Why the blockchain matters.
One of the better cases I’ve seen for the importance of blockchain / bitcoin. I’m still a skeptic, but maybe a slightly better informed one now. | learn more
The archive
Find a half-remembered link or follow a subject through years of Sunday notes.
7,487 posts
The Complete TurtleTrader: How 23 Novice Investors Became Overnight Millionaires
If you’ve never heard the story of the Turtles before, this is worth a listen. It’s a real-life version of the movie Trading Places. In the mid 80s, a group of people were taught a trend-following system for trading markets and given money to trade. They made over…
Put away your tophat and monacle.
Put away your tophat and monacle. It turns out that “crevasse” (pronounced kruh-VOSS) is not just a super pretentious way to say “crevice” (pronounced KREV-iss). Hat tip to Ilya Z for the insight. | learn more
Chicago gangs once had business cards.
Chicago gangs once had business cards. And then the digital age came to take over. | learn more
Ruthless prioritization.
Ruthless prioritization. Shopify product director Brandon Chu’s take on how to prioritize between projects and within a single project. | learn more
Planning is guessing.
Planning is guessing. Jason Fried suggests a way to get past the psychological roadblock to planning by taking it for what it is. | learn more
The future is autonomous and electric.
The future is autonomous and electric. Cars are changing. Not all at once, but over the next 20-30 years. When most of the fleet is self-driving and powered by electricity, there will be huge direct impacts on oil consumption and human safety. Thinking beyond that, Benedict Evans dives into…
Evidence of the robot takeover.
Evidence of the robot takeover. Economists from MIT and Boston University examine the impact of industrial automation on the US labor market from 1990 to 2007. They conclude that each additional robot reduced employment in a given commuting area by 3-6 workers, and lowered overall wages by 0.25-0.5%. | learn more
Too much retail.
Too much retail. “Last summer, Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren called the situation ‘ridiculous,’ noting that the U.S. has 7.3 square feet of retail space per capita, versus 1.7 square feet per capita in Japan and France.” | learn more
Wal-Mart does the internet.
Wal-Mart does the internet. Now that Marc Lore of Quidsi (diapers.com + soap.com) and Jet.com fame is in charge of e-commerce at Wal-Mart, they’ve started a shopping spree with the acquisitions of ModCloth and Moosejaw. These are culturally pretty far from Wal-Mart’s core discount stores, but maybe (just maybe)…
Building the “Berkshire Hathaway of The Internet”.
Building the “Berkshire Hathaway of The Internet”. Andrew Wilkinson is building an investment firm called tiny. His team is moving quickly on acquisitions to make them seller-friendly, then leaving management teams in place and staying out of their way. | learn more
In search of the new “internet”.
In search of the new “internet”. What’s the next innovation that will change the world? It could be any one or more of these. | learn more
Love food trucks? Politicians don’t.
Love food trucks? Politicians don’t. “You get somebody sick in Chicago, it’s a $200 fine,” Geller says. “You park too close to a restaurant, it’s $1,000. Those restaurants’ profits are more important than public health? The city of Chicago has said, ‘We’re going to protect brick-and-mortars.’ Why is…
Maps are lying to you.
Maps are lying to you. I still remember when it sunk in that our typical world map is one big lie. When a tour guide in Colombia told us that the country is bigger than Texas and California combined, I didn’t believe him. Google quickly confirmed that I was…
Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
Clayton Christensen applies his innovation framework to the education industry, an effective monopoly that’s resistant to true disruption. With examples galore, he builds a case for how we can expect disruptive innovation to change mass market education. While his timing may have been off, his roadmap still seems…
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Okay so this one is a tiny bit self help-y, but really not so much. The author’s (Clayton Christensen of The Innovator’s Dilemma fame) premise is that his class at Harvard Business School had the best of intentions and the future looked bright, but as time went on…
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer
Imagine if you and your brother worked together. Then imagine if you worked together in the government. Keep going - one of you is Secretary of State and the other is Director of the CIA. That’s the Dulles brothers. Together, they overthrew governments, ran secret paramilitary campaigns, and…
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Anthony Bourdain’s autobiographical story about “coming up” in the world of kitchens and cooking. He narrates the book himself, which I really enjoyed because he delivers his writing with so much authenticity as well as clarify. If you like food, and have a high level of tolerance for…
Siddhartha’s Brain: Unlocking the Ancient Science of Enlightenment
This author makes a case for the idea that mindfulness/meditation has tangible benefits, backing it up with studies and wrapping it around the story of Siddhartha and the foundation of Buddhism. The studies are, by the author’s own admission, fairly “early” with small sample sizes and less than…
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
The story starts 70,000 years ago and takes you through the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution, and all of the revolutions since then. It starts out with a strong “anthropology” focus, giving insights (and the author’s opinions) into evolutionary traits we’ve developed. The latter half is fairly modern,…
@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex
This book is written by a journalist who has been following cyber-security for a long time. Your computer is probably already hacked. Cyber war is the next frontier of war, and the US doesn’t want to give up its military advantage. (View on Amazon)
Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
A good biography of the royally screwed up Caesar family, from Julius through Caligula. (View on Amazon)
The Case Against Sugar
Holy Crap! I started avoiding sugar after reading this. A really compelling argument, backed up by plenty of studies, about the dramatic negative effect refined sugar has on us. (View on Amazon)
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
The story of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who I admittedly didn’t know anything about before this book. They essentially founded the field of behavioral economics. They discovered/documented many of the biases that humans have, which until relatively recently were mostly unknown: The Anchoring Effect, Framing, Overconfidence Bias,…