Hey there — hope you have a great week!
What has been the best piece of content you have consumed recently?
Hit reply to this email and let me know!
Enjoy the newsletter.
Articles to Read.
Q: What do you call someone who knows three languages?
A: Trilingual
Q: What do you call someone who knows two languages?
A: Bilingual
Q: What do you call someone who knows just one language?
A: An American
Native speakers of English (or those who already know it well, if not natively), shouldn’t waste their time learning a second (natural) language at all, but instead, those English-speakers should spend their time learning the only true permanent global language: Math.
Now, I realize that this is an extraordinary suggestion, and that extraordinary suggestions require extraordinary support. I’ve already demonstrated that one doesn’t really need to learn any language other than English in order to participate in the modern technical world.
—
$1,500 Sandwich Illustrates How Trade Raises Living Standards
What would life be like without exchange or trade? Recently, a man decided to make a sandwich from scratch. He grew the vegetables, gathered salt from seawater, milked a cow, turned the milk into cheese, pickled a cucumber in a jar, ground his own flour from wheat to make the bread, collected his own honey, and personally killed a chicken for its meat. This month, he published the results of his endeavor in an enlightening video: making a sandwich entirely by himself cost him 6 months of his life and set him back $1,500 (It should be noted that he used air transportation to get to the ocean to gather salt. If he had taken it upon himself to learn to build and fly a plane, then his endeavor would have proved impossible).
The inefficiency of making even something as humble as a sandwich by oneself, without the benefits of market exchange, is simply mind-boggling. There was a time when everyone grew their own food and made their own clothes. It was a time of unimaginable poverty and labor without rest.
—
The maskification of American skin care has happened during an unprecedented boom for the face-goop industry as a whole, both in the United States and beyond. In 2018, Americans spent more than $5 billion on high-end skin care, according to one estimate—13 percent more than the year before. The global skin-care market is projected to expand by more than 4 percent through 2025, and face-mask sales are expected to grow at almost two and a half times that rate.
—
Why So Many of Us Don’t Lose Weight When We Exercise
People hoping to lose weight with exercise often wind up being their own worst enemies, according to the latest, large-scale study of workouts, weight loss and their frustrating interaction. The study, which carefully tracked how much people ate and moved after starting to exercise, found that many of them failed to lose or even gained weight while exercising, because they also reflexively changed their lives in other, subtle ways.
But not by moving less, the scientists found. Almost everyone’s activity-monitor readouts had remained steady. Instead, the exercisers were eating more, other measurements and calculations showed. The extra calories were slight — about 90 additional calories each day for the some-exercise group, and 125 a day for the most-exercise set. But this noshing was sufficient to undercut weight loss.
—
The Knight of Apple’s Old Republic
Following the passing of Steve Jobs in 2011, Ive was effectively made an “untouchable” at Apple. While Jobs may have wanted to ensure that Tim Cook didn’t just try to mimic what he would do as the new CEO of the company, he seemingly made it clear that Ive was now the de facto soul of the company and could be trusted to continue at least some semblance of the vision, because he and Jobs saw eye-to-eye on so much.
This situation worked well for a time. Tim Cook did what Tim Cook had always done: execute.
Things hit a bit of a snag when Apple decided it needed to ditch Google and go it alone in mapping. This was an unmitigated disaster. At the same time, behind the scenes, it seemed that a battle was brewing between Ive and Scott Forstall — Jobs’ other chosen son. The software yang to Ive’s hardware yin.
—
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
The economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote, “Faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.”
Leo Tolstoy was even bolder: “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
What's going on here? Why don't facts change our minds? And why would someone continue to believe a false or inaccurate idea anyway? How do such behaviors serve us?
—
After striking out in extravagant and embarrassing fashion during NBA free agency, James Dolan must sell the New York Knicks and then go for a long walk.
I am trying to find empathy for an impossible feeling. Dolan is the biggest and perhaps the only reason the New York Knicks did not acquire a single superstar free agent during the rowdiest and most exciting offseason in the NBA’s history, which featured more marquee players and more movement than ever before. During a six-month period in which Kevin Durant’s arrival in New York felt inevitable—with Kyrie Irving and maybe even Zion Williamson in tow—fan expectations grew to ludicrous, unhealthy proportions. This was the contact high of hope, invisible but mind-altering. Today is the hangover.
┄
More to Check Out:
- When Myspace Was King, Employees Abused a Tool Called ‘Overlord’ to Spy
- A Vanderbilt baseball star’s remarkable road to the College World Series
- Oyo Has Remade India’s Hotel Business. Now It Is Going Global.
- How One VC Firm Amassed a 24% Stake in Slack Worth $4.6 Billion
- 'Football pitch' of Amazon forest lost every minute
My Update.
Time is flying. Heads down working more than I have ever worked on anything in my entire life. I think you are going to find it interesting, will have more to share soon.
Hope you enjoyed the newsletter & hope you are happy in general. Reach out if I can help with anything.
Thanks so much for reading! Find me on twitter : )