My Content List #27 | Tues 3/9/21

Opening Rant: Mental Musings

31 min readMar 9, 2021

Been a busy time. As I’m looking back, each 1st-quarter in recent memory has been a grind…

How’s it been for you? How are you doing? Worth pausing for a moment to take inventory.

Herein, I present a series of questions/thoughts that have been percolating. These could be fodder for future Opening Rants, but today they are seemingly-scatted observations. I hit on all the usual topics… psychology, investing, existentialism, musique, and beyond.

Time now to dig in.

I. Clubhouse & The Midas Touch

Since I last posted, Clubhouse has… earned?… itself a $1 billion valuation. a16z tapped into some sorcery to conjure that value, seemingly out of thin air. This feels like a little much, no? There’s a bull case out there somewhere — that this may be the “next Facebook” (heard that one before…) — but I’m inclined to say it’s all a bit overhyped.

Clubhouse isn’t alone… the median pre-money valuation for Series A investments is up to $37 million, a six-fold increase (i.e. from about $6mm) in just a decade.

I started thinking about future shaping, of “forecasting” trends, the concept of “pumping your own book.” Then I thought how VCs like Andreesen (and others) have such a strong halo effect — in the sense that their portfolio companies get a sort of stamp of approval… I.e. “This idea is ‘worthy’ of capital from a backer like them, so this must be something.”

Ah, manifest destiny… The best VCs not only predict how we spend our time and money; they also (at times) nudge our reality towards their ideal future state. Feels as if they are spellcasting the most portfolio-company friendly future into existence.

This is particularly relevant to Clubhouse — a platform where, I’d guess, VCs themselves comprise north of 1/3rd of the in-app “audiospace.” And as many friends have observed: the folks in this ecosystem really love hearing themselves talk (note: I plead the fifth).

There’s also nothing wrong with the concept of “value-added activities”— a version of which we see on damn near every VC’s site — when it corresponds to legit/sustained growth, profitability (or a path to it), etc. But the idea of “value creation by conjuring value because our VC brand is that strong” is a new one I’m reckoning with.

This “Fin-fluencing” isn’t limited to Mark and Ben. What about Jim Cramer (a man who cried tears of joy when the Eagles won the Super Bowl but not at his wedding day… legend) pummeling listeners with his stock picks? That dude moves markets too (not Buffet-level, but still)! What if you found out he was taking positions in all the companies he mentioned?*

We’ve talked before about feedback loops and proxied validation an asset bubbles and all that good stuff, so I suppose this line of logic is just an extension of all that.

I respect the Machiavellian means of a16z — honestly, I do. I wish I could conjure value out of the ether after decades of outperformance and credibility-building. Maybe someday…

II. The Power of Sincere Compliments

Compliments… Complements? Nah, the first one. Expressing praise, admiration. An act of vulnerability!

There’s a real connectivity in those moments, on both the giving and receiving end. And the best part is — compliments are pretty much free to dole out. Even to folks you don’t know that well. Imagine getting a compliment on your smile or outfit (in a non-creepy way) right when you meet a new person/group.

It’s disarming. When a compliment is conveyed with true sincerity, it could represent exactly the affirmation the recipient needed, or the pick-me-up they didn’t know they needed. Maybe it’s the one good thing that person hears all day/week…

There are psychological bases at work here- we’ve talked about pro-sociality prior, and these acts fall into that category.

There are also 2 areas of weirdness worth noting : (1) when compliments are given without sincerity and (2) when the recipients are the types of people that are “bad at getting compliments”. The first is surprisingly easy to detect, for whatever reason, and is a surefire way to tarnish any goodwill’s that’s been kindling among counterparts. Those recipients referenced in (2) — ya can’t really blame them, because they’re probably accustomed to the fluff levied their way by insincere complimenters.

But it’s as if those tough-to-compliment folks want you to dig your heels and really mean what you’re saying. Good way to snuff out insincerity, I suppose, but a bit of awkwardness when the praise is already sincere and they should just take the freakin’ compliment.

Takeaway: damn near everyone can be complimented — sincerely — for something they are doing or have done. That compliment can go a long way. And when someone compliments you, it’s best to accept it with humility.

III. Perceptions & Reality

I’ve been noodling on the formula above, and it’s hard for me to disprove it in theory. One hack — by this logic — would be to lower your Expectations to heighten the weight of your presumably-good Reality.

It’s obviously not that simple. For one, Expectations may actually be better than reality — and that the idea of an Expectation is actually what keeps one motivated when times get tough. A better translation of Expectation here might be hopes or visions. As described in “Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success”, dissatisfaction with the status quo (i.e. current Reality) “can inspire action and change in your life.”

