better doing

Unleashing your secret identity.

Todd Herman helped Kobe Bryant craft his alter ego, the Black Mamba. He is a performance coach who uses the tool of identity, “because your identity—the person or the view of yourself that’s going out to perform on that field—is […]

tech, startups, internet

Lessons from acquiring 586 companies.

This was a top notch discussion with Justin Ishbia of Shore Capital. They’ve deployed $7 billion of capital with an average transaction size of $12 million. It’s all down to the repeatable systems and tons of sports analogies by which […]

oh, chicago

Guilty verdict for alderman-racketeer Ed Burke.

“The conviction caps a stunning fall from grace for an old-school politician who wielded his power for decades as the head of the City Council’s Committee on Finance, which controls much of the city’s spending. … The 79-year-old Burke was […]

fun facts

The Pontiac Aztek.

If you remember this car, you probably remember how unattractive it was… “a car so ham-fisted in its execution it became a metaphor for the clownshow that was pre-bankruptcy GM.” Professional car designer and writer Adrian Clarke tells the story […]

fun facts

Why do tattoos last?

Most cells in the body only live for about a year. Skin cells are on this schedule. “Therefore, skin cells should divide and dead cells be cleared out in under a year, not the decades that tattoos would suggest.” So […]

fun facts

When the western world ran on guano.

“For the second half of the 19th century, the Western world pretty much ran on a game-changing, nation-making, super-powerful substance—bird poop. At first glance (or, fine, maybe second), guano is an ideal fertilizer. Made almost entirely of nitrogen, phosphate and […]

big ideas

The renewable energy disaster far more deadly than Chernobyl.

The point here is pro-nuclear, not anti-renewables. In 1975, China’s Banqiao Dam collapsed, “forming a wall of water six meters high and twelve kilometers wide moving up to fifty kilometers per hour. The towering deluge eventually collapsed 62 more dams, […]