TBB Best of Web: Stupid Evil Tyrants, Facebook Wild Early Days, Science vs Art, Toughest American, Nat Geo Travel Contest

We bring you another edition of the awesome TBB Best of Web links you usually can not find anywhere else! This week we have a great piece on stupid evil Tyrants vs Democrats, learn about Facebook and its wild early days, we ponder science vs art, meet the toughest American you never heard of and look at all of the 2018 National Geographic Travel Contest photos.

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As always, click on the headline to be taken to the original source. Sometimes I insert my incendiary comments on article excerpts between [brackets].

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Tyrants Aren’t Smarter Than Democrats, Just More Evil

Fascinating and encouraging read, considering the crazy times we live in!  I am not going to ruin the pleasure you should derive from reading this article and excerpt the crap out of it here. I guarantee you will benefit from clicking on something like this instead of another hideously disguised credit card sales blog post that is attempting to pass of as “writing” or, heaven forbid, some moronic clickbait video of something that happened up in the air among the thousands of flights that operate daily…

Ok, here is the opening…

A common explanation is that these tyrants are better at playing the game. They are strategic geniuses leading governments with decades of experience in foreign affairs and characterised by single-mindedness and a long-term horizon. Of course they are going to make better geopolitical moves than democratic governments riven by political factionalism and only able to think as far ahead as the next election.

This explanation is wrong. Tyrants don’t succeed because they are especially skilled at the game of geopolitics, but because they are baddies. Tyrants make bold moves because they are willing to subject their country (and the whole world) to more risk. They can do that because they care less than democrats, and hence worry less, about bringing harms to their people. Like a hedge fund manager, they can afford to take big risks because they are not playing with their own money. When tyrants win it is because of luck, not brilliance. This is easier to see when tyrants lose – as they nearly all do in the end, when their luck runs out. [Naturally, I loved the dig against hedge funds!]

Okay, you know me, I could not resist…

However, a hint at the true clownishness of tyrannical regimes may be found in Trump’s administration. Trump has the character of a tyrant, but he rules within a constitutional democracy that requires much more public exposure than at his previous businesses. In line with the clown theory of tyranny, Trump only appoints people he can trust for their personal loyalty to him. And these cronies are manifestly incompetent: a shower of fools, criminals and wingnuts. (The handful of mildly competent people he initially appointed have mostly already been replaced – exactly because they were too loyal to America, not Trump.)

And sadly, the final paragraph…

What makes this tendency to misjudge risk even more dangerous is that the most powerful country in the world has elected a would be tyrant. Though constitutionally constrained at home, Trump is free to play at brinkmanship abroad unencumbered by competence or facts. And he has made it clear that chicken is the only negotiating strategy he believes in. The competitive interaction of so many incompetent but heavily armed states all using the threat of escalation as their main tool of international diplomacy is a recipe for very dangerous times.

Sex, Beer, and Coding: Inside Facebook’s Wild Early Days

Full disclosure: My son is an intern at Facebook this summer…so I was especially interested to read this article! This is WILD. Okay, we all knew about the early days at Harvard from the movie The Network and other write ups. But this is a long collection of stuff that comes out for the first time I believe. And, oh boy, is it wild or what? After reading it, I sent the link to him and told him that maybe it would be a good idea not to work there after graduation lol.

Actually, it is a fascinating look at the early days of the Web and the free wheeling culture behind it. In addition, as an immigrant here, this is one of the aspects of America that I find the most special. The deep entrepreneurial spirit that exists. Companies like Google, Facebook and Apple would not easily happen anywhere else but here.

Okay, just a small excerpt…

Jeff Rothschild: They had a bar, a whole shelf with liquor, and after a long day people might have a drink.

Ezra Callahan: There’s a lot of drinking in the office. There would be mornings when I would walk in and hear beer cans move as I opened the door, and the office smells of stale beer and is just trashed.

Ruchi Sanghvi: They had a keg. There was some camera technology built on top of the keg. It basically detected presence and posted about who was present at the keg—so it would take your picture when you were at the keg, and post some sort of thing saying “so-and-so is at the keg.” The keg is patented.

Ezra Callahan: When we first moved in, the office door had this lock we couldn’t figure out, but the door would automatically unlock at 9 am every morning. I was the guy that had to get to the office by 9 to make sure nobody walked in and just stole everything, because no one else was going to get there before noon. All the Facebook guys are basically nocturnal.

Katie Geminder: These kids would come in—and I mean kids, literally they were kids—they’d come into work at 11 or 12.

Ruchi Sanghvi: Sometimes I would walk to work in my pajamas and that would be totally fine. It felt like an extension of college; all of us were going through the same life experiences at the same time. Work was fantastic. It was so interesting. It didn’t feel like work. It felt like we were having fun all the time.

Ezra Callahan: You’re hanging out. You’re drinking with your coworkers. People start dating within the office …

Ruchi Sanghvi: We found our significant others while we were at Facebook. All of us eventually got married. Now we’re in this phase where we’re having children.

Katie Geminder: If you look at the adults that worked at Facebook during those first few years—like, anyone over the age of 30 that was married—and you do a survey, I tell you that probably 75 percent of them are divorced.

Immeasurably Important

What a wonderful short read by Morgan Housel. I see this so often in my day job. I have butted heads in the early years of being a Certified Financial Planner with some prospects who had some data proven methods of investing to maximize returns when I am like…”If you can put this down in writing that I can earn % maybe I give you my money to manage instead? In the meantime, can you stop spending all your paycheck and actually put away some of it for some long terms goals you supposedly hold dear and leave all this shortcut nonsense to others okay?” 🙂

The point here is that investing is both art and science. Some things are countable. Others you have to just feel out.

Gathering information is a science. Filtering out noise is an art.

Net present value is a science. Identifying the trust and passion of a CEO is an art.

Measuring what worked in the past is a science. Understanding why things are different now is an art.

Since those are conflicting skill sets, toggling between the two is hard. Which is why business and investing is hard. Steve Jobs was both a technical and artistic genius. Warren Buffett can calculate DCF figures in his head, but he also drops fluffy feelings like, “With Coke, it’s not about share of market; it’s about share of mind.” That kind of mental flexibility is a rare trait.

If you think the world is all art you’ll miss how much stuff is too complicated to think about intuitively. Most people get that. But if you think the world is all data you’ll miss how much is too complicated to summarize in a statistic. That one’s a little harder.

The Legend of John Arthur, the Toughest Man in America

I had never heard of this guy, what a WILD life story!

John Arthur has been shot, stabbed, fought in mob-run deathmatches. He’s arrested and killed some of America’s worst criminals as an undercover agent. And now he’s finally coming clean.

I can see a movie about him one day…

2018 National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest

This is the homepage of every single photograph. I really enjoyed clicking through and looking at all of them!

My favorite is this one #mindblown

And I leave you with this…

TBB
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