And, as you probably know, Happiness is different from satisfaction. The former is transitory and less meaningful to our souls; the latter is a more enduring, cultivated state.

Long-winded way of saying: Expectations are tricky tools to wield. We’ve talked before about maximizing vs. satisficing, and that’s relevant here as well. The long and short of it is: if you set a low bar for yourself, you’re surely more likely to clear it. But lasting Satisfaction comes not from clearing a low bar, but from the pursuit of increasingly elevated self-defined goals. Process over outcome, again I say.

Also RE perception, in a different sense…

I realized recently that — as a person who loves music as much as I do— I’m a pretty subpar dancer. Now, that typically doesn’t stop me from dancing my heart out. (Note: I’m being fully literal here, no metaphor implied, yet…) Yet, I feel the music so deeply! The right song can — at the same time — be deeply resonant with what I know I’m feeling and evocative of feelings trapped beneath the surface. I love these moments!

When I had that thought, I started pondering the disconnect between what we actually see (i.e. observe in the physical, tactile world) and what goes on beneath the surface within those around us. In a way, there’s a bottomless well of uncertainty in each individual we encounter. Sure, after we get to know someone we can learn to infer, to interpret, to read between the lines of their words and actions. But some degree of uncertainty in how we perceive others’ actions is inescapable.

This hearkens back to the idea of the fundamental attribution error. And… ah, well, I’ll let you interpret from here, because frankly not even sure where this observation will lead you. Just food for thought, as alwaze.

IV. In Defense of Gray Areas

It may look like the central rectangle is a gradient from light to dark gray, but it’s actually all the same! It’s an illusion: our perception of the rectangle are ***anchored*** by the black and white in the backdrop.

Why is nuance underappreciated? Why isn’t there much reverence for gray areas?

Issues, people, beliefs, actions — we tend to bucket them, to assign a label, to categorize… because that’s the simple/efficient thing to do. Yet when someone tries to bucket you, it feels a little strange, no? Personally, I’m particularly resistant to horoscopes and enneagrams… as if everything I do is really attributable to when I happened to be born, or that there are only 9 types of people in the world (but that’s a different rant)… It’s shorthand, sure, but that’s inherently simplistic to chalk everything up to one superficial label.

Yet tribalism — especially in a political sense — is ubiquitous and pernicious. The ingroup/outgroup mentality that slips into our psychological evaluations of others is tough to eradicate. I’ve said this before and will say again: a person is a helluva lot more than one perspective (or a collection of beliefs) they happen to hold. Fundamental attribution error popping up yet again: we tend view ourselves as these complex, ever-evolving beings, yet we tend to confine others to an oversimplified label based on availability heuristics, selection biases, or other psychosocial errors.

Also, I’ve talked about my goal to foster stronger opinions. This is because I frequently find myself able to consider both sides of a debate and see how — from another’s vantage, thru the lens of their compendium of experiences — the argument they’re defending makes sense. And yet, this ability to perceive nuance (a capacity for empathic reasoning) sometimes gets misconstrued as flippancy or weakness.

This stoical investigation of the gray areas is how I (and many others) work our way towards conviction. At the same time, I’m all for hypothesis-driven thinking, the “strong opinions / weakly held” paradigm. Too much meddling around in gray areas can lead to recursive analysis paralysis; on the other end, one may encounter hard-headedness and a refusal to acquiesce even in the face of undeniable logic. The upshot, as always, is to strike a balance among (1) reverence for nuance, (2) appreciation for the multitude of perspectives a person may bring to a debate, and (3) actually operationalizing the data-gathering and decision-making process so we all don’t spin our wheels forever.

As Matthew McConaughey relayed in his book Greenlights (highly, highly recommend btw), the nature of discourse in Africa is “not about right or wrong… it is: do you understand?” McConaughey and I agree that we in America could use a lil bit of that…

Well, we got pretty meta today; happens sometimes.

Hoping that Opening Rant — and the hugely eclectic, yet ever-intriguing article/podcast/musique selection below — will give you enough to ponder until next time…

*(Note: He’s apparently restricted from trading… But I bet that hypothetical still made ya think!)

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 #27 | Wed 3/9/21

Articles

The Lies We Tell During Job Interviews | WSJ

““It’s a situation almost designed to encourage lying,” he says. Candidates must put their best foot forward, and managers need to sell the job. Some companies say they want radical honesty, but do they really? “It is part of being a well-socialized person in our society to use lies to make other people feel good about themselves and to present ourselves effectively,” Dr. Feldman says. One study finds that people would exaggerate all manner of things when going for a new role, from the responsibilities they had in previous jobs to their reasons for quitting. Of course, mistruths exist on a spectrum, from slight exaggerations to complete fabrications. Sometimes omissions can help to avert potential bias. Other times, they can wreak havoc, even destroying careers.”

