Brunch Briefing | Sisyphus

Dickens, PTSD, and The Book of Resell

Dec 01, 2019

Hope you all are enjoying a good Sunday, with our American readers still working their way through Thanksgiving leftovers. You’ll notice a slightly abridged version this week as your faithful writer has spent the last few days with family, and traveling. Hopefully a shorter Briefing will also serve as a more salubrious segue into the week ahead.

As I continue my travels next week (all Lisbon recommendations encouraged), I have a rather exciting replacement lined up for December 8th’s edition. You may remember seeing a certain ‘Charlie L,’ mentioned in past issues, featuring frequently as one of our most successful riddlers. In the fashion of the South Korean crossover hit, The Masked Singer, I am glad to expose that individual’s true identity: Charlie Lyons. In addition to being one of my favorite people, Charlie is an Associate Editor at Minerva Research where he spends his time unpacking emerging technological trends. Very excited to hear his takes.

In this week’s BB, you’ll learn about…

✊ Speaking truth-to-power with long lashes

📚 The cost of reading Dickens in prison

🛴 Scooter-wars, and the penance of Zuckerberg

🎟️ A new side-hustle for sneakerheads

☮️ The solution to the crisis in the Middle East

⛰️ Sisyphus and PTSD

🐦 A first for The Generalist’s band of riddlers

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🕰️ If you’re new to The Generalist, you can check out our recent breakdowns of Synthetic Meat, Prison, and Addiction.

💓 If you’ve been digging the Briefing and would like to help, the #1 thing you can do is share this email with someone brainy and fun to be around.

🐰 Overheard

(Quotes from clever people)

Hi guys, I want to teach you guys how to get long lashes. So, the first thing you need to do is grab your lash curler…then put them down and use your phone you’re using right now to search up what’s happening in China, how they’re getting concentration camps, throwing innocent Muslims in there, separating their families from each other, kidnapping them, murdering them, raping them…this is another Holocaust.

Respect is owed to Feroza Aziz, a TikTok user who managed to side-step the Chinese company’s strict censorship to discuss the Uighur crisis. Aziz begins her video in the fashion of a make-up tutorial, before pivoting into a discussion of the conditions the Uighur community have been subjected to, all while wielding her curler. She ends by returning to the subject of eyelashes. Aziz was banned from the platform, though TikTok later apologized, blaming “human moderation error.” Hmm.

Historically, TikTok has thwarted topics like the one discussed by Aziz from reaching mass distribution via the app’s “For You” page. Interesting to see what role the company plays in an election year.

😱 Signs of the apocalypse

(Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!)

Disappointed (High). In a bid to make Alexa more expressive, Amazon released six voice samples this week, demonstrating the voice-bot’s range. Developers of apps for the platform will now be able to program Alexa to answer with “happy/excited” or “disappointed/empathetic” tone. I am certain both will fill me with dread. (As an aside, if you would like to creep yourself out, ask Alexa to whisper.)

Call off the dogs. The Massachusetts State Police has begun piloting Spot, one of Boston Dynamic’s quadrupedal creations. A police spokesman said the robot would be used as a “mobile remote observation device.” While Boston Dynamics use of leasing (rather than offering outright purchasing) seems to be a thoughtful way to protect against misuse, the ACLU nevertheless has questions about planned usage.

Pay for prose. Prisoners in West Virginia have been given tablets that will allow them to email family members and read books from Project Gutenberg’s free online library. It costs them up to $0.05 a minute to use. With the average wages in West Virginian prisons of between $0.04 - $0.58 an hour, it might cost an inmate $14.40 to read Great Expectations, for example, or the equivalent of 15 days of non-stop work. A uniquely vicious, stupid idea.

📈 Jobs for interesting people

(Openings at companies and funds building something cool)

🌟VC Analyst/A ssociate - Red Sea Ventures (NY). My former employers, RSV, are adding to their investment team. An opportunity to work with smart, cool folks and build on the firm’s impressive track-record.
VC Managing Partner - Alumni Ventures (NYC). These guys seem to be hiring like crazy. With a decentralized model, Alumni have scaled quickly. Might be a good time to dust off your college sweatshirt, and jump in.
VC Analyst - USV (NYC). The race is afoot once more.
Corporate Development Lead - Postmates (SF). Less than 25 people have applied at the time of writing!
VC Principal - Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (SF). Help Mark assuage his guilt at an organization doing some real good. Plenty to admire about what CZI has done to date.
Chief of Staff to CBO - Spin (SF). The company, acquired by Ford, might have the deep pockets to make it out of the scooter-wars alive. It sounds like you’d have a front-row seat.
Chief of Staff - Gitlab (SF). An opportunity to get into the trenches with Sid Sijbrandij. Amazingly, there is a whole page in the company’s handbooks devoted to Sijbrandij’s likes, dislikes, and flaws.
VC Analyst - Jet Blue Ventures (San Carlos). Only for the most flynamic of investors.
VC Principal - Tola Capital (Seattle). B2B firm, looking for folks to hop aboard for the long-term.
VC Intern - Newchip (Austin). A 4-6 month internship with a direct shot at an Associate’s gig.
Managing Director of Virtual Program - Techstars (Anywhere). Help the famed incubator strip away the office space as part of their “Organizationeled” offering.
Head of BD & Partnerships - Microverse (Anywhere). Fascinating distributed coding school with an emphasis on peer-to-peer learning.

