Changing the name to Poor Billy’s Almanac. It’s a play on Benjamin Franklin’s newsletter, Poor Richard’s Almanac, the first personal newsletter in American history.
Before you say I’m stealing from Ben, he stole the name from his brother, who had a newsletter called, Poor Robin’s Almanac. I’m just following in the family footsteps.
❝ Quote of the Week
Everyone wants to climb the mountain, but the big difference between those at the top and those still on the bottom is simply a matter of showing up tomorrow to give it just one more shot
Gary Halpert. Famous copywriter. His “Boron Letters” are one of the best ways to learn copywriting. If you want to get better at emails, writing non-fiction and fiction, or landing pages, read them.
The quote is also good. Give yourself a pat on the back for showing up today.
🤷🏼♂️ What did Billy do this week?
Went to a talk by Alex Lieberman, the founder of Morning Brew. I love Alex. He doesn’t get on his knees for hustle culture and tells it how it is. But, the talk was less exciting than the one I went to last week with the Nobel Prize winning economist. Maybe I’m starting to enjoy learning about society and political systems more than business.
Why is LA snowing? I lived in Los Angeles for 23 years and it never snowed once. I leave for 6 months and it starts snowing in Beverly Hills and Burbank? On another note, it snowed hard for the first time since I moved to New York. I probably looked stupid touching street snow, grinning from ear to ear. I felt like a kid again. I never had winters growing up, so I’ve only seen snow a few times. Embrace the moments that make you feel like a kid.
I’m writing the Milk Road full-time again. Crypto is less exciting to me than it was a year ago. I blame it on the lack of hype and prices at rock bottom. However, I still like some of the stuff being built especially in decentralzied science, incentivizing “good quests”, and decentralized social media.
💡Idea of the week: I Have an Addiction Problem
It’s true. I’m addicted to social media apps. I know I am because I had to remove Twitter and Instagram from my phone so I could have ownership over my days. The definition of addiction is not having control over doing something to the point where it could be harmful to you.
It sounds ridiculous. Addicted to apps. Then again, I spend 7 hours a day scrolling my phone, 3.5 hours per day on Twitter (that’s not counting the time I spend on my desktop), and every time I open Instagram I remember why it turned into a dating app.
From the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep, we are being monetized. Every time we check our phones tech companies and e-commerce giants look at us the way a Lion looks at a wounded Gazelle in the Safari.
Airpods are one of the tools that keep us plugged in. Thankfully, I lost my airpods in an Ikea a few months ago. At first, I was upset. $250 down the drain - great job Bill. After a few days I was relieved. I didn’t have to worry about losing them anymore, I wasn’t constantly plugged in, and I had more time to think.
Right now I’m, reading the book, “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy," by Jenny Odell. It’s fantastic. I encourage anyone interested in unplugging to read this. Because as Jenny says, “Nothing is harder than doing nothing.”
I also plan on starting a book club and reading, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, first. If you’re interested HMU.
🎙Podcast of the week: The Dark History of Silicon Valley
Sean Illing, the host of The Gray Area, talks to Malcolm Harris, the author of, Palo Alto: A history of California, capitalism, and the world.
Malcolm is a leftist thinker who grew up in Palo Alto. He studied the history of his hometown to see how we got to where we are today. On the surface level Palo Alto is a normal suburban California city. But it’s also the home of Stanford, Silicon Valley and a suicide rate 5x the nation’s average.
Malcolm and Sean discuss how Silicon Valley became the “center of design”, but has always relied on cheap immigrant and temp labor for execution and production (look at Apple’s “Designed in California” and “Produced in China” labels and the “Gig Economy”). Why Silicon Valley relies on the exceptionalism myth. What Karl Marx thought of California. And how Stanford became what is today.
Malcolm ends the episode with a plea to Stanford University to give their land to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, the native people of Palo Alto. Sounds ridiculous, but he makes a compelling argument.
💰Company of the week: Mememorph
Mememorph uses AI to put your face on 127+ memes. Here’s how it works:
Pay $6.99
Snap a few selfies
Let the AI magic happen
✅ Get 100+ customized memes featuring YOU!
Such a simple application. An easy way to generate funny memes without lifting a finger. Totally worth the $6.99 in my opinion.
The app was founded by @David_LoDico and @dannypostmaa a few days ago and is already at $1k in revenue. If you want to check it out go here.
👨🏼💼 Person of the week: Magareet Poret
Magurieite Poret was a 13th century Christian mystic in France.
What’s interesting about her life isn’t what happened while she was alive, but what happened after she died.
In 1300 she wrote a Christian book called "The Mirror of Simple Souls."
The church found out about the book and called her a heretic. They gave her the chance to ask for forgiveness to spare her life but Poret didn’t believe she did anything wrong.
The church burned her at the stake even though hundreds of similar writings were circulating through Europe at the same time.
The funny thing is, "The Mirror of Simple Souls" became extremely popular after her death. So popular that a century later the pope endorsed the book.
Magurieite went from a death sentence to a hero. Talk about wrong place wrong time.
Love your analysis on social media addiction. Unfortunately, these companies make money by giving you little dopamine hits – so they can addict you. One of the platforms I dislike the most is Twitter: since the algorithm encourages such bad behavior from users who want those dopamine hits (in the form of likes, retweets, etc.)
And I actually wrote an article on this too: https://nathanbrown.ghost.io/019-three-things-twitter/