“Discard the junk…you are far better off to read a much smaller amount of good material with care and thoughtfulness.”
– Barton Biggs
Food for Thought:
- Medium – Design Principles for the Mind – Gems from the leading edge of cognitive science – How to create habits and misconceptions about learning, how to pick up skills faster and maintain them longer, a deeper look at what motivation is, the limits of carrots and sticks, and how to build inner drive.
- Slate – Uber Just Showed Us Its Trump Card: Leaving Town. Uber calls San Antonio’s bluff.
- Medium – The Ten Commandments of Sushi
- BI – Here’s what the modern résumé should look like
- ZH – How Many Slots Are Open In The Upper Middle Class? Not As Many As You Might Think
- WSJ – Lee Kuan Yew, the Man Who Remade Asia. He preached ‘Asian values’ and turned a tiny, poor city-state into an astonishing economic success. Is Lee’s ‘Singapore model’ the future of Asia?.
- WSJ – Balance of Power Shifts in Groceries. Natural, organic foods from small producers muscle in on big names.
- TPIR – April Fools. Countless companies throw their own “April’s Fools” surprises, but if you grew up watching The Price is Right, seeing this “guest host” was certainly special.
Business/Economics/Investing:
- Medium – The Interface Layer: Where Design Commoditizes Tech. In the last five years, we have seen massive fragmentation as single-function apps/tools have come to dominate. Think Pinterest for shopping, WhatsApp for messaging, Waze for Mapping, Uber for transportation, etc. etc. This piece begins to think forward about how the next iteration and insight in technology will be about designing integrated interfaces that unify these disparate services. Thought provoking for sure.
- Flurry – Apps Solidify Leadership Six Years into the Mobile Revolution – A little dated, but a look at how 86% of the average US mobile user’s time on their phone is spent using apps.
- WSJ – Jack Welch on M.B.A. Degrees. If you can’t go top 10, is it worth the $300,000 cost – Jack Welch questions the logic of many MBA programs.
- BN – Slumber Party! Casper leads a new crowd of startups in the $14 billion mattress industry, trying to turn the most utilitarian of purchases into a quirky, shareable adventure.
- WSJ – Selling Songs for a Song? Scrutinizing the Streaming Model. For less than a penny per song play, Spotify and its ilk monetize music and beat back piracy.
- Wired – The Secret History of the Apple Watch
- WSJ – In Silicon Valley Frenzy, VCs Create New Inside Track. Pinterest board observer raised $200 million in three days to buy more shares—with startup’s blessing.
- Bloomberg – Renegades of Junk – The Rise and Fall of the Drexel Empire – Credit DH
- Economist – Attack of the bean-counters. Lawyers beware: the accountants are coming after your business
Life/Culture/Art/Science:
- WSJ – The Plan to Speed Up Baseball. The game, its fans aging and ratings dropping, is on a mission.
- NY Times – Rory McIlroy Has the Best Swing in Golf. How far will it take Northern Ireland’s onetime child prodigy?
- Inc – How This Fitness Entrepreneur Won Over Blake Griffin and LeBron James. Hyperice founder Anthony Katz turned his own aches and pains into a recovery tool now used by the biggest athletes in the world.
- BI – Prada is in crisis. Fashion mis-steps and geographic concentration, leave the famed Italian designer much worse off vs. global luxury peers like Kering and LVMH.