Weekly Review #135 - How HBO Nails Silicon Valley, Thiel's Terrible Dinner, and Silicon Flatirons
Fresh off a week long trip to Oregon and Colorado. All I can say is that Bagby Hot Springs is at the edge of civilization 3 hours outside Portland, but totally worth it. Ancient wooden hot baths open 24/7 in the gorgeous Cascades.
As for Denver, the Boulder wilderness is gorgeous, but not nearly as tech-centric as I had been led to believe. The only startup thing I saw the whole trip was Gusto's Denver corporate headquarters! So much for the Silicon Flatirons....or at least them being obvious.
Tech
The reddit rebellion and the challenge of commercializing communities
“Online communities pose as republics, with the company as the elected. In reality, they are weak dictatorships.” How do you make money from a community that regards profit as the enemy? It's not easy, says former Imgur head of product.
How “Silicon Valley” Nails Silicon Valley
Basically, they have tons of real techie consultants who come in to stroke their own ego in cameos and the like, offering fodder for the writers to work with. And it's this insider authenticity that helps it shine, rather than Dave Eggers' barely researched Google spoof The Circle, says the New Yorker.
Worthy long read!
In which Nick Bilton goes to a dinner hosted by Thiel that's all talk and no food. Which he takes to emblemize Silicon Valley's total lack of concern for what other people think.
"I was struck by a profound epiphany about Silicon Valley: Thiel, in many ways, sums up the entire mentality of the tech industry. He doesn’t necessarily care what other people want; if Thiel is on a weird and special diet, then we should all be on a weird and special diet. If Thiel thinks that people shouldn’t go to college because it’s a waste of time, as he’s said innumerable times before—regardless of the way such a decision could affect people’s lives in the future—then we are all fools for not dropping out."
Sorry, Nick, but it's not as simple as that. Thiel lives by principles, and theoretically, his wants are determined by alignment to principles he's found to make sense. Your beef is with his principles, not his person or the way the pursues them.
I might go as far to re-quote Einstein and say "“If most of us are ashamed of shabby (dinners) and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies".
Lifehacks
John Brockman: the man who runs the world's smartest website
John Brockman, that guy who keeps writing books that are just him asking super smart people what they think about stuff, actually is also a literary agent and has a big website to his name about the same: The Edge. Cool stuff, though a bit academically stuffy, it seems.
Fun
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