My end of the first week of the new year, first NFP of 2022, morning train WFH reads:
• Against Willpower: Willpower is a dangerous, old idea that needs to be scrapped. As a practicing addiction psychiatrist and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, I’ve become increasingly skeptical about the very concept of willpower, and concerned by the self-help obsession that surrounds it. Countless books and blogs offer ways to “boost self-control,” or even to “meditate your way to more willpower,” but what’s not widely recognized is that new research has shown some of the ideas underlying these messages to be inaccurate. (Nautilus)
• Titans of Carmaking Are Plotting the Overthrow of Elon Musk Volkswagen and Toyota are coming for Tesla, laying out $170 billion worth of investments to stay on top. (Bloomberg) see also Ford vs
FerrariTesla What is the Tesla story today? It’s much more challenging than it was in the 2010s: Their success has attracted competitors from around the world, from well-financed start-ups to world-class legacy automakers. Their future product line, espeically the cyber truck is…let’s just call it a work in progress (The Big Picture)• The Tenacious Quest to Find the World’s Best Rice: Among hundreds of Japanese brands and cultivars, it takes a blind tasting by a panel of “rice sommeliers” to determine the top of the crop. (Taste)
• Podcasters are letting software pick their ads — it’s already going awry Ads are showing up in places they shouldn’t (Verge)
• This is your most important decision: Why your career is your biggest opportunity to make a difference, and how you can use it best (80,000 hours)
• Buildings Don’t Have To Be Bird-Killers Glass-encased towers are still death traps for birds. But designers know how to stop the crashes. (CityLab) see also Manhattan Luxury Home Sales Skyrocketed in 2021 Affluent New Yorkers confident in the city’s recovery paid up to spread out last year (Wall Street Journal)
• 100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying Whether it’s taking fruit to work (and to the bedroom!), being polite to rude strangers or taking up skinny-dipping, here’s a century of ways to make life better, with little effort involved … (The Guardian)
• The Omicron LeBrons Want to Stay in the NBA They signed 10-day contracts when the league was ravaged by Covid. Now some of the NBA’s temps are sticking around. The latest variant was their lucky break. (Wall Street Journal)
• To catch an insurrectionist Everyone thought it was cool to take selfies doing crimes until the FBI got all their data from Google and said hello. (Recode)
• Weaving ‘Charlotte’s Web’ In his new book, The Story of Charlotte’s Web, writer Michael Sims traces the life of E.B. White. From White’s childhood in suburban New York and rural Maine, to his adult years as a New Yorker writer, Sims shows how White’s experiences in nature shaped his classic novel. (NPR)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Ray Dalio, founder, co-chairman and co-chief investment officer of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. Dalio’s latest book, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail.
Wages are rising because they have to
Source: Vox
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