July 2024
Books, articles, podcasts, and thoughts throughout the month
July 31
🎧 How to Write a Book Like Ryan Holiday - How I Write podcast
Ryan continuously writes books
David - His editor called him to congratulate Ryan on hitting the number three spot on the New York Times bestseller list. And you'll notice in the clip that Ryan, he responds and he's already halfway done with his next book.
Ryan - There's lot of dead time between projects and I've always found that instead of taking an off season, if you just start on the next project, you're insulated as far as how it does.
Ryan - Quantity is a way to get to quality. And I think a lot of people, there's an expression in football that if you don't get out of shape, you don't have to get into shape. You know, like, easier to stay in shape. And like, I think the pauses between books are really hard.
A 10-year edition book
Ryan - The big thing that makes you cringe when you read old things that you wrote is actually less stylistic and a lot more to do with certainty. Certainty does not age well. So you are saying things that are a reflection of your experience up until that point, then if you have 10 years more experiences, you go, it's a tad more complicated than that.
Ryan - The interesting thing was like the acknowledgments. Like is the acknowledgement something you update or is it a reflection of, like reading the acknowledgments you're like these are all the people I was grateful to at this moment but I think differently about some of the people. I think I understand the relationship different and so but it's also this like product of its, it was pure and authentic in that moment.
Michael Lewis - The Big Short
Ryan - I think Michael Lewis was born to write the Big Short. Everything in his life was leading up like his background in finance, all his other books, all his characters, and then the economic history of the United States is leading up to 2008. And then the book that explains this thing, right? And so that's a person sort of meeting their moment. That's, you know, decades of experience and writing and all these other amazing books lead like the perfect author and the perfect story intersecting. I would like to think we all have that or that we should all get lucky enough that those two things would intersect.
To make good writing, you need to read deeply (find the source of the source)
David - Truman version of that quote is not all leaders are not all readers are leaders, but all leaders have to be readers. And the idea that you're going to learn things by trial and error, I think is very expensive when you are in a position of leadership or responsibility. So the idea is to learn by trial and error is very expensive. And to be a leader, you have to learn as much as you humanly can from the people that came before you. And so I think what he was saying, and what I always take is that you have to read the things that challenge you, and you have to read about sort of big moments in And you also have to have a Deep experience. You have to borrow all the experiences that have cumulatively been in your space.
Ryan - Like you can read about, I don't know, the rising conflict between China and the US, but if you haven't read Thucydides, you're not going to understand what the people who are talking About it now are basing all their assumptions on. And so yeah, I try to go back and I tend to try to find the oldest books on that topic.
Plutarch is a great biographer
Ryan - I think the greatest biographer of all time is Plutarch, probably the longest lasting biographer. And his point was that you often discover more about a subject in an offhanded remark or a gesture or an encounter than you do exactly how many people were at this battle or exactly where It took place or exactly what time it was. And I think the problem is that most biographers don't understand the essence of the person. They only understand them as a series of facts and figures, and they think that you just instruct a reader by assembling these and throwing them at them one person after another. And they didn't quite understand what made them great or what made them terrible or why they, we should love them or why we should hate them.
How to work with editor: tell them what you need
Ryan - You have to do the hard work of figuring out what you are trying to do and to be able to articulate that to the people you are asking for notes from. So if you just say, here's my book, what do you think? Or even with your editor, you're just like, here's the book, they're going to give you a bunch of notes. And where I've had conflict with editors and where I've come to sort of assert certain power that I have is knowing, okay, this is the book that I'm trying to write. So give me notes that help me do that. Anything else is of no consequence to me. And so like on conspiracy, which I'm very proud of, I went some rounds with my editor because I was very, this is where I figured out I had to do that work. I was like, this is the kind of book that I am writing. It's going to be different than most books in this genre. I'm not interested in doing this. I am interested in doing this.
How Ryan selects stories
A couple things I'm looking for in a story. Ideally something that someone hasn't heard before or something surprising. But it's often about someone that they have heard about before.
Those are powerful. I think when you're that are very obscure or about obscure people, there's, at least for the kinds of lessons that I'm trying to teach, there's something that is not quite powerful enough About them. You want someone that either they have a strong opinion, positive or negative and then a story that shows something about them or what made them great or not great that they wouldn't Know. And the other thing I'm looking for in stories is that this can't be an aberration. This has to often be a theme. Like this story is similar to this story, which is similar to this story, and I can layer them on top of each other to kind of make the point that this is an observable, demonstrable fact Or trend or reality of existence. So I'm just kind of looking for those things often.
Drafting in 30-40 Google docs
I don't write a manuscript draft. I have 30 or 40 individual drafts. So each one of the chapters is its own thing. Is that like its own Google Doc? Its own Google Doc. So I write everything in individual Google Docs first. So I'm thinking about it more as a like a small blog post or a story. Like it's, it's a thousand word chunk that I'm writing and this helps me with the momentum day to day because I'm working on this this one section. But it also is helping me with the pacing because I'm, I'm each thousand words or 1500 words has to be self -contained, have its own pacing, and work by itself.
Writing as an art has less reps than e.g. comedians and musicians
Writing it is hard to get reps because I mean, even 16 books, which is an absurd amount in sort of modern publishing, that's not that many reps compared to how many shows a musician would Do, right? It's just, it's really, books take a long time, they're expensive, you know, it's hard. Being a screenwriter would be even tougher, right? Or a movie director would be like impossible. You might get to do it twice in your whole life. So like how do you find other ways of getting reps for what you do? And I would say one of the things I accidentally chanced upon, speaking of stories, is because I started The Daily Stoke. So the book The Daily Stoke is 366 stories. So just like, that's a lot of stories. And then day for eight years, I've put out this email. And that's like a very set structured format that's short and tight with a pretty, not unforgiving, but like an audience, right? So I'm not doing it like just in my bedroom or something. So like to put on a show for that many people, that's probably eight books that I've done at least of practice.
🎧 Prof G Markets — Rivian and Volkswagen’s New Partnership + Scott’s Tax Strategy
SpaceX’s Starlink is now a purchase decision factor for Scott
I told you I'm going on a boat next week. And what's interesting is it's a big purchase. I'm going with a family who's still a shit ton of money. And I didn't ask anything about the boat, but I called the broker and I had one question, does it have Starlink? And at that moment I thought, wow, I am now making huge purchase considerations based on this technology.
Well, Tesla seems to be differentiated and it's relevant. People are interested in EVs. Okay, the third hurdle, is it sustainable? Can we own it? So back to Starlink, it's differentiated. I mean, you get a call on a plane on FaceTime video, it's crystal clear. Is it relevant? Oh yeah. I mean, we're gonna try and do these pods next week. I need serious broadband, highly relevant. And then is it differentiated? And this is why I think this thing is gonna be the technology of the year. 60% of all currently orbiting satellites belong to SpaceX. Almost two thirds of all, that's just crazy. So even if someone says, this is an amazing business, we got to get into it, we're Boeing, whoever it is, we're Amazon, we have deep pockets, to figure out a way to get the Falcon X heavy Rocket or whatever it is, the launch capacity, to get these satellites into space, that is a moat the size of the Amazon. Anyways, this latest version, 599, this is a 10X better product at substantially lower price. This is just, I'm intoxicated just thinking about it, but I really wish it was you that had come up with this, not this fucking weirdo that has 78 children now.
When getting a big paycheck from a company, spread it out so it can be taxed lower
I did this strategy or did this agreement with Vox or distributed this podcast where they're gonna give me a lump sum of money in May of 2025. And because that's current income, which I hate, 37%, I'll lose 37% of it right away, I'm gonna do something or we're talking about doing something called the installment method. Now, what is that? They can pay me over six years, which they like, because it saves them cashflow, because it's a sizable amount of money. We pick an interest rate, I don't know, call it 7%, and over six or seven years, they pay down. I'm basically loaning them, the money they were owing me, say it was $100, I'm loaning them a hundred bucks, and they pay it off over six or seven years like a mortgage, and they pay me 7% On it. But here's the fun part. Because they're paying it off over seven years, I'm getting 7% on the pre -tax income. So for the first whatever it is, three or six months, I'm getting 7% a hundred dollars. Whereas if I sold a dollar, I just recognized the gain, with a 37% tax rate, I'd end up with 63 cents, and I would need to get 10 or 12% on investment.
Expensing costs thru business
If I'm going to LA and I see my dad in San Diego, but I spent four of the five days in LA working on an original scripted drama on big tech based on the book, The Four, written by Scott Galloway, I can write off all of my expenses. You can shove a lot of expenses through a small business because you'll find most of your life, at least if you're an entrepreneur, is somewhat related to business.
The key to tax minimization is to figure out a way to save enough money as an earner such that you become an owner, because then you can get long -term capital.
I will absolutely, I'm not gonna disarm unilaterally. I will take advantage of every single tax loophole.
