My Content List #26 | Monday 1/11/21

Opening Rant: 2021 Resolutions

Whew. 2020 sure was an “unprecedented” year, to say the least… Yet despite the calamities (of which there were many), the passage of time felt faster than any year in recent memory. And I’m far from the only one who felt that way.

What about 2020 made it slip by so strangely? Based on my understanding of time perception, changes to an environment (i.e. external stimuli) help the brain punctuate events to be archived to our memories. Why then — in a year of cacophonic, disastrous stimuli — didn’t this feel like the longest year ever?

Part of it has to do with the fact that we cannot cogitate timespans in the past tense: when we think back on events, we remember the feeling of something taking a while… but that’s not a qualitatively different memory recall than thinking back on a short-duration event.

Another part of it — probably more widespread and influential— is that 2020 lulled us into monotony. Working from home meant pinballing between desk and bed ad infinitum. We socialized less, traveled less, adventured less than ever. Even the barrage of overwhelm, at a certain point, became de-sensitizing.

Trippy to think about. Anyway, I digress…

I’m here today to share my resolutions for the upcoming year. As I started brainstorming, I found it impossible not to bump into the resolutions I submitted last year. As a reminder, I “bucketed [last year’s] into 2 categories — MORE and LESS — because I think that underscores the marginal nature of the slow-grind of improvement.” Here they are, for reference:

2020 Resolutions — full post linked there.

MORE:

- Reading & Journaling

- Picking Battles

- Decisiveness & Opinion Formation

- Meditation

LESS:

- Complaining / Negative Self-Talk

- Waste

RT literally all of these; they’re just as important to me now as they were last January. I’ll never really be able to check ’em off, to say they’re “complete.” But that’s not to say I didn’t make progress.

As good as it feels checking something off a to-do list, I’ve found that most of my highest-order goals are those that cannot be quantified. Journey over destination.

I also know, though, that (1) “checklists” used to guide our behaviors and actions bring us closer to optimal performance and (2) people respond to incentives. Those two factors ought to be jointly considered in the goal formation and operationalization processes.

Incentives, abridged.

So for this year, I’m going to try a slightly different bucketing tactic for my resolutions, using (bastardized) definitions of terms you may’ve heard in stats class. Those resolutions that are “Discrete” are tangible, measurable, check-off-able, or otherwise quantifiable. Those that are “Continuous” are more intangible, enduring, never quite complete (more akin to those from last year). Here goes…

DISCRETE

• Read more than 13 books: I hit a baker’s dozen this year, which is a local (/hopefully-not-global) maximum tally for me. I thought I did decently well for myself, until I learned my girlfriend read >40! Among my favorites for the year were Barbarian Days, Hidden Valley Road, Beneath a Scarlet Sky, The War on Normal People, and American Kingpin. I LOVE reading fiction, and I think my nonfiction digest (i.e. that which comprises my Content Lists) is robust enough that I can maintain a novel-heavy diet on the ol’ Kindle. I welcome any and all book recs from y’all.
• Meditate, floss, make my bed, and take a cold shower damn near every day: I view meditation as a sort of “mental floss.” It helps me manage all the proverbial plaque (distractions, self-criticism, etc.) I confront, allowing me to see the world- and myself-with more lucidity. Literal flossing’s on there because I want to see whether my dentist/hygienist will actually notice a difference and because I care about my teeth. Making my bed’s important because doing so allows me to start every day with intentionality, and Admiral McRaven says that habit-forming nudge is the path to changing the world. RE cold showers, I’m a big fan of the principles espoused by Wim Hof and have experienced the energizing effects / other health benefits associated with the plunges. At a higher level, though, the act of cranking that shower knob to the coldest position, bracing for impact, then controlling the mind+body whilst hyperventilating is scary as hell. Confronting that fear on the daily will forge more fortitude into the psyche.
• Become more concrete about career goals + land an awesome internship. Back in August, Wharton’s career services office instructed us to share a “calling and mission statement” for our career pursuits — one that could serve as a sort of North Star as we navigate the recruiting process. Here’s what I came up with: “My calling and mission is to channel my perspicacity, empathy, creativity and grit/doggedness to build/operate/found/invest in innovative companies that have positive impacts on the productivity, well-being, and functionality of their customers/clients, and to add continually to my knowledge reservoir thus creating a “playbook” of value creation life algorithms from experience and evidence.” Sheesh, what a mouthful — I’m happy with the ethos therein and still stand by those words, but they’re comically vague and too imprecise to be useful. After all, we Millennials love optionality preservation, and I’m no different! Frankly I’m still deep in the soul-searching process necessary to flesh all this out, which could arguably render this resolution Continuous, not Discrete. But the tangible part comes in securing an internship in the early stage ecosystem (likely VC/growth investing) for Summer ’21. Doing so requires formulating a target list, building theses, and cultivating relationships with founders and investors. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this process so far; I’m as excited to connect with all those impressive folks as I am to see where it gets me personally/professionally.

