Now I Know Why | (New York Times, 2021)
1️⃣ The Plague Year | (New Yorker, 2021)
“There are three moments in the yearlong catastrophe of the covid-19 pandemic when events might have turned out differently. The first occurred on January 3, 2020, when Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke with George Fu Gao, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which was modelled on the American institution. Redfield had just received a report about an unexplained respiratory virus emerging in the city of Wuhan.”
David Bowie on why you should never play to the gallery
2️⃣ Elon Musk reveals Tesla's plan to be at the forefront of a self-driving-car revolution — and why he wants to be buried on Mars | (Business Insider, 2020)
“Musk: It's now clear that people want electric cars. They want sustainable transport. They want clean energy. This really tends to be somewhat of an age-related attitude. The younger somebody is, the more they care about the environment. And so, as time goes by, they grow older, and then they become the decision-makers. That's the normal way of the world.”
Trust me when I say this one is worth signing up for the BI trial to read.
Related: What it’s really like to ride shotgun with Elon
Curb Your Enthusiasm: Nosebleed Seats
3️⃣ FRAMEWORKS v0.2 | (@cpaik, 2021)
“All successful consumer-facing companies appeal to one or more of the seven deadly sins. They are time-tested core motivators that incentivize people to do things (the fact that they have survived for all of time without any edits is proof of their power). There are no successful consumer companies that do not appeal to any of the seven deadly sins.”
Related: 33 Questions We Asked Ourselves Before Starting Pace Capital
Daft Punk - 2007-08-03 - Grant Park - Chicago, IL - [Full Show/High-Quality] - Alive 2007
4️⃣ Interview w/ Tobi Lütke | (The Observer Effect, 2021)
“Because when a company is growing north of 30% for instance, this means that, at the very least, your job becomes 30% harder every year. There is this great Red Queen's race at Shopify where you have to become significantly better just to keep your job. That's something I explain to people quite frequently. It's not optional to grow, especially when it comes to executives. The learning curve of being a great executive is a lot less like learning the guitar, and a lot more like skydiving. It’s the kind of thing you should not do without an instructor. A coach is probably one of the highest returns on investment anyone can do with their attention. An hour spent with a coach has a 10x, 50x, 100x potential return on time spent.”
Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Moon River
5️⃣ Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: The Rolling Stone Interview | (Rolling Stone, 2019)
“How are you not in a constant state of agitation that something terrible is going to trend, or that a war or some other calamity is going to start over a tweet?
We have a global team. And I trust them to make decisions. And I trust them to make decisions without me having to interject or oversee them at all. And I trust that we have a learning mindset. That we’re gonna do retros on what we fucked up. And we’re going to learn from that. And we’re not going to repeat the same mistakes. So in terms of what happens in the platform, I am concerned. I am a citizen in this world. I feel the weight of how our tool is used in society and how it’s been used for good and how it’s used for stuff I’m not proud of.”
Larnell Lewis Hears A Song Once And Plays It Perfectly
6️⃣ Old Castle, by the river, in the middle of a forest | (Kortina, 2021)
“Every once in a while, I come across a song that I listen to about 100 times in a row when I find it. This just happened with Chick Corea + Hiromi’s Old Castle (a Youtube Rx after I was listening to Chick Corea’s Spain).”
Off the back of this article, I found lots of previously unknown gems in this playlist by Kortina.
Chick Corea & Hiromi - 上原ひろみ&チックコリア
7️⃣ Something New Is Fucked Up In My World Every Day | (Brad Feld, 2015)
“This is one of my favorite lines to use to explain the business life I live. When asked what it’s like to be a partner in a VC firm, be on a bunch of boards, and have a continuous stream of random interaction come my way, I like to level set my reality.
It’s simple. Something new is fucked up in my world every day.
Now, just because something new is fucked up, doesn’t mean I’m unhappy. Quite the opposite – I’m usually happy, although when the pile of fuckedupness gets high enough I get tired. And day after day after day of 12+ hour days also make me tired.”
Stick with this one for the unforgettable parable at the end.