How to have better arguments online | The Guardian

“Often, the person in the group who articulates the possible is dismissed as a dreamer or as a Pollyanna persisting in a simplistic “glass half-full” kind of optimism. The naysayers pride themselves on their supposed realism. However, it is actually the people who see the glass as “half-empty” who are the ones wedded to a fiction, for “emptiness” and “lack,” like the “wall,” are abstractions of the mind, whereas “half-full” is a measure of the physical reality under discussion. The so-called optimist, then, is the only one attending to real things, the only one describing a substance that is actually in the glass.”

Seeking Social Salvation | Meera Clark

“Today, we are facing a crisis of community. We’ve structured our personal lives for efficiency instead of resiliency. While it’s never been easier to have dinner delivered to our doors or to find a flick for a Friday night in, many among us have simultaneously lost our connection to strong support systems, be they family or friends. As we emerge from the most challenging year in recent history, might we be able to leverage heightened societal awareness of such issues to begin to close this widening gap?”

We Are What We Remember | FarnamStreet

“New memories build on the ones that are already there. The more we know, the easier it is to remember the new things we learn. But we have to be careful and recognize that our tendency is to reinforce the narrative we’ve already built. Brand new information is harder to retain, but sometimes we need to make the effort.
Finally, memories are important not only for learning and remembering but also because they form the basis of what we can imagine and create. In so many ways, we are what we remember. Accepting that our vivid memories can be very different from those who were in the same situation helps us reduce the conflict that comes with insisting that our memories must always be correct.”

Human-Centered Finance | Meera Clark

“For some, it is challenging to remember a time when the new new thing was not the obvious choice. The nightly news gave way to Netflix. The local pizza joint lost its monopoly power to Postmates. Yet, in some circumstances, older models have something to teach us. Few institutions better exemplify this than USAA. Founded in 1922, USAA is a unified financial services platform that offers banking, investing, and insurance to people and their families who serve, or once served, in the US military. Whether you need an auto loan, catastrophe insurance, a 529 plan, or a mortgage, USAA has you covered. As a one-stop shop for its 13 million users’ financial services needs, USAA is a formidable force. While the company’s 2019 revenue of $36 billion puts USAA in the Fortune 100, its Net Promoter Score (NPS) is more than 4x the industry average and supports its 96% member retention. And the company never raised venture capital! So what explains USAA’s historic success? Community, customer service, and a comprehensive suite of services. Today, as we revolutionize our offerings for the underserved, we ask — might this be replicable? I hope so.”

Why removing space debris requires caution and action | Bessemer Venture Partners

“The existence of space debris is concerning for many reasons, with physical collisions being the most obvious. The possible risk caused by space debris is magnified by the incredible speed at which debris typically travels. According to NASA, there are over 30,000 objects larger than a softball in orbit, traveling at speeds up to 18,000 miles per hour. At that speed, any one of these objects is capable of completely destroying a spacecraft. Even debris just 1 cm in diameter can disable an operational spacecraft, while even smaller fragments can cause huge problems as well. Indeed, a fleck of paint was enough to damage a window on the International Space Station, which has been forced into maneuvers to avoid larger, potentially catastrophic debris 28 times since 1999, including 3 times in 2020 alone.”

Snapchat Wants You to Post. It’s Willing to Pay Millions. | NYTimes

“Snapchat hasn’t always been fertile ground for social media creators. For years, the company focused on being a messaging platform, and offered internet talent no way to earn money or grow their followings. In 2017, the company began verifying creators with large followings as well as celebrities, displaying their public Stories in the app’s media portal called Discover, but the platform wasn’t designed to source and display viral content to the masses. With Spotlight, Snapchat aims to change that. Similar to TikTok and other TikTok-inspired apps and features including Instagram Reels, Spotlight is a stream of endlessly updating content (or, more precisely, an algorithmically curated feed of vertical videos)”

Online shopping is booming. Start-ups have a few ideas to make it more sustainable. | The Washington Post

Why We Work | Meera Clark

“While looking up at our screens for the ninth Zoom meeting, down at our leggings storing a few too many DoorDash deliveries, and back at the door separating us from the rowdy roommates mere feet away, many of us are left asking Why? Upon entering the workforce, millions of GenZennial knowledge workers dreamed of opportunity and recognition, yet our current remote reality has left many of us with a sense of stagnation and anonymity. As we crawl out of our COVID-induced caves and collectively figure out the future of work, it is worth reflecting upon Why We Work and how new systems can better support us in fulfilling such intrapersonal aspirations… The value of work extends far beyond the paycheck it provides. For many knowledge workers, the workplace of the past long served as a grounding force, acting as a source of both economic and social stability and strength. From breakup breakdowns with my fellow Analysts in the bathrooms of Morgan Stanley to finding shared strength through meditations with the CEOs of the Obvious portfolio, I’ve cherished the warmth and wisdom from the incredible colleagues and thought partners around me.”

