This week’s highlights:  Why We Re-Read, Rockefeller’s Rolodex, and Barbie Jeep Racing.

Fifteen on Friday – 12/08/17 – Issue 264

Food for Thought:

1. FRR – How Facebook’s VP of Product Finds Focus and Creates Conditions for Intentional Work.  This is a great example of the level of intentionality required to manage your calendar in the current workforce.
2. Bacon – Why We Read (and Re-Read).  Heraclitus said that no man steps into the same river twice.  A young(er) Peter Taylor guest posts with a thoughtful reflection on re-reading and the passage of time.
3. NewYorker – Where the Small-Town American Dream Lives On.  As America’s rural communities stagnate, what can we learn from one that hasn’t?
4. WashPo – His class is famously tough. ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Westworld’ wouldn’t exist without it.
5. TheSun – Mom shares her six-year-old son’s VERY disgruntled letter to Santa

Business/Economics:

1. WSJ – David Rockefeller’s Rolodex Was the Stuff of Legend. Here’s a First Peek. The Bank executive met with nearly every world leader for 50 years, filled out some 200,000 note cards.  The WSJ’s paywall has gotten much more difficult to access, so apologies if you can’t access this one – it is a real gem.
2. NYT – The Great American Single-Family Home Problem.  Building more housing, more densely, could help address a widespread economic challenge. A fight over one lot in Berkeley, Calif., shows how tough that could be.
3. NYT – The Hidden Player Spurring a Wave of Cheap Consumer Devices: Amazon
4. TechCrunch – There’s an implosion of early-stage VC funding, and no one’s talking about it
5. GOI – What Most Investors Are Trying to Do

Culture/Tech/Science:

1. CN – On the Complicated Economics of Attention Capital
2. Economist – Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago
3. MNN – Spider drinks graphene, spins web that can hold the weight of a human – The webbing was on par with bulletproof Kevlar in strength.
4. Jalopnik – Extreme Barbie Jeep Racing Is The Real Pinnacle Of Racing
5. Vox – How cosmic rays revealed a new, mysterious void inside the Great Pyramid