🎧 Buckets of Rich, Attracting Luck, and Maintaining Balance — With Jesse Itzler - Prof G Pod
Break-up companies
The second biggest tax cut in history, the second biggest tax cut, would be if we invested 10, 20, $30 billion, gave it to Lena Kahn and Jonathan Cantor. And basically, totally overfunded the DOJ and the FTC and went on a breakup Lollapalooza. Why? Everything from chicken to home renovations, to beef, to cereal, to confections, to search engines, to social media is controlled by a small number of companies. And what happens to an industry when it becomes too concentrated? They learn that they don't have to make great products. They can just raise prices. And there aren't that many options. And then, boom, what happens? Prices go up.
Jesse Itzler on making opportunities for luck
I used to come home, Scott, from like, you know, I walk into Markie Jet and I'd be like, I got a sale last night. We had a bell. I would ring the bell. They'd be like, what do you mean? You at the bar. Same bar I was at. I'm like, yeah, but you left at 11 o 'clock. I stayed till 2. And I got the sale. Oh, you're so lucky. The guy came. I wasn't. I'm not lucky. I put myself in that situation. You know, luck doesn't happen Sunday night watching the Kardashians on your couch. It happens when you put yourself in an environment where the universe can reward you for deep care and then you have to be good at what you do and take advantage of it. So my 20s and 30s were built around putting myself in environments where I could get lucky.
I’m where I need to be - exploring everything in my 20s
Your 20s are a time to try as many things as you can and see what you like to do and see what you're good at. And then, you know, and then master it in your 30s and get rich in your 40s. You're to make five to 10 times as much money most people in their 40s and 50s than you will in your 20s.
Building a brand takes time
But I remember going to Coca -Cola in my 20s on the Zico meeting, and the president of Coke said to me, it's going to take eight years to build this brand. It takes eight years to build a brand in this country. I always remember that, and it's gotten sped up a little now with the internet and everything. But it takes time.
Jesse Itzler’s weekly family meeting
We get together on Sundays, and it's short. And we just talk about something like one thing that happened to us this week. So somebody said, you know, in school, I failed at this. I did this. I succeeded in this. We have anything that we want to talk about, like summer plans or goals or whatever, we'll bring it up. It's a chance for everybody to kind of share, get up to speed, and communicate in a group setting. Sometimes, you can vote if it's like, hey, you know, we're thinking about going on a trip this year. You know, that kind of stuff gets discussed. You know what it does, Scott? It allows everybody to be heard. I actually like it. And I'm not a great communicator. So for me, it's kind of challenging.
Jesse’s kids need to ask guests a question
The other rule that we have is when we have guests at our dinner table, each of the kids has to ask the guests a question about them. So it gives them a to practice there. What I think is the most important thing, which is communication and public speaking. So that's another kind of rule that we have.
July 30
🎧 How Stoicism Makes Us Better at Money — Ft. Ryan Holiday - Prof G Pod
Success should be doing more of what I want to do
Stoicism is very helpful for me with is like, if I'm getting more successful, why do I have less control of my schedule? Why is the reward for my success less time to do the thing I actually want to do, which is right, or spend time with my family? And so I think stoicism has a lot to teach us and talks a lot about that.
The secret to a long-term relationship is not breaking up
Sometimes people ask me like what the secret to a, you know, a long -term relationship is. And I say it's not breaking up. It's not like magical thing. It's the decision to not go always to greener pastures, to not take the easy way out, to stick with your commitments and you benefit from that in many, many ways. But I think having some checks on my personal life and having another person who I trusted and loved, who saw me from outside me, helped keep me sane and healthy and reasonable, and a whole Bunch of other positive traits. Did it tie me down a little bit? Sure. But I would say it tied me down to reality in a positive way.
Ryan Holiday’s start on being an author
I wanted to be an author and I went at it a somewhat untraditional way in that I was a research assistant for a great writer, a guy named Robert Green who wrote The 48 Laws of Power. So I really learned how to do, of all the sort of intellectual thought leadership things, I started with the hardest, least sexy of the mediums.
To be successful online, you need to have a point of view or an actual skill set
I'm not saying you have to start with books, but I'm saying we often see people that get blessed by the algorithm, they blow up in some way on some medium. But because they don't have like an actual point of view, an actual skill set, like a thing that they do, they just become like a person who chases more and more on that particular platform. Like I write books. That's what I was doing before I did this. That's what I'm going to go do after I close the laptop on this is I'm going to go back and sit in my chair by myself and work on a chapter in the book that I'm writing now. Now, what I generate there ultimately can be translated and can do well on social media, on podcasts, on news media or whatever, but it starts from the core originating thing. And people oftentimes don't want to do that work. What attracts them to like being an influencer or whatever, is not just the fame and attention, but that it seems easy. Like it seems like they're just turning on the GoPro or the phone or whatever and riffing to millions of people and that's not really how you do it.
📰 How to Cultivate Resilience in Troubled Times via
Active coping (versus passive)
Active coping means creating your own resilience. It involves both thought and behavior, including being mindful of your thoughts, trying to maintain a positive attitude, and actively seeking help from others. In other words, proactively doing things that are likely to help in your situation.
🎧 Elon Musk’s Pay Package, Scott’s Early Career Advice, and How Do I Find a Mentor? - Prof G Pod
At work, be first in, last out
Figure out when everyone gets to work and try and show up a few minutes or before them and a few minutes later.
Take the shittiest part of your boss’s job
Josh Brown from CNBC and from Ritholtz Wealth Management had a really good idea that I thought was very simple. I never thought about it. Find the shittiest part of your boss's job and take it off their plate and slowly but surely try and give them time back. If you can do anything, whether it's responding to RFPs, I don't know what job you're doing, but try and really understand, learn and do stuff and volunteer for stuff and do your best To try and take the worst part of other people's jobs off their plate such that you become indispensable to them. Because if you make their life easier, you're going to be indispensable. Try and praise, always praise people behind their backs. Be known as the guy that praises people behind their backs. Listen when you're in meetings, try and really understand what's going on. Be very social, ask people out to coffees, ask them a bunch of questions. You don't need to be explicit about finding mentors. I've never said to anyone, will you be my mentor? But I am blessed with a ton of mentors because I would ask them out for coffee. I'd ask them a lot of questions. When you're older and you've got some experience under your belt, you like it when people ask you questions.
Bring in a massive attention to detail. Success is in the last 10%. Be known also as the guy that anything that leaves your desk is near perfect or perfect.
🎥 What's New This Week? GIANT POTATO via Goulet Pen Company
The origin of Magikarp-Gyarados evolution: A Japanese story where a koi goes up the waterfall and becomes a dragon.
July 29
📰 Returning to Society via
Are sabbaticals supposed to motivate you to return to work or to convince you to never pursue regular full-time work ever again? For me, taking a “sabbatical” has only made me more sure that I’d to work a 9-5 for the next few years, rather than starting my own thing. All I’d like is a little bit of stability.
📰 10 Non-Traditional Relationship Tips via
On not fighting: I could simply say “Hey I don’t really like how you said that. It made me feel…” / Every single time his response has been “I didn’t mean it to come across like that, here’s what I actually meant.” / And we move on.
🎧 Debate Prep, Apple and Meta's Potential AI Partnership, and Guest Brené Brown via Pivot Pod
Kara has said: I don't want to talk to you anymore because you're taking up minutes of my life.
Brené Brown is doing an 8-episode series on tech.
The takeaways, she thinks, would be similar to Pivot. Why do another podcast for the same message? Because it reaches Brené’s audience.
Hope is a cognitive behavioral process, it’s not an emotion.
We think hope is an emotion. I'm hopeful. It's like a sense of possibility and potential, but hope is actually not an emotion. Hope is a cognitive behavioral process. And this is all C .R. Schneider's work. And hope is three pieces. It's goal, pathway, and agency. A person who scores very high on levels of hopefulness. A, has the capacity to set a goal. B, has the capacity to develop a pathway. The best way to understand the nuance of pathway research is a person with high levels of hope not afraid of plan B, C, D, Q, or Z if plan A goes to shit. A pathway is someone who can really say, here's my goal. If this doesn't work out, I'm going to keep going. I'm going to try this next. And then the last part of hope, so you've got goal pathway is agency. I believe in my capacity to create change, to do something for myself.
Biologically we are changing for connection
We really are biologically changing for connection because of our intolerance for discomfort. And love is hard. And friendship is hard. And roommates are hard. And job interviews are hard. And the anxiety people feel that keep them so avoidant, they stay at home, that's also real.
Skill to learn: The ability to look someone in the eye who's in pain and not diminish it and not try to make it better, but just be with people.
🎧 Prof G Markets — Netflix’s New Entertainment Venues & Scott’s Takeaways From Cannes
To take a family of four to Disney and the hotels, you're looking at 5 to 10 grand.
July 27
📰 On Giving Up Control by
While optimizing is a good short-term solution to bridge our self-trust gap, particularly in the early stages of cultivating trust, it begins to maladapt when we overindex on processes that no longer serve us, using them as a crutch for control, and override our intuition.
📰 No One Needs Me by
book rec: Birding to Change the World by Trish O’Kane, a memoir about birding, social justice, and education.
📰 Two Early Attitudes About Photo Reference by
Adolph Menzel (1815-1905): relying on photography “is diametrically opposed to my belief in the responsibility of the artist to art and his self-confidence; and even the continuation of such a method must necessarily lead to the loss of discipline in certain important powers of the eyes, the hand, the memory, and the imagination concerning animated nature.”
