S-Town, Being Lazy, & Grocery Price Wars- Link Roundup

Articles

• Think like a bronze medalist, not silver – “Instead of comparing up to the next-higher situation, compare down to the next-lower” [Derek Sivers]
• How Alcohol and Caffeine Helped Create Civilization – Hint: it has to do with water safety, a problem that we rarely think about but that was a very serious threat up until a few hundred years ago [Human Progress]
• Don’t accelerate your startup – “See once you take the initial check, you’re also inevitably taking on the expectations of exponential growth. You’re literally selling your life, heart, and soul to an off-chance crack at a moonshot trajectory.” [Signal v. Noise]
• How Much Data Do You Need to Be Data-Driven? – Being “data driven” is as much a mentality as it is having large sample sizes and lots of tools and data at your disposal [CXL]
• Amazon and Walmart are in an all-out price war that is terrifying America’s biggest brands – “[E]even if Amazon isn’t profiting from its extremely low prices, Walmart is still demanding the same bulk-rate discount applied to individual items.” [recode]
• Inside the Hunt for Russia’s Most Notorious Hacker – a fascinating read about the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between cybersecurity experts and an elite hacker [Wired]
• Being Lazy Is the Key to Success, According to the Best-Selling Author of ‘Moneyball’ – I’m a huge Michael Lewis fan (see below). He’s such a prolific writer. It’s refreshing to see that you can be at the top of a profession while still relaxing and enjoying life. [Inc]

Podcasts

• S-Town – I binge-listened to everyone’s new favorite podcast, which stands for Shit-town, Alabama. It’s as addicting as advertised, but also sort of disturbing and very unsatisfying. I very much echo the sentiment of the Vox article S-Town is a stunning podcast. It probably shouldn’t have been made. [This American Life]
• Georgetown, Louisiana – this blew my mind. Georgetown university sold slaves in the 1800’s to remain afloat. They’re now one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Recently it was discovered that the descendants of those slaves live in a poor area of Louisiana. What, if any, responsibility does Georgetown have to those people? Part two is here. [Planet Money]
• Mr. Money Mustache — Living Beautifully on $25-27K Per Year – Tim interviews one of my favorite bloggers, Mr. Money Mustache. If you haven’t heard of MMM, his tagline is “financial freedom through badassity”
  [The Tim Ferriss Show]

Books

• The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds – This was one of the most exceptional books I’ve read, it explains how a lot of what we’ve come to understand today about decision making and judgement came from the unlikely friendship between two Israeli psychologists. [Michael Lewis]
• The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University – What happens when a liberal student from Brown goes undercover for a semester at Liberty University? Not what you’d expect. [Kevin Roose]

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