CONTINUOUS

• Become a better listener: I used to think I was halfway-decent at this, until I realized/researched how much room for improvement exists. What really hit me hard lies in minutia of “distracted listening” — in particular, how even thinking about what to say next while your counterpart’s speaking IS NOT attentive listening. It’s perfectly acceptable to take a momentary pause to gather one’s thoughts before responding, rather than launch into some half-baked idea. I’ve also found that I err towards action-oriented responses in conversations- actively dissecting the situation brought to me and helping formulate solutions. That’s a good thing in general, I think, but often folks (especially friends/close-others) aren’t looking for a solution… they’re just looking to vent, to be received with compassion — not unsolicited problem-solving calculus! I need to be better at interpreting the needs of my conversational counterparts to respond more dynamically and empathetically. Not to get too meta, but I also apply this resolution to listening to myself. Via meditation, journaling, and other introspective undertakings, I hope to be able to hold a clearer mirror up to myself, to dissect the psychological contributors to my current state, and to bring those subterraneous thoughts+concerns to the shores of my awareness.
• “Don’t compare — connect!”: I’m a pretty competitive guy, and I don’t think that part of me is going anywhere — probably more helpful than detrimental in the long run. But as I become more aware of how the real world works, I’m realizing that Ringo’s right: it’s easier to thrive With a Little Help from My Friends. The quote for this resolution is one I’ve mentioned before; it came from some administrator’s speech during undergrad orientation in 2013. Connections are critical for collective problem solving, for opening doors, for having a sense of community in this dog-eat-dog world. I’ve been afforded an incredible opportunity to connect with brilliant individuals from eclectic backgrounds through this two-year stint at Wharton, and I’m doing my best to cherish this time by engaging with as many of my classmates(+alumni) as possible. It’s frankly surprising how willing people are to talk — so great to experience that warmth and receptivity. Quality over quantity is relevant here too, for the record. If we haven’t spoken before, I would LOVE to hear from you!
• Prioritize process over outcome: I’ve said it before and will say it again — life’s about the journey, not the destination. Having an optimal process is more important than having an optimal outcome because, over time, processes trump chance. I’ll let Obama describe what I mean here… “My emphasis on process was born of necessity. What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. Instead, I was constantly dealing with probabilities: a 70 percent chance, say, that a decision to do nothing would end in disaster; a 55 percent chance that this approach versus that one might solve the problem (with a 0 percent chance that it would work out exactly as intended); a 30 percent chance that whatever we chose wouldn’t work at all, along with a 15 percent chance that it would make the problem worse. In such circumstances, chasing after the perfect solution led to paralysis. On the other hand, going with your gut too often meant letting preconceived notions or the path of least political resistance guide a decision — with cherry-picked facts used to justify it. But with a sound process — one in which I was able to empty out my ego and really listen, following the facts and logic as best I could and considering them alongside my goals and my principles — I realized I could make tough decisions and still sleep easy at night, knowing at a minimum that no one in my position, given the same information, could have made the decision any better. A good process also meant I could allow each member of the team to feel ownership over the decision — which meant better execution …” THAT’s the shit I’m talking about, Barack!
• Become more adaptable/flexible: In a sense, 2020 was a big exercise in exactly this. Based on personality assessments, I score pretty high on the Conscientiousness scale — with the downside that I’m more comfortable with structure than disarray. Without structure, achieving optimal productivity+impact requires additional catalysis and can thus generate some inefficiencies. The goal here is to strive for another buzzword of 2020: “antifragility.” That word doesn’t mean “more durable / less breakable / robust” as you might expected; instead, things that are antifragile are “things that gain from disorder”, that which thrives in chaos. Per Nassim Taleb’s words: in times of uncertainty/chaos, “the resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better.” If uncertainty is the only sure thing in the world, finding a way to use that to my advantage would be pretty sweet.
• Unplug fulsomely when needed: I’ve slandered hustleporn-stars for their “always-on” mentality; in this regard, I need to do a better job in practicing what I preach. I’ve long had this inescapable feeling of guilt whenever I step away from work. Even the most fun, engaging experiences would be marred by thoughts about what I should be doing instead to further myself professionally. I’ve written before about the importance of diffuse thinking, passive processing, and dynamic equilibriums. Like the strength model of self control, I believe motivation can be replenished and even reach higher watermarks when it’s not continually exerted. This year, I want to embrace that belief more fulsomely and do my best to appreciate that breathers are necessary for sustained endeavoring towards anything.

Well, that’s plenty to work on. Hopefully y’all know by now that I believe life’s made on the margin — a hallmark takeaway from Content Lists. Whatever your resolutions, I encourage you to be cognizant of that fact. With awareness of marginality and precision in one’s goals, one will grow to embody them over time.

