Happy Friday!☀️
Hello from Vienna where I’m spending a week during the Easter break. Easter is my favorite holiday of the year and I look forward to some time off with L. and family.
What I’m reading 📖
My friend Philip shared this article on Twitter and it captures a feeling and observations I’ve had for a while about a trend for things to look visually generic. The piece looks at different aspects of our lives like architecture, interiors, cars, brands, film and book covers all tend to look the same. The author Alex Murrell calls this the age of the average and ends on a positive note that in this age, there is opportunity. When everyone zigs, you zag. Read.
What I’m listening to 🎧
My friend Matze shared this podcast in his newsletter last week and I binge-listened to it this week. The 8-episode podcast and host Helen Lewis (staff writer for The Atlantic) investigates the emergence of modern times gurus. Today there are online gurus for everything: wellness, fitness, money, productivity, dating–pick your topic. Lewis ventures out to meet and try to understand the reasons why people flock to these new type of gurus and it’s informative and entertaining. Here’s the trailer:
What I’m watching 📺
Beef is a new show on Netflix and I watched the first two episodes last night. I had heard a few tv podcast hosts (tv gurus?!) recommend the series and I see why. The series starts off by introducing the two protagonists played by comedian Ali Wong and actor Steven Yeung who are involved in a road rage incident. What follows is a peek into the life of two people who couldn’t be more different and the one thing they both have in common: the hunger for revenge. I like it so far. Watch the trailer.
What I’m thinking about 🧠
Steve Schlaf is a coach based out of New York who I met during his time as a venture capitalist before he transitioned into a new career. Late last year, Steve shared a template for a yearly review and yesterday he introduced his Ultimate Quarterly Review which guides you through a set of reflections if you don’t want to wait until the end of the year. If you want to go straight to the template that Steve provides, click here here. Thanks, Steve!
What else?! 💯
Some nerdy stuff to wrap up this week’s newsletter. Data Scientist and AI Researcher Randal Olson took the challenge to compute the optimal road trip across the United States. Based on three rather simple rules, Olson used his machine learning toolbox to create a Google Map with the ideal route. Your time invest if you follow his itinerary?
Assuming no traffic, this road trip will take about 224 hours (9.33 days) of driving in total, so it's truly an epic undertaking that will take at least 2-3 months to complete.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!
David
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