📰 The Secret to Creativity, How Our Challenges Shape Us, and the Value of Bad Workouts by James Clear
"In many cases, what you hope to learn by reading books or listening to podcasts can only be learned by attempting what you fear. Some knowledge is only revealed through action."
"The bad workouts are the most important ones. It's easy to train when you feel good, but it's crucial to show up when you don't feel like it—even if you do less than you hope. Going to the gym for 15 minutes might not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity. It's not always about what happens during the workout. It's about becoming the type of person who doesn't miss workouts."
Joan Didion reminds us that the little choices count and carry us toward our destiny: "That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it." Source: Slouching Towards Bethlehem, "Goodbye to All That"
📰 The Worst Thing That Never Happened to Me by
My four step process for moving through fear.
Step 1: Awareness
I write my fears down. I give them space and let them breathe, because without understanding what’s driving me it’s impossible to get behind the wheel.
Step 2: Worst Case Scenario
I close my eyes and allow myself to think through what would happen if my worst case scenario came true. Every bone in my body feels the dread and despair. I ask:
What would the worst case scenario look like?
What would the worst case scenario feel like?
How would my life fall apart?
Then, I write an action list for everything I’d do next. I ask:
Who would I call for support?
What options would be available to me?
What actions could I take in the first day, the first week, the next month?
How would I put my life back together?
Step 3: Best Case Scenario
I indulge in a thought experiment and write down everything that could go right, making it as extreme, dramatic, vivid and ridiculous as the worst case scenario. I ask:
What would happen if everything goes to plan?
What would happen in everything goes better than the plan?
What would my wildest dreams look like?
How would achieving my goals feel?
Step 4: Take Action
📰 Dr. Goobie’s Midlife Crisis by Khe Hy
Dr. Goobie observed (empirically) that many folks already experiencing back pain had a chance at fixing it holistically and preventatively by:
• Eating a heavy plant-based diet
• Limiting their salt intake
• Having ways to relieve stress
• Sleeping a lot
• Moving their bodies daily
• Not smoking and barely drinking
🎥 Are Shimmer Inks Dangerous? Plus, Pen History With Brian | Goulet Pencast 144
Fountain pen history
It was really in the 1800s where fountain pens as we know them today really started to be a thing and that's where like of the patents started to come out
Industrial Revolution certainly played a hand there was a lot of Technology chemistry had a lot to do with it the development of different materials like hard rubbers and Plastics
End of the 19th century early 20th century that's where fountain pens just exploded
1880s is when mass production really started with Waterman really leading the charge they filed that first patent U I believe it was in 1884
Victor Hugo wrote Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables
🎧 Elon's About-Face, Surgeon General's New Warning, and AI in Ads - Pivot Pod
Where are you a 1% storyteller?
Figure out the metrics, figure out the medium. There's so many mediums. Well, I'm shy. Well, you don't need to be in front of people to be on Reddit or Discord or TikTok. I'm not, you know, I'm not good looking. Well, guess what? Podcasting. Hello. Five TV shows cancelled, by the way. Everyone has their medium. Everyone can be a great storyteller. And I don't care if you're Jeff Bezos or Winston Churchill, or Maya Angelou, the most influential successful people in history, all have one thing in common. They're great storytellers.
July 26
🎥 What's New This Week? GIANT POTATO - Goulet Pen Company
Japanese story: the koi goes up the waterfall and becomes a dragon. I don't know a ton about Pokemon but I do know that Magikarp is just a useless little carp like a koi but then it turns into Gyarados which is like a big dragon.
July 25
🎧 What Went Wrong With Capitalism? — With Ruchir Sharma via Prof G Pod
The cost of, let's say, setting up a new fund is up 10 times over the last 20 years. So that makes it very difficult for someone looking to set up a new fund in breaking even compared to some large fund, which is already there, has the resources, has the legal compliance departments to deal with all this.
America has always had a very large legal population. The number of lawyers per capita is about the largest in the world. But again, that this growth has exploded in the last 20 years or so.
July 24
📰 I sold 50k books (and I didn't predict this either) by
1,000 books in 100 days
a friend who had worked with a lot of self-published authors told me that 1,000 books in 100 days is the the metric to hit.
With TradPub Book 1, you’ll notice that it’s majority hardcover. This is because, with many traditional publishers, they only release a paperback a year after releasing the hardcover. I am not sure why they do this, as I love paperbacks and almost always prefer Kindle over hardcover.
Behind these numbers are various pricing decisions. I’ve mostly tried to make as much as possible from books, which means that I haven’t tried to maximize sales.
For example, I charge $18.99 for my paperback and $25 for my hardcover, both of which help me earn about $7-8 per book. For Kindle, I priced my book at $9.99 for the first year and a half, earning about $6.50-$7 per book. More recently, I have played with the price of Kindle and lowered it to between $4.99 - $7.99 depending on the region (which does seem to increase sales AND total profit, which is cool).
The Mistakes: Audio + Foreign Rights One of the biggest misses for me was not getting my audiobook out sooner. I was shocked at how well the audiobook sold once it was published. Since releasing it in July 2023, it’s been close to a quarter of all sales.
Another mistake was using Amazon’s distribution for hardcover.
The other miss was foreign rights.
I recently signed with Dropcap, who has a lot of experience repping self-published books through their work with scribe. Now I’ve signed translation deals in India, Malaysia, and Russia, and maybe France soon.
🎧 Future of Travel — Is High-Speed Rail Finally Happening in the U.S.? - Pivot Pod
In the years following World War II, instead of investing simultaneously in a national roadway system and in a national railway system, the United States made a really fateful choice, which was to invest far more money in the creation of interstate highway system. That interstate highway system is the system that almost every American relies on every day to get around. It's the system of roadways that connects every city and state, much like the the inner city railway system that preceded it. But the choice to invest massively in interstate highway system rather than also investing in their inner city railway system meant that, after World War II, the railway system degraded massively to a point where it had to be nationalized in the late 1960s. That led to the creation of Amtrak. - Yonah Freemark
🎧 Washington Post Drama, OpenAI IPO Rumblings, and Guest Scott Wiener - Pivot Pod
Kara's rank of most important newspapers in USA: NYT, WSJ, WaPo
What should Washington Post do?
There's a lot they could do. Right now, they need to get a CEO. He did bring in a temporary editor after Sally decided not to go with him. Guy named Matt Murray from the Wall Street Journal, who he did work with, who I think have great regard for in the newsroom. Keep him there. Hire a digital person, a really smart, capable digital person to figure out what, how to create new revenue streams just for now until the election and then have a rethink in December.
Who wants to go to the Washington Post to make no money?
A teenage girl, audience is 92% adult men - WSJ story
Want to talk about a story that's in the Wall Street Journal. I think, Scott, this is something that's important to you too. But this is an influencer, the influencer is a young teenage girl, the audience is 92% adult men. This story is, it's not a surprise and it's not something that I was, oh no, but it was an incredible explanation of how difficult it is, one, for these tech companies to push back against All these men. And the people who are doing this stuff online, young people, how it's very hard to protect them and at the same time, in order to be successful, you have to have a lot of engagement and The people that have engagements around young girls are more men. Let me read the first part, and you must read the story.
July 23
📰 Gay Nerd Explainer: Queer Symbols and Codes in Art History by Toby Leon
The use of peacock feathers as a symbol of queer identity came about in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the Victorian Aesthetic Movement, fashionable symbols were the playful language of the day. Flowers, handkerchiefs and fans acted like secret agents in a world of gray. A celebration of self-expression and connection. Helping men and women find joy and camaraderie in the most unexpected places. The male peacock's flamboyant tail feathers were seen as a representation of non-heteronormative beauty. Men would wear peacock feathers to identify themselves to other homosexual men, and artists would incorporate the feathers into their artwork as a subtle way to signal their sexuality. All around the same time as the green carnation was a popular symbol of gay male identity, thanks to Oscar Wilde.
The male peacock's flamboyant and extravagant appearance, which is more striking than the female peahen's, also contributed to the association of peacock feathers with queer identity.
📰 'Have You Always Been Creative?' by
I've always believed that my best, most discerning readers are young people between the ages of 10 and 20.
You've got to love painting or writing so much that you can't wait to get back to it. That enthusiasm is necessary to carry you through the inevitable frustrations and disappointments that are sure to come along.
it’s a tough time right now to make a living as an illustrator. But it's also a time full of opportunity with fewer gatekeepers than ever before.
Making pictures is a proud calling. We should never forget how lucky we are to be able to conjure dreams out of thin air.
July 22
📰 The Key to Longevity Is Boring via the New York Times
Research has long shown that health and longevity come down to five fundamental lifestyle behaviors: exercising regularly, eating a nutritious diet, eschewing cigarettes, limiting alcohol consumption and nurturing meaningful relationships.
There is a real danger in focusing so much on extending the number of years in our lives that we neglect to focus on the life in those years. This is as true for the 50-year-old on Instagram as it is for a 16-year-old on TikTok.
