Hey everybody,
Greetings from Morocco. I’m with two friends, and as I write this, we’re driving from Casablanca to Marrakesh. Afterward, we’re going to the Tangiers at the Northern tip of the country, before one final stop in Chefchaueon.
If you have any recommendations, please send them over. Books, experiences, people, places, stories. Everything is fair game.
— —
Before Morocco, I was in Washington D.C for a panel at Bloomberg. The panel was about my Twitter and the benefits of writing on the internet.
On the panel, I was asked about writing online and what it means to be “from the internet.”
(That’s me on the right)
Inspired by Erika Nardini, the CEO of Barstool Sports (who I recently interviewed on my podcast), I said that being an internet native changes your perspective on the world.
When I was applying to college, our parents and advisors always told us to delete our photos and change our names because they thought sharing online was a risky thing to do. But they don’t say that anymore. The internet has become an amazing way to get access to people, ideas, and opportunities.
Being from the internet gives you an intuitive sense for how to make things happen in the modern world. Three examples:
When you go to networking events, you use Twitter to search whose at the event and direct message the biggest names there. By doing so, you skip the normal small talk and connect directly with people you want to meet.
In a recent article, I told the story of a 19-year-old friend and Monday Musings subscriber from a rural town in Western Ireland, taught himself to build a fusion reactor on the internet. He explored high vacuum equipment, high voltage electronics, neutron detection, and plasma physics. When he had questions, he didn’t meet experts in person. Instead, he posted questions on fusor.net, an online forum for nuclear fusion reactor constructors. He relishes the independence of learning on the internet. When he needs money, he crowdsources it with online campaigns instead of relying on an institution. In short, people on the internet know how to learn without institutional guidance.
And my favorite… people from the internet understand the power of writing online. When you create content, people can access your knowledge without taking your time. You no longer need to sell knowledge by the hour. Until recently, the average person wasn’t able to publish and distribute their ideas at a reasonable cost. But on the internet, anybody, in any corner of the world, in any time zone, can access your best thinking. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week.
These lessons are the focus of my online course called Write of Passage. In it, I’ll show you how to meet people, attract jobs, and accelerate your career by sharing and distributing your ideas.
If you’re interested in Write of Passage, you can visit the site here.
Fresh Ideas
North Star Podcast: Jason Stein
Of everybody I know, Jason Stein has the most interesting thoughts on the future of social media.
I used to work for Jason. He hired me by sending me a direct message on Twitter. I’ve been following him for almost a decade, and he’s consistently predicted the future of social media. For example, he was writing about Facebook commerce in 2014, and Facebook recently launched a product he predicted back then. Seven years ago!
Some themes from this episode:
Why the Direct-to-Consumer commerce might be a bubble
How marketing and product teams should work together
Incentives of advertising agencies
The future of long-form content
You can listen to the podcast here: iTunes | Website | Spotify
Note: Please take a second to rate the podcast on iTunes. Here’s why: The iTunes algorithm takes prioritizes podcasts with a lot of ratings, so a quick review will help other people find the podcast.
Coolest Things I Learned This Week
Love This
Source: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018
Saudi Aramco Loses a lot of Oil
“Aramco loses 10,000 barrels of oil per day.
That’s “loses” in the strictest sense: It loads them on a truck or ship or pipeline, and then when it goes to unload them they’re not there anymore. They’ve evaporated or leaked or shrunk or whatever. It’s not a big thing, just one line and a footnote on one page of the discussion of operations. 1 The number is tiny, hardly worth mentioning, 0.1 percent of Aramco’s total output.
It’s also the equivalent of about 14 train cars full of oil vanishing every day, or losing about one supertanker full of oil (more than $200 million worth) every year. If you had a supertanker full of oil you probably would not misplace it. Aramco just has too much oil to care.”
A History of Social Networks
LinkedIn was the first social network that stuck.
Excellent Point about Writing
The common advice to “write as you speak” overlooks the fact that writing wasn’t invented solely to mimic spoken language.
Speech is enriched by body language. Writing isn’t.
For writing to bridge this gap, it must be enriched with carefully crafted words. Writing relies on the richness of words more than speaking does. Speaking is ~10% actual words spoken, rest is tone and body language.
Note: These is exactly the kind of discussion we’ll have in Write of Passage.
Warren Buffett’s Secret
The average private equity fund charges 2-20 as a fee structure. 2 percent of assets, and 20 percent of profits. It’s a standard fee structure. Berkshire charges no fees. Buffett’s salary is $100,000 per year.
There’s nothing else attached to it. Just that one fact alone, the difference between the 2-20 fee structure, and Buffett charging nothing accounts for 4 percentage points of the outperformance over time.
Source: An excellent talk by Morgan Housel
We’re Getting Older
For the first time in history, the Earth has more people over the age of 65 than under the age of five. In another two decades the ratio will be two-to-one.
How Temperature Changes
A band of equal average annual temperature between Europe and North America. Demonstrates the importance of the gulf stream for keeping Europe quite a few degrees above its latitude would expect.
The Friendship Paradox
The “friendship paradox” refers to the fact that, on average, people have strictly fewer friends than their friends have.
This oversampling of more popular people can lead people to perceive more engagement than exists in the overall population. This feeds back to amplify engagement in behaviors that involve complementarities. Also, people with the greatest proclivity for a behavior choose to interact the most, leading to further feedback and amplification.
This is consistent with studies finding overestimation of peer consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs and with resulting high levels of drug and alcohol consumption.
Photo of the Week
On our first day in Casablanca, we visited the Hassan II Mosque. It’s magnificent. And huge: it’s the largest mosque in Africa and the 5th largest in the world.
The mosque borders the Atlantic Ocean. There are no tall buildings nearby, so the sun shines through the Moorish horseshoe arches, illuminates the courtyard, and creates long, sweeping shadows that light up the emerald Moroccan tiles.
It was a proper introduction to Morocco.
Until next week,
David Perell