Mapping Out Mental Health Tech: 70+ Startups Changing Lives | Sarah Du

“1. Mental health is a critical issue, affecting 450 million people worldwide and 1 in 4 adults in the U.S.
2. Four of the biggest challenges in mental healthcare are lack of access, inconsistent quality, regulation at times constraining innovation, and discrimination.
3. There are many ways to segment the market. I’ve mapped six categories: self-care, chatbots, P2P, telehealth, digital therapeutics, and hardware.
4. Six areas I predict continued momentum are: 1) solutions for mild and moderate cases of mental illness, 2) solutions focused on prevention and upstream intervention through seamless monitoring and diagnoses, 3) the unbundling of mental health services, 4) solutions targeting youth, 5) senior-focused solutions, and 6) provider tools that monitor and improve patient outcomes.”

Climate risk is investment risk | Climate Tech VC

Stocks only go up, right?* Retail investing is hitting its zeitgeist moment, now what | Mercedes Bent

“Some say the window for retail investing products is over. I disagree. Robinhood’s dominance marks the beginning of a new generation of retail investment products. As of 2020, millennials owned just 3% of all retail equity and 43% to 51% didn’t own stock in 2019. The last few decades saw 4–5 dominant brokerages so there is still room for new players to acquire investors and increase wallet share. Millennials hit 10T in assets but are still underinvested in equities relative to older generations.
In the next decade we will see a new generation of investing brands fight to become the primary brokerage for Millennials and GenZ. Why? Robinhood’s success awakened the investment mindset amongst Millennials/GenZ, and it’s not just equities. It’s trading cards, fine wine, vacation homes, streetwear, and other lifestyle assets turned investments.”

‘Right Now Feels So Long and Without Any End in Sight’ | NYTimes

“The entries are among more than 6,500 from some 750 people of all ages and diverse backgrounds who have been keeping digital diaries on the same platform. The Pandemic Journaling Project, a joint initiative of the University of Connecticut and Brown University, began last spring and now contains perhaps one of the most complete records of North Americans’ internal adjustments over months of pandemic, protest and political division.
The story it tells, so far, is a deeper one than the many one-off surveys done last year, which reported predictable increasing levels of distress. The thoughts are a messy, ever-shifting chronicle of psychological adaptation over months of imposed isolation, together documenting a landscape of everyday concerns, emotions and expectations.”

The Sperm Kings Have a Problem: Too Much Demand | NYTimes

“The sperm kings of America are exhausted. These men are flying all over the place. They are shipping their sperm with new vial systems and taking the latest DNA tests because that is what women want now. Sure, they can talk on the phone, but they say it has to be quick because they are driving to Dallas or Kansas City or Portland, Maine, in time for an ovulation window. They would like to remind me they have day jobs. “People are fed up with sperm banks,” said Kyle Gordy, 29, who lives in Malibu, Calif. He invests in real estate but spends most of his time donating his sperm, free (except for the cost of travel), to women. He also runs a nearly 11,000-member private Facebook group, Sperm Donation USA, which helps women connect with a roster of hundreds of approved donors. His donor sperm has sired 35 children, with five more on the way, he said.”

SPAC Mania Gives Early Investors Steady Returns With Little Risk | WSJ

“Here is how the trade typically works: Hedge funds give the SPAC money for up to two years while it looks for a merger target. In return, they get a unique right to withdraw their investment before a deal goes through that minimizes any loss on the trade. At the same time, the potential return for early investors is huge if the SPAC shares rise because they also initially receive shares and warrants giving them the right to buy more shares at a specified price in the future…Wall Street’s recent exuberance has engulfed SPACs, with day traders and large institutions alike pouring money into shell companies pursuing startups tied to themes such as green energy or sports betting. Recent SPACs have surged immediately after announcing deals to take startups public, giving the hedge funds opportunities to sell and turn quick profits.”

9 Trends That Will Shape Work in 2021 and Beyond | HBR

From Piggly Wiggly to tomorrow: The grocery store of the future | Bessemer Venture Partners

“While the grocery store format has largely remained stagnant, the headwinds for grocery seem to be picking up, promising to usher in a new era for the shopping experience. As COVID-19 accelerates the trend toward contactless shopping, we’re entering a new technological paradigm for how we shop for groceries… The future of grocery stores will be a win-win for both businesses and customers: with new technology, stores will strive to decrease their operational expenditures and consumers will want easier ways to shop. From optimizing inventory management and checkout lines to finding high-quality groceries at consumers’ personal price points, the future of grocery store shopping promises to alleviate, and even eliminate, these points of friction.”

