Good Reading -- October 2019
Quoted
“In 1971 the social scientist Herbert Simon anticipated the attention economy when he wrote that in an information-rich world, the most scarce resource is the one that information itself consumes: attention. ‘A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently.’” (Source: “All I Ever Wanted Was a One-Trick Pony”)
Facts and Figures
In 1996, 59% of SEC filers used non-GAAP figures; in 2017, 97% did. (Source: Audit Anaytics via WSJ)
The U.S. homicide rate fell 6.8% in 2018, the second consecutive annual decline. In the 30 largest cities, the aggregate decline was 7.5%. (Source: FBI)
At 17%, the average rate of interest on credit card balances is at a 25-year high. (Source: Fortune)
Books
The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West — This book won a lot of praise and great reviews, and it’s a topic I find really interesting. The historical accounts are well researched, and the brutality is vivid, but the narrative was less than gripping and the overall book was somewhat underwhelming.
Links
The Slow-Burning Success of Bob Iger — An interview that also previews his new book, which I plan to read.
Bog Iger’s Wild Ride — Another good feature that also previews the book.
The Renegade Executives of Houston Who Shook Up Sports Management — A great interview/profile of Jeff Luhnow and Daryl Morey.
Why Are Rich People So Mean? — This interesting article may have unintentionally answered its title question with this aside: “Researchers have concluded again and again that the single most reliable predictor of happiness is feeling embedded in a community.”
We Are All Confident Idiots — Enough said.
Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan — A long look at Bezos in light of the question, “Where in the pantheon of American commercial titans does Jeffrey Bezos belong?
Dyson and the art of making quick decisions — Avoiding painful decisions is a common problem, as companies prove almost every day. James Dyson, on the other hand, is “unsentimental about unsuccessful experiments” and he recently decided to abandon his long-held, expensive project to develop an electric vehicle. Danny Kahneman is quoted in this essay, but it’s actually a different quote of his that comes to mind and might be even more applicable: “When I work I have no sunk costs. I like changing my mind. Some people really don’t like it but for me changing my mind is a thrill. It’s an indication that I’m learning something. So I have no sunk costs in the sense that I can walk away from an idea that I’ve worked on for a year if I can see a better idea. It’s a good attitude for a researcher. The main track that young researchers fall into is sunk costs. They get to work on a project that doesn’t work and that is not promising but they keep at it. I think too much persistence can be bad for you in the intellectual world.”
Copyright © 2019 Anabatic Investment Partners LLC, All rights reserved.
Email: info at anabaticllc dot com
Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list