As I wrote last year, by sharing these resolutions “my goal is not to ‘inspire’; rather, for my friends who read this post, I ask for your help in keeping me honest and focused on these.” In fact, I’ve arrived at this list in large part because I’ve witnessed others excel at these exact goals… it is you all who have inspired me to strive ever higher.

Thank you, sincerely, for your time and attention. Let’s have a year; the best is always yet to come!

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 #26 | Monday 1/11/21

Articles

How to Think for Yourself | Paul Graham

• “One of the most effective techniques is one practiced unintentionally by most nerds: simply to be less aware what conventional beliefs are. It’s hard to be a conformist if you don’t know what you’re supposed to conform to. Though again, it may be that such people already are independent-minded. A conventional-minded person would probably feel anxious not knowing what other people thought, and make more effort to find out.
• It matters a lot who you surround yourself with. If you’re surrounded by conventional-minded people, it will constrain which ideas you can express, and that in turn will constrain which ideas you have. But if you surround yourself with independent-minded people, you’ll have the opposite experience: hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to, and to think of more.”

The Business of Fame: 1920–2020 | Rex Woodbury

• “In the startup and venture capital world, “media” has become something of a bad word. But there are two reasons that digital media is underrated in entrepreneurship and venture investing:

1. First, digital media enjoys the zero marginal costs of both software and content. Each incremental user to join Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube costs nothing. And when that user shares a piece of content, that content can reach a theoretically infinite number of people at zero cost. Some people would argue that these companies aren’t media companies, but tech companies. The reality is that they’re both: digital media today encompasses the platforms through which we communicate and share content.
2. Second, media is culture. One study showed that people are more likely to vote for a female president after watching a TV show with a female president. Another study showed that Will & Grace was largely responsible for changing public views on gay marriage. Media crystallizes our opinions about the world.”

The Social Life of Forests | NYTimes

• “The most radical interpretation of Simard’s findings is that a forest behaves “as though it’s a single organism,” as she says in her TED Talk. Some researchers have proposed that cooperation within or among species can evolve if it helps one population outcompete another — an altruistic forest community outlasting a selfish one, for example. The theory remains unpopular with most biologists, who regard natural selection above the level of the individual to be evolutionarily unstable and exceedingly rare. Recently, however, inspired by research on microbiomes, some scientists have argued that the traditional concept of an individual organism needs rethinking and that multicellular creatures and their symbiotic microbes should be regarded as cohesive units of natural selection. Even if the same exact set of microbial associates is not passed vertically from generation to generation, the functional relationships between an animal or plant species and its entourage of microorganisms persist — much like the mycorrhizal networks in an old-growth forest. Humans are not the only species that inherits the infrastructure of past communities.”

What If You Could Do It All Over? | The New Yorker

• “Swept up in our real lives, we quickly forget about the unreal ones. Still, there will be moments when, for good or for ill, we feel confronted by our unrealized possibilities; they may even, through their persistence, shape us. Practitioners of mindfulness tell us that we should look away, returning our gaze to the actual, the here and now. But we might have the opposite impulse, as Miller does. He wants us to wander in the hall of mirrors — to let our imagined selves “linger longer and say more.” What can our unreal selves say about our real ones?”

Sequoia Capital Warned of a ‘Black Swan.’ Instead, 2020 Is One of Its Best Years Ever | Bloomberg

• “The initial economic shock in the spring has given way to a very comfortable year for venture capitalists. Venture-backed IPOs have raised more so far this year than at the height of the dot-com boom, market data from Dealogic shows. And VC firms are on track to invest more than $140 billion in U.S. startups, exceeding last year’s total, according to research firm PitchBook. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund had two big listings in September and is looking forward to at least three more expected this month: Airbnb, Affirm Inc. and Wish. Andreessen Horowitz is counting on the first two of those, plus the video game maker Roblox Corp. And GGV Capital, also an Airbnb backer, will see eight of its companies go public in the U.S. this year.”

Why You Should Talk to Yourself in the Third Person | Vice

• “When we’re struggling with this kind of distress, we tend to zoom in, “almost to the exclusion of everything else. We lose the ability to take the big picture into account,” Kross said. Then, we might have a hard time coping with strong emotions, or finding ways to emotionally regulate. Emotional regulation, simply described, is the broad set of strategies that people use to change or modify what they’re feeling. In those situations, being able to think about your experience from a more distanced perspective can be helpful.”

You’re Only As Good As Your Worst Day | Farnam Street

• “You’re only as good as your worst day. Not because what you do the rest of the time doesn’t matter. Not because you should be expected to be perfect under immense stress or to behave according to plan when everything goes awry. But because what you do on your worst day is impossible to fake. It’s honest signaling. There’s little time for posturing or stalling. On your worst day, you reveal whether you’ve been planning for the possibility of disaster or just coasting along enjoying the good times. Your plans and preparation (or lack thereof) show how much you really care about the people who depend on you. You get to build and strengthen bonds in ways that will last a lifetime, or you risk destroying relationships in moments. You get to build trust and respect or you might break what you have irreparably.”

