Staring at the Sun
w.227 | Stripe, Demographics, Investment Office Playbook, AI Replacing Services, The Totality
Dear Friends,
Are you ready for the totality on Monday? Luckily for me, it passes right over Austin; potentially unluckily, it is forecast to be cloudy. Wish me luck :)
I’ve been playing Staring At The Sun over and over in anticipation of the event, so I just had to publish this week. Hope you enjoy the song and the eclipse.
Today's Contents:
Good Reads: Sensible Investing
Song of the Week: Staring At The Sun
Good Reads: Sensible Investing
Stripe’s Annual Letter - They do a lot of stuff now and have a lot of thoughts. Also, they heart Charlie Munger. So that’s good.
The 2nd Demographic Transition. Opportunity cost and fertility. I’m super into reading about this megatrend. This is a good piece.
The Investment Office Playbook—What Managers Don’t See. This was shared in so many group chats that I’m sharing it now.
What MidJourney, DeepL, ElevenLabs, and HeyGen Have in Common (besides special teams and explosive growth!). TL/DR: They are all providing an outcome-as-a-service faster, cheaper, and more reliable than labor. It’s a short piece and kind of obvious, but I liked this data on service sector value added to the GDP.
Song of the Week: Staring at the Sun
This is a song of the week to remind you that despite the total eclipse that is happening on Monday, you cannot stare at the sun without those special glasses. (Thanks, Mom, for sending an article to remind me!).
I like a lot of things about this song and find it quite catchy. The lyrics are based on a Sufi poem by the 13th-century Persian writer Rumi, “No Room for Form,” about transcendence, death, and love.
Side Note: I often get lyrics and intel on songs from Genius (including this week). I was saddened to read that the founder, Mahbod Moghadam, passed this week at age 41. His family wrote an excellent obituary on the site.
Moghadam's legacy is one of fearless innovation and the empowerment of online communities to engage with and share knowledge on their own terms. As he once said, "The only way to succeed is if all you're doing is working on your own company." He lived those words, pouring his singular energy into the platforms he helped create.
“Staring at the Sun” by TV on the Radio
Note the trees because
The dirt is temporary
More to mine than fact face
Name and monetary
Selfie of the Week
Thanks for reading, friends. Please always be in touch.
As always,
Katelyn