2/11 – What’s Next
Hey – Hope you are having a great start to your week.
I just put together this repository of links that I think you will find very thought provoking. It is basically a collection of my favorite essays.
Enjoy the newsletter!
Articles to Read.
Expiring information is sexy but it’s not knowledge. Here are a few telltale signs you’re dealing with expiring information. First, it’s marketed to you. Second, lacking details and nuance, it’s easily digestible. This is why it’s commonly telling you what happened, not why it happened or under what conditions it might happen again. Third, it won’t be relevant in a month or a year. Expiring information is one reason I stopped reading most news. It’s a false map.
When we consume information that doesn’t expire or expires slowly; is very detailed; and we spend time thinking about it not passing the buck, we can match patterns. This is how you learn to see what other people are missing. The longer you do this, the more advantage you get.
Read more books!
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The 3.5 Star Chinese Restaurant
First, let’s get this out of the way — Yelp should be used only as a starting point for finding good places, Yelp rewards specific kinds of restaurants, service has a disproportionate affect on a restaurant’s rating, Yelp generally sucks, and anybody who is a Yelp Elite also sucks and are the same kind of people who really really want to be cops i.e. the kind of people you don’t want doing it.
That being said, I’ve found an interesting trend when looking for good Chinese food, which is this: The Best* Chinese Restaurants on Yelp are usually rated 3.5 stars.
If a Chinese restaurant is “authentic” in that they ignore your dumb ass unless you speak up, their food is definitely “authentic” as well.
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How fitness classes provide the meaning that religion once did.
A 2012 Pew study tracked the rise of a new religious group: the “nones,” or the religiously unaffiliated. One-fifth of Americans — and a full third of adults under 30 — say they belong to no religion at all.
That need for community was something that was so strong in our research. People were longing for relationships that have meaning and the experience of belonging rather than just surface-level relationships. Going through an experience that tests you to your limits, especially if you’re doing partner or team-based fitness routines, there’s an inevitable bonding that comes from experiencing hardship together.
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Since the financial crisis, dozens of crackdowns have targeted money launderers who effectively rely on banks, shell companies, and other mechanisms to cover their tracks. Fines have surged into the billions of dollars, but it’s unclear whether the enforcement efforts—some of the more notable ones are described here—have made much of a dent. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, shady transactions continue to reach as much as $2 trillion a year.
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The Day China Watched the Superbowl
When Hale asked CCTV how many people watched the matchup, she couldn’t believe her ears: 300 million. Let that sink in: 300 million was more than the population of the United States at the time and more than three times the number of Americans who had watched the game live two months earlier, according to Nielsen.
It was the first time American football had been broadcast in the insular country of 1 billion. And with a minutes-long introduction from President Reagan, read by U.S. Ambassador to China Winston Lord, it was the first time any foreign leader had directly addressed the Chinese population
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Meet the man behind a third of what’s on Wikipedia
Steven Pruitt has made nearly 3 million edits on Wikipedia and written 35,000 original articles. It is what earned him not only accolades but almost legendary status on the internet.
The online encyclopedia now boasts more than 5.7 million articles in English and millions more translated into other languages – all written by online volunteers. Pruitt was named one of the most influential people on the internet by Time magazine in part because one-third of all English language articles on Wikipedia have been edited by Steven. An incredible feat, ignited by a fascination with his own history.
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The Rift Between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon is Economic, Not Moral
Defense contracting is a risky business for fast-moving commercial companies, especially startups. Without aligned financial incentives, high-tech companies cannot pursue the national security market and therefore, many state-of-the-art commercial technologies will never reach the warfighter.
For commercial companies, the Defense Department and intelligence community are markets. These markets, like any, have their own risks and opportunities. Many layers of bureaucracy were created to protect taxpayer dollars from waste and corruption. As a result, America has one of the least corrupt military acquisition systems in the world. However, those layers of bureaucracy obfuscate the national security demand, limiting information access. By the time a call for a capability is shared with commercial companies, it is a jargon- and buzzword-filled multipage document posted on sites only the defense industrial base knows how to navigate.
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More to Check Out:
– Cool Colorizing Tool
– The future of human interaction with machines?
– Resentment of the Wealthy Is Not a Policy
– Becoming a Magician
– Yes, Venezuela Is a Socialist Catastrophe
Kudos (to people in the community).
- As I am graduating soon, it is very exciting to see my friends and peers prepare for “life after college.” Everyone is playing their own game.
- My brother – Adam – made a Fast and the Furious themed Chrome Extension.
let me know if you are working on anything new!
My Update.
- Have spent a good amount of time working on a new project that I am slowly getting really excited about. Time will tell.
- Reading more and more! Finished The Score Takes Care of Itself, Zen, Huc and Gabet (travels in 19th century China), Liar’s Poker, and The Big Short. Here is my 2019 bookshelf.
- Let me know how I can be helpful to you.
Thanks so much for reading! Find me on twitter : )
Also published on Medium.