The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of coffee, grab a seat by the window, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• How HBO’s creatives survived corporate chaos Authors Felix Gillette and John Koblin explain how your favorite shows kept HBO afloat. (The Verge)
• What is ChatGPT and why does it matter? Here’s everything you need to know: This AI chatbot’s advanced conversational capabilities have created quite the buzz. Here’s what you need to know. (ZD Net) but see also AI Tech Enables Industrial-Scale Intellectual-Property Theft, Say Critics: Are ChatGPT, Stability AI and GitHub Copilot the next big breakthroughs, huge legal and regulatory liabilities, or something else entirely? (Wall Street Journal)
• I was asked to invent the next Wordle. How hard could it be? Wordle is the deceptively simple puzzle that became a global sensation last Christmas. The challenge: to create a rival. (The Guardian)
• Downward Spiral The nautilus’s lineage made it through all five of Earth’s previous mass extinctions. But can it survive the Anthropocene? (bioGraphic)
• Apple in 2022: The Six Colors report card: It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple. This is the eighth year that I’ve presented this survey to a hand-selected group. They were prompted with 12 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 to 5 and optionally provide text commentary per category.. (Six Colors)
• The Astonishing Transformation of Austin: My town, once celebrated for its laid-back weirdness, is now a turbocharged tech megalopolis being shaped by exiles from places like Silicon Valley. (New Yorker)
• Do You Know How to Behave? Are You Sure? How to text, tip, ghost, host, and generally exist in polite society today. (The Cut)
• Shell’s Grand Plan to Fight Climate Change (and Continue to Cause It): The company is investing billions of dollars in zero- and low-carbon energy solutions, but selling oil and gas at record profits is a hard habit to break. (Businessweek)
• The Last Boeing 747 Leaves the Factory: The plane known as “Queen of the Skies” helped make air travel more affordable, but it has been supplanted by smaller, more efficient aircraft. (New York Times) see also Bon Voyage, Boeing 747. You Really Did Change Everything. (New York Times)
• The First Family of Human Cannonballing: David and Jeannie Smith gave up their day jobs for a life of daredevil stunts —with six children in tow. Five decades, thousands of cannon shots and multiple Guinness World Records later, this stupendous family business is still defying gravity and all other expectations. (Narratively)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Rick Rieder, Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income at BlackRock, Head of the Global Allocation Investment Team, and Senior Managing Director. Rieder helps to manage $2.5 trillion in fixed-income assets as a member of BlackRock’s Global Operating Committee and is Chairman of the firm-wide BlackRock Investment Council.
Location of the 20 New Regional Innovation Hubs
Source: Economic Innovation Group
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