How to spend your money for maximum happiness | Popular Science

2021 Will Launch the Platinum Age of Piracy | Wired

• “This piracy boon will be good for media companies and content creators as well, even if they lose out on some ticket revenue and subscription dollars. In 2021, more people will watch films on their release date than ever before, because the Warner films will travel into homes through HBO Max and through the pirate network. Many pirates are also good fans, and they will heavily promote the Warner films they like on social media, which will drive up HBO Max subscriptions and increase the cultural value of whichever of the offerings they like best. Pirates could make some of the Warner 2021 films legends, by acting quickly to cement their reputations among movie lovers.”

The Three Stages of the Future of Work | Rex Woodbury

• Just discovered his newsletter, Digital Native — big fan.

Overvalued Startups Could Be ‘Shorted’ by New Firm | WSJ

• Yeah, this isn’t sustainable. But I respect the creativity…
• “While many have speculated about how to short private-company stock, there hasn’t been an easy way to do it directly. The biggest reason, besides lack of liquidity, is that startups themselves approve any buying, selling or borrowing of their stock and could forbid such deals. However, Apeira’s “short” positions wouldn’t own or borrow a startup’s actual equity. Apeira would generate what are basically contracts between two parties that would have definable triggers — such as an initial public offering, merger or acquisition, or shares hitting a specific price. The money from each side would be held in escrow at a bank. The trigger would cause the contract to be paid out. Apeira would take the short side of that bet and it would find buyers on the long side. A third-party firm would determine when the trigger had been met.”

Cyberpunk 2077 Was Supposed to Be the Biggest Video Game of the Year. What Happened? | NYTimes

• “Cyberpunk’s rollout is one of the most visible disasters in the history of video games — a high-profile flameout in the midst of the holiday shopping season by a studio widely considered an industry darling. It shows the pitfalls gaming studios can face when building so-called Triple-A games, titles backed by years of development and hundreds of millions of dollars. But it is also a tale that insiders said they saw coming for months, based on CD Projekt Red’s history of game development and warning signs that Cyberpunk 2077 might not live up to its sky-high expectations.”

In Exile from the Dreamscape | Aeon

• “The mind seems to grow fidgety and uncomfortable cooped up in a body 24/7. Mentally, dreaming is like taking off a pair of tight shoes at the end of the day: the liberated mind is no longer constrained by somatic sensory and motor processes. Reminiscent of common notions about the soul leaving the body in sleep, dreaming unfetters the mind from the world of matter; and, having vacated the body, consciousness is free to pandiculate, ponder and play. The dreaming mind stretches, yawns and reawakens in a strangely familiar place where it can time travel, dialogue with demons, get trapped in a mundane loop of doing dinner dishes or soar with angels. With Jacob’s ladder in place, the sky is literally the limit.”

Roblox and the Dispersal of Creativity | Prof Scott Galloway

• “Roblox commands the attention of America’s kids to the tune of 2.6 hours per day. And it does so with games that largely avoid the violence and dystopia of those $100 million blockbusters. Some of the most popular games on the Roblox platform are about adopting digital pets, building virtual communities, and running a pizza restaurant. The audience skews younger than the traditional video game market as well: 54% of users are under 13. Unlike Facebook, whose concern for the well-being of kids lies somewhere between Michael Jackson and the Catholic Church (can’t wait for the hate mail on that one), Roblox appears to be run by people who act as if they have children of their own. The word safety appears 121 times in the S1, which is 8x more than in Facebook’s. And the word parental appears six times in Roblox’s S1 and … zero times in Facebook’s. The company employs both filtering software and content moderators, who have reviewed over 68 million digital assets this year alone.”

The Stickiest, Most Addictive, Most Engaging, and Fastest-Growing Social Apps — and How to Measure Them | a16z

How to Beat Procrastination Like a Stoic Philosopher | Ryan Holiday

• “Putting off our responsibilities is easy. Complaining is easy. Both are as natural to us as breathing. But what good has either ever done for anyone in the long run? Sure, shaking your fist at the sky and venting your frustrations can feel liberating in the moment, but has it ever changed your circumstances for the better, solved your problems, or made you happier? Has procrastinating ever made your life less stressful and more efficient? I’m willing to bet the answer is no. This is why we must follow Aurelius’ lead and focus on the important tasks in front of us. If we can win that battle first, the rest of the day will be a breeze.”

The Children of Pornhub | Nick Kristof x NYTimes

• “The issue is not pornography but rape. Let’s agree that promoting assaults on children or on anyone without consent is unconscionable. The problem with Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein was not the sex but the lack of consent — and so it is with Pornhub. I came across many videos on Pornhub that were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls. The rapists would open the eyelids of the victims and touch their eyeballs to show that they were nonresponsive.”

