July 31, 2023
Good morning! I thought I invented the Tomato sandwich back on the farm sixty or more years ago. Turns out I didn’t, or at least others are laying claim to it. Which begs the question, if you do something for the first time in a vacuum — and others do it simultaneously in their own vacuums — who wins? For me it was simple: A one-inch-thick center-cut slice of a large, perfectly ripe, freshly-picked tomato, salt, positioned between two slices of fresh-from-the-oven bread. Chomp. Take care when you compare as it can often lead to despair.
- Clarity brings oxygen into the room, so it isn’t filled with worry, doubt, blame, and fear. (On communication — Eades, 2023)
- What does it say about our culture when Barbie out distances Oppenheimer two-to-one?
- Wanna add ~$6 billion to your income? Stop the shoplifting.
- NetFlix cracked down on subscription sharing (stealing) and suddenly increased its gross income by that number.
- Where would we be without Liszts (Franz, that is)?
- Someone by the name of WalletHub has gone to all the trouble of quantifying the Most Fun cities in the United States.
- They have an algorithm — doesn’t everyone?
- The winners are so lame we hesitate to Liszt them here, but: Las Vegas — Orlando — Atlanta… Etc.
- Choose one and go have some fun; report back.
- When designing algorithms, humans need to recognize two major limitations:
- Algorithms do exactly what they’re told, and may be acting without the common sense of a human.
- Algorithms are black boxes – they can predict the future, but not what causes it. (Issac)
- God save the King — and Taylor Swift!
- If you live in a city, your downtown was just saved by Taylor Swift, according to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve:
- “Despite the slowing recovery in tourism in the region overall, one contact highlighted that May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the plague…
- in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city.”
- Among my cherished readers is someone with her pulse on the hospitality industry in downtown Minneapolis; was it similar there, my friend?
- On the topic of so-called Legacy students at colleges: “I don’t think it serves a useful social function. I think it is unfair, and I think it sends a bad signal about the institutional citizenship of elite education. And at a time when the issue of estrangement of elites is so big in our politics, I think the right thing for our leading universities to do is what MIT has already done, what Johns Hopkins has already done, what Amherst has already done. I hope everybody follows and that legacy admissions are gone two years from now. And I think if they are gone ten years from now, people will wonder how they ever lasted as long as they did.” (Summers, 2023 — Harvard)
- What are four (4) areas essential for building a better board, according to McKinsey? (July 2023)
- Broaden the Board’s scope
- Deepen Directors’ commitment
- Clarify responsibilities and Board composition
- Create trust by investing in Board dynamics.
- “… Directors must be well versed in the company (organization) and its ecosystem in order to challenge management with critical questions, and they must work to continually improve knowledge and skills.” (McKinsey, 2023)
- “I don’t think you’re ever done with digital transformation.
- It’s a muscle that you’re constantly building and you’re constantly honing to get better at.” (Smaje, 2023)
- Update on pedestrian vs. vehicle carnage: A reader in Washington City reports his city is doing something about this. I will be there soon and I’ll investigate.
