This week’s highlights: Meet Liz, TV Streaming, and Fake Handbags
Happy Friday
A word of welcome to a bunch of new subscribers, and a special thanks to long-time subscriber Aman B for the kind endorsement on the socials. For those who are new, just a bit of orientation.
Fifteen on Friday (FoF) is a generalist curation of articles across a wide range of subject matters. The feedback I consistently hear from readers is that no one will read every article, but that they consistently find 2 – 3 that they hadn’t seen before. We all have our favorites who go deep on a single subject – this is the wide piece to keep you well rounded. You don’t skip leg day at the gym, same thought here. The common thread across the articles is a good faith effort to understand and live thoughtfully in this rapidly changing world.
Original Content this week:
- Books Read During Q1’23 – I’m a few weeks late on this, but here is a snapshot of the 9 books I read during Q1.
Cheers,
David
Topic of the Week
- NYT – Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth. This one is fantastic – “The black turtlenecks are gone. So is the voice. As the convicted Theranos founder awaits prison, she has adopted a new persona: devoted mother.”
- Curbed – Spiraling in San Francisco’s Doom Loop. What it’s like to live in a city that no longer believes its problems can be fixed.
- NYT – Ted Lasso, Holy Fool. Ted Lasso is another kind of religious archetype: a modern-day holy fool. The holy fool, or yurodivy (also spelled iurodivyi), is a well-known, though controversial, character in Russian Orthodox spirituality.
- C&S – We Interviewed Deepfake Tom Cruise. Miles Fisher aka DeepTomCruise has amassed a following on TikTok of 5.2 million people using ai to deepfake as the actor. Along the way he’s built a company Metaphysics that’s ushering in the future of storytelling and another company, Bixby coffee, responsible for Emma Chamberlain’s coffee company.
- IFS – Homeschooling Boys. Is part of the problem faced by boys not precisely maturity, but rather the inability of most schools to accommodate little boys’ need to run, skip, and climb?
Other Great Reads
- Price Point – TV Questions Asked of TV Companies. Let’s take a look at those TV questions today for all the streamers in a way that most entertainment journalists I find tend to avoid — how’s the TV? And what do each company’s TV choices suggest about their direction?
- RogerMartin – A Dangerous Schism. Your Strategy Course is Utterly Inconsistent with your Statistics Course
- II – How Sam Bankman-Fried Peddled a Story Everyone Wanted to Believe
- WSJ – Warren Buffett’s Formula for Success: One Good Decision Every Five Years
- ForeignPolicy – The World Economy No Longer Needs Russia
Others…
- NYT – Inside the Delirious Rise of ‘Superfake’ Handbags. Can you tell the difference between a $10,000 Chanel bag and a $200 knockoff? Almost nobody can, and it’s turning luxury fashion upside down.
- Ringer – The King in the Endgame. Magnus Carlsen’s legacy is still being written
- A16Z – Navigating the High Cost of AI Compute
- WSJ – The Houses Must Be White, and the Designs Preapproved. Everybody Wants In. – This isn’t new news for those of us in the Southeast – Demand for property in Alys Beach, a planned community on Florida’s Panhandle, has soared over the past few years—even if there are a lot of rules
- BigThink – Want antifragile kids? Get out of their way. Kids are more anxious and depressed than ever. Is identity politics to blame?…We call that common enemy identity politics. The more we encourage people to see the people around them as good versus evil, the harder it’s gonna be to create an an inclusive, diverse environment.
My Book:
When Anything is Possible – Wealth and the Art of Strategic Living
- Does how you handle your wealth actually align with what you care most about in the world?
- Do you feel like you are pro-active and intentional with your financial affairs or entirely reactive to a busy world?
Growing financial wealth is a natural occurrence on the path to success. While this should make life easier, that is not always the case. With greater wealth, comes great opportunity and an overwhelming number of choices to make.
When Anything is Possible is the guidebook about how to engage strategically with wealth. It will help you change your wealth from something overwhelming and all-consuming towards a resource to be deployed to help you positively impact the things that you value most.
If you are interested in learning more, visit here and download a free chapter.