Maybe it’s not the achieving stuff that makes us happy, but rather the act of chasing after achievements. Most people need to feel that they are contributing to society. At least for me, when I try to picture my ideal days, it doesn’t matter if I’ve accomplished anything in the past. But my visions always involve working towards some kind of goal i... See more

We believe in the free press and in free speech – and we do not believe those things can be decoupled.

Become a lifelong learner Go hard in technology or in human relationships.

There’s another group of platforms out there that don’t just disperse retail, but disperse creativity. Etsy — a pandemic winner whose prosperity is nothing short of inspiring — enables artisans to reach a global audience. YouTube made video stars out of millions, and now TikTok is leapfrogging YouTube in the mobile space. Substack, Patreon, and Onl... See more

But some products can develop into habits. In thinking about how and why, I came up with a highly unscientific list of qualities that a product likely needs to meet:

For the longest part of our history, humans lived as hunter-gatherers who neither experienced economic growth nor worried about its absence. Instead of working many hours each day in order to acquire as much as possible, our nature—insofar as we have one—has been to do the minimum amount of work necessary to underwrite a good life.

A 23 minute driving commute has the same effect on happiness as a 19% reduction in income.

But this isn’t really a story about the consequences of raising too much venture capital, or even about branding. It’s mostly a story about a not-great business that never figured itself out — where customers spent too little and didn’t come back enough.

At the core of this is a debate on whether The New York Times, The Washington Post and others are failing the American people by pushing more content behind the paywall.