This week’s highlights: Life Auditing, Ad-Fraud, and Running
Fifteen on Friday – Issue 335
Food for Thought:
Top Read(s) of the Week: NYT – The Surprising Benefits of Relentlessly Auditing Your Life
Why It Matters: “We tend to think that good marriages and happy families are born of love and care, not spreadsheets. But what if that’s wrong?”
Consider as well:
- TheAtlantic – The Adults Who Treat Reading Like Homework Not sure I see the problem here – “No one’s making them try to read 100 books a year.”
- NewYorker – How Football Leaks Is Exposing Corruption in European Soccer While Rui Pinto sits in jail, his revelations are bringing down the sport’s most famous teams and players.
- BecMin – Please Stop Buying Plastic Crap for Kids Toys are notoriously hard to recycle. That means nearly every plastic toy ever manufactured now lives in a landfill somewhere. Take a moment to visualize that.
- LifeHacker – Create a ‘Noticing Wall’ for Your Kid
Business/Economics:
Top Read of the Week: FastCo – How the No.1 most creative person in business this year led the FBI to its biggest ad-fraud bust ever
Why It Matters: The complexity behind the scenes of online advertising is breath-taking. Blend that with criminals trying to take advantage of the system and the software company trying to stop them and you’ve got a really interesting story.
Consider as well:
- VanityFair – Can J. Crew Find Itself—and Its Customers—Again?
- BusinessWeek – The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich Thirty-two-year-old French economist Gabriel Zucman scours spreadsheets to find secret offshore accounts.
- II – Private Equity Drove Two Canadians Crazy. At BlackRock, They’re Trying to Fix It. The world’s largest asset manager closes in on a potentially seminal deal.
- Jalopnik – Pogo Stick Sharing Micro Mobility Startup Cangoroo Is Truly Beyond the Pale
Culture/Tech/Science:
Top Read of the Week: Outside – One Man’s Pointless Attempt to Rule a Strava Segment
Why It Matters: One writer sacrificed (not even close to) everything to get to the top of the leaderboard.
Consider as well:
- Verge – Metadata is the biggest little problem plaguing the music industry It’s a crisis that has left, by some estimations, billions on the table unpaid to musicians
- GearPatrol – Counterpoint: In Praise of the One-Watch Collection Not long ago I realized I am surrounded by collectors.
- Science – Researchers strapped video cameras on 16 cats and let them do their thing.
- NYT – Fish Cannons, Koi Herpes and Other Tools to Combat Invasive Carp Researchers are experimenting with a Rube Goldberg-esque mix of tactics to control hearty, nonnative swimmers that re-engineer nutrient-rich Midwest waters.