12. Labels matter more than I realized
Becoming a Managing Director is the highest title on Wall Street. I’m glad I left after the promotion. It’s like going to an Ivy League school – it can’t be taken away from you. And even if you don’t stay in your current industry? The gravitas it carries shouldn’t be underestimated.
13. I’m not sure I’d recommend an “Internet Career”
Create a personal brand and create content about things you’re passionate about. Build a following and these followers will become your best customers.
14. It’s hard to make > $500k on your own
I work 25-30 hours a week. I don’t want to manage people. I don’t want investors. Essentially, I’m trading time for money through coaching services. Our rates are very high, yet we’ve never made more than $250k in profit.
11. I’m glad I grinded in my 20s
In my 20s I was high-energy, single (and without kids) and driven AF. I’m glad I channeled that into a high-income career, invested it and let the compounding fly. Yes, there were health trade-offs, but I’d do 98% of it all over again as it set us up for life.
32. Marital challenges have a strange source
who’s really fighting? The younger versions of yourselves.
In the early days of The Drawing Board, I analyzed historic paintings and posted my findings on Twitter. My goal was to quickly learn what makes great art so great, so I can apply these principles to my own work.
📰 My Creativity Expansion Pack by
“This person is so negative.” ⇢ “Life is hard. How can I make it a little easier for them?”
Read with your brain ⇢ Read with your heart: What’s being said? What’s not being said? Check for resonance/dissonance
📰 Book Chugging by
There are three practices I’ve been applying the last few months that made a substantial difference in my reading experience.
Use the pen to taste.
Focus on reading at a pace where you enjoy reading, your mind races with thoughts inspired by what you read, and where you’d be equally content whether you read one book or 100.
Write about what you read
The economy is people and people are the economy. That's Kyla [Scanlon]'s main point in this amazing book. I think this should be mandatory reading for every high school in the United States.
Despite the fact that members of press associations had been expelled from the country previously, the Journal wanted its reporters in Hong Kong to sign up for the HKJA—so they could be protected, and to have press cards that could help mitigate highly charged moments with police. During 2019, as other outlets followed suit, HKJA’s membership swelled.
July 21
📰 Aren’t You Lonely? by
Even the fact that #mentalhealth has over a hundred billion views on TikTok seems to me less a triumph of mental health awareness and more like a collective cry of loneliness. Why aren’t we opening up to each other, in real life? Why are we telling TikTok?
📰 Why Instagram Content Creation Made Me Quit After Just 24 Hours by
It's absurd. Why do people want to display themselves in front of strangers? Why do people enjoy it? Why is having more followers often seen as being better at social media? Why did I hit "post" on that Reel from hell?
It’s wild how something I enjoy and do for a living, like content marketing (which involves content creation), can turn into an anxiety-inducing beast when you add the personal element—aka marketing yourself.
📰 Beyond Food and Travel: Remembering Anthony Bourdain by
Anthony Bourdain was the highest profile person engaged in what novelist Walker Percy called, “the search.” In his novel, The Moviegoer, the narrator, a character very dissimilar to Anthony Bourdain, finds himself trying to fill his days with books, movies, and women because he’s searching for something, though he doesn't know what it is or why he seeks it. He calls it “the search” and defines it as follows: “What is the nature of the search? you ask. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”
📰 Change Your Place, Change Your Luck by
I’ve changed my place. And my luck, or my mazel, or my inspiration, feels like it’s waking up from a sleepy haze.
Part of my improved photography skills is my access to better camera equipment. I might as well admit it. The Sony line of cameras genuinely live up to their reputation. But what moved the needle the most was simply taking thousands of photographs.
📰 The Most Beautiful Thing in the World by
I think the most beautiful thing in the world is the courage to show your whole self to someone.
Relationships, real relationships, are friction-filled. They demand vulnerability. Intention. Effort. A commitment to a state of devoted attention.
It's simpler to be the lone wolf.
here's the truth: We're all here. To save one another. There is hardly. Anything else worth living for.
July 20
📰 The Great Juggle: Surviving Fatherhood, Work, and Everything in Between by
Emotionally, the balancing act so many Ambitious Dads have described to me centers around 5 emotions: guilt, stress, fatigue and fear, and love.
📰 Herminie Waternau's Paris by
Herminie Waternau (1862 - 1913) painted detailed architectural scenes around Paris using a muted palette of watercolor and gouache. She achieved convincing textures with a combination of transparent and opaque watercolor.
I found these images at the Paris Musées website, which released a trove of over 100,000 high-resolution images online. Since they're in the public domain, you can download the large files and look at the details.
📰 Dear Hawai’i by
I invite you to start your own practice. Of the three that we wrote from our younger and older self, start with the one of writing about this moment in time to yourself on New Years Days on January 1, 2025. Send it via email through futureme.org. For more, watch this recording to write yourself letters too.
📰 How the Sounds of a Calculator Ended Up on Sublime's Website by
The sounds of the calculator born backwards in the mind of Curt Herzstack in 1930s Austria and almost given as a gift to Hitler, those crisp, decisive, mechanical sounds made by the only pocket-sized calculator people could use for about twenty years, those sounds traveled.
Those sounds traveled through the story told by Shl0ms.
And received by Gabriel.
And recorded by Sofi’s boyfriend.
And chosen by Gabriel's mom.
And added to Sublime’s website.
And shared now by me.
To you.
July 19
📰 Move Over New York Times. These Are the 44 Best Books of the 21st Century. by
I feel so strongly about the value of best-of lists that I frequently urge people to make their own. “Make your own canon!”
10 Truly Exceptional Books
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
*The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (2006)
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (2014)
*The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (2015)
The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott (2015)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier (2018)
The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018)
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson (2018)
📰 Active Reading: How to Become a Better Reader by Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Philosopher Mortimer J. Adler put it, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”
📰 Run for Calm, Persistence and Energy by Charlotte Grysolle
It's not really a runner's high. It's a persistence high. The research shows that the high isn’t about the physical act of running in and of itself. It’s about the continuous moderate intensity—requiring some level of persistence. That means that all you need to do is do something that’s moderately difficult for you and stick with it for at least twenty minutes.
📰 The Necessity of Daily Sacrifice by
I know I’m sacrificing when my knee-jerk reaction is avoidance.
Exercise is one of the sacrifices I make each day.
There is rarely a day when I’m excited to lace up my running shoes. But I do it anyway.
Sacrifices that require short commitments determine our mood. My mood is earned through the hard things I do every day that would be easier to avoid doing altogether. If I appease the Gods through hard exercise, proper and kind conduct, modest eating, honest work, and enough sleep, I will be bestowed the daily gift of feeling vital, light, and optimistic about life.
Sacrifices that require long-lasting commitments create meaning in our lives. The parent sacrifices their time, money, and freedom to raise their child and is rewarded with purpose, personal growth, and profound unconditional love for another human being. The spouse sacrifices themselves as an individual to merge their lives in union as one with their partner and receives companionship, love, support, and shared experiences.
📰 More Abs, Less Hair by Khe Hy
Simple always beats complex
Vacation house, bigger car, more stuff. In Western culture, more is always better. But when things you own end up owning you, simplicity is peace. And peace is happiness.
📰 Makes You Think by Morgan Housel
“Survival is the ultimate performance measure.” – Vicki TenHaken
“Everything feels unprecedented when you haven’t engaged with history.” – Kelly Hayes
“The best arguments in the world won’t change a single person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” - Richard Powers
“Comforts, once gained, become necessities. And if enough of those comforts become necessities, you eventually peel yourself away from any kind of common feeling with the rest of humanity.” – Sebastian Junger
“Psychology is a theory of human behavior. Philosophy is an ideal of human behavior. History is a record of human behavior.” – Will Durant
“History as usually written is quite different from history as usually lived. The historian records the exceptional because it is interesting.” – Will Durant
“The dead outnumber the living 14 to 1, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril.” – Niall Ferguson
Early action vs early planning
Some projects benefit from early action. If you're writing a book, it's easy to spend a lot of time brainstorming titles and dreaming up an outline, but it's better to simply write. The book discovers itself as you go. Yes, you'll need to go back and organize things, but this is easier to do once you have material. The key is to act first and then organize your thinking. Other projects benefit from early planning. The best way to build a skyscraper is to plan carefully. If you start placing steel beams on day one, you're guaranteed to run into problems. It is harder to make changes once you've begun. You'll need to tear it down and start over again. The key is to organize your thinking and then act. Do you need early action or early planning?
It’s beautiful to do something right
Investor and mathematician Jim Simons on beauty: "Be guided by beauty. I really mean that. I think pretty much everything I've done has had an aesthetic component—at least to me. Now, you might think, "Building a company that's trading bonds? What's so aesthetic about that?" What's aesthetic about it is doing it right. Getting the right kind of people, and approaching the problem, and doing it right. And if you feel that you're the first one to do it right, that's a terrific feeling. It's a beautiful thing to do something right." Source: Mathematics, Common Sense, and Good Luck
When to enact boundaries
It's important to have boundaries in life, but sometimes you may feel guilty for enforcing them. Aren't I supposed to be generous? Am I unkind if I say no to this? The question isn't whether to be flexible or firm, but when to be each one. A good life has a healthy mix of selfish boundaries and unselfish giving. You don't have to be all things at all times. Sometimes you pour for others and sometimes you refill your own cup. What does this moment call for?
