This is a well done reflection. Business models and investment both have gravity; in this case, the gravity of the investment they’ve taken works against the gravity of their business model

Brad DeLong@braddelong.bsky.social · 2d ago

My view: The most ambitious thing SubStack could do right now is stop pushing forward. But given who is running and funding the place, that is unlikely. Scott Carney says the platform is collapsing. I say it is more likely that it has reached the limit of its supply lines—and that the cure is... 1/

Very cool analysis of the Maine 70.3 Half Ironman men’s finishing times last weekend (assembled by a friend). Note that the pool of competitors in each age bracket gets smaller as ages go up, but the finishing times really don’t change much!

If you’re in Philly early for #AOM2026 and looking for something to go, I highly recommend touring the US Mint. Great exhibit design, see the machines in action, quick visit. www.usmint.gov/about/tours-...

Philadelphia Mint

The Philadelphia Mint produces circulating, commemorative, and precious metal coins; medals; and manufactures the Mint's dies. Learn more about this facility.

usmint.gov

Seems like a good time to remind folks that even if you are safe from fires, breathing smoke is, like, really bad. A DIY air filter can help. #wildfire #pacificpalisades #crbox

How a nondescript box has been saving lives during the pandemic – and revealing the power of grassroots innovation

3D printers got a lot of attention when DIYers leapt to action to address equipment shortages early in the pandemic, but some everyday items found in hardware stores played a big role, too.

theconversation.com

Oh my gosh, I love everything about this: the concept, the community, the Risky Business homage www.news-gazette.com/business/ent... h/t @ecourtem.bsky.social

Champaign bookstore buys house to offer events, retreats

Jenny Shima, owner of The Literary, is converting a historic Champaign home into a space for weekend reading retreats and other events. She hopes to have the first booking available

news-gazette.com

New paper alert! Learning to grow in entrepreneurial ecosystems. entrepreneurs learn about entrepreneurship from other entrepreneurs. Not from accelerators, not from textbooks, not from their very handsome entrepreneurship professors — from each other. 🧵 1/7 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Learning to grow in entrepreneurial ecosystems - Small Business Economics

The entrepreneurial ecosystems literature lacks a clear explanation for how ecosystems influence firm growth. To address this gap, this paper examines learning as a way to link the structure of ecosys...

link.springer.com

"writing code to solve a problem" used to have "understanding the problem" as a prerequisite. but vibecoding allows solution-shaped objects to be produced without any of the hard-won understanding. beware of solution-shaped objects.

ok, yeah, in retrospect not an ideal bookmark to be using, in the courthouse, while waiting in the jury pool

“Some things need to become enormous to survive. Other things survive because they never needed to become enormous.”

Terry Godier@terrygodier.com · 3mo ago

📢 New Essay: The Boring Internet The internet you grew up on isn’t dying. A commercial veneer glued on top of it is. www.terrygodier.com/the-borin…

Wonderful piece by Donna Harris on pitch competitions in entrepreneurship: They reward the wrong things, but we just can't quit them (h/t to @vanishingcorp.bsky.social) buildersfieldguide.substack.com/p/breeding-c...

Breeding Cobras or Building Companies?

Pitch competitions dominate entrepreneurship. There's almost no evidence they help founders build durable companies.

buildersfieldguide.substack.com

I think it's under-appreciated how much user-hostile recipe sites and news articles smothered in pop-ups and video ads have negatively polarized the average normie against the open web, and helped to drive adoption of AI as an alternative way to get basic information

re-upping this in light of the very amusing Granta fiasco

The Easy Promise of Hidden Revelations

Don't blame LLMs. We have always wanted slop.

hegemon.substack.com

I've never liked the phrase "kill your babies" as a piece of writing advice, but oooof, it sure does hurt to watch paragraphs that took days to craft end up on the cutting room floor

Sure the world is in tatters and gas is $75/gallon but I just bought four Brother ink cartridges for $25, for a 10 year old printer that's still going strong?