🐒 Long tail

(Best of the rest)

Uber hits the skids in London. In response to safety failures, Transport for London failed to renew the ride-sharing company’s license in the capital. One of the primary issue was the persistent presence of unauthorized drivers on the app, who conducted thousands of trips. Uber can appeal the decision, but competitors like Ola, Bolt, and Kapten stand to benefit.

Thanks in advance. Despite that being the most irritating email sign-off, it’s also the most effective, according to a member of email plug-in Boomerang’s team. Other tips to receive favorable responses to your emails include providing value upfront, and making your ask as explicit as possible.

Glue, from unicorns. In the past year, tech’s unicorns have lost roughly $100B in value. That includes companies like UiPath, Fair, Juul, WeWork, Uber, Lime, and others. As VCs begin to conduct more rigorous diligence, and finance more conservatively, growth companies are focusing on reaching profitability more quickly.

The Book of Resell. As the ability to make cash in the streetwear game has been bitten up by bots, sneakerheads are increasingly turning to scalping tickets. They talk strategy and boast about their spoils on Discord.

‘I was compulsively playing minesweeper’. Addiction to gaming can take many different forms, with the World Health Organization adding it to its International Classification of Diseases earlier this year. Grassroots organizations, and startups like Healthy Gamer, have sprung up to help sufferers.

Gotta respect the hustle. Aspiring musicians are finding ways to game Spotify to increase their listening figures. By creating playlists that masquerade as film soundtracks, and slipping their own songs onto the list, they’re able to reach a larger audience. Crafty.

Democracy.com has a new owner. Thanks, Mark. (Not that one).

The solution to unrest in the Middle East? Adam Neumann, of course. This Vanity Fair profile adds new detail to the rich tapestry of Neumann’s hubris, including his belief that Mohammed bin Salman would benefit from his mentorship, Rahm Emanuel would run for president in 2020 on the “WeWork Agenda”, and that he would save the world, with the help of Jared Kushner. Truly the heroes we deserve.

Simple Opt Out. We are all being tracked far more than we think. Extricating ourselves from that can require comical levels of commitment — to get Hearst to stop sharing our information, a written letter is required. This article describes the simple steps you can take to stop unwanted sharing.

🚏 Digression

(A ludic adventure)

Lisbon is home to the Museum of Art Architecture and Technology (MAAT). Yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting, and spending an hour or so in their exhibit “Play Mode,” an exploration on the power of games. Alongside reconfigured ping-pong tables, and simulations of mundane office life, were two pieces that I found particularly remarkable.

The first, by Pippin Barr, is shown above. In it, you play as Sisyphus, trying to push a rock up a hill by alternating between the ‘G’ and ‘H’ keys as quickly as possible. Of course, you fail. Despite the fact you know you are going to fail, it is absorbing, and somehow, very funny.

Stripped of any humor, the task Sisyphus faces is echoed in a later exhibit, “Serious Games,” which shows soldiers suffering with PTSD, reliving trauma through the world of virtual reality. I have heard of these experiments previously, but have never seen them. Over the course of ten minutes, you hear a soldier talk about losing one of his buddies to an IED, clearly falling back into the terror of the event. Just when he believes he is finished, reaching the end of the simulation, he is asked to start again.

A powerful reminder of the diversity, range, humor and rehabilitative qualities of an often trivial-seeming form of media.

🧩 Puzzler

(A question, conundrum, or riddle to mull over)

A man knocks on the door of a woman’s hotel room. When the woman answers the door, the man says, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought this was my room.” He then walks down the hall and into the elevator.
Once he has left, the woman calls security. Why is the woman suspicious?

Last week’s riddle delivered on its promised barbarousness, with no one providing the correct answer. That’s a first in The Generalist’s brief history. Credit is owed to NMT, who got awfully close, getting to the 7-letter ‘strings’ before throwing in the towel. The correct answer can be unpacked as follows:

Starling
Staring
String
Sting
Sing
Sin
In
I

Technically, I suppose you could provide a 9-letter answer, by giving the plural. But that’s not much fun.

I am genuinely thankful to you all for reading. Wishing you a do-nothing sort of Sunday, with a helping of remaining apple pie. 💙

The Generalist