📰 Seriously, What Do You Really Need Right Now? by
When I'm coaching clients, one distinction I often listen for is the difference between 'wants' and 'needs'. I need some wine. I need a holiday. I need him to be quiet for a moment. These are actually wants. They don't address the underlying need.
At this moment, right now, what do you need? You may find it helpful to take a look at this list of needs. I often share this with clients so they are focussing on needs, rather than wants.
At this moment, right now, what do you need? You may find it helpful to take a look at this list of needs. I often share this with clients so they are focussing on needs, rather than wants.
🎧 How FOMO, Doom, and Ego Impact Your Money — Ft. Morgan Housel via Prof G Pod
Cider House Rules by John Irving. It's a fantastic book. It's about a home for unwed mothers who get pregnant. And it's by John Irving, who is an outstanding author. It's one of my favorite.
What would impress the people you want to impress?
I think you should go out of your way to figure out who are you trying to impress and what is going to impress them. Getting a nice new car is not going to impress my wife. Being a good father might. So I should spend more time on that than trying to impress people who aren't paying attention.
A well-calibrated sense of future regret
Daniel Kahneman had this great phrase where he said, the most important financial skill is having a well-calibrated sense of your future regret. What are you going to regret 5, 10, 50 years from now?
Uncertainty as the cost of admission in investing
Once you view uncertainty as the cost of admission in investing, like your ability to handle the humility of saying, I don't know what's gonna happen next, your ability to grasp that Is the cost of admission for doing well over time. And there are investments that don't have uncertainty, FDIC insured savings account, there's no uncertainty, and there's no upside.
Markets is just an index / indicator of the aforementioned human behavior
I think markets are a window, a fascinating window into human behavior of how people think about greed and fear and risk and reward. There's no like, like a higher turnover window into that aspect of humanity than markets. And it's incredible to watch people, how they invest in on social media fall for the traps of risk, greed, fear, uncertainty, and being able to watch that, I think it's just fascinating. But even though I check my brokerage account every day, I watch the stock market every day, it doesn't influence my behavior. It doesn't influence my activity. I'm not watching that and going out and buying this and selling that. So I think if you use it, if you're following the markets because you find it intellectually stimulating, it's phenomenal.
Giving kids money is leverage, both good and bad
Giving your kids money is leverage, and leverage when you're doing well is amazing. Leverage when you're doing poorly is a disaster. And so it's so, it's so dependent. I think one of my biggest fears actually, is that one of my children is doing great, and giving them money would be positive leverage. And at the same time, another of my children's doing very poorly and giving them money would be negative leverage. Cause then how do you deal with that? How do you keep it equitable to say, I'm going to buy my daughter a house, but not my son. How does that work?
July 18
Apple has discounted rates for universities because that is an audience that will represent a fairly significant lifetime value, in terms of economics and influence.
Be the guy that really understands the intersection between creativity, storytelling, and technology.
I'm really starting to understand the concept of to not question the good in your life. Never ever question the good in your life. Just accept it and be godamn grateful. Despite all the change going on, I still love life.
🎧 Prof G Markets — the Texas Stock Exchange + Is Short Selling a Dying Strategy?
Texas is now tied with New York for having a second highest number of S&P 500 companies in the state. They're both just behind California.
Hedge funds really aren't hedge funds. What they are is levered long funds.
The fact that you have people getting out of this business means that there's less people trying to borrow money, which means the interest costs on borrowing stock will go down, which Means on a risk-adjusted basis, there's gonna be more upside to shorting stock. So I would argue that this is exactly the time to think about a hedge fund or a diversified index fund that does occasionally some companies. And I would suspect that the few short funds that survive this or go into this or run into the fire are gonna overperform the market. Because as Jamie Dimon said, a recession is something that happens every seven years. It hasn't happened in 15 years and we are due.
July 16
📰 Social-Media Influencers Aren’t Getting Rich—They’re Barely Getting By via the Wall Street Journal
But money doesn’t mean big bucks. Last year, 48% of creator-earners made $15,000 or less, according to NeoReach, an influencer marketing agency. Only 13% made more than $100,000.
He recently hit a new low, receiving only $120 for a video with 10 million views.
📰 Rest Is for the Dead and Other Misconceptions About Worthiness via
“sleep when we’re dead” … was coined at the turn of the century by Warren Zevon, an American singer and songwriter.
On the other side of surrendering to my fear of slowing down is an overflow of presence, knowing, and acceptance.
🎧 A Lesson in Branding + How to Think About Trump’s Verdict — With Jessica Tarlov via Prof G Pod
Branding age is over. It's now all about the products and the supply chain. Because brand used to be the shorthand for quality but now you can Google and find exactly what you want.
📰 You’d Still Work if You Didn’t Have To by
Imagine, like many utopian philosophers do, that all of our survival and financial needs are thoroughly met and we don’t need to work if we don’t want to. What would we do? / Many have assumed the answer is enjoy more leisure. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes worried we would become bored with so much free time. “There is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread,” he said. “For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy.”
History turns on millimeters. Sometimes it is the tree that barely misses the house. Sometimes it is the tree that strikes it. A similar near-miss happened with American democracy on Friday.
📰 An Assassination Attempt for the Social Media Age by
Bespoke realities
The rise of social media and parallel decline of mainstream journalism have enabled us to create what researcher Renee DiResta calls “bespoke realities”: custom versions of the truth that reflect what we already want to believe.
🎥 I'm Taking a Break! Here's Why via Trixie Mattel
People won’t tell you to take a break
You cannot rely on people around you, who make money off you, or watch you perform, or work with you… It is not their job to tell you when it's time to take a break because that day will never come. You have to advocate and speak up for yourself. Otherwise you're not actually being a good work partner. You as a professional are more valuable to tell the room, “Hey I really need that day off to recharge.” That's a good thing. It's a good thing to have boundaries about the way you need to take care of yourself
Nobody has demanded any of this of me. I have overly demanded it of myself.
Having friends like Katya asking, “Why are you working like this? For what?”. I'd be like “Well it's a good money.” And she'd be like, “You have money.” Sometimes a friend like that just like saying something so plain like that.
Some scenarios you have to go, “If my best friend was crying like this, or was this upset, or losing weight like this, what would I say?”
July 15
📰 Dispatch From a Writing Shed by Cal Newport
Isolation doesn’t make writing easier
Writing sheds don’t make the specific cognitive act of writing easier. It’s tempting to believe that the right aesthetics will usher in the muse and transport your efforts into a time-warping flow-state. But this doesn’t happen. Writing is still hard, requiring you to marshal multiple parts of your brain to work in synchronized and focused tandem toward the impossibly demanding task of producing well-crafted sentences.
Isolation removes distractions for writing
But these sheds do seem to improve many of the general factors that surround this act. For example, they’re wonderfully effective at dampening the siren call of distraction. These rooms are used for a single purpose, so they lack the associations with other activities or interests that can so easily hijack your attention. The calming, natural environment beyond their windows also has a way of lulling the parts of your brain uninvolved in the writing task at hand into a harmless quiescence. Meanwhile, the novelty of their setting seems to lower the energy investment required to convince your brain to slip beyond its cacophonous inner-chatter and enter a deeper state more conducive to focus.
📰 Let Go by
On the movie “The Sound of Music”
“These walls were not built to shut out problems. You have to face them,” she says.
The Captain—much like Maria at the turning point in *her* journey—acknowledges that he must let go of what he thought was meant for him to make space for what is. So he ends his engagement and marries Maria instead.
📰 25 Tips for Building a Sci-Fi Backstory by
If we want our images to suggest a backstory, we need to give the viewer a lot of little visual clues to help them understand the context of the image.
Success is a dress you put on the mannequin of self-worth. Stripped of its adornment, it lays bare to what it really is. Isn’t the reason for success to feel worthy? Despite having decided that the corporate world is not for me, do I still not feel disappointed when I was overlooked for promotion? Do I not question whether I am less worthy than the others?
Joan Didion explored how true self-respect stems from personal integrity and internal validation rather than external achievements
To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth, which constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent - Joan Didion, On Self-Respect.
📰 The photo essay by
“Taking photos is my love language, and as Summer fleets by, and words seem harder to compose, I’ve found myself back in capture mode.” vs “living in the moment”
📰 ...I Don't Want You to Read This... by
My era is jobs on job sites. People in suits showing me how to wear mine better. My era is a replicant reality. Machines trained to mimic our work, our art, our music. Everything is either to impress me (...learn how to get 25,000 followers!...) or do an impression of me (...A.I. please make me an erotic Garfield…).
Is it worth it to plan a spreadsheet for that? Or to create a bucket list? Or to make generations of “generational wealth”. Let’s give our money to the poor and see what they do. I want to see generations of uneration :: untold unheard unfound unbelieved undefined unctuous unknowns
📰 Ten Tips for Better Brushstrokes by
1. Mix plenty of paint
If you prepare plenty of paint on the palette, you're more likely to use it. Sometimes a big, juicy stroke full of paint is what you need for a passage.