Sharing a good friend's Kickstarter. Erin is a designer and illustrator; her book Girl Math is gorgeous and offers accessible advice to folks (esp. young women) who weren't taught about or feel overwhelmed by personal finances. www.kickstarter.com/projects/eri...

Girl Math: Claiming our Freedom & Redefining Abundance

Help me print & distribute this super cute guide to money & mindset for women who don’t know what they don’t know. Let’s change lives!

kickstarter.com

Watching “Chef” starring Jon Favreau has led me, inevitably, back to the greatest restaurant review of all time www.everywhereist.com/2021/12/bros...

Bros., Lecce: We Eat at The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever

There is something to be said about a truly disastrous meal, a meal forever indelible in your memory because it’s so uniquely bad, it can only be deemed an achievement. The sort of meal where everyone...

everywhereist.com

A female experimenter, appearing pregnant, boarded the train with an observer. In the experimental condition, an additional experimenter dressed as Batman entered from another door. Passengers were significantly more likely to offer their seat when Batman was present (67.21% vs. 37.66%).

Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect - npj Mental Health Research

npj Mental Health Research - Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect

nature.com

My mother spent much of her career as a florist, which made Mother’s Day a mixed bag for her (looong days and too much work). So this year when my 6yo and I made paper flowers with the tagline, “no florists were harmed in the making of this arrangement” 😜

A gorgeous, quiet grey day in @giesbusiness.bsky.social during oops-no-finals week. #illini

Rereading Edward Abbey’s “Down the River” to prep for a float trip at the end of the month, and delighted to find a perfect start to the preface: “For me, this floating began near home…my brother Hoots and I built a boat. To be honest, we didn’t build it, we stole it. Nor was it exactly a boat.”

"That's kind of a wild thing," said one man at South Station. "I think the researchers might be a little bored over at UCLA."

WBZ NewsRadio@wbznewsradio.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The results of a UCLA bird study have people questioning whether Boston birds trust men more than they trust women.

One underappreciated value of coding your own interviews from transcripts by hand is the self-coaching potential it brings. It can be annoying & challenging, but really lays bare the potential bad habits & mistakes that you still make, no matter the level of experince. We all have our blindspots.

Big day today if anybody wants to pitch me an irresponsible investment or adventure

Studies involving venture capital, pro sports, healthcare & entertainment find all-women groups face a collaboration penalty that solo women & all-men groups escape. All women groups seen as more threatening & more likely to challenge power structures. theconversation.com/why-women-in...

Why women in groups face a ‘collaboration penalty’ that solo female stars like Taylor Swift and Coco Gauff escape

All-women groups, whether in sports, music or business, are consistently underpaid compared to men. They’re seen as more threatening to the status quo.

theconversation.com

Very odd to see Claude’s writing ticks show up in a print copy of the Economist (ironically, in an article about AI 🙄)

Turns out Indianapolis airport is ORD’s mirror twin. Connecting through O’Hare is like being a salmon going over a hydro dam; this is a meditation spa in comparison 🤣

Millennial hustle culture

BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 4mo ago

learnt from the very good book on gladiatorial life I'm reading that powerful Roman men generally wanted to be depicted in statues as looking tired and worn because it conveyed them as being hard working and self-sacrificing. which explains all those baggy eyes.

Thinking more about the Yale report. Parts of it are thoughtful. But Yale wants to make what is essentially a structural problem a question of behavioral one.

Fantastic panel on the role of agentic AI in research, hosted by @strategicmgmt.bsky.social and Sukhun Kang, with @mattbeane.bsky.social, Gwendolyn Lee, @cgartenberg99.bsky.social, @joshgans.bsky.social. Image from Claudine Gartenberg. It's a new world (with lots of unanswered questions).

Hummingbirds shouldn't be allowed to migrate this way. They're too small. It's too far.