This week’s highlights: Secret dinners, online speech, and PB Blaster
Issue 410
by David Wells – Nashville TN
WWTLD?
I may be a bit late to the Ted Lasso party, but better late than never. The US in the last year has binged on Tiger King, The Last Dance, and concluded the fall with Queen’s Gambit. But as we start 2021, Apple TV’s first (and only) season of Ted Lasso just hits the right note. The show tells the story of an American football coach who heads to England to coach a premier league soccer team.
Lasso’s humility and downright optimism feel so refreshing in the current climate, and challenges us all to take a step back from skepticism and snark, and choose to see a brighter path forward. Can’t say enough great things about this show.
Original Content This Week –
- The Power of Integrative Thinking What if there was a systematic way to generate better ideas to solve your most complicated problems?
- Recommended Reading Database While I publish quarterly a list of what I am reading, I parsed through 15+ years of reading and organized my favorite reads by major category. So if you are looking for a recommendation, this is a good place to start.
If you have had a chance yet, check out my new book (Amazon)!
Have a great weekend!
Regards,
Food for Thought
- ESPN – Michelin restaurants and fabulous wines: Inside the secret team dinners that have built the Spurs’ dynasty
- Ideopunk – 100 Tips For a Better Life Some awesome ideas on this list
- NYT – Twins With Covid Help Scientists Untangle the Disease’s Genetic Roots “I want to know,” one twin said, “why did she have Covid worse than me?”
- Vox – Terrible financial advice is going viral on TikTok TikTok is full of dubious personal finance myths. Here are 10 of them, and why you should be wary.
- NYT – Bernie Sanders Is Once Again the Star of a Meme The Vermont senator was cold, but comfortable. The internet noticed.
Business
- BE – Online Speech and Publishing Facebook has close to 2bn users, posting over 100bn things each day. The global SMS system, at its peak, had 20-25bn messages a day. This is not a ‘publisher’, in the sense that a newspaper or radio station are publishers – or if it is, then we’ve stretched the word ‘publisher’ so far as to become meaningless.
- Inc – The Founders of Harry’s Got a $1.37 Billion Offer to Sell. But the FTC Wasn’t Sold The founders of the razor startup relished their challenger status, picked a fight with a consumer goods giant, and made the biggest deal of their lives. Then they learned some of the toughest lessons of hardball capitalism.
- Stratechery – Intel Problems
- NYT – Snapchat Wants You to Post. It’s Willing to Pay Millions. Top performers are raking in cash as the company seeks to compete against TikTok and similar platforms.
- BBC – How the world embraced consumerism
Culture / Tech / Science
- NYT – They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast Enough As a tech era draws to an end, more workers and companies are packing up. What comes next?
- Jalopnik – The Legend Of PB Blaster
- Engadget – Synthetic cornea helped a legally blind man regain his sight
- WSJ – Covid-19 Has Nearly Wiped Out the Flu—How Do We Keep It From Coming Back?
- Youtube – Keyboard shortcuts for Youtube Didn’t know these existed – super helpful
My Book:
When Anything is Possible – Wealth and the Art of Strategic Living
However wealth arrives – whether made or inherited, it can be a disorienting and worrying experience. When Anything is Possible is meant to be a guidebook about how to engage thoughtfully and strategically with wealth. Doing so requires a person to articulate 3 key items – Wealth Structure, Wealth Identity and ultimately a Wealth Strategy. The book walks through each of these items in great depth, and guides the reader through a process to develop each.
If you are interested in learning more, visit here and download a free chapter.