholders is good for society — a belief that rested on the assumption of perfectly functioning markets. Unfortunately, such perfect markets exist only in economics textbooks.”
• Related: Beware of Corporate Promises | The Atlantic — My entrepreneurship professor Tyler Wry discusses the signatories of a “Business Roundtable” mission statement: On average, signers actually paid out 20 percent more of their capital than similar companies that did not sign the statement. Then, as the coronavirus swept the country, did they lay off fewer workers? On the contrary, in the first four weeks of the crisis, Wry found, signers were almost 20 percent more prone to announce layoffs or furloughs. Signers were less likely to donate to relief efforts, less likely to offer customer discounts, and less likely to shift production to pandemic-related goods. “Signing this statement had zero positive effect,” said Wry. Why, though, would it produce a negative effect?
• Wry told me he has yet to nail down a causal explanation. (His first theory — that signing the statement drew counterpressure from institutional investors — found no supporting evidence.) But he said his findings are not inconsistent with psychological explanations. Behavioral psychologists have observed an effect they call “moral self-licensing”: If people are allowed to make a token gesture of moral behavior — or simply imagine they’ve done something good — they then feel freer to do something morally dubious, because they’ve reassured themselves that they’re on the side of the angels.”

He Invented the Rubik’s Cube. He’s Still Learning from It | NYTimes

• “When he invented the cube in 1974, he wasn’t sure it could ever be solved. Mathematicians later calculated that there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 ways to arrange the squares, but just one of those combinations is correct. When Rubik finally did it, after weeks of frustration, he was overcome by “a great sense of accomplishment and utter relief.” Looking back, he realizes the new generation of “speedcubers” — Yusheng Du of China set the world record of 3.47 seconds in 2018 — might not be impressed. “But, remember,” Rubik writes in his new book, “Cubed,” “this had never been done before.””

What Would Bill Campbell Do | Fast Company

• “Fortunately, in some ways it is easier today to care about others, because when we are on a videoconference with someone, we are usually looking right into their homes. There are family pictures on the wall behind them, random bits of sports gear stacked in the corner, a cat, dog, toddler, or teen strolling by in the background. What would Bill do? He wouldn’t ignore the passerby or prized pictures — he would ask about them. He would invite the kid into the videoconference and chat with them. How do they like attending school from home? Are they being nice to their parents? In fact, we could envision the home tour taking over the meeting with Bill, so curious was he about the whole person.”

Eddie Van Halen, Hall of Famer Who Revolutionized the Guitar, Dead at 65 | Rolling Stone

• ““I don’t know shit about scales or music theory,” he told Rolling Stone in 1980. “I don’t want to be seen as the fastest guitar in town, ready and willing to gun down the competition. All I know is that rock & roll guitar, like blues guitar, should be melody, speed, and taste, but more important, it should have emotion. I just want my guitar playing to make people feel something: happy, sad, even horny.”
• …Spoken like a true rockstar. RIP to a literal guitar hero.

College Football’s Worst Fear in the Pandemic. The Death of a Player | NYTimes

• ““If you see Juice as a human being, you see a very large human being,” said Garth Taylor, a youth football coach who had known Stephens since he was a young boy. “His spirit was twice as big as that.””

Computer-generated realities are becoming ubiquitous | The Economist

• “As other musicians were settling down on their sofas during lockdown, Travis Scott was seizing the virtual moment. On April 23rd the American hip-hop star staged a concert that was attended live online by more than 12m people within the three-dimensional world of “Fortnite”, a video game better known for its cartoonish violence. As the show began, the stage exploded and Mr Scott appeared as a giant, stomping across a surreal game landscape (pictured). He subsequently turned into a neon cyborg, and then a deep-sea diver, as the world filled with water and spectators swam around his giant figure. It was, in every sense, a truly immersive experience. Mr Scott’s performance took place in a world, of sorts — not merely on a screen.”
• Related: The Metaverse is Coming
• Also related (hearkening back to my Picks and Shovels piece…): Why Investors Should Focus More On The Infrastructure Supporting The AI Revolution

