Mental Pivot

Notes and observations from a lifelong pursuit of learning.


Articles & Podcasts of Note (Week of 12/16/2019)

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  • The 2019 Stratechery Year in Review (stratechery.com): Ben Thompson is the brilliant mind behind one of the absolute best business tech blogs (and one of the few actually devoted to business strategy rather than product specs and rumors). His end of year post highlights his top posts of the year.
  • The 84 Biggest Flops, Fails, and Dead Dreams of the Decade in Tech (theverge.com): “The 2010s were the decade of Google filling up its product graveyard, Apple stubbornly denying obvious missteps, and Microsoft writing off billions of dollars.”
  • Ars Technica’s Ultimate Board Game Guide for 2019 (arstechnica.com): If you’re looking for some new additions to your collection, this a great resource.
  • Climbing the Wealth Ladder: Why Affluence Increases in Steps (ofdollarsanddebt.com): Nick Maggiulli of Ritholtz Wealth Management looks at the relative difference in spending power for different tiers of affluence.
  • The Glenn Show (blogginheads.tv): A friend recommended this podcast featuring economist Glenn Lowry. Each episode Loury discusses a pressing current issue with another guest economist. Topics of race in America are especially interesting (Loury is African-American and frequently invites other African-American economists on his program).
  • Losing Faith in the Humanities (chronicle.com): In an era when enrollments in the humanities are declining and job prospects are bleak, an English professor ponders whether the humanities are facing an extinction level event.
  • Shopping Sucks Now (vice.com): “The internet has created a tyranny of perfect information, so there is more to know about which thing is the right thing to buy than any human can comprehend.”
  • This Page is Designed to Last (jeffhuang.com): The brittleness of internet archiving and content longevity is the focus of Jeff Huang’s self-described “Manifesto for Preserving Content on the Web.”
  • We’ve Just Had the Best Decade in Human History, Seriously (spectator.co.uk): Bad things may still be happening, but the world keeps on getting better. The problem is that the latter doesn’t get reported because good news isn’t fit to print.