Dickie's Digest #15 - Student-Athletes, Tycoons, and Pivot
Plus a couple of the can't-miss tweets
Hi there 👋🏻
Another PACKED Digest this week to keep you thinking during the umpteenth week of quarantine. AT LEAST the local Starbucks in NYC has opened back up so I can stop drinking the weak stuff from Trader Joes.
I hope you’re staying safe, staying healthy, and getting to spend some quality time with your loved ones, either in person or via Zoom. Enjoy this week’s edition of the Digest!
Check out this shiny new button that says "Share Dickie's Digest" right below here. If you find something worthwhile in here each week and know someone else who might too, give that button a tap and share it with them! Getting to 100 readers by the end of April would be incredible, but I'll need your help.
What I'm Reading—
"Time will prove this choice misguided: A group of Princeton athletes speaks out."
Three weeks ago, the NCAA made a landmark decision to extend an additional year of eligibility to every spring sport athlete whose seasons were cut short by COVID-19. But three days ago, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale decided against granting eligibility waivers to senior athletes who choose to withdraw this Spring, effectively ending their athletic careers.
The students make valid points in contrasting this ruling with other recently-announced University policies. But there are some valid counterpoints, such as the potential strain on University resources if every senior withdrew in order to compete again next year. If you read this, where do you stand on this issue?
"Normally, Princeton and the Ivy League stand out from the NCAA for the right reasons. Today, they stand out for the wrong ones."
The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
Last week, I talked about Chamath's comments comparing the first 20 years of the 21st century to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century: concentrated corporate power, rising income inequality, and United States technological exceptionalism.
I picked up this book for some insight into these last 19th century businesses. I'm only a couple chapters in, but learning about the lives of these Gilded Age titans has been fascinating.
What I'm Listening To—
Tim Ferriss x Ryan Holiday — How to Use Stoicism to Choose Alive Time Over Dead Time
In this episode, Tim Ferris and Ryan Holiday, founder of the Daily Stoic, discuss dealing with fear, being critical of our past decision-making, and how we can better spend our time during the quarantine.
The best question asked is "How can you make the next three to six months something you look back upon as a sacred time that you really treasure, not just survive?" — I explored a few ways of doing this in 10 Ways to Stay Antifragile During Quarantine.
Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway
Pivot has quickly become the podcast I most look forward to each week. Every Friday, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway discuss the top stories across tech, media, and business. The mix of the shrewd, mean-substitute-teacher style of Kara Swisher with the sarcastic, self-deprecating humor of Scott Galloway makes for quite an entertaining hour.
Best Tweets of the Week—
"Much of the debate has been polluted by a nonsensical duality which will now be hard to get past — that there is such thing as a 'herd immunity strategy' (which is what the bad people want) and the opposite is a lockdown (which is what the good people want)."
This argument gets straight to the point. There are not multiple strategies— there is one strategy: lockdown, reintroduce, herd immunity. Policy-makers must strike a delicate balance in sequencing this strategy without losing sight of the entire process.
This ad does an exquisite job of putting social distancing in a visual context.
#TeamMable — what a come from behind victory.
End Note
If you’re enjoying the Digest so far, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two by forwarding it or sharing it with the button below!
Be sure to follow me on Twitter or respond directly to this email to get in touch. And should you come across anything interesting this week, send it my way! I love finding new things to read through members of this newsletter.
Have an epic week,
Dickie