In this issue: Depp-Heard trial as revenue generator, the secret languages of AIs & more.
Greetings from sunny Chicago. Let’s do this thing.
“Alien life might, though, have its roots in something yet more exotic. In the laboratory, metal oxides known as polyoxymetalates have shown some remarkably lifelike abilities, such as being able to form membranes (dubbed “inorganic chemical cells” by Lee Cronin, a chemist at the University of Glasgow) and being able to assemble, with some chemical help, into complex structures reminiscent of DNA.”
“Research from Zach Goldberg, a doctoral student in political science at Georgia State University, has shown that white liberals consistently express stronger agreement with many tenets of the anti-racist worldview than do minorities. More generally, as the Democratic Party has become more and more identified with anti-racism, it has actually shed support among nonwhite people, especially Hispanics.””
American Airlines replacing some shorthaul flights in the northeast with buses… and they’re nice!
“Getting published is, no lie, incredibly difficult. Think of it like a chain of successive events, a chain that goes manuscript → pitch → getting an agent → getting a publisher → getting good reviews → getting sales. A successful book is so rare precisely because it needs to pass through a sequence of these “Hard Steps” wherein each conditional step has a low probability.”
“Companies have been navigating the highs and lows of social media for almost 20 years, but Levi’s had suddenly found itself in its most dreaded terrain: a star executive tweeting controversial opinions about a deadly pandemic, and employees holding the company accountable for it.”
“Podcasters are commanding a CPM of more than $23. […] For reference, the average CPM across YouTube is about $7—so podcast ads cost around three times what your standard YouTube pre-roll does.”
“Internet monetization is somewhat like a Soviet election: It doesn’t matter who clicks and where, it’s who counts those clicks that matters. The technology and business of that counting of clicks (and everything else you do online besides) goes by the dull-sounding name of attribution, and it determines the fate of trillion-dollar companies.”
“Sheryl Sandberg grew Meta's revenue from $272 million in 2008 to nearly $118 billion in 2021. That's over 43,000%.”
Congrats NYC studio Postlight on their acquisiton by NTT Data!
Trouble at Twitter during the Musk Interregnum: “Executives told workers of plans to pull back resources for some long-term ambitions, including audio spaces, newsletters and communities, in favor of focusing on more immediate needs, like user growth and personalization efforts, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Netflix’s quietly building a mobile gaming empire.
“The new Comixology app is largely just... annoying. That’s the best word for it. Everything you need is still there, but the design isn’t really intuitive, and it can make a large collection of comics (I’ve been using Comixology since 2011) difficult to navigate.”
“The news industry uses opinion pieces to drive traffic. They undermine the very reason journalism exists.”
Taylor Lorenz on the Depp-Heard trial. “Content produced by social media influencers skewed heavily pro-Depp, with economic bias playing a big role. “Johnny content performed a lot better,” said Rowan Winch, a 17-year-old content creator. “When people do post stuff trying to defend Amber Heard, they will lose followers. A lot of major content creators probably don’t even care about it that much — they just care about the views that it gets.””
Elon Musk bans remote work at Tesla shortly before he proposes laying off 10% of the company’s employees.
The secret language of AI.
New levels of VC fraud.
Why founders end up unemployable.
“You thought you had to wait forever to speak with a customer service representative? Facebook and Instagram serve nearly 3 billion users a day with a help desk that numbers closer to zero.”
How not to do B2B tech sales.
Florida tech thoughts and prayers.
The seven varieties of stupidity.
Charles Fort, ESP and the tech world.
31 different email templates for saying “No.”
The political horseshoe theory, but for furniture.
Why do things keep turning into crabs?
“We have this generation of people who have ironized traditional success but have nothing to replace it with, and the results are weird.”
Pride flags, but metal.
