Welcome to March — that means Spring is not far off! Kick off the first weekend of the month by pouring yourself a mug of Tolima Los Brasiles Peaberry Organic, grabbing a seat by the fire, and enjoying our longer-form weekend reads:
• Gen Z and the End of Predictable Progress: How AI, volatility, and changing institutions are shaping young people’s economic reality (Kyla’s Newsletter)
• Palmer Luckey, American Vulcan. He is perhaps the wildest misfit tech diva of his generation, with a torrid ambition and engineering prowess rivaled only by Elon Musk, Luckey is also, in a way Musk is not and cannot be, the product of something more familiar—the heir to a 100-year revolution in American society that made Southern California the techno-theological citadel of the Cold War, and a one-man bridge between the smoldering American past and an unknown future that may be arriving soon. (Tablet) see also Welcome to the New Military-Industrial Complex. For decades, a handful of giant firms have garnered the lion’s share of Pentagon arms contracts, producing the same planes, ships, and missiles year after year while generating huge profits for their owners. But an assortment of new firms, born in Silicon Valley or incorporating its disruptive ethos, have begun to challenge the older ones for access to lucrative Pentagon awards. (The Nation)
• Is God a Mushroom? New research into the role of psychedelics upends our understanding of spirituality — and with it, our vision of the cosmos. (Long Now Foundation)
• The hardest-working font in Manhattan: In 2007, on my first trip to New York City, I grabbed a brand-new DSLR camera and photographed all the fonts I was supposed to love. I admired American Typewriter, Akzidenz Grotesk, Helvetica, Gotham. But there was one font I didn’t even notice, even though it was everywhere around me. Last year in New York, I walked over 100 miles and took thousands of photos of one and one font only. The font’s name is Gorton. (Marcin Wichary)
• The U.S. Economy Depends More Than Ever on Rich People: The highest-earning 10% of Americans have increased their spending far beyond inflation. Everyone else hasn’t. (Wall Street Journal) see also Meet the World’s 24 Superbillionaires:As the ranks of global billionaires have swelled dramatically in recent years, a new category of ultrarich has emerged—the superbillionaire. Musk is one of just 24 people worldwide who qualify for that distinction, which is defined as individuals worth $50 billion or more. The ultrarich are growing in numbers, and changing wealth as we know it. (WSJ)
• In an Age of Right-Wing Populism, Why Are Denmark’s Liberals Winning? Around the world, progressive parties have come to see tight immigration restrictions as unnecessary, even cruel. What if they’re actually the only way for progressivism to flourish? (New York Times)
• brAIn drAIn: The enhancement and atrophy of human cognition go hand in hand (Intrinsic Perspective) see also “Fuck You Money” is Useless Without the “Fuck You” We chase financial freedom, believing it’s the key to independence. But the real prison isn’t material, it’s psychological. It’s the internal constraints that traps us, often long after the external ones are gone. The “fuck you money” transforms into something more like: “oh, fuck me!” (The Way of Work)
• Her job is to remove homeless people from SF’s parks. Her methods are extraordinary: To watch park ranger Amanda Barrows is to be faced with a disturbing question: If this is what it takes to help one unhoused person, how can we manage thousands? (SF Standard)
• Is It Time to Redefine Time? New atomic clocks are more accurate than those used to define the second, suggesting the definition might need to change. (Scientific American)
• Classical Music Got Invented with a Hard Kick from a Peasant’s Foot: Is there any reason why music should be constrained by an unyielding pattern? Why should these musical handcuffs repeat bar after bar in a composition? Imagine if every sentence in a story were expected to contain the same number of alphanumeric characters. That would be absurd, no? Each sentence should have its own organic length, unconnected to what came before or goes after. So why doesn’t our music do that? Or why we need less math in music theory. (The Honest Broker)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Melissa Smith of J.P. Morgan, where she is co-head of commercial banking. Previously, she was co-Head of Innovation Economy and Head of Specialized Industries,. She has been with JPM Chase for more than 20 years, working with founders, entrepreneurs and startups.
The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks, 84% of the private businesses, 44% of real estate and two-thirds of overall wealth
Source: A Wealth of Common Sense
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