Archived Posts for July 2023

Weekly Report: July 23, 2023

Observations

We’ve been on holiday. Here are a few photos:

Write up to come…

Further Observations

• Aptos is Microsoft’s new standard font, succeeding Calibri, which was made standard around 2007. Calibri in turn replaced Times New Roman and Arial as Microsoft’s default fonts. I never liked Calibri, so I welcome the change. This is dating me, but TNR is still my default serif font of choice for writing large amounts of text.
• In an example of the speed at which the government moves, in January 2023 the U.S. Department of State finally made Calibri (14-point) its standard font, replacing Times New Roman due to readability factors (sans serif fonts are regarded as being more readable than serif fonts). Just in time for Calibri to no longer be Microsoft’s default font. Prior to introducing Times New Roman in 2004, the State Department used Courier New, which is a monospaced font (otherwise known as a typewriter font where each character occupies the same width on the page).
• Inflation seems to be back under control and the stock market is ripping again. It’s kind of crazy. More and more people are now literally buying into the prospect of a soft landing after tearing into Jerome Powell for first acting too late, and then acting too aggressively. I still think the other shoe is yet to drop. Interest rates went up 5%+ in record time, the labor market is still tight, and everything is suddenly back to the way it was before? I don’t buy it (literally).

Articles

• How second-generation owners of 99 Ranch are turning the Asian supermarket into a national powerhouse (LA Times)
• Inside the most extreme heat wave the Southern U.S. has faced (Washington Post)
• Boiling the Ocean (The Atlantic)
• The Trillion-Dollar Grift: Inside the Greatest Scam of All Time (Rolling Stone)
• Inside the Private Writings of Caroline Ellison, Star Witness in the FTX Case (New York Times)
• Judge rules XRP is not a security in SEC’s case against Ripple (Coin Telegraph)
• When Clarence Thomas Entered an Elite Circle and Opened a Door to the Court (New York Times)
• The Maverick Design Choices That May Have Doomed Titan (New York Times)
• The state of AI and social media shows capitalism is unlikely to end with a robot rebellion (The Guardian)
• 4 reasons why homelessness keeps going up (NPR)
• Proof You Can Do Hard Things (Nat Eliason)
• A change of typeface: Microsoft’s new default font has arrived (Microsoft)
• How a family of five transformed a 58-seater bus into an incredible home to travel across Australia (Daily Mail)
• Can Everyone Take a Sabbatical? (New York Times)

Reviews

• 🎪 Knuthenborg Safaripark (Maribo, Denmark)
  A surprising safari park in the south of Denmark where you can drive around and see a host of animals, including elephants, giraffes, tigers, lions (evacuated from Ukraine!), ostriches, etc. Also has a huge, super fun playground for the kids. We stayed overnight in a cabin that has a window looking directly into the tiger area. ★★★★
• 🎪 Den Blå Planet (Kastrup, Denmark)
  Denmark’s national aquarium. Pretty decent, with a fun water playground outside. ★★★
• 🎪 Frilandsmuseet (Lyngby, Denmark)
  Open air museum with what must be the world’s largest collection of old barns. Decent for the kids because there are a few activities there they can do, but not so much for adults, unless you love looking at barns. ★★
• 🗺️ Nivå Strand (Nivå, Denmark)
  A nice beach for young kids with a shallow gradient out into the ocean. ★★★
• 📺 Jack Ryan (Season 4)
  A reliable show to binge watch. I liked how all its seasons were self-contained. Unfortunately this is the final season, but it looks like it will be getting a spinoff. ★★★
• 🎬 The Menu (2022)
  Nice looking movie. Characters are a bit of a mess. ★★½