Magic Leap Tried to Create an Alternate Reality. Its Founder Was Already in One | Bloomberg

• “The co-founder’s departure came as little surprise to those who worked with him. Interviews with over two dozen people familiar with Magic Leap’s operations, including current and former employees, investors and business partners, suggest Abovitz’s world-building aspirations had become increasingly disconnected from the company’s reality. When employees found they would be unable to deliver on Abovitz’s vision, Magic Leap went from being one of the most intriguing tech startups outside of Silicon Valley to a parable about believing one’s own hype. The company’s failings reflect a broader struggle within the industry to commercialize a technology with so much promise. The question for Magic Leap is what parts of Abovitz’s dream, if any, can be salvaged.”

Orlando Bravo Rides Software Deals to Heights of Private-Equity Industry | WSJ

• ““People have proven that they can conduct business without going to an office, but they can’t do it without software,” Mr. Bravo says. “Software is everything. It is the business. It’s what makes the business go.” Software has been the most popular sector for U.S. leveraged buyouts every year since 2014, with annual deal volume more than doubling to $39.6 billion in 2019, according to Dealogic. Even as the pandemic has crimped M&A, firms have struck $18.5 billion worth of software buyouts in 2020 through the end of August, more than double the volume of the next-most-active sector, technology services. That’s helped Thoma Bravo become one of the private-equity industry’s most dominant players. Launched in its current form in 2008, the firm oversees around $60 billion in assets, up from just $9 billion at the beginning of 2016. It’s close to completing a $21 billion-plus round of fundraising for multiple vehicles, including a new $16.5 billion flagship fund, The Wall Street Journal reported.”

Why Breathing Is So Effective at Reducing Stress | HBR

• “So what makes breathing so effective? It’s very difficult to talk your way out of strong emotions like stress, anxiety, or anger. Just think about how ineffective it is when a colleague tells you to “calm down” in a moment of extreme stress. When we are in a highly stressed state, our prefrontal cortex — the part of our brain responsible for rational thinking — is impaired, so logic seldom helps to regain control. This can make it hard to think straight or be emotionally intelligent with your team. But with breathing techniques, it is possible to gain some mastery over your mind. Research shows that different emotions are associated with different forms of breathing, and so changing how we breathe can change how we feel. For example, when you feel joy, your breathing will be regular, deep and slow. If you feel anxious or angry, your breathing will be irregular, short, fast, and shallow. When you follow breathing patterns associated with different emotions, you’ll actually begin to feel those corresponding emotions.”

The Public Shaming Pandemic | New Yorker

• “Public shaming used to take place in the public square. By the nineteenth century, it had moved to the newspaper, and in the twentieth century the forum was television. Today, people are scorned online. The Internet, with its opportunity for anonymity, its absence of gatekeepers, and its magnification of transient hurts, has made it unnervingly easy to generate instant mass outrage. The blog, a venue of self-reflection, has given way to the social-media post, which tends to favor the impulsive attack and the group pile-on.”
• Related: The Spiral of Silence | Farnam Street : “As social animals, we have good reason to be aware of whether voicing an opinion might be a bad idea. Cohesive groups tend to have similar views. Anyone who expresses an unpopular opinion risks social exclusion or even ostracism within a particular context or in general. This may be because there are concrete consequences, such as losing a job or even legal penalties. Or there may be less official social consequences, like people being less friendly or willing to associate with you. Those with unpopular views may suppress them to avoid social isolation.”

Podcasts

How Are Psychedelics and Other Party Drugs Changing Psychiatry? | Freakonomics

• “Three leading researchers from the Mount Sinai Health System discuss how ketamine, cannabis, and ecstasy are being used (or studied) to treat everything from severe depression to addiction to PTSD. We discuss the upsides, downsides, and regulatory puzzles.”