2. Use it thinly, too
Although thick, generous paint is attractive, also be ready to use the paint thinly and delicately. Have a tiny brush for extremely delicate details. Have a soft blender to blur out some areas. Rarely should a painting be covered equally with thick paint strokes. Variety of handling is almost always desirable.
3. Variety of brushes
Use a lot of different brushes: big ones, small ones, synthetics, natural fibers, stiff ones, soft ones, flats, filberts, new brushes, and old splayed out brushes.
4. Big brushes
Before you start painting, select a family of brushes that you expect will do the job. Five or six will often be enough for a given painting. They should range from large to small. But for any given passage, choose the biggest brush you can get away with for that passage.
5. Don't forget the painting knife
The painting knife is useful not just for mixing paint, but also for applying it.
6. Scratch through
Don't forget that you can scratch through the wet paint with the tip of your brush handle.
7. Use the edges and corners
Flat brushes are really three or four brushes in one.
8. Make every stroke count
There's no formula for good technique, but most often it comes from a sense of urgency and economy.
Great painters of the past have often been described as holding their brushes above the canvas deliberatively before going in for the stroke.
9. Better with practice
Yes, it gets better with practice. The best kind of practice is painting from living subjects in changing light, because the dynamics and risk adds more focus than you're going to get under controlled studio conditions.
Think how economical and automatic your movements are when you wash dishes or tie your shoes. That's the way you want your brushwork to be. Your brushwork should be deliberate and controlled, but occasionally wild and impetuous.
10. The test of good technique
As you paint, your ultimate goal is to think beyond the strokes, the way a race driver is thinks about the line they're taking on the turn, not about how they're holding the steering wheel.
📰 The End of Our Extremely Online Era. by
It's an addiction, no doubt. It started out, like any addiction, for the newness and excitement and thrill. But now we're in the ugly, yellow-skin, wheezing and scratching phase.
🎧 Is the Golden Age of Luxury E-Commerce Over? The Nuances of Remote Work, and How Does Scott Manage His Time? via Prof G Pod
What you really wanna be focused on, and I think this is true even if you're not an entrepreneur, is trying to zero in on what can I do really well and then trying to outsource almost everything else.
📰 my runs with the crossing guard by
[“How fully and how well am I showing up to my work each day?”] doesn’t take away from the work you’re already doing, but actually allows you to best honor it and expand it.
“Repetition is not redundancy” - Jim Finley
Bottom line, stop worrying about doing the “right roles” you’re doing and start doing your best in all your current roles.
📰 Some of the Most Beautiful People I've Seen by
The colour of our pupils is a genetic lottery, one only a few of us win. But there is no denying it; those who have won it sure are beautiful.
🎥 The PERFECT Desk Setup! from Mrwhosetheboss
Cubii Go elliptical footrest
The best one I've used. My complaint would be that it doesn't feel very high-tech with its display but it's basically silent it's super low impact on your joints. The screen lights up so you can see it clearly. The whole thing is made of nylon and is on wheels so it's super easy to move around which I do. I know it sounds excessive, like what kind of madman tries to be productive while also having a workout at the same time. The way I see it, if you just create the opportunity it will just happen naturally. You kind of use it as a footrest to start with. Then when your feet are there it's just like oh I might as well move them around a bit. Before you even know what's happened, you're in a flow state with your work you're getting loads done, your core is active, and your legs are burning an extra 150 calories per hour.
July 12
📰 The 5-Step Plan to Discover Your Niche by Team Ali Abdaal
Uncover Your Passions
Are there topics which make you lose track of time? What could you talk about for hours without getting bored?
Start by listing out 3–5 topics that genuinely interest and excite you.
Dive into Audience Interests
Use tools like Google Trends, YouTube Search Suggestions, or even Reddit to see what questions people are asking in your areas of interest. The key is to find an overlap between (your unfair advantage), and what are eager to learn, or are interested in.
Scope Out the Competition
Time to find out who’s already creating great content in this space. Watch their videos, read the comments, and look for gaps or areas where you could add real value. Remember, competition is good because it means there's already an audience. Therefore, your goal is not to avoid competition, but to find a unique way to stand out.
Craft Your Unique Angle
This is where the real magic begins. Try and think about a fresh perspective that you can bring to the table. Maybe it's your personal experience, a unique combination of topics, skills, or a different way of explaining things.
Test, Learn, and Refine
The final (and ongoing) step is to start creating, then pay attention to what resonates. Look at which videos get the most views, comments, and engagement. Then use this feedback to refine your niche over time.
Bonus points: You can come up with novel video ideas by having a look at your competition’s best performing titles and thumbnails and see how you can add your unique angle or spin.
📰 The Enshittification of Google Maps via Julia Angwin
OpenStreetMaps global budget is shockingly tiny – at just about $1 million a year. By comparison, the foundation that supports Wikipedia spent nearly $170 million in 2022.
📰 Driving Apps Like Google Maps Drive Me Crazy via Julia Angwin
We have all become so reliant on online maps that we have lost the deep knowledge that allows us to make our own calculations of an optimal route.
📰 On Feeling Foolish, the Importance of Dreams, and Respecting Others via James Clear
"One of the great mistakes in life is suffering for years because you didn't want to feel foolish for five minutes.
• You don't want to apologize, so you let a relationship deteriorate.
• You're scared of the sting of rejection, so you don't ask for what you want.
• You fear people will say your idea is dumb, so you never start the business.
Nobody likes feeling foolish, but the feeling fades quickly. The willingness to endure five minutes of discomfort turns out to be a meaningful dividing line in life."
July 11
📰 Why Do I Keep a Notebook at All? via
Didion writes things down so as not to forget. Not to forget the memories, yes, but more so not to forget the version of herself who experienced those memories.
My reason is existential. By writing the things that pop into my head down into my notebook, I teach my brain that those ideas - my ideas - are worthy of being written down at all.
📰 Credibility Inspires via
My newfound skills had spilled over to my personal and professional life outside of my coaching practice. I didn't realize coaching skills could make you a better partner, colleague, and friend.
📰 She Made $170,000+ by Being Delusionally Confident by Alice Lemee
1. Manifest Aloud. There are magazine bylines you want, clients you’d love to write for, brands you’d die to have sponsor you. Gabby has them too, but the difference is she’ll regularly share these goals in public.
2. If It’s True That’s All That Matters
“It’s about three tips that helped me earn $86,000 in my third year as a freelancer writer,” I explained. “Well, is it true you made $86,000?” Gabby asked. “Yes!” I almost shouted. “Then post the video,” she replied. “Just own it.” That’s when I had a lightbulb moment: I was afraid to share my income because I thought people might whisper about how “I should’ve made six figures” by now.
If you’re telling the truth, you’re going to help at least one person.
3. Hate is Content
Gabby will screenshot naughty comments and use them for content. It not only gets people chatting and catapults her through the algorithm, but the spotlight silences 90% of the anonymous trolls.
4. Never Pre-Reject Yourself When Gabby was a teenager, she won a grant that paid her to travel. But when she received the award the event organizer said: “It’s great that you got it. But I wish more people had applied.” Turns out barely anyone applied because they all pre-rejected themselves.
📰 No. 42: Reflections on Ten Days in Spain via
For our last show and tell (or "throw down" as we sketchbook artists call it), we used small Post-it notes to share words of encouragement and kindness. (This is something Ohn Mar learned from Emma Carlile when she attended one of her retreats.)
📰 The Double-Edged Sword of Collecting Customer Emails via
Here’s what we learned.
1. Don’t ask for an email immediately. Wait until customers are two or three pages into their journey.
2. Don’t ask for an email too close to purchase. Avoid distracting people when they are viewing product pages, or the cart.
3. Don’t ask for an email while people are browsing. Wait until they have been inactive for at least 10 seconds.
4. Don’t rely on a single approach. Use multiple methods, from pop-ups to banners to footer-based forms.
5. Offer something in return to the customer. Show them you’re reciprocating in return for their personal data.
🎧 How to Write Fearlessly via How I Write Pod, David Perell and Scott Galloway
If I have an idea for a book, I'll do some newsletters on it or some shorter posts in my newsletter as a kind of a Petri dish. And I'll do a talk. And if the talk does really well on YouTube, I know I might be on to something. So I'm able to sort of, I have the minor leagues of my books.
Scott’s writing process with team
Well, greatness is in the agency of others. A lot of people will say to me kindly, I can't get over how much content you produce. You must work around the clock. I don't. I'm at a stage in my life where I want to spend more time with family. I want to spend more time spending money instead of making it. That's why I'm in Europe. My reductive analysis after molesting the planet for 30 years is America is the best place to make money. Europe is the best place to spend it. I'm now in the spending part of my life, so we move to Europe. But I have a group of 14 people who work with me who do everything from editing to charts to graphics. And on most of my now, I will sit down with someone, give them some thoughts, give them some talking points and ask them to draft it. And I find it just so much easier when I get 1500 words. Sometimes I think I spend more time editing than I would if I'd just written it myself. It comes back just bloodied. But the next draft they do gets better and better. And I give it voice. I have different metaphors, different examples. But that first draft, or even if it's just a couple paragraphs from someone, it inspires some thinking. And it prompts me to get going. But I don't, there's very few things now that I do that other people don't touch. If you want, unless you're a genius, think there's some people who are just so amazing what they do that go into a room with a typewriter and punch out something that can change the world. I think that. 51% of what i do or the influence comes from other people. Scale, other people understand technology, other platforms, that I have quote unquote, weaponized, leveraged, used, and 49% maybe comes from me. But I now there's, there's few things I do that aren't touched and improved dramatically by someone else on the team.
