This week’s highlights:  No More Preventative Care?, Dis-economies of Scale, and Hedonic Adaptation

Fifteen on Friday – 04/13/18 – Issue 280

Food for Thought:

1. LH – Barbara Ehrenreich: Why I’m Giving Up On Preventative Care.  Once I realized I was old enough to die, I decided that I was also old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance, or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life. As for medical care: I will seek help for an urgent problem, but I am no longer interested in looking for problems that remain undetectable to me.
2. NewYorker – Malcolm Gladwell – Where Ideas Come From  David Remnick speaks with Malcolm Gladwell about how he arrived at his particular approach to storytelling.
3. WashPo – No, Mark Zuckerberg, we’re not really in control of our data. “Some 45 times — I was counting — the Facebook CEO told members of Congress that we’re in control of our data, when it’s plainly impossible for most people to figure out how to do so. That makes it hard to buy what he’s selling, even if it’s free.”
4. Racked – I Made a Massive Spreadsheet of All My Clothes.  My economics degree has trained me that any problem can be solved with the right data set. So as part of my great wardrobe redo, I spent 13 hours on a Saturday cataloging the entirety of my wardrobe in a massive spreadsheet.  By the end of the day, the spreadsheet had more than 4,000 cells and 28 tabs. Here’s what I found.
5. SethMeyers – Seth Meyers’ Wife Gave Birth in Their Apartment Lobby  Congrats to Seth / What an insane story

Business/Economics:

1. MIT – The End of Scale  New technology-driven business models are undercutting the traditional advantages of economies of scale. But large companies still have strengths to exploit — if they move quickly.
2. Bloomberg – A Millionaire Mindset Never Made Anyone Rich  The notion that just thinking something can make it happen is a joke. Too bad some people fall for it.
3. NYT – The 10-Year Baby Window That Is the Key to the Women’s Pay Gap.  Women who have their first child before 25 or after 35 eventually close the salary divide with their husbands. It’s the years in between that are most problematic, research shows.
4. PiperJaffray – The 35th Annual Taking Stock with Teens Survey  What matters to teens now?
5. NYT – With Tesla in a Danger Zone, Can Model 3 Carry It to Safety?

Culture/Tech/Science:

1. MMM –  Hacking Hedonic Adaptation to Get Way More For Your Money
2. WM – How Minimalism With a Family is Possible (& Life Changing!)
3. GQ – Nordstrom’s New York Store Is Like Shopping Online—Only in Real Life
4. VF – “The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster In Decades. A recording salvaged from three miles deep tells the story of the doomed “El Faro,” a cargo ship engulfed by a hurricane.
5. RollingStone – That One Night: The Oral History of the Greatest ‘Office’ Episode Eve