astukari Newsletter #68 - Save like a Pessimist, Invest like an Optimist
Hi friends,
As much as I would like to have my usual witty or insightful comment in this introduction, I drove for 5 hours today and now have a killer headache. So I’m going to keep this one short. This is the peril of trying to get a newsletter out on the same day every biweek for two years :)
🔨What I’ve Been Making
A New Model for Teaching Humanities - Is there a better way to teach humanities? I explore some possible ideas.
A Dialogue on Mindset - Mindset is an unorthodox thing to learn. Therefore, it requires an unorthodox method to teach.
[For those who prefer audio, there are now video summaries for Managing Your Personal KPIs and People Productivity]
📚What I’ve Been Reading
Save like a Pessimist, Invest like an Optimist - I think Morgan Housel is my new favorite writer. I’ve recommended him on this newsletter like, what, 5 times now? Anyway, this post explains short/long horizon trading and black swan risk pretty well.
Social Status: Down the Rabbit Hole - Social status is essentially culture’s biggest magic trick. On the outside it looks extremely important and valuable, but when we reveal the curtain… it’s quite small! Of course, you’ve been told “status isn’t important” a million times, so you knew that. Or do you? Another interesting feature of social status is that despite us knowing it’s made up, we still have an innate desire for it — one that’s very hard to correct. All this in more in this article!
Signal: How to Ethically Boost Your Revenues - Growth.Design is also no stranger to this newsletter. In their most recent case study they go over some strategies for maximizing donations in an ethical manner.
Mark Zuckerberg is Betting on the Metaverse - The metaverse is what’s currently “in” today. Fortnite called their concerts an “experiment in metaverse”, ROBLOX rebranded to “the new metaverse”, and a couple of other companies — both gaming and otherwise — are inputting “metaverse-esque elements” into their content. Usually this is a sign of fad-chasing, and it was… until this article. Facebook going all-in on the metaverse is an incredibly bizarre move, and it can either result in the company’s demise or a true-to-God attempt at a metaverse. Either way, things are going to get interesting.
Miami’s Mayor is Charting a Course for a Post-Trump GOP - This title is a bit misleading since it refers to the very dull section of the article. The interesting part is right up front — that Miami is trying its best to position itself as “the right-leaning Silicon Valley”. Can it be done?