FRAMEWORKS v0.2

“Many of the thoughts in this document draw on and synthesize concepts from economics, math, physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology…
All successful consumer-facing companies appeal to one or more of the seven deadly sins. They are time-tested core motivators that incentivize people to do things (the fact that they have survived for all of time without any edits is proof of their power). There are no successful consumer companies that do not appeal to any of the seven deadly sins.
Different motivators can apply to different constituents within each company, even different behaviors from the same constituent.
Examples:
Sloth: Uber, Amazon
Pride: Instagram, Tik Tok
Gluttony: DoorDash, Netflix
Lust: Tinder, OnlyFans
Envy: Pinterest
Wrath: Twitter
Greed: Bitcoin, Robinhood”

What to Know About Music’s Copyright Gold Rush | Pitchfork

“What’s physically changing hands may be little more than lists of song titles in filing cabinets, as The New York Times’ Ben Sisario recently pointed out in a podcast on this subject. But what’s at stake is nothing less than control of the popular music canon. Some investors compare songs to real estate, because (financially speaking, at least) both are assets that are expected to generate predictable income over time. But while the supply of land is pretty fixed, artists keep churning out more and more music every year. And despite the occasional delightful rediscovery, like TikTok going nuts over Life Without Buildings, only a tiny sliver of that new music ends up being played again and again long into the future. By the market’s logic, the most lucrative bet is buying the songs that are already proven winners, and there are only so many of those to go around.”

Mental Models for Startup & Thesis Ideation — Visual Reference Guide | Ali Afridi

Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed With Building Utopian Cities | Patrick Sisson

“In their most basic form, cities are markets, places to gather to trade goods and services. The smart cities being envisioned by contemporary tech leaders — Bill Gates’s desert metropolis in suburban Phoenix, the late Tony Hsieh’s revitalization of downtown Las Vegas, libertarian venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s (now defunct) dream of a seaborne floating settlement in the Pacific — are perhaps best seen not as visions of the future, but statements about their core beliefs, most pointedly around markets and the economy. These urban utopias, in a real and philosophical sense, represent the ultimate vision of scaling up… The idea of one man building his own city, perhaps the ultimate collaborative human endeavor, can come across as a well-funded version of a child building their own tree fort. Zappos’ founder Tony Hsieh, when emailing a journalist about his vision to remake Sin City back in 2010, used the subject line “Playing SimCity in Real Life,’’ preceded by a smiley-face emoji.”

Apple Pay Offers Germ-Free Shopping — If Only We Could Figure Out How it Works | WSJ

“The pandemic has done what Apple, Google and Samsung have long struggled to do on their own: get more shoppers to use their digital wallets. Some 46% of people surveyed by S&P Global’s 451 Research said the pandemic prompted them to use mobile wallets and other contactless payments more often or for the first time in-store. Problem is, many shoppers and cashiers have no idea how to use them. Even those who do find the major brands are still not accepted at the U.S. stores of some big retailers like Walmart Inc., Home Depot Inc. and Lowe’s Cos.”

The Rejection of Internet Perfection | Digital Native

TikTok is the first Gen Z-native social platform and it embodies Gen Z values. Inauthentic or performative content is sniffed out quickly and called out. In many ways, how Gen Zs use TikTok (and, to a lesser extent, Snapchat) is a reaction to how Millennials used Instagram. This is clear in trending challenges and visual effects; some examples:
One of the most popular filters is 2078, which makes you look old and wrinkled.
Another popular filter is the Chubby Face effect, which gives you — you guessed it — a chubby face. The hashtag #fatface has 10.8 million views.
While Chubby Face saw some backlash for being “fatphobic”, another trend embraces being overweight. Creators pretend to have lost an incredible amount of weight with a strict diet and workout regimen. They show their “new” self — only to then reveal that it’s just a skinny lookalike friend. The original creator walks through the background, usually eating a bag of chips and laughing.
Another common video is to see a creator — usually a young woman — transform herself with make-up. These videos have a surprising vulnerability to them, as the creator is revealing the “before”, emphasizing her blemishes and wrinkles.”

The Rise of the Community Department | Lisa Xu

“In many ways, products (software or otherwise) are no longer sold by salespeople or by ads, but by community members. As communication proliferates online, a company’s potential customers are being saturated with information — not to mention overwhelmed with options as the number of software products continues to explode. In this environment, users turn to each other as a trusted source for recommendations; the community-led sale is the one that wins. Combine that with community’s impact on retention and engagement and it’s not hard to see how community-driven products will win against their non-community counterparts in the long run.”

