Hey Everyone,
Welcome back to The Chomp—your weekly dose of the best content from the internet and beyond, designed to expand your mind and get you thinking. Let’s dive into it.
Quick Bites
Shared Objective Reality: “When humans share an understanding of how things are objectively, we’re able to make enormous progress, because this objective reality is consistent.” On the contrary, much of our life is driven by shared cultural reality, which is when ‘we’ all agree on something—such as brides wearing white for their wedding. While shared cultural reality is integral to the human experience, divisions over this cultural reality are getting worse. This quick piece from author Seth Godin dives into the overlap between our objective and cultural realities and why it’s important not to confuse them. (2 min)
Why Do Such Elderly People Run America? When the next inaugural presidential address takes place in January 2021 the three people most likely to be the next president—Biden, Sanders, and the incumbent, Donald Trump—would each be the oldest president to ever give an inaugural address in American history. In congress, the average age is near an all-time high. The House speaker, House majority leader, House majority whip, and Senate majority leader are all over 75. To put it bluntly, American leadership is as old af. This recent piece in The Atlantic is an eye-opener into how America is becoming a gerontocracy and what that could mean for our future. (6 min)
Deeper Dives
The Deployment Age: I recently came across Jerry Neumann’s 2015 talk on Carlotta Perez’s theory on the path of technological revolution, and I can’t stop thinking about it. This post on Neumann’s blog includes the full text and slides of his talk as well as additional sidenotes expanding on his comments. The jury is still out on the validity of Perez’s theory, yet it’s incredibly helpful context to have for thinking through where we are in the current phase of our technological advance. Despite the talk being five years old, it’s still remarkably applicable and worth exploring further. (27 min)
The Business Equation: Every business can be distilled into a simple equation. While the equation for a large complex company like Apple or Microsoft might be more quantitative than a five-person investment group like Benchmark, it doesn’t need to be more complicated. This post from VC Brett Bivens dives into the three most important criteria for a successful business equation and provides useful examples of their successful implementation. (12 min)
Media
The Knowledge Project #27 Chris Voss: The Art of Letting Other People Have Your Way: Chris Voss has become one of the world’s foremost authorities on negotiation in recent years following the massive success of his book Never Split the Difference. I read the book shortly after it came out and it’s had a huge influence on how I now approach negotiations. In this podcast, Chris walks through many of the major ideas he covers in the book as well as several additional insights on negotiating and decision making. Highly recommended.
Tweet of the Week
Song of the Week
Apple Music Link
Books
Currently Reading
Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age (Stephen Platt)
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Robert A. Caro)
This is a 1,344-page behemoth that I’m steadily making my way through. Excited to share my thoughts when I finish in the next couple of weeks.
Recently Read
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (Robert Pirsig): This book is a gold mine of philosophical quips and metaphors, but it’s not always easy to get through. You need to be focusing to extract the full value of the ideas that Pirsig presents, and if you’re even the slightest bit distracted you’ll find yourself constantly having to go back and reread what you just read. Even when you are fully focused, it’s still helpful to reread much of his writing to ensure you’re capturing the full breadth of his thoughts. That being said, this one is a modern-day classic for a reason and it’s well deserving of that status. (4.5/5)
Parting Thoughts
This Week in History
On March, 5th 2010, check-in app Burbn raised $500,000 in its first financing. Seven months later, Burbn pivoted and launched a new app called Instagram. 18 months after that, Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion. (Source)
“Positioning doesn't just ensure survival, it affords you the opportunity to periodically take advantage of chaos. Positioning means you're always ready for what's next." — Shane Parrish
If you found something that piqued your interest this week, please help me out in expanding the reach of The Chomp by forwarding it along to a friend or sharing it with others in your network. Until next week.
-Cody