“[Sam Bankman-Freid] held himself out as a philosopher king, a devotee to esoteric ethical precepts and a concerned billionaire who was committed to saving the world from ugly political currents; after the collapse, he confessed that this was all marketing nonsense (“this dumb game we woke westerners play”).”
— Cory Doctoroff
Foxconn
Watching what is happening at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, I am left wondering how many bosses of state-owned enterprises are secretly delighted to watch Foxconn take this hit. Whatever Foxconn’s faults may be, they are one of the largest private enterprises in China, and this could well be the beginning of the end for their business in the PRC.
Kevin Smith is the only man over the age of 19 who is allowed to wear a ballcap backward. He makes it look good. The rest of us are just pretenders. (Kevin looks great, by the way. He looks like a man, not a moon.)
“Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.” (“And do not listen to those who keep saying, ‘The voice of the people is the voice of G-d’, because the tumult of the crowd is always close to madness.”)
— Alcuin, in a letter to Charlemagne
Here is the big question about Disney: how long until Iger is forced to take a big writedown on the company’s investment in its two China theme parks?
Field Notes Unbox
I continue to collect/stockpile notebooks, especially Field Notes, and this was my Chinese New Year gift to myself last year, a total of 33 notebooks.
I was an early convert from analog to digital note-taking, and as early as 1984 I was keeping all of my notes on one application or another on my hard drive. But a series of catastrophic crashes and minor incidents of data loss or file misplacement has convinced me to return to analog form to augment my digital archiving, or at least a hybrid of analog with digital archiving.
What I did not expect when I started my first tentative steps back to the handwritten world in 2006 was all of the other cognitive benefits that come with just writing stuff down.
Notebooks are now a key part of all of my workflows, whether for writing, Scouting, travel, reading, or any of my projects that require more than a simple list.
I’ll be sharing some of the ways I use notebooks in the coming weeks. Some are proven, some more experimental, but each reminds me how underrated and versatile these simple tools can be.
Beyond Dogs
Slight cheat here as well. I had the extra fats left over, and I wanted to give the meatless option a try. These are Beyond Meat bratwursts wrapped in Carb Balance high-protein, low-carb tortillas. 470 calories, 36g carbs, 27g fat, 38g protein.
Caught in the wild for the first time this morning: a Los Angeles Fire Department Advanced Provider Response Unit. Yes, it looks like a regular RA (rescue ambulance,) but there is more here than meets the eye.
You have to feel bad for companies like GotJunk.com.
A clever company name can turn into an adult movie come-on without warning, sucking the value out of a brand all at no fault of a company.
“None of us is as smart as all of us.”
— Kenneth Blanchard
A Bucket and a Pen 