On Twitter

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Weekly Report: July 9, 2023

Observations

🧵 versus 🐦

• I’m on Threads: @stuloh.
• In under 5 days, Threads will have hit 100 million users. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t exactly the world’s most beloved billionaire, but in a case of the enemy of my enemy, Elon Musk is even more polarizing given his behavior over the last year. Lots of people have been looking for a Twitter replacement, but the issue with any social network is achieving network effects. This issue has plagued Twitter clones like Blue Sky, Mastodon, and Post News. And the overwhelming majority of users simply don’t care whether the network is decentralized or whatever. It just can’t be a ghost town. Threads, launching off of Instagram’s 1 billion plus user base, doesn’t have that problem.
• The historic adoption rate is despite Threads not being released in Europe. This is likely due to the $1.3 billion fine levied by the EU in May, which essentially said that various transfers of personal data they make from the EU to the U.S. are not legal because U.S. laws render that personal data incapable of being protected to the standards required by EU law. There is a new EU-U.S. data transfer framework that is being worked out that in theory will address the issue. However, it is the third incarnation of such a framework. After the European Court of Justice invalidated the first two, it’s uncertain whether the third attempt will actually solve the underlying problems, which all stem from U.S. government surveillance.
• I was in the European Union when Threads was launched, but I was able to sign up. That is most likely because my Instagram account was pegged as an American one. The rules around which privacy laws apply to whose personal data can be complicated, but in general you can think of the laws being based on residency (where you live), not citizenship (which country’s passport you hold).
• It will be interesting to see how Threads fares. It feels pretty vibrant for such a new product, but we’ll see if it has staying power. I must confess, like many others, it will be a big dose of schadenfreude to see Meta successfully swoop in and take out Twitter after months of “I know better than everyone else” behavior from its mercurial owner. And then things will eventually revert back to people criticizing Meta for how slimy a company it is.

Further Observations

• In the meantime, Twitter is suing legendary law firm Wachtell over their huge fees from having successfully defended the company from Musk’s attempt to backtrack from the acquisition. Yeah, good luck there. Apparently, the $90 million fee was composed of $18 million in hourly rates, and the remainder being a massive success fee. Wachtell is perhaps one of the only corporate firms that can charge success fees.
• I’ve been in the miles and points game for a decade now, but I’m still learning new tricks. Here’s how to get free cruises by gaming casino status matches. There are various on ramps to this process, but the goal is to attain status at two Vegas casino loyalty programs (Caesars Diamond or MGM Gold) and go from there. With MGM Gold status, it’s possible to get an almost-free 7+ night Carnival cruise for a couple (or a very cheap one for a family). some may be offered balcony rooms and longer cruises. The free Carnival cruise can, in turn, be matched to a free Royal Caribbean cruise. You can also match MGM Gold to Caesars Diamond, which may generate additional free cruises and other benefits like free hotel nights and credits. I have almost 2 years of Hyatt Globalist status courtesy of a Bilt promotion earlier this year, but unfortunately the challenging part is actually making the time for a cruise.
• This thread from 2008 on a body building forum defies a satisfactory description and will give you brain damage.

Articles

• How to Do Great Work (Paul Graham)
• Tuesday was world’s hottest day on record – breaking Monday’s record (The Guardian)
• The U.S. Population Is Older Than It Has Ever Been (New York Times)
• The Alzheimer’s drug lecanemab wins full FDA approval. It’s a very big deal (Vox)
• The Titan Submersible Implosion Was “an Accident Waiting to Happen” (The New Yorker)
• Newchip CEO Andrew Ryan Accused of Sexual Harassment, Mismanagement (The Daily Beast)
• US Government Issues China Travel Advisory (One Mile at a Time)
• The Rich Are Crazier Than You and Me (New York Times)
• Investors spend $200mn on ‘worthless’ Bed Bath & Beyond shares (Financial Times)
• Can Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Sell Cricket in America? (Bloomberg)
• The slow, sad death of Twitter (The New European)
• The Reddit AMA as we know it is dead (Quartz)
• Apple Plans a Slow, Appointment-Only Rollout of Its $3,500 Vision Pro (Bloomberg)
• The Art of Translation (New York Times)
• Jubilee Jim Fisk and the great Civil War score (The Boston Globe)
  How a 30 year old made a fortune shorting Confederate bonds at the end of the Civil War in 1865. His scheme involved trading on the news 5 days before the news reached London.

