⌛ Masters of Control (Dwarkesh Podcast)
Robert Moses was an idealist who built power in order to achieve his ideals. LBJ was into power for its own right and embraced ideals as a means to get there. They both teach master classes in institutional control through subtle and distributed means. Controlling the agenda is a source of power.
🦅 Skipping the Unity Breakfast (Wake Up To Politics)
Split tickets used to be relatively common until the 1990s. Team unity won the war; primary losers would endorse primary winners at the unity breakfast and the party marched on. This time feels different. The unity breakfasts are now general election launch events. Tickets might be split again.
🙋♂️ What Men Want (Of Boys and Men)
Young men have become America’s swing voters. They want to be heard. They want jobs, inflation under control and corruption addressed. Mental health is a concern. As is the lack of the ability to save for the future. Sound familiar?
🚌 Bring on Driverless School Buses (Changing Lanes)
School bus drivers are in short supply. The credentials required are expensive. If you do have them, you can get paid a lot more driving for companies. Driverless school buses might be the solution. The different economics could make them better and cheaper than the current regime.
🧠 Overcoming Task Paralysis (Psyche)
Task paralysis is not a form of procrastination. It is being unable to start the thing you actually want to get done. Here is a practical guide for using Goal Management Training to defeat the task paralysis monster. Shrinking the first step is a start.
🪤 Beware The Prestige Trap (Young Money by Jack Raines)
For thirty years there was a very safe trail blazed. It ran from your elite school, through banking and into private equity. The game is changing; the macro spread is working against private equity. AI is eating the technical edge. Those long hours are not going to map to a juicy partnership by default.
🤖 We Bots Like Rosie (Infrastory)
Unpaid labor does not directly show up in the GDP. It has huge effects; the time you spend doing housework and taking care of needs effectively disappears. We don’t need a chatbot that can draw, we need something that can do dishes. Something like Rosie from the Jetsons.
⚾ Small Market New Moneyball (Neil’s Substack)
Milwaukee is one of the smallest markets in MLB. In a sport where local market size advantages provide the Yankees and Dodgers with effectively unlimited luxury tax money, small market teams need every advantage they can get. The Brewers found it by replacing stars frequently, while focusing on defense, bullpen and getting the ball into play.
🎮 Your Game Developer Vibes (Simon Willison)
Claude is magical and one of its best tricks is building video game experiences. Developer Simon Willison explores what is now possible with a few prompts. Open source game libraries give the tools a strong baseline. How well Claude creates the game loop is remarkable. This is definitely worth a try if you have the tokens.
✈️ The End of the Mobile Lounge (Airport Architecture)
Mobile lounges might be the coolest part of flying through Dulles. Driving alongside jumbo jets is always going to be better than a sterile tunnel. Unfortunately, it looks like the plan is for a sterile tunnel.
🍷 Every Vintage of the Century (EVERYDAY DRINKING)
If everything is Vintage of the Century, nothing is Vintage of the Century.
👍 Facebook is Actually a Necropolis (Andy Might)
I did not connect the dots myself, but Facebook actually does feel like a casino at 9am.
The Look
Gallup finds that people trust state and local governments much more than the Federal Government.
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