The white space I am trying to fill, which is enormous in terms of voice, to be a white heterosexual male in his fifties talking openly about his emotions. I'm a 59 -year -old man that hasn't gotten over the death of my mother, right? And I say these things and I talk about how I really miss my mom and she died 20 years ago and I still get very down about it.
Scott can say [controversial things] because [he has] two huge blessings. I'm economically secure. And I have people who love me unconditionally. And I think if you have both those things, you have the privilege and obligation to speak your mind.
Humor is an incredible way of softening the beach such that you can invade with ideas. People are much more open to their ideas being challenged when you couch it in humor.
Instead of, you know, old versus young, call it incumbents versus entrance. It doesn't feel as class warfare. And it makes the point, I think, more subtly and more powerfully.
We interpret images something like 30 to 50 times faster than words because we've been interpreting images, whether it's the sun in the midday sky or drawings on cave walls. We've been doing that for hundreds of thousands of years. We've only been reading words for about, I think about seven or 800 years. So images are so much more powerful if you can get something across.
The night before [a talk], I'll just sit in my, you know, sit in a chair in bed and I'll just click through the slides. But I can do it pretty well impromptu. I don't do a lot of practice, but by the time I get on stage, I've gone through these slides 15 -20 times and really know the data. And every time I do a presentation, like the TED presentation, that's probably 8 12 weeks of someone's labor. It's probably two weeks of just someone's creative labor, and it's probably six to ten weeks of analysts going through and assembling these slides. And then we spend two weeks fact -checking it. We say this? Is this right? Well, what about this? We said this on slide 15. We QA the thing. It's a lot of time. Ted doesn't pay, but if you want to charge six plus figures for an hour talk, which I do, you've got to show up.
A decent skill is to, any time you're on a line, speak to the person in front of you and behind you. It feels good. There's supposed to be some research that releases a good hormone and you learn how to open. And I think one of the keys is learning how to open, like how to start.
July 10
📰 Love Myself? Knowing What I Know? via
What makes self-loathing go away?
Trigger Warning: what I’m about to write next is so sappy, so self-helpy, so optimistic that I nearly barfed on my computer when reading it back while editing. Ok here it is.
Self acceptance.
I know. What the fuck.
📰 Sketching in Watercolour Standing Up via Liz Steel
Sketching standing up is a game-changer!
If you can sketch standing up with minimum gear setting up (eg. setting out a support board), you can more easily sketch anywhere at any time.
setup photo on blog post: cup propped on watercolor tin. One handed watercolor tin & sketchbook.
July 9
🎥 How I Got the Strongest I've Ever Been at 36 Years Old via Matt D’Avella
There's optimal and then there's practical.
A lot of people you know look at a program and they say I can't do that so therefore I'm not going to do it. No, that's as optimal, now let's think about what's practical for you. We need to always compromise and make sure 1) you can do it, and 2) you're going to enjoy it. You need to enjoy your training. If you don't enjoy it, you're not going to stick to it.
🎧 The Road to Healthier & Longer Lives — With Andrew Scott via Prof G Pod
New York waffle spot: Jack’s Wife Freda
Greeks put university outside the city centre so people can say provocative things
If you are a graduating college student, you have so much agency. Economically sure it's hard to be a baller but it's less hard than it was 30 years ago bc we don't need permission to upload videos on YouTube or move to another country or marry your same-sex partner. We have agency.
There's a great quote by the Greek poet Pindall, which says, the point of life is to become who you are having to discover what that is.
When mothers speak to their daughters, when they text them, their blood pressure would go up. Then when mothers call their daughters and they hear their voice, their blood pressure goes down.
📰 Treating Childhood Anxiety With a Mega-Dose of Independence via
Why doesn’t anxiety stay away once we’ve temporarily banished it? Because it was evolutionarily advantageous for anxious thoughts to return.
[Anxiety] only “care” about your survival, not whether the ride is pleasant
Holding onto a fear is annoying, but it increases survivability.
Clinicians who are skilled at delivering exposure therapy will work with kids (and their parents) to devise “approach” tasks where kids must repeatedly face their fears.
📰 Maybe You Need to Have More Fun via
Rarely in our day-to-day lives do we get so excited that we are crying with our best friends, grabbing each other by the shoulders as we jump up and down with glitter on our faces screaming “WOOOOO!!!!!”
French philosopher Henri Bergson. In his 1900 essay, "Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic," he explored what happens to us when we attend a comic performance in a crowded theater, and why we don’t respond with the same joy in our day-to-day lives. “The comic spirit has a logic of its own, even in its wildest eccentricities,” he said. “It conjures up, in its dreams, visions that are at once accepted and understood by the whole of a social group. Can it then fail to throw light for us on the way that human imagination works, and more particularly social, collective, and popular imagination?”
I read a lot of philosophy, I don’t spend time on social media or watch TV, but I am listless. I’m not eating enough cheesecake or drinking enough champagne. I’m not staying out late with friends. Sometimes I need to be shaken from my slumber with loud music, loud laughter, a roller skating party at the park, fantasy books only.
🎧 “Possible” by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger Featuring Kara Swisher
Small media businesses that are doing really well:
Kara Swisher
Platformer
Puck
Heather Cox Richardson makes $5m revenue. A woman typing away in Maine. 2 people business.
How to raise boys? Lesbians should raise all the boys. But also - Kindness.
📰 Letters From Esther: Introducing the Arc of Love - Esther Perel
Anyone grappling with the profound loss of a spouse will find a beacon of hope and peace in Warren Kozack’s new book Waving Goodbye: Life After Loss. I highly recommend this personal and accessible guide to navigating the labyrinth of grief. It offers solace and insight from a place of deep understanding.
📰 How Stocks Became the Game That Record Numbers of Americans Are Playing via Claire Ballentine (Bloomberg)
Members of Generation Z start investing when they’re 19, on average, according to a Charles Schwab Corp. survey released in June.
That compares with 32 for Gen X and 35 for baby boomers. Schwab also found that almost 3 in 5 Americans today are investing in stocks.
Despite all the fanfare over options and single-stock trading, if you just bought an S&P 500 index fund five years ago, reinvesting dividends, you’d have doubled your money after earning an average annual return of 15%. Research shows that investors, both professional and amateur, are better off sticking with a diversified portfolio for the long term and that rapid trading tends to lead to painful losses.
Regulators are concerned that brokerages are gamifying trading in a way that lures people into betting more and more money.
To understand the changes in stock trading, consider the process of buying equities a few decades ago. Say you heard your friends talking about a promising public company that was selling for $50 a share. You would’ve had to call your stockbroker and customarily would’ve asked to buy a round lot of 100 shares for $5,000. To put together a reasonably diversified portfolio of 20 companies that way, you’d need $100,000.
🎧 Prof G Markets — Nvidia’s Blowout Earnings & Stock Split + Britain’s Damaged Economy
Ed Elson: in the UK there's two grades - attainment (effort) & achievement. A1 is a hardworking person achieving 100% grade. But the best grade is E1 - achieving 100% with no effort. Boris Johnson is the most E1 person ever.
July 8
🎥 Leica M6 vs. Mamiya 7ii via Joe Greer
[Used the film stock] Fuji Pro 400h and all my friends at shoot that stock told me to overexpose like a mother so that's exactly what I did. I decided to over expose a lot of these frames almost all of them at least 2 to 3 stops and was super stoked with the results. I did a little post-production work.
🎧 Scarlett vs. OpenAI, Nvidia's Numbers, and Guest Julia Angwin - Pivot Pod
In the alcohol industry, 10% of customers are responsible for 70-80% of the volume of purchases
Good column from Julia that Kara read out: AI models are relegated through some mediocre work. They may have to compete on price rather than quality which is never good for profit margins says Jeremy Gratham (?)... The greatest question - should we as a society be investing tens of billions of dollars, our precious electricity to be used towards moving away from fossil fuels ... on incremental improvements on mediocre email writing?
Julia Angwin has opinion column in NYT
📰 My Creative Journey via
I’ve invited Camelo, quality control manager for Camilo, Inc., into the boardroom of my mind. He wears a hard hat and a musketeer mustache. Implacable and surly. And he tells me that the next thing I write has to be better than the previous one, and so on and so forth.
This is the creative journey. You sail stormy seas, but you know that it is only by looking up at the sky and seeing your North Star that you’ll be able to traverse without sinking.
🎧 The Goldilocks Economy & the Biggest Risk to the Market Right Now — With Josh Brown - Prof G Markets
Career advice: ask your manager, what's the worst 10% of your job? Then do it. Then ask for the next 10%. Once you're doing the worst 20% of someone's job, you're indispensable
July 6
David Ignatius: Before Henry Kissinger died, he was really worried about how AI can be used for warfare
July 5
🎧 Market Milestone, Alito Flag Fail, and OpenAI Drama - Pivot Pod
Scott: indices like Dow Jones & S&P create a false flag and a misdirect that the economy is doing really well. Only 10% - some people think it's closer to 1% - of people in America own 80-90% of the stock. So when the Dow is doing well, the rich are doing well. Spoiler.
