Five Links for December

Every month I try to share the most mind-expanding links to read/watch/listen. If you find these interesting, please do share with your friends.

Here are five links worth reading…

How Elites Abandoned the Masses by Erik Torenberg

On elite lifestyles vs the normalization of divorce, bad health and unemployment, and how elite hypocrisy is encouraging others to make bad choices. 

Listen: Keith Rabois: Velocity, Differentiation & Disruption on World of DaaS

A conversation with one of the most counterintuitive thinkers in tech. Keith is a master operator and has amazing insight on finding talent, investing early, and creating culture, whether that’s at his companies or in building a new tech scene in Miami.  

Is Wine Fake? By Scott Alexander

The most exhaustive look at the data from numerous wine tasting competitions and academic studies you’ll find anywhere. Scott Alexander comes to a pretty definitive answer to the question “is all this wine stuff made up?”  

Winter is Coming by Fabrice Grinda

A stark, comprehensive look at what could go wrong in the global economy in the next year. If you want a baseline bearish macro view, this is it.  

A sleuth’s guide to the coming wave of corporate fraud by The Economist

“There is an inverse relationship between interest rates and dishonesty.” Where and how you can expect to see the cracks appearing as the economy trends downward.   

Of Ponzis and Polyamory: SBF, FTX, and EA by Zohar Atkins

What polyamory, EA and crypto have in common: optimizing for efficacy and altruism alone will likely take us to zero. There’s been plenty written about the FTX implosion, but this is worth a read.

Bonus (freaky): 30 Y.O. Woman Takes DNA Test For Fun Only To Discover Her Long-Term Boyfriend Is Her Full Sibling by Darja Zinina and Saulė Tolstych

“Life is crazy, sometimes hellish even.” An unbelievable story of modern DNA testing. 

HT: Christopher Kirchhoff

Bonus (Interesting): Rishi Sunak and the Rise of the ‘Short King’

Almost every leader in the G7 is the exact same height— 5’ 7”.

Bonus (Watch): We Own This City on HBOThis six part miniseries from David Simon, the writer of the Wire, covers one of the wildest true stories of corruption in the last 20 years: the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force.

More reading links at https://twitter.com/AurenReads 

Books:

Spy Handler: Memoirs of a KGB Officer by Victor Cherkashin

An autobiography from the KGB officer that handled Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.

The Teenage Brain by Frances Jensen and Amy Ellis Nutt

HT: Jack Huffard

The Small Big by Steve J. Martin, Noah J. Goldstein & Robert B. Cialdini

The Speechwriter by Barton Swaim

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