How to Create and Capture Virality | Rex Woodbury

• “The most iconic viral moment on TikTok belonged to a skateboarder drinking cranberry juice. On September 25th, TikTok user @420doggface208 posted a video of himself calmly skateboarding to work, drinking Ocean Spray cranberry juice and lipsyncing to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”…
• Today, the video has 71 million views on TikTok alone (and countless more across Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube). “Dreams” reentered the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in 43 years, hitting #1 on the iTunes Store. Ocean Spray reported increased sales and estimated 20 billion (free) media impressions. The company turned the TikTok video into an ad and its CEO even joined TikTok to share his own version of the meme. Moments like Ocean Spray’s are rare and elusive. A calculated advertising move couldn’t capture the same authenticity and wouldn’t result in the same cultural resonance. Rather, every modern company should have a contingency plan in place for when serendipity strikes. Companies can’t create lightning-in-a-bottle moments, but they can capitalize on them to build enduring brand value and recognition.”

Facts won’t fix this: experts on how to fight America’s disinformation crisis | The Guardian

• “America’s current disinformation crisis is the culmination of more than two decades of pollution of the country’s information ecosystem, Wardle said. The spread of disinformation on social media is one part of that story, but so is the rise of alternative rightwing media outlets, the lack of investment in public media, the demise of local news outlets, and the replacement of shuttered local newspapers with hyper-partisan online outlets. This “serious fragmentation” of the American media ecosystem presents a stark contrast with, say, the UK, where during some weeks of the pandemic, 94% of the UK adult population, including 86% of younger people, tuned into the BBC, a publicly funded broadcaster, according to official statistics.”

30 Years Since the Human Genome Project Began, What’s Next? | Wired

• “I was inside the Human Genome Project from day one, and I can’t stress enough how back then we didn’t know what we were doing. We had this big audacious goal of reading out the 3 billion letters of the human instruction book, but we didn’t have the technology to do it. We didn’t have the methods. We didn’t even have a functional internet. There was no playbook. So, as someone who got into this as a young physician, I could sort of imagine that one day genomics might be part of clinical care. But I truly did not think it would happen in my lifetime.”

Meet Me in the Metaverse | a16z

The State of Sound in 2020 and Beyond | BVP x Gaby Goldberg x Talia Goldberg

• “Natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition, and speech-to-text technology is reaching a tipping point. Automatic speech recognition accuracy rates have surpassed 95%. This accuracy, combined with improved latency, allows for near real-time voice recognition and transcription, making it easier to search, personalize, and monetize audio. These technological innovations are in part thanks to speech recognition tools, like portfolio company Rev, which are making it possible to use voice as a computing interface and affordably index audio content. Most humans can talk faster than they type, and with the rise of voice assistants and automated speech-to-text technology, we can now interact with our devices faster and more efficiently than ever before. These innovations have created a conversational relationship between people and devices, serving as an entryway for consumers to access additional products and services from a company. “Lack of a device boundary means that voice assistants can spread more easily, can provide different types of value than the previous platforms, and can offer an entry point for new providers that don’t have assets from the previous eras,” writes Bret Kinsella in the Harvard Business Review.”

A Race Car Crash From Hell — and the Science That Saved Its Driver | Wired

• “Headlines with the word miracle practically wrote themselves. Racing fans everywhere celebrated what looked like a mixture of luck and benediction. But to the quiet nerds who typically operate behind the scenes — chemists, engineers, and injury biomechanists like myself — Grosjean’s survival was far more exciting than blind luck. From his hospital room after the wreck, Grosjean credited his relative lack of injury to the recently implemented Halo device, a ring positioned above the driver compartment that is designed to absorb crash impact. It is a sturdy structure that looks like a circle above the driver’s “survival cell,” an area that is supposed to be most impervious to trauma. The Halo was certainly one factor; it kept Grosjean’s head from impacting the shredded roadside barrier. (Grosjean himself was formerly a skeptic about the relatively new safety device but says he is now a convert.) But there were at least three other brilliant scientific advances that, together, kept him alive: his Head and Neck Support system, his racing harness, and his logo-covered high-tech suit.”

Virtual Worlds and Virtual Economies | Rex Woodbury

• I know… another one from Rex… what can I say?! I dig his stuff.
• “Today, virtual worlds mostly take the form of multiplayer online games: Roblox players average nearly 3 hours per day in Roblox; Fortnite has been collectively played for 10.4 million years — about 52x the time that humans have occupied the Earth. But virtual worlds are emerging in new forms, bleeding into parts of life from music to education to work. We’re slowly inching toward the “metaverse” — a term from the novel Snow Crash that describes a collective virtual shared space. (Roblox’s S-1 filing from last month mentions the term “metaverse” 16 times.) In the future, we’ll all spend hours each day as digital avatars or as ourselves in immersive virtual reality worlds. Most importantly, virtual worlds will level the playing field. We’re living through unprecedented income inequality, with global wealth concentrated at the top. In the analog world, talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not. In virtual worlds, everyone will have equal access to opportunity: all a participant needs is Internet access. Virtual worlds and virtual economies will break down traditional barriers to wealth creation and wealth distribution.”

