Flagpole Sitta
w.218 | State Dynamism, AI & Lawsuits, Crypto & Wealth Attitudes, Six Charts of 2023 Economy, & MCM Credenza
Dear Friends,
Happy end to 2023!
I’m shipping this out just in time for a clean slate into 2024. This will be a round-up of some of the best content that I encountered during December, and I’ll save the predictions for the future next week.
I spent the weekend with my friend's favorite founding father (see below). Do you know where he resides? :)
See you in 2024!
Today's Contents:
Good Reads: Sensible Investing
Media Round-Ip
Song of the Week: Flagpole Sitta
Good Reads: Sensible Investing
It is a striking reminder of the relative value of the technology world in dollars and cents. It is not ALL stocks from Japan and France, just those in the MSCI World All Countries Index.
Index of State Dynamism: Dynamism as a whole is historically low in the US, but some states are doing better than others.
AI and Everything Else. 71 pages on the state of AI from Ben Evans.
Twitter Thread on the legal issues in the OpenAI vs New York Times lawsuit.
2022 Bank of America Study of Wealthy Americans. Highlights:
$84 trillion is expected to pass from Baby Boomers to GenX and Millennials through 2045
Views on crypto vary significantly by age group
Six Charts that Defined the Markets in 2023 from Axios. Pasting one here:
My end-of-the-year media:
Podcast on the Austin Ecosystem for AustinNext with Rajiv Bala. Rajiv, Jason, and I discuss the state of the Austin tech ecosystem and our predictions of glory in the coming years.
Recap of Season 1 with guest book recommendations on Obviously The Future. It’s been 12 episodes and much learning on podcasting, interviewing, and storytelling.
Song of the Week: Flagpole Sitta
Video on YouTube.
I was getting dinner earlier this month when this Nineties classic came on. A critic wrote about the song: With biting sarcasm, the lyrics paint a picture of a world fraught with hypocrisy and wickedness, where self-reflection offers the only glimpse of truth. I don’t feel angst daily at the ‘wickedness’ in the world today. But hearing the song, I felt nostalgia for my middle / high school days before fast internet and smartphones, i.e., when you didn’t know what everyone was doing, thinking, and messaging all the time.
“Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger
Paranoia, paranoia
Everybody's comin' to get me
Just say you never met me
I'm runnin' underground with the moles
Diggin' holes
Hear the voices in my head
I swear to God it sounds like they're snoring
But if you're bored then you're boring
The agony and the irony
They're killing me, whoa
Selfie of the Week
Earlier this month, I drove around town to turn SashaInDenver into SashaInAustin!
Bonus pics. Christmas came early for me.
I love midcentury modern (MCM) furniture, particularly credenzas. For the past eight months, I’ve been following an Instagram account of a woman who restores wood MCM furniture. Nothing was perfect until last week, when I leaped to buy this rosewood gem designed by Paul Hundevad in the 1960s, and I’m happy to say it’s been secured and delivered.
I recently enjoyed reading Why We Can’t Have Nice Things about how contemporary fashionable objects are plain and minimalist, if not utilitarian. I’m not against utilitarian design; MCM is pragmatic, but I resonate with the sentiment. Over the holidays, I claimed my set of ornate family china and silverware.
Thanks for reading, friends. Please always be in touch.
As always,
Katelyn