Powering the Rise of SMBs | Chris Gaertner

“Companies like Square, Wix, Stripe, and Shopify are offering SMB-specific solutions, either in the form of platform products, point solutions, or APIs, with the goal of providing owners the tools to build and scale their respective businesses better than ever before. SMB-focused software is not new by any means, but over the last 9 months, the COVID pandemic has been a forcing function that has accelerated the digitization of these businesses, creating tremendous growth opportunities for this category of software. The market has noticed and as a result, we have seen traditionally SMB-focused public stocks rise at a rate significantly faster than major indices shown below.”

TikTok: Transforming Music Creation and Distribution | Julia Maltby

“Deliberate or not, new artists are “making” it on TikTok. TikTok shared that, in 2020, over 70 new artists utilizing that platform to launch their careers have signed with major music labels. Furthermore, “nearly 90 songs that trended on the platform in 2020 climbed onto the Top 100 charts in the US, with 15 of those reaching №1 on a Billboard chart.”²
Ultimately, TikTok is a relatively new platform, and the platform’s long-term impacts on the music industry are still unfolding.”

There Are Spying Eyes Everywhere — and Now They Share a Brain | Wired

“Mind-bending new breakthroughs in sensor technology get a lot of buzzy press: A laser that can covertly identify you from two football fields away by measuring your heartbeat. A hack that makes your smartphone spy on anything nearby with a Bluetooth connection, from your Fitbit to your smart refrigerator. A computer vision system that will let the authorities know if you suddenly break into a run within sight of a CCTV camera. But it’s a mistake to focus our dread on each of these tools individually. In many places across the world, they’re all inputs for a system that, with each new plug-in, reaches a little closer to omniscience.”

Fashion Trends Are Often Recycled. Now More Clothing Can Be, Too. | NYTimes

“The biggest problem rests with the volume of unwanted clothing that winds up in landfills. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which works to foster sustainability, clothing production globally roughly doubled from 2000 to 2015. During the same period, the number of times a garment was worn declined by 36 percent. All told, “the equivalent of one garbage truck full of clothes is burned or dumped in a landfill every second,” their report found. Over roughly the same period, according to the World Economic Forum, 60 percent more garments were purchased, but consumers kept them for only half as long.
But some companies, like H&M, are trying to increase their own sustainability while also encouraging consumers to keep garments out of the trash. At H&M’s flagship store in Stockholm, for example, customers can pay a nominal amount to have unwanted clothing transformed into new garments through a process that breaks down the old fibers and combines them with new ones.”

APIs All the Way Down | Packy McCormick

Related: https://medium.com/wharton-fintech/apis-are-everywhere-b4645c562277 by Nate Soffio

The Age of Automation: How Tech Is Coming For Our Jobs | Rex Woodbury

“The economist Paul Krugman once said, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything.” At its core, automation unlocks productivity. My partner, Sarah Cannon, wrote a piece titled Freeing Humans to Do Their Best Work. That phrase captures the promise of AI: if technology does its job, workers can focus on more high-value and rewarding tasks.
Some people call these new in-demand skills “androrithms” — inherently human skills like emotional intelligence, creativity, and intuition. But shifting to a new skillset means that we need to revamp education to ensure that innovation doesn’t leave workers behind.”

Are we overhyping telemedicine? | Second Opinion

“Health care is still at its core about human relationships. And sometimes that relationship can be augmented by technology. The beauty of telemedicine is that the patient often ends up taking the call or video visit at home, so a clinician can get a potential glimpse into how they really live. That can feel far more intimate than a sterile room at a hospital or clinic. That said, a face-to-face interaction or a physical exam is sometimes required to get to the root of the problem. So let’s not go overboard in predicting that the future is all digital.”
Related: Digital Health and Opioid Use Disorder
Related: Telemedicine dominated 2020, but what happens when patients aren’t stuck at home anymore?

How the United States Lost to Hackers | NYTimes

“The hubris of American exceptionalism — a myth of global superiority laid bare in America’s pandemic death toll — is what got us here. We thought we could outsmart our enemies. More hacking, more offense, not better defense, was our answer to an increasingly virtual world order, even as we made ourselves more vulnerable, hooking up water treatment facilities, railways, thermostats and insulin pumps to the web, at a rate of 127 new devices per second.”

“Your Ideas Are Not Your Identity”: Adam Grant on How to Get Better at Changing Your Mind | Behavioral Scientist

“I think when we encounter people who disagree with us on charged issues, it is worth thinking about no matter how passionately I feel about a given issue, I could imagine having grown up in a family or in a country, or in an era, where, because of my experiences and the people that I knew, I might believe different things. That allows me to be open to rethinking my animosity toward people who believe those things. It allows me to recognize that their beliefs have the capacity to change, just like mine could have.”