“There’s an Intimacy to What We Do”: How Peloton Became Must-Watch TV in 2020 | Vanity Fair

• Related: How SoulCycle lost its soul | Vox

An Oral History of the World’s Biggest Coupon | NYTimes

• “The 20 percent off coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond — a homely and oversize mailer known as Big Blue — is omnipresent, unmistakable and a joy to deploy in the chain’s endless aisles. It’s also an oddball marketing achievement where the promotion became a stand-in for the brand itself. At the postcard’s height, hundreds of millions of them found their way into mailboxes each year, an enormous logistical challenge that could go wrong up to the moment they arrived at your door. But that made Big Blue a bona fide cultural phenomenon, so familiar it became a basic-cable plot point.”

How to Understand the Russia Hack Fallout | Wired

• “[T]here are really three subgroups within the potential victims of these attacks: Orion users who installed the backdoor but were never otherwise exploited; victims who had some malicious activity on their networks, but who ultimately weren’t appealing targets for attackers; and victims who were actually deeply compromised because they held valuable data. “If they didn’t exfiltrate data, it’s because they didn’t want it,” says Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and founder of the security firm Rendition Infosec. “If they didn’t take access, it’s because they weren’t interested in it.””

The Big Thaw: How Russia Could Dominate a Warming World | ProPublica

• “A great transformation is underway in the eastern half of Russia. For centuries the vast majority of the land has been impossible to farm; only the southernmost stretches along the Chinese and Mongolian borders, including around Dimitrovo, have been temperate enough to offer workable soil. But as the climate has begun to warm, the land — and the prospect for cultivating it — has begun to improve. Twenty years ago, Dima says, the spring thaw came in May, but now the ground is bare by April; rainstorms now come stronger and wetter. Across Eastern Russia, wild forests, swamps and grasslands are slowly being transformed into orderly grids of soybeans, corn and wheat. It’s a process that is likely to accelerate: Russia hopes to seize on the warming temperatures and longer growing seasons brought by climate change to refashion itself as one of the planet’s largest producers of food.”

How Amazon Wins: By Steamrolling Rivals and Partners | WSJ

• “No competitor is too small to draw Amazon’s sights. It cloned a line of camera tripods that a small outside company sold on Amazon’s site, hurting the vendor’s sales so badly it is now a fraction of its original size, the little firm’s owner said. Amazon said it didn’t violate the company’s intellectual-property rights. When Amazon decided to compete with furniture retailer Wayfair Inc., Mr. Bezos’s deputies created what they called the Wayfair Parity Team, which studied how Wayfair procured, sold and delivered bulky furniture, eventually replicating a majority of its offerings, said people who worked on the team. Amazon and Wayfair declined to comment on the matter…
• Amazon set its sights on Allbirds Inc., the maker of popular shoes using natural and recycled materials, and last year launched a shoe called Galen that looks nearly identical to Allbirds’ bestseller — without the environmentally friendly materials and selling for less than half the price. “You can’t help but look at a trillion-dollar company putting their muscle and their pockets and their machinations of their algorithms and reviewers and private-label machine all behind something that you’ve put your career against,” said Allbirds Co-CEO Joey Zwillinger. “You have this giant machine creating all these headwinds for us.””

The Real Estate Collapse of 2020 | NYTimes

1,273 People Share Their Best Life Lessons from 2020 | Mark Manson

• ““Fear is not simply an emotion, it is dangerous. I have often excused the behaviors of others in crisis as “just being afraid” and preached compassion, but as things got more and more intense you can see how very dangerous and destructive fear can be. It can override our sense of altruism and soon enough it is like rats fleeing a sinking ship, panicked and harming each other. Therefore it’s not enough to simply recognize/acknowledge/forgive our fear, we must find ways to crush it by finding reassurance and a sense of security, and giving others a sense of security in any way they need it. ””

Feeling Socially Awkward? Even Extroverts Are a Little Rusty | NYTimes

• “Welcome to the pandemic province of the socially rusty and newly awkward, where simple interactions among even the most outgoing people have become unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Jumping back into pleasant interactions can feel like returning from a year in the wilderness, a silent meditation retreat or outer space. “Even the most social people right now feel like awkward eighth graders attending a school dance for the first time,” said Samantha Boardman, a Manhattan psychiatrist who runs a website called Positive Prescription. She recently counseled a patient who destroyed a friendship by recoiling from a hug. “The challenge is that everyone’s rules are different,” she said.”

