Greetings from the Ungerleider Works fortress of deadlines1. As usual, things are busy.
First off, it sure looks like Twitter will have a new CEO very soon. Linda Yaccarino is currently NBCUniversal's advertising chief, has an a+ reputation in the advertising and media worlds, and seems perfectly placed in ambition and mentality to take on what will almost be a 1000% thankless job that’s high risk and low reward2. Yaccarino will be working with a very interventionist Elon Musk and, as Twitter is a private company, won’t have the shareholder (or even activist inventor!) buffer publicly-owned companies have. And she’s Republican-leaning but has worked with the World Economic Forum, which should lead to all sorts of fun with Twitter’s sizeable conspiracy theorist population.
More after the jump.
What I’m Thinking About Right Now:
The Wall Street Journal’s absolutely ridiculous deep dive into Cash App founder Bob Lee’s death. (Great job Kirsten Grind, Katherine Bindley and Zusha Elinson!) Turns out it was less random street crime in San Francisco and a lot more sex, drugs and other scandal.
Good excerpt:
Some of Mr. Lee’s friends say they had become worried in recent months that he was getting in over his head. Dana Wagner, the former general counsel of payments company Square, now known as Block, said Mr. Lee was comfortable with a lot of different crowds and that he was creative and adventurous, loyal to his friends, and “saw the best in everyone.”
“He was also hanging out with people who weren’t great people, and that was part of what happened in the end,” said Mr. Wagner, who says he didn’t know the Momenis. “There are a lot of swingers, cheaters and liars in that crowd,” he said.
Mr. Lee remained close to his wife, Krista Lee, even though they were separated. He recently moved to Miami with his father, a widower, but regularly returned to San Francisco to visit his two teenage children, Dagny and Scout, named after characters in “Atlas Shrugged” and “To Kill A Mockingbird.” The family had planned a trip together to Japan in August.
I’ve also been reading Rob Henderson’s on social class on American tv shows:
The tutors at this program were either students or graduates of top universities like Yale, Dartmouth, and Amherst. Some were veterans, and others were typical college students working as tutors for the summer. Between lessons and writing workshops, me and the other students would hang out with the tutors and have informal conversations. And sometimes I’d overhear them speak with one another.
I became close with one, a recent Yale graduate. One evening, I saw him watching something on his MacBook. He told me it was “The West Wing.” I’d never seen this show, nor did anyone I know watch it. My military friends watched “Two and a Half Men” (I didn’t enjoy it), “Game of Thrones” (unsuccessfully tried twice to get into it), and “Family Guy” (was one of my favorite shows). But when another tutor overheard him recommend the show to me, she nodded vigorously, saying I had to watch it. I took the recommendation seriously — I watched “The West Wing.” It was, after all, the first show that two Ivy League graduates had ever recommended to me. In my mind, if two Ivy League graduates watched a show, this meant that everyone who attends such schools watches it (If two different veterans told you that you had watch a certain show, you might think all veterans were fans of it). Thus, if I did decide to attend college, this was an important cultural touchstone to understand. What if someone made a comment referencing the show and I didn’t understand? It was an attempt to learn more about the distinctive culture of a highly influential segment of society.
But as I worked my way through the first season, I had a realization: “The West Wing” is not very good.
Disney’s adding a Hulu portal to Disney+, bringing the Disney-owned platforms one step closer to merging.
YouTube tests blocking ad blockers.
More after the jump. But first… a word from our sponsor.
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What I’m Loving:
Ali Abdaal interviews British advertising exec Rory Sutherland, and every minute of it is gold.
That’s it for this week. NOW DO AWESOME STUFF.
Actually, a pretty damned nice coworking space here in Chicago.
My personal suspicion—and this is speaking with the bias that I run a small consulting company, am pretty damned happy with what I do and am very deliberate with work stuff—is that being CEO of Twitter is a lot like being mayor of New York or mayor of Chicago. No matter what you do, your audience will hate you, the world will throw mud in your face and the people inside the building are just waiting for a chance to stab your back. But, if you play your cards right, you can become President of the United States!