Never bet against Zuck - I've heard about the machine that is Meta, but this is an incredible in depth look at their advertising dominance. Their response to Apple Ad Tracking Transparency (ATT) is impressive, as that knee capped many other businesses. Instead, Meta brought real AI to bear on the problem of ad targeting.
Not only does Meta have the most sophisticated targeting and most performant ad network in the industry… but it also has an estimated $35B moat of AI chips. Which means, just about no one will be able to compete with Meta on performance.
the 3-step plan to figure out what you want to do in life - I wish I'd read this 10 years ago, but you I'm glad I'm reading it at all. I love the book Designing Your Life, but this summarizes it well in a 3 minute article.
One day - I met a guy at a wedding who had the exact job I wanted (orthopedic surgeon for a sports team). I asked him if I could shadow him for 2 weeks. He agreed. Right away, I realized that I did NOT want to be a doctor. Doctor’s are very noble, but the job has very little creativity. (trust me, you don’t want your doctor ‘getting creative’ on you…)
🦄 Surgical projection technology - Behind the hype train is real innovation. Here we see AR making a practical impact in spinal surgery, one of the trickiest of all. I find hope in these real applications of cutting edge technology. It is heartening to see our best brains turned towards something other than Fortnite.
While most competitors are VR-based, Illuminant’s embracement of AR technology makes its projectors far cheaper than expensive headset rigs, and the process of modeling patients is frictionless with software being able to automatically generate models based on routine pre-surgery CT scans.
You Can’t Math Your Way to Success - I found this article helplessly endearing. The author manages to be nerdy but charming in an eccentric way. Despite being humorous, the author manages to find some real insights to questions I've struggled with. How do you raise a child? How do you build a career?
I am about to have a child. By “about to,” I mean in November. And by “I,” I mean I am valiantly making my wife snacks while she grows an energy-guzzling chupacabra inside her. Being a dad was not something I dared to dream of, but now that is upon me, I can’t help but feel giddy. I also can’t help but make spreadsheets. My fatherly nesting instincts have manifested not in the selection of strollers or pastel-colored home decor, but in never-ending data analysis. There is a file on my personal hard drive packed with napkin math about raising a daughter in the great state of Massachusetts: stats about graduation rates, career tracks on which women are paid equal wages, high school placement rates to MIT (Harvard is for blowhards), and so on. I promise you the spreadsheet gets stranger tab by tab.
Have mercenary - I consume a steady diet of rom coms and action movies. Imagine my surprise at finding out about the rise of international mercenaries thanks to tech. There are some wild stories in here.
Samuel Wesley Hall A former Olympic silver medallist diver and member of the Ohio House of Representatives, Sam Hall became a self-described “volunteer counterterrorist”, travelling to foreign countries to back anti-communist groups like the Contras. While some of his stories sound a tad far-fetched, he once described parachuting into Angola to rescue captured Canadians, and training Latin American groups in guerrilla warfare, before being apprehended in Nicaragua in 1986 on suspicions of being a spy.
Pregnant Then Screwed - A UK based organization providing resources for mother's, who are frequently discriminated against in the job market. To dive deeper, be sure to check out their book The Motherhood Penalty: How to stop motherhood being the kiss of death for your career.
Two days after she informed her employer that she was pregnant with her first child, Joeli Brearley was sacked from her job by voicemail. She was four months pregnant and unemployed with bills to pay. Joeli considered taking legal action but then found out she was having a high-risk pregnancy and could go into labour at any moment. Her career and confidence were at rock-bottom and the health of her baby was in jeopardy.
Dunya - Mustafa is incredible. I recommend starting the album with SNL and then starting from the beginning. I loved reading about the album here and seeing his "wiser than his years" nature live here. Perhaps most impressive is the short film he produced about his home city, Toronto, featuring Drake (of course).