Sex-crazed ‘roaring ‘20s’ awaits post-pandemic: Yale prof | NY Post

• “Sex, sacrilege and spending await society on the other side of the coronavirus pandemic. So says Yale professor Dr. Nicholas Christakis … who is also a social epidemiologist. Society will make up for lost time as soon as it’s safe to, with hedonism quickly replacing conservative socializing — but that reversal remains years away. “During epidemics you get increases in religiosity, people become more abstentious, they save money, they get risk averse and we’re seeing all of that now, just as we have for hundreds of years during epidemics,” Christakis told the Guardian. “In 2024, all of those [pandemic trends] will be reversed.”

The Future of Music Journalism… Is on TikTok | Rolling Stone

• ““There aren’t that many ways that Gen Z kids are getting new music other than playlists that Spotify makes or word of mouth,” says Ari Elkins, whose high-energy TikTok recommendation videos, which also include dancing and sing-alongs, have spiked his following from 500 to 500,000 in the last eight months. There’s “a void in terms of Gen Z music curation,” and he’s happy to fill it. “That influencer-ish, Vlog-ish style of music journalism might be the future,” Levine adds.
• This is due in part to the blind spots of more traditional media: Mainstream music journalism is largely uninterested in promoting discovery, focusing instead on blanket coverage of superstars and seemingly endless traffic-grabbing lists — which may buoy an existing reader base, but often fails to capture newer, younger music fans. Enter the upstart music blogs of TikTok.”

The Year We Gave Up On Privacy | Recode

• “As a digital privacy reporter, I try to avoid sites and services that invade my privacy, collect my data, and track my actions. Then the pandemic came, and I threw most of that out the window. You probably did, too. I gave away tons of personal data to get the things I needed. Food came from grocery and restaurant delivery services. Everything else — clothes, kitchen tools, a vanity ring light for Zoom calls, office furniture — came from online shopping platforms. I took an Uber instead of public transportation. Zoom became my primary means of communication with most of my coworkers, friends, and family. I attended virtual birthdays and funerals. Therapy was conducted over FaceTime. I downloaded my state’s digital contact tracing tool as soon as it was offered. I put a camera inside my apartment to keep an eye on things when I fled the city for several weeks.”

The Journalist and the Pharma Bro | Elle

• In a packed courtroom for Shkreli’s arraignment, Smythe watched as Shkreli, dressed in a gray hoodie, pleaded not guilty. He was allowed to go home and continue working at Turing after posting a $5 million bond. The next month, Shkreli called Smythe. I was sitting next to her in the Brooklyn pressroom, where I covered courts and the Shkreli case for the New York Times, when she took the call. I overheard her startled conversation with him, in which he told her, “I should’ve listened to you,” referring to the first time they spoke about the investigation, back when he said she didn’t know what she was talking about. During the call, she managed to wrangle an in-person meeting with Shkreli four days later. She was hoping to profile him and brought along her camera, just in case.”

How electric lighting changed our sleep, and other stories in materials science | ArsTechnica

• “Prior to the Industrial Revolution, people experienced “segmented sleep”: they would retire to bed and sleep for three or four hours (“first sleep”), then wake up after midnight and stay awake for another hour or so, before going back to bed for their “second sleep.” There are references to first sleep in Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid, according to Ramirez, as well as several 19th century novels and thousands of 19th century newspaper reports. “When artificial lights came into being, they pushed back the darkness and lengthened the day,” she writes.”

Inside India’s booming dark data economy | RestofWorld

• “The black market for data, as it exists online in India, resembles those for wholesale vegetables or smuggled goods. Customers are encouraged to buy in bulk, and the variety of what’s on offer is mind-boggling: There are databases about parents, cable customers, pregnant women, pizza eaters, mutual funds investors, and almost any niche group one can imagine. A typical database consists of a spreadsheet with row after row of names and key details: Sheila Gupta, 35, lives in Kolkata, runs a travel agency, and owns a BMW; Irfaan Khan, 52, lives in Greater Noida, and has a son who just applied to engineering college. The databases are usually updated every three months (the older one is, the less it is worth), and if you buy several at the same time, you’ll get a discount. Business is always brisk, and transactions are conducted quickly. No one will ask you for your name, let alone inquire why you want the phone numbers of five million people who have applied for bank loans.”

The Big Rocks and the Jar: A Lesson in Making Priorities | AskAlana

• “The point is that unless you first place the big rocks into the jar, you are never going to get them in. The big rocks are the important things in your life …your family, your friends, your personal growth. If you fill your life with small things, as demonstrated by the gravel, the sand, and the water…you will never have the time for the important things.”

