March ‘24 recap
Articles I read, podcasts I listened to, books I read and listened to, and some other cool things from this month:
Articles:
Some short blog posts from Seth Godin’s blog:
State of startup compensation, H2 2023 | Carta
More employees left startups than joined them in 2023, and 1/3 of hires made in 2022 are no longer at their company, plus a bunch of other interesting data.
NASA’s Webb, Hubble Telescopes Affirm Universe’s Expansion Rate, Puzzle Persists | NASA
The universe is expanding faster than we initially thought based on observations of how it looked shortly after the big bang, and our models for expansion rate. The difference between the current expansion rate and the models for how fast it should be expanding is called the “Hubble tension.”
What does this mean? We originally thought the universe was doubling about every 10 billion years. Hubble and Webb have recently proved that the universe is expanding much faster than we thought it should be, and we don’t know why. Basically, we’re finding out how little we actually know!
Smart words from smart people | Morgan Housel
Some quotes that resonate.
Ownership battle breaks out for one of the NBA's hottest teams | Axios
Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore agreed to buy the Minnesota Twolves in 2021 for $1.5B. The deal was supposed to close this month. Apparently, they’re late on payments, and existing owner Glen Taylor said the deal is off. My hunch is Glen Taylor is looking for any way out of the deal, because the Twolves today are worth much more than $1.5B. The Suns sold for $4B 1.5 years ago, and the Mark Cuban just sold his majority ownership stake in the Mavericks at a $3.5B valuation. Another reason to not sell now is the lump sum payment that owners will get in a couple years when the NBA expands to 32 teams, most likely with new teams in Las Vegas and Seattle. People estimate that the 2 franchises will pay between $7-9B between the two, which is divided equally in a lump sum payment to the other 30 owners, and could be around $300 million for each ownership group.
Podcasts:
Ciudad de México y el agua que se agota | El hilo
CDMX has had a really bad drought over the last 3 years. In the south of the city, some neighborhoods have gone weeks without water. In the wealthier neighborhoods, water has been cut for several hours causing restaurants to close on short notice. Water in the city (and in most big cities in Mexico) is a major problem, and it’s hard to get the facts on how bad it really is. The problem has become political since it’s an election year. The podcast is in spanish, but this LA Times article is a good English alternative.
Should the US ban TikTok? | Plain english
The House of Representatives passed a bill to ban TikTok in the US or force ByteDance (TikTok’s Chinese parent company) to divest itself from TikTok in the US. If this bill gets passed, ByteDance will have 6 months to sell the US entity, or TikTok will be banned in the US, leaving the 100+ million american’s who spend an average of 97 minutes per day on the app with a lot more time on their hands.
Derek Thompson breaks down the details of why the US is considering banning the app, and how to think about it.
Sequoia’s Roelof Botha on Crucible Moments and the state of VC | This week in Startups
Botha has a bunch of good insights in this podcast. 2 that I liked:
He says that all startups have crucible decisions: the 1-2 really important decisions each year that have an enormous outcome on the business.
He says that the best founders are creative, calm, able to spot talent, understand the long term, and empowering.
Books:
1491, New Revelations of the Americas before Colombus | Charles Mann
If you have any interest in what the Americas were like before the Europeans arrived in 1492, you’ll love this book. Here are some of my highlights from the book:
“In 1491 the Inka ruled the greatest empire on earth. Bigger than Ming Dynasty China, bigger than Ivan the Great’s expanding Russia, bigger than Songhay in the Sahel or powerful Great Zimbabwe in the West Africa tablelands, bigger than the cresting Ottoman Empire, bigger by far than any European state, the Inka dominion extended over a staggering thirty-two degrees of latitude—as if a single power held sway from St. Petersburg to Cairo”
“Taken as a whole, the epidemics must have killed nine out of ten of Incan's”
“In the first 130 years of contact it’s predicted that about 95 percent of the people in the Americas died.”
“When Columbus landed, Cook and Borah concluded, the central Mexican plateau alone had a population of 25.2 million. By contrast, Spain and Portugal together had fewer than ten million inhabitants. Central Mexico, they said, was the most densely populated place on earth, with more than twice as many people per square mile than China or India.”
“Dobyns argued that the Indian population in 1491 was between 90 and 112 million people. Another way of saying this is that when Columbus sailed more people lived in the Americas than in Europe.”
“When Cortés landed, according to the Berkeley researchers Cook and Borah, 25.2 million people lived in central Mexico, an area of about 200,000 square miles. After Cortés (and the disease he brought), the population of the entire region collapsed. By 1620–25, it was 730,000, “approximately 3 percent of its size at the time that he first landed.” Cook and Borah calculated that the area did not recover its fifteenth-century population until the late 1960s.”
“In the Norte Chico (modern day Chile), Homo sapiens experienced a phenomenon that at that time had occurred only once before, in Mesopotamia: the emergence, for better or worse, of leaders with enough prestige, influence, and hierarchical position to induce their subjects to perform heavy labor. It was humankind’s second experiment with government.”
The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway
I don’t read much fiction recently, but I’ve found I really enjoy listening to fiction audiobooks. This is the 3rd time I’ve read The sun also rises.
I first read it about 10 years ago. I hated it, and thought it was extremely boring with no plot.
The second was in 2018 when I was on my way to Pamplona to do the Running of the Bulls. I still thought it was boring, but the descriptions of Pamplona and San Fermín made it a great read before getting to Pamplona.
This time, I loved it. I’ve been to most places mentioned in the book, and am only a couple years younger than the main characters in the book. I’ve been to Paris, Pamplona, San Sebastian, and Roncesvalles and even though the book was published 98 years ago, almost everything felt like it could happen today. I know more about the Lost Generation, and being in my late 20s makes it easier to relate to the characters. Maybe I’ll remember to read it again in 5 years, or the next time I’m going to Paris or Pamplona.
Naval recommends reading the best 100 books over and over again. While best is certainly subjective, I’ve found that re reading books at different points in your life helps you relate to different parts depending on where you are in life.
Cool things I saw:
One minute focus: The next time you’re switching tasks, try the exercise in this link. It’s only one minute long and helpful for focusing.
Your AI foreign language teacher: I’ve been learning Portuguese since the end of August 2023. I’ve gone from basically 0 to conversational, probably a high B1 or low B2, with only 1 lesson a week. I found this AI tool that you can use to learn any foreign language, whenever you want. It’s the first one I’ve seen where you can have full conversations, and the ‘teacher’ only sounds robotic about 10% of the time. Most people learning new languages struggle on the speaking curve, and this is a great, low pressure way for people to start speaking in their target language.
