Articles & Podcasts of Note (Week of 02/11/2020)
Every Friday I highlight the most interesting or entertaining items from my media diet from the past week. These weekly lists cover a variety of topics from an assortment of media—articles, blog posts, forum threads, podcasts and videos. It’s a personal bookmark archive of sorts but if it's helpful to others, that’s great too.
- 1000 True Fans? Try 100 (a16z.com): Kevin Kelly’s famous adage gets an update from the team at A16Z.
- The Best Board Games of the Ancient World (smithsonianmag.com): It’s comforting to know our ancient ancestors engaged in many of the same things we do today.
- Copying Ideas is Highly Underrated (invertedpassion.com): Copying carries negative connotations but is an essential part of successful innovation.
- Costco Capitalism (bryanlehrer.com): Analysis of how Costco is able to remain so successful and competitive in the online-shopping and Amazon era.
- The Great Affordability Crises Breaking America (theatlantic.com): The stock market is booming and unemployment is at a generational low but wages are stagnant and have not kept up with inflation.
- How to Reduce Attention Residue in Your Life (bbc.com): Promotes an extreme form of task-bundling called GYLIO (Get Your Life in Order) which involves periodically taking a week off to deal with personal tasks, refocus the mind and reset your priorities.
- Living on the Streets of LA (slate.com): Heartbreaking account from the frontlines of a national homelessness crisis.
- The Mormon Church Amassed $100 Billion. It Was the Best-Kept Secret in the Investment World (wsj.com): A great reminder of the famous L. Ron Hubbard quote: “If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”
- My Productivity App for the Past 12 Years Has Been a Single Text File (jeffhuang.com): A refreshingly simple solution to a problem that is frequently addressed by a bevy of apps and complicated systems.
- Sidedoor Podcast: Aloha Y’All! (si.edu): The forgotten history and influence of the Hawaiian steel guitar on country music and maybe even the blues.
- Toy Commercials are Being Replaced by Something More Nefarious (theatlantic.com): “Kids are getting less exposure to traditional TV ads, but marketers have found sneaky ways to reach them anyway.”
- What are Underrated Newsletters You Like Reading? (ycombinator.com): I always enjoys these types of threads because they’re a great way to discover new writers and content. Which begs the question: Why is content discovery still so problematic for so many media (I’m thinking of podcasting and email newsletters in particular).
- Will Spotify Ruin Podcasting? (substack.com): Podcasting, to date, has relied on open standards and distribution. Will Spotify buck the trend and move to a siloed model based on content exclusivity and restricted distribution (a la services like Netflix?)/ I hope not.