The Man Who Turned Credit-Card Points Into an Empire | NYTimes

• “Since 2010, The Points Guy has published over 30,000 blog posts: hotel, airline and cruise-ship reviews, next to wonkish analyses of rewards-program fine print. (Some typical headlines: “Why the Amex Gold Is the Perfect ‘In Between’ Credit Card”; “How to Get to Puerto Rico on Miles and Points”; “Why I Canceled Bora Bora Again.”) Kelly is only the face of the site; the “guy” is now voiced by a 30-person team of credit-card experts, aviation reporters and expats from legacy travel media. Older travel publications sell a daydream: crisp ocean vistas, street side cafes, European hamlets with more steeples than people. The Points Guy sells that daydream as a promise, upholding a sworn oath to help you “maximize your travel.””

Nothing Has Been the Same Since David Bowie Died. Even His Own Legacy. | Esquire

• “The Bowie DNA is obviously present in The Weeknd when he wears those unexplained face bandages or in Lady Gaga’s reinventions and costuming (though, as my teenage son cannily points out, Gaga’s grand pop gestures are really more Freddie Mercury than Bowie). But if his greatest contribution of all was to give a voice to the outcasts and misfits, to speak for those on society’s fringes and provide them a valued space in rock & roll, then the question is where do those freaky kids now turn? Billie Eilish filled that spot for a while, but has — like Nirvana before her — presumably become too big to represent those impassioned, alienated youth. And in truth, it’s primarily the anarchic hip-hop of Tyler, the Creator or Frank Ocean’s hazy, interior R&B or Janelle Monae’s angular funk-rock (and parallel acting career) — uncategorizable, sexually unfixed, imperfect but ambitious — that offer the defiance and bravery that Bowie pioneered. For that matter, would the queer, genre-blending, fashion-forward Lil Nas X have had the longest-running Number One single of all time without the trail that Bowie blazed decades earlier?”

Gyms aren’t coming back. Here’s how you’ll work out in the future | FastCompany

• “A survey of 3,500 Americans by The New Consumer and Coefficient Capital found that 76% of people have tried working out at home during the pandemic — and crucially, 66% prefer it. Among millennials, the number is even higher: 82% made the switch and 81% like it more. This has enormous ramifications for the future of fitness. TD Ameritrade found that 59% of Americans don’t plan to return to their gym after the pandemic, and analysts and industry insiders believe that gyms and fitness studios as we know them could become a thing of the past. This is a devastating blow to an industry that represents more than 40,000 health and fitness centers and employs 3 million trainers and other personnel.”

Podcasts

What makes someone a Republican or a Democrat? | Yang Speaks

• “Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt joins the podcast to talk about moral foundations theory, human-centered capitalism, and how we can bridge today’s political divide.”

Bold predictions for 2021 | Yang Speaks

• “In preparation for the new year, Andrew Yang, Zach, and Carly share their bold predictions for 2021. But these aren’t ordinary predictions — they are also bets”

2021 Predictions: The Great Dispersion | Prof G Show

• “Scott reflects on the 2020 predictions he got right and wrong and then dives into his predictions for the new year. You’ll hear his thoughts on the dispersal of work, hospitality, and healthcare, as well as potential acquisitions, stocks he’s watching, and more.”

Pandemic Learnings with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed | Prof G Show

• “Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a physician, epidemiologist, educator, and progressive activist, joins Scott for our final episode of 2020. They discuss the intersection between public health, public policy, and politics as well as what a Biden-Harris administration can do differently on COVID-19. Abdul is the author of “Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic,” the podcast host of America Dissected, and a Political Contributor at CNN.”

Bill Gurley and Howard Marks: What Happened In 2020? What Can We Expect Looking Forward to 2021? | 20VC

• ARE YOU KIDDING?! [Fisher voice] Both these guys on the same podcast?
• “Howard Marks is co-chairman and co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, a leading investment firm with more than $120 billion in assets. Prior to founding Oaktree, Howard spent 10 years at The TCW Group, where he was responsible for investments in distressed debt, high yield bonds, and convertible securities. Howard has also written two books, most recently Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side, and it was Warren Buffet who said, “When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they’re the first thing I open and read. I always learn something.
• Bill Gurley is a General Partner @ Benchmark Capital, one of the most successful funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Uber, Twitter, Dropbox, WeWork, Snapchat, StitchFix, eBay and many many more. As for Bill, widely recognised as one of the greats of our time having worked with the likes of GrubHub, NextDoor, Uber, OpenTable, Stitch Fix and Zillow. Prior to Benchmark, Bill was a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Before entering venture, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston.”

A few Thoughts for a New Year | Making Sense with Sam Harris

Are Humans Smarter or Stupider Than We Used to Be? | Freakonomics’ No Stupid Questions

Is Optimism a Luxury Good? | Freakonomics’ No Stupid Questions

Which Gets You Further: Talent or Effort? | Freakonomics’ No Stupid Questions

Musique

My Mind is for Sale | Jack Johnson

Free Me | Otis Redding

Family Tree | Kings of Leon