About half of my friends kind of hate their jobs, so they're moderately unhappy most of the time, but never unhappy enough to leave. This is the mediocrity trap : situations that are bad-but-not-too-bad keep you forever in their orbit because they never inspire the frustration it takes to achieve escape velocity.

The mediocrity trap is a nasty way t... See more

I guess maybe there’s a line between thinking of loneliness as something that can be noticed and interrogated, and loneliness as something that can be isolated and solved for...and the latter zone doesn’t sit right with me.

it’s just getting harder for brands, particularly new brands, to achieve and sustain that kind of fame because there are fewer opportunities for them to send messages that everyone sees, due to the way media has shattered into a million tiny pieces. Thus common knowledge is rarer, more valuable and more expensive than ever. The price of Super Bowl ... See more

As a kid, gardens and the internet both offered a place to dream, create, and play.

But that was then. Today, the internet is an omnipresent force that organizes the ways we learn, connect, and love—often in ways that are more nefarious than virtuous. The internet is a place, and that place has largely been led by those who value the accumulation of... See more

“I like it when people make clear artistic decisions,” he said. “In a time of so-called A.I., personality becomes even more important.” Using technology to randomize content and narrative, he added with a laugh, “becomes a little bit garbage.”

The way of the tourist is to consume; the way of the pilgrim is to be consumed. To the tourist the journey is a means. The pilgrim understands that it is both a means and an end in itself. The tourist and the pilgrim experience time differently. For the former, time is the foe that gives consumption its urgency. For the latter, time is a gift in wh... See more

“Connectivity between restaurants and guests has eroded. There’s a difference between knowing it’s someone’s birthday and being able to contact that person and invite them in for a drink.” - Ben Leventhal

Blackbird transforms traditional loyalty systems and fosters a more interactive and valuable relationship between consumers and businesses.

Building a T-shaped knowledge graph means aggressively diversifying your information sources, spreading out wider to seemingly unrelated areas and capturing the advantage of being at the beginning of the diminishing returns curve where you’re constantly exposed to new ideas. It also means being selectively ignorant about certain things. You have to... See more