Photo of the week:
Grace contemplating life while visiting Birmingham.
Tech News:
- Maybe what I wanna be when I grow up?: Hiring Your First Chief AI Officer from HBR
- “The term product/market fit describes ‘the moment when a startup finally finds a widespread set of customers that resonate with its product’.” 12 Things about Product-Market Fit over at a16z
- Pew has a big long analysis of how algorithms have and will continue to shape our lives: Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age (reminds me of this BBC 4 documentary)
- “The Bad Product Fallacy: Your personal use cases and opinion are a shitty predictor of a product’s future success.”
The Bad Product Fallacy: Don’t confuse “I don’t like it” with “That’s a bad product and it’ll fail” from Andrew Chen - We are now apparently inventing AIs to explain to us what other AIs are up to: “Meta-intelligence software that generate rationales and narratives for explaining data-driven machine decision to humans.” 4 Models for US AI to Make Decisions also from HBR, which has been a bit AI crazy of late
Misc News:
- J. S. G Boggs funded most of his life by selling art — hand drawn dollar bills: His money or his art? Obituary: J. S. G. Boggs was found dead on January 23rd from the Economist
- A sobering look at how Trump is — and more importantly is not — like Hitler. I took some solace in the fact that we’re a long way away from private militias and death squads, at least: Ron Rosenbaum’s Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post” over at LARB
- I sorely sorely wish I could go see this in DC, it looks amazing: Immersed in Yayoi Kusama’s Lonely Labyrinths and Infinite Worlds from Hyperallergic
- Great profile of Mike Mills, the director of 20th Century Women (which is also great) “While his stance is one of self-deprecating bewilderment, he is also often genuinely bewildered” MIKE MILLS’S ANTI-HOLLYWOOD FAMILY FILMS from the New Yorker
Podcasts
- Tech in Chicago interview with Nick Moran, an investor in Chicago. Interesting that he has a goal of investing 50% in Chicago but can’t find enough to invest in at the moment. What An Ideal Startup Looks Like & Deal Sourcing With A Podcast
- Vox’s The Weeds has a very sobering series of interviews with Trump voters that are currently using Obamacare and hoping Trump does right by them. Weeds in the Wild: Sarah Goes to Kentucky
Fiction
I’m currently flying (as much as one can with his books) through Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.
On Republicans:
“Back when I was getting into the business, all ‘being Republican’ meant really was a sort of principled greed. You arranged things so that you and your friends would come out nicely, you behaved professionally, above all you put in the work and took the money only after you’d earned it. Well, the party, I fear, has fallen on evil days. This generation – it’s almost a religious thing now. The millennium, the end days, no need to be responsible anymore to the future. A burden has been lifted from them.
On poutine in Montreal:
In Montreal it’s a diagnostic for moral character – if somebody resists poutine, they resist life.
On IKEA:
An entire section of the store was dedicated to replacing wrong or missing parts and fasteners, since with IKEA this is not so exotic an issue. Inside the store proper, you walk forever from one bourgeois context, or “room of the house,” to another, along a fractal path that does its best to fill up the floor space available. Exits are clearly marked but impossible to get to. Horst is bewildered, in a potentially violent sort of way. “Look at this. A barstool, named Sven? Some old Swedish custom, the winter kicks in, weather gets harsh, after a while you find yourself relating to the furniture in ways you didn’t expect?”
Recipes
I doubt I’ll always include recipes each week, but when I try something I like I’ll be sure to link to it.
- Loved this, recommend adding some carrots along with the potatoes: Roasted Chicken With Potatoes, Arugula and Garlic Yogurt from NYT
- Did you know anchovies melt in butter? I’m going to be using the breadcrumbs fried in anchovy butter part of this recipe all the goddamned time: Pasta With Carmelized Cabbage, Anchovies and Bread Crumbs from NYT