Tiktok and “Seeing Like an Algorithm” | a16z

• “But since this show is focused on where we are on the long arc of innovation, and what’s hype/ what’s real when it comes to tech trends & the news, where does the source code (and more specifically, the “For You Page” algorithm) — which may or may not be included in the deal due to China’s revised export controls — come in? Yet it’s not just about if TikTok is really TikTok without it, or whether “the algorithm” and machine learning training data can be recreated… the real question is: How does the “creativity network effects” flywheel work between video creation and distribution — from origination to mutation to dissemination? It boils down to the idea of “algorithm friendly design”, observes Eugene Wei, who has written a series of deep dives on TikTok, and formerly led product at Hulu, Flipboard, and video at Oculus, among other things. So what does TikTok, regardless of deal outcome, suggest about the future of product development, and more broadly, the future of video? All this and more in this 2x+ long explainer episode of 16 Minutes.”

The Question of Education | a16z

• “Monopoly, oligopoly, cartel. All three of those words can describe the (not so) modern education system today, given the cost structures, economics, and accreditation capture — in everything from who can and can’t start a new university (when was the last time a significant change happened there anyway?!) to where government funding really goes to the student loan and debt crisis? Yet degrees do matter, just not for the reasons we think. So what are the tradeoffs — when it comes to the “right” school, making money, and assessing skills objectively — between what’s been called “hard” (B.S.) and “soft” (B.A.) degrees? What’s the best book on career advice, and what advice does Marc Andreessen — who went to a public university, worked on a revolutionary project there, and started a company right after — have for students (and others contemplating change in their careers)… and especially for those considering dropping out, delaying, or skipping college altogether?”

Welcome to the Cult Factory | Sam Harris

• “In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Tristan Harris about the ways in which social media is fracturing society. They discuss the rise in teen depression and suicide, political polarization, conspiracy theories, information warfare, the decoupling of power and responsibility, the distinctions between platforms and publishers, the cancellation of Alex Jones, social media-inspired ethnic cleansing, concerns about the upcoming presidential election, culture as an operating system, and other topics.”

Rahul Vohra — Using Emotion to Design Great Products | Invest like the Best

• Rahul is one of the MOST ARTICULATE interviewees I’ve heard in this year… high praise
• “ Rahul is the Founder & CEO of Superhuman, an extremely popular product for managing email. Rahul describes himself as a Computer Scientist, Gamer, Entrepreneur, and Designer. You’ll see quickly why it’s the intersection of these areas that sets Superhuman apart. We discuss why emotion matters when building products, and how other entrepreneurs can learn from his experience. Please enjoy the very first episode of Founder’s Field Guide, and stay tuned in future weeks as we host leaders from Nike, Cisco, Twitch, and so many more…listen in as we explore the world of cannabis, baking (not that kind), manufacturing, hardware, software, and more.”

Is New York City Over? | Freakonomics

• “The pandemic has hit America’s biggest city particularly hard. Amidst a deep fiscal hole, rising homicides, and a flight to the suburbs, some people think the city is heading back to the bad old 1970s. We look at the history — and the data — to see why that’s probably not the case.”

Investing in Transformational Technologies — Raj Ganguly, Co-Founder of B Capital Group | Wharton FinTech Podcast

• “In this episode, Miguel Armaza sits down with Raj Ganguly, Co-founder and Managing Partner at B Capital Group, a global growth equity firm with $1.5 billion in assets under management, focused on investing in B2B startups across four technology-enabled verticals, including Fintech and Insuretech. We talked about the story behind B Capital, their investing approach, his outlook on fintech around the world, the road ahead, and the challenges and opportunities of fundraising and investing over zoom.”

Musique

Her Vacation | Goth Babe

She | Harry Styles

Harvest Moon | Neil Young

What’s the Word (feat. Nas) | Joe Fox