CNN article: The trick to keeping the Simpsons relevant and exciting all these years later is to keep the show's tremendous legacy out of their minds as much as possible.
Scott: first season mindset
📰 Feedback Is Not a Gift. via
If I could go back and give my younger self some advice, I’d say that delivering high quality feedback is a muscle that can be grown and a habit that can be built. I’d tell myself to think of it as being part of my daily routine as opposed to a noble act of going above and beyond.
🎥 Fall Plein Air With Holbein Irodori Gouache via Judd Mercer
All of that in the background needs to read more or less as one one value cuz it's it's all a setup for what's in the foreground
🎥 How to Think About Setting Goals as a Painter or Artist via Judd Mercer
Had a goal of plein air-ing 100 paintings before a convention. Every Sunday prep palette etc. Go out painting 2x a week. Scout locations on Google Maps. Paint 6x8 on Strathmore Toned Tan Mixed Media
Goals can sort of act like like a coach or a trainer. A boxer has a trainer that pushes them and gets them to do things that they might not do. A writer has an editor. An artist might have work with a gallery or an art coach or a mentor.
A goal can work in the same way where it's setting up constraints for you. You have to push against those constraints it takes a little bit of discipline to be able to not cheat on that goal but it can be a good way to build yourself a little box.
🎧 OpenAI's New Model, Presidential Debates, and EV Tariffs - Pivot Pod
Scott: Butler economy in the UK - make money by servicing wealth that was created elsewhere e.g. restaurants, wealth management
Kara regrets not teaching her boys about the markets earlier, e.g. buying stock.
for a future essay: when I was like 10, my dad gave me 100,000 to invest in stock. He also bought a subscription to Bisnis Indonesia. Every single morning I would open up the papers to check the price of the brick/cement company I "owned".
What separates people who are really wealthy vs just wealthy is it's a whole person project. Really wealthy people put rooms of opportunities even when they're not there. Make small gestures of kindness and generosity to people. But it's powerful for allies to fight for you even when you're not in the room. Any opportunity to be kind or do someone a solid, do it. It's an investment in your own future.
Send children to public school (vs private) and invest the tuition difference.
On private vs public school.
Do the math. Instead of paying for that private school (which we hope will lead to more professional success but is no guarantee), pick a school that's closest to your house instead. Invest all the extra commute time into sleep, quality time, etc. Put the difference in $$ into a low-cost ETF. If they end up not professionally successful, that money will ease the pain.
Kara's daughter Clara is going to a public school because of this. And she's gonna set aside that difference in tuition for Clara.
📰 Starting the Day in Black and White via
There's no better way to learn about painting than to capture a still life using nothing but black and white.
Prime sketch with yellow-ochre
📰 Dua’s Monthly Read for July - Dua Lipa via Service95
Like many people my age, I was partly raised by Malorie Blackman. She creates worlds you want to carry with you and each of her stories encourage young readers to ask the important questions in life.
Noughts & Crosses is my absolute favourite of her books. I remember devouring each book in the series as they came out in the early 2000s, desperate for the next instalment. Part of the reason it is so enduring is because while it is written for young adults, it is still a brazenly political read.It was my first step to understanding racism and classism, opening the door for questions that are just starting to form in young minds – which is why I’m so excited to share that it’s my Monthly Read for July. I hope you find it as pacey, romantic, tortured and enlightening as I did.
📰 3-2-1: On the Hidden Costs of Success, How to Deal With Challenges, and the Joy of Shared Experiences via James Clear
"I'm not the best writer, but it is a strength. I might be a 90th percentile writer. And I'm not the best marketer, but it is a strength. Again, maybe 90th percentile? I'm better than most, but if you pass 100 people on the street it won't be hard to find some people better than me. What I have gradually learned is that it is not your strengths, but your combination of strengths that sets you apart. It is the fact that writing and marketing are mutually reinforcing—and that I enjoy both—that leads to great results. How can you combine your strength? That's something I would encourage everyone to think about. You will find talented people in every area of life. It's the combinations that are rare."
It's easy to want the public rewards, but also have to want the hidden costs."
July 4
🎧 Break Up, Stay Together, or Cheat? from Staying Up with Cammie and
Maybe you and your partner are not at 100. Maybe one is at 20 and one is at 60. So that doesn't amount to 100. So there's actions that can be taken, like apologizing to son for not being able to bring them to a sports thing bc "your dad and I are busy and can't rework our schedules" or "we're gonna be too tired to cook this week but let's freeze everything in the fridge so we don't lose the food".
July 3
🎧 Apple’s ChatGPT Deal, Uber Earnings, and Guest Adam Moss - Pivot Pod
Kara: Every single person who has the audacity and arrogance to run for something or be CEO should accept scrutiny.
Scott & Kara recommendation: NYT should take DealBook and spin it to be a Bloomberg competitor
Book: Adam Moss - The Work of Art
The book is a series of narrative case studies of the evolution of a single song or a single poem or a single play. Artists confronted with the question: How did I do this?
Kara looks at poet Louise Glück as an inspiration.
🎥 Therapist Reacts to INSIDE OUT 2 From INSIDE Pixar
Attachment theory
I can already tell you, Alan, when we do our episode on the full movie, we're going to talk a ton about attachment theory, because at the beginning, Riley is very securely attached.
Joy as a parent emotion
there's a big parental aspect to Joy as the main character
We can't judge emotions or at least we ought not to, because they just exist for us to say, Okay, what is this meant to be telling me
Puberty emotions
My daughter, who's 13, turning 14 this year, and I cannot count the number of times in the past few months she's come back after a particularly explosive interaction with me or anybody else and said, I'm sorry. My hormones are just really difficult to handle right now.
Emotions as a superpower
We had the conversation with her about, This is what's going on. So if things feel more intense than normal... Because what happens is then she feels, I'm the worst person ever. And it's like, no, this is... Like, it's your super powers. Jono: The super powers of adulthood are rushing in.
When Anxiety took out the ‘sense of self’
Just the idea that you could so quickly jettison your entire sense of self, who you are, to fit in socially and to alleviate your anxiety.
Emotions are good
It's important that all of her emotions are doing this out of love for Riley and trying to protect her.
Being less happy as an adult
I scanned all of my photos and as I was dating them, I came across a photo of me when I was five years old, and it was my birthday, and I stopped me in my tracks because I had this huge smile on my face and I'm like, Wow, I am so happy. It's not some random day. It was my birthday and it's a day to celebrate who I am. I was totally in with doing that. Then I looked at when I turned eight and you can see my smile fade, and then 11 and it fades more, and then 13, and I'm just staring at the cake, and I look miserable. I absolutely hated being sung Happy Birthday to at that age. I hated all the attention. I hated everyone staring at me.
What happens at that age, you suddenly become self-conscious and really self-aware. I started to look at myself and see nothing but flaws. I was thinking, am I...? Am I really worth all this celebrating?
July 2
Streaming market as a way to understand economics
Promise of the future attracts way too much capital. An unbelievable, the overinvestment results in an unbelievable, but unsustainable consumer value proposition grows the market substantially. But unless you have cheap capital, you can't keep up. So Netflix just basically use capital as a weapon. Outspent everybody. And then all of a sudden, the market said, okay, fun time's over. We're not just going to give you money to acquire customers. You have to show that this is economically viable. The company begins to modulate and consolidate. It's consolidating everybody. But kind of the big two or three is looking for a dance partner real fast. They're either going to go out of business or they're going to sell to someone else. And Netflix is not only cut its content budget. It's raised prices, which creates cloud cover for the other survivors to raise prices. And you're seeing the market just modulate, but it's just fascinating that these companies are basically now distressed assets. If you look at their multiple, Disney still trades a decent multiple on EBITDA. But people are sort of looking at Warner Brothers as if it's going out of business.
🎧 TikTok Lawsuit, Reddit's Debut Earnings, and the 4-Day Work Week - Pivot Pod
Top 1% income earners in the US is $760,000/year
🎧 Conversation With Rex Chapman — Facing Your Demons & the Road to Recovery - Prof G Pod
Rex Chapman: Every athlete is one wrong step away from never playing again.
The most powerful way to get someone to open up is to open up yourself. “I’m fine but I’m really struggling with my youngest and it’s putting a real strain on our marriage” or “I’m worried about money” or “I’m really disappointed that everyone’s making money on investments but I’m not and it’s really taking a mental toll on me.”
July 1
🎧 Tesla Layoffs, Amazon Earnings, and Walmart Closes Health Centers - Pivot Pod
CEO typically comes from the leader of the best-operating unit. In Goldman about 10-15 years ago crowned a CEO from trading and not investment banking - Lloyd -- and that had never happened before. I wouldn't be surprised if the next one comes from wealth management
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wow! what a compilation! thanks for sharing 💗
Saving this one to read all your recs ❤️⭐️🫶