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
America’s Restaurants Will Need a Miracle: “Restaurants in a pandemic are like beachfront properties in a hurricane. Their devastation is both a tragedy and an omen of greater havoc to come.” It’s no secret that restaurants—and many local businesses—are dealing with incredible hardships as a result of COVID-19. This piece from The Atlantic offers some perspective into the reality of the situation and what it will take to get many of the restaurants suffering back on their feet when the pandemic subsides. (4 min)
Why Are We so Slow Today?: “We used to do things fast…Tegel Airport was built in 92 days in 1948 to support the Berlin Airlift. The Empire State Building took 410 days to construct. The 1,700-mile Alaska Highway was built in 234 days.” It’s incredible to look back in time and see how quickly many of the world’s most impressive structures were built before the latter half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, today’s pace of construction happens at a snail’s pace despite vast increases in technological capabilities. The main culprit: bureaucracy. This fascinating piece peels back the curtain on how much of this unnecessary bureaucracy functions and what can be done to fix it. (7 min)
Deeper Dives
Blizzard, Winter, or Ice Age: “Blizzards are defined by extreme volatility and uncertainty—and we’ve had historic amounts of both since February 20th. I believe that to survive a blizzard you must focus on placing each foot in front of the other. Executing your plan or process, reigning in leverage (if applicable), and avoiding blunders in the confusion.” While I don’t endorse anything in this article as investment advice, I think this is a really strong analysis from Patrick O’Shaughnessy at OSAM of what we’re seeing in markets at the moment, and what we might expect to see in the coming months. (10 min)
The Creation and the Myth of Kanye West: “When I mentioned one evening this February, as we walked across his office, that he is obviously ambitious, West halted midstride. “I do not like the word ambitious. I’m Kanye West. The word ambitious is beneath my abilities,” he said. “I’m just a doer.” He added, “You can see in my eyes there’s not one bit of fear.” Kanye West is an enigma. He’s polarizing and erratic, yet undeniably one of the greatest musical talents of our generation. This enthralling feature in the WSJ Magazine from Christina Binkley gives a behind the scenes and first-hand account of Kanye’s recent stumbles, some of his failures, and his larger-than-life plans for the future. A must-read for any Kanye fans. (22 min)*
*Requires WSJ login to read
Media
Our World In Data has been one of the most valuable sources on the internet in finding useful data on COVID-19 as the situation unfolds and additional data becomes available. In recent days, they have been plotting total confirmed COVID-19 deaths against time using a logarithmic scale on the vertical axis. This makes it much easier to comprehend the exponential growth that’s been occurring. The chart serves to convert a constant rate of exponential growth into a straight line that can be plotted in a way that represents X-day doubling periods, as can be seen in the figure below. Check out this link for the full visualization, which I, unfortunately, can’t embed here for you to view. Also, check out this daily update from Quillette for a full breakdown of some of the science behind this.
Tweet of the Week
Song of the Week
Apple Music Link
Books
Currently Reading
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Robert A. Caro)
Excited to share my thoughts on this next week, when I’ll finally be finished.
The Obstacle Is the Way (Ryan Holiday)
Recently Read
Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age (Stephen Platt): As China continues to develop into a world-leading power, I found this to be an incredibly timely and worthwhile read. The Opium War was a potent turning point in China’s modern history and stands as the divide between their last Golden Age and restructuring following a period of turmoil after the war. Platt gives an enlightening yet entertaining account of the events that lead up to the war and how it ultimately unfolded. Recommended for anyone who finds historical parallels useful in navigating the present and future. (4/5)
Parting Thoughts
This Week in History
On March 24, 2001, Mac OS X 10.0, the first public version of Mac OS X, is released. The code name for this release was Cheetah, although Apple did not start using the code names for marketing purposes until Mac OS X 10.3, Jaguar. (Source)
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” — William Arthur Ward
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