Reviews

• 🍽️ Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen, Denmark) ✽✽
  A decent meal that met but did not exceed expectations. Service was attentive (they gave Susanne a Danish menu and me an English menu) but impersonal. ★★★
• 🎪 Experimentarium (Hellerup, Denmark)
  Like the Exploratorium in San Francisco, but oh so much better and with exhibits for kids of all ages. Signage is in Danish and English. ★★★★
• ✈️ SFO-CPH on SK936 (A330-300, Premium Economy)
  Solid, new hard product, but the wifi didn’t work. Service was decent for a red eye flight. We bought a couple of these inflatable seat extensions so our kids could lie down to sleep and the flight attendants seemed cool with them (not all airlines are). Flight was full. Sit on the right hand side of the plane for a nice view of Copenhagen when circling to land. ★★★★
• 🛋️ United Club Lounge (International Terminal, SFO)
  Overcrowded, cramped lounge with passable food. You’re better off hanging out in the terminal. ★★

Charts, Images & Videos

This maths lecture, “A world from a sheet of paper” by Stanford Professor Tadashi Tokieda is very engaging:

On Twitter & Threads

https://www.threads.net/t/CuP48CiS5sx/

https://www.threads.net/t/CuYcHxWOnKn/

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Weekly Report: July 2, 2023

Observations

• Last week at work, a sizable portion of my company gathered at a physical office in San Francisco and spent the week working physically together. It wasn’t an offsite — it was actual, regular work. It’s the first time in a few years since I’ve done that with a larger group of colleagues, and it felt refreshing. Everything is just much more dynamic. The side conversations during meetings, the option to have quick “drive by” chats, the ability to “read the room”, and even the small non-work diversions that keep you feeling connected to other people throughout the day. On the flip side, the interactions eat up more time, and finding focus is more difficult when you need to do work that doesn’t involve a discussion. But, the worst part of office work is by far and away the commute, and I was reminded about that when it took me 90 minutes to drive home in traffic (double the time it took to get in).
• The toilets in the building we were working in were on the floor above us. That floor also happened to house the company shown in the photo below — a 2 year old AI company of 60 people that had literally just been acquired for a jaw-dropping amount.

• DPReview, the authoritative site for digital camera reviews, was scheduled to shut down after Amazon (its owner) conducted layoffs earlier this year. However, I was glad to learn that DPReview was acquired by Gear Patrol and will live on!
• SCOTUS handed down two major judgments this week that were split 6-3 along party ideological lines.
• As mentioned last week, short update this week. Happy Independence Day for Tuesday!

Articles

• AI Obsession Powers $5 Trillion Nasdaq 100 Surge (Bloomberg)
• The return of quantitative easing (Financial Times)
• With Binance under attack in France, founder CZ is ‘bunkered down’ in Dubai (Semafor)
• Financial ‘meme-lord’ Litquidity: ‘The market is beyond satire. You can’t make it up’ (Financial Times)
• A Rubik’s Cube, Thick Socks and Giddy Anticipation: The Last Hours of the Titan (New York Times)
• A Star Reporter’s Break with Reality (The Atlantic)
  How 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan went off the deep end.
• WHO’s cancer research agency to say aspartame sweetener a possible carcinogen (Reuters)
• 150 Most Legendary Restaurants in the World & Their Iconic Dishes (TasteAtlas)
  Despite having visited the cities that 50% of these restaurants are in, I’ve only eaten at three of them!!
• The Man Who Broke Bowling (GQ)
  Aussie Jason Belmonte’s two-handed technique made him an outcast. Then it made him the greatest—and changed the sport forever.
• 2023 Drone Photo Awards (Siena Awards)
• Why Ice Cream Like Salt and Straw’s Are So Addicting (Bon Appetit)
• He has flown 23 million miles. Here are his travel secrets. (Washington Post)
  Several people sent me this article, but I learned about Tom Stuker a number of years ago. He got a great deal, but dare I say that United First would lose its novelty relatively quickly.

On Twitter

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