Sneakerheads Have Turned Jordans and Yeezys Into a Bona Fide Asset Class | Bloomberg

Away From Silicon Valley, the Military Is the Ideal Customer | NYTimes

“Half a mile away, 28-year-old Palmer Luckey, one of the tech industry’s proudest iconoclasts, talked excitedly about the military potential of the flying machine — a self-piloting drone, called Ghost, that his start-up company Anduril built. “You can just set it up and then go do something else while it maneuvers,” he said. Though parts of Silicon Valley have kept the Pentagon at arm’s length in recent years, Mr. Luckey’s company, based 400 miles to the south in Irvine, is aggressively courting business from government agencies and the military. It is one of a number of young tech companies, many of them far from Silicon Valley, that are shrugging off the concerns about the potential militarization of their creations that in recent years have stirred employee revolts at industry giants like Google and Microsoft.”

Anyone Who’s Anyone Has a SPAC Right Now | NYTimes

“In simpler times, famous-people-turned-entrepreneurs bought wineries or invested in car dealerships — or simply created multi-billion-dollar lifestyle companies on the strength of their family brand. But in the pandemic economy, there’s a new way for the rich and recognized to flex their status and wealth: through a SPAC. (That’s a “special purpose acquisition company,” but more on that later.)
Jay-Z is involved with one. Shaquille O’Neal has one. Ciara Wilson sits on the board of one, as does Serena Williams. Sports figures seem especially enthusiastic about them: Alex Rodriguez, Steph Curry and the activist and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick — or should we say, “SPAC-ERNICK” — all have one. So does Billy Beane, the former Oakland A’s general manager and subject of the book and film “Moneyball.”

The unlikely place young workers fight mental-health taboos | BBC

““TikTok has a younger demographic, [and] I want them to be able to see that it’s fine to feel [bad], it’s fine to feel great, and if you do have mental health issues, it’s absolutely fine to address them and speak to people about them,” says Selwood. He adds that these posts help him work through his own feelings, too. Across social media, discussions of mental illness from Generation Zers like Selwood are everywhere; a 2018 Pew Research Center report showed that one-third of 13- to 17-year olds surveyed regularly posted about their feelings on social media. This is especially the case on TikTok, where Gen Z reportedly makes up more than 60% of the platform’s billion-plus users globally.”

Email and Slack Have Locked Us in a Productivity Paradox | Wired

“…we feel increasingly overwhelmed and frustrated by the sheer number of hours we now spend engaging in this streamlined back-and-forth messaging. Once we removed the cost and friction from office interactions, the quantity of this chatter skyrocketed. According to various studies I gathered during my research, in 2005, we were sending and receiving 50 emails a day. In 2006 this jumped to 69. By 2011 it was 90. Today we send and receive an estimated 126 messages, checking our inboxes once every 6 minutes on average.”

I asked hundreds of people about their biggest life decisions. Here’s what I learned | The Conversation

Sex Tapes, Hush Money, and Hollywood’s Economy of Secrets | Wired

“Dirt in hand, Blatt serves as a bridge between the lawyers, the tabloids, the celebrities, and the people with something to sell — pocketing a percentage or a consulting fee from as many of those parties as possible. Each deal is unique, and he is often surprised by how a situation plays out, but his goal is to capitalize on clickability, leveraging either the story or a star’s dread about its potential for virality to make as much money as he can.”

The Rise of the Biden Republicans | Politico

“Like the Reagan Democrats, they’re heavily white and live in suburbs. But where the Reagan Dems are blue-collar and culturally conservative, Greenberg sees the Biden Republicans as more affluent, highly educated and supportive of diversity. Historically, they identified with the Republican Party as their political home. But the leaders who were supposed to fight for them seem to care more about white grievance and keeping out immigrants; seem to care more about social issues and “owning the libs” than about child-care payments and college tuition. They don’t consider themselves Democrats — at least not yet — but they are voting for them, delivering them majorities in the House and Senate, and making Joe Biden just the fourth candidate in the past century to defeat an incumbent president.”

When SPAC-Man Chamath Palihapitiya Speaks, Reddit and Wall Street Listen | WSJ

It’s about TIME for 2021: Digital Trends Transforming How We Shop, Live and Work | Jennifer Carter Fleiss

“A month into 2021 is a perfect opportunity to take stock of the trends that will shape the rest of the year. Covid accelerated and intensified certain trends, but the macro underlying trend is not revolutionary: increased utilization. Utilization comes in two main buckets:
1. Optimizing personal time and enjoyment, focused on tools to save time thereby increasing bandwidth and/or enhancing experiences.
2. Optimizing the value of a resource for the purpose of efficient use/sustainability and/or cost savings.”

Memes and the Atomic Units of Culture | Digital Native

“The word “meme” has surprisingly academic origins. “Meme” was coined by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins was looking for a word to convey “a unit of cultural transmission” — the cultural equivalent of a gene. He wrote:

We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. “Mimeme” comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like “gene”. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to “memory,” or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with “cream”.

E-Commerce Marketplace Aggregators Are Hot On Thrasio’s Heels As Companies Raise $2.3B | Crunchbase

Podcasts

Improving the News, with Max Tegmark | StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice talk echo chambers and the polarization of news with Max Tegmark, physicist and creator of AI media tool ImproveTheNews.org, and journalist Jeff Jarvis. You’ll find out why our media landscape, and by extension our democracy, is suffering because of polarization and distribution of news through social media platforms. You’ll learn what our media landscape has in common with the multiverse. Tegmark walks us through how his tool works with machine learning to aggregate news articles, and how it tries to combat polarization in the way we find news articles. What are the pitfalls of such a tool? Will it even work?”

Esther Perel: Building Resilient Relationship‪s‬ | NPR’s TED Radio Hour

“How do we build more trusting and empathetic relationships, even during a crisis? This hour, therapist Esther Perel shares ideas on creating lasting bonds in romance, family, and at work.”

How Does When You Are Born Affect Who You Are? | Freakonomics’ No Stupid Questions

Chamath Palihapitiya — The Major Problems Facing the Worl‪d‬ | Invest Like the Best

“Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder and CEO of Social Capital, whose mission is to advance humanity by solving the world’s hardest problems. I didn’t know where this conversation would take us given Chamath’s wide-ranging activities and interests but I think it provides an interesting glimpse into some of his core beliefs and the source of his drive. In our wide-ranging discussion we cover potential paths to closing the income inequality gap, how to manage one’s personal psychology, his perspective on “value investing”, and tackling climate change.”

Life Stages Of The Brai‪n‬ | NPR’s TED Radio Hour

“In each stage of life, our brains morph and change. This hour, TED speakers explore pivotal chapters where the brain can either flourish or decline — and what control we might have over brain health. Guests include neuroscientists Kimberly Noble, Adriana Galván, Sandrine Thuret, and Lisa Mosconi.”

Why Are We So Attracted to Fame? | Freakonomics’ No Stupid Questions

Responsible Innovation and Venture Capita‪l‬ | Prof G Show

“Hemant Taneja, a managing director at General Catalyst and the founder of the firm’s Silicon Valley operations, joins Scott to discuss the venture capital space, why he’s bullish on the healthcare sector, and why responsible innovation is more important than ever. Hemant also shares his thoughts on the energy space and why Tesla is a key player.”

Have We All Lost Our Ability to Compromise? | Freakonomics’ No Stupid Questions

Josh Wolfe and Tony Thomas — The Past, Present, and Future of Defens‪e‬ | Invest Like the Best

“Josh is the co-founder and General Partner at Lux Capital. T2 is now a venture partner alongside Josh at Lux Capital, after serving for almost 40 years in the US military and becoming a 4-star general and the 11th Commander of US Special Operations Command. Our conversation focuses on the technology frontier in defense as well as the geopolitical threats that the US faces. We talk about everything from semiconductors and autonomous weapons systems to the moral dimensions of investing in defense technology.”

The Gratitude Chain: A.J. Jacob‪s‬ | NPR’s TED Radio Hour

“When A.J. Jacobs set out to thank everyone who made his morning cup of coffee, he realized the chain of thank-yous was endless. This hour, Jacobs shares ideas on gratitude — and how to make it count.”

How to Fix the Incentives in Cancer Research | Freakonomics

“For all the progress made in fighting cancer, it still kills 10 million people a year, and some types remain especially hard to detect and treat. Pancreatic cancer, for instance, is nearly always fatal. A new clinical-trial platform could change that by aligning institutions that typically compete against one another.”

Jack Clark — Grateful for Everything, Entitled to Nothin‪g‬ | Invest Like the Best

“Jack Clark, head coach of the University of California Varsity Rugby team. Jack has one of the highest winning percentages not only at the collegiate level but in sports history, winning an incredible 90% of games since his start as a coach in 1984. That includes a 98 game winning streak from 1990 to 1996 and a 115 game winning streak from 2004 to 2009. In our conversation, we dive into how Jack builds high-performing teams, the shared vocabulary he creates across his organization, and his work with companies applying what he’s learned on the field to operating businesses.”

The Algebra of Wealt‪h‬ | Prof G Show

“Noreena Hertz, an economist, a bestselling author, and an Honorary Professor at the University College London, joins Scott to discuss the learnings from her latest book, “The Loney Century: How to Restore Human Connection in a World That’s Pulling Apart.” We find out how loneliness impacts more than just our mental health and the second-order effects of our “contactless” world.”