Six Ideas That Made Us Think

1. Is There Life After Zoom?

“At some point, many of those meetings will turn back into coffees, we hope, but video will remain. Will it still be Zoom, though?” So begins Ben Evans’ examination of whether Zoom’s early success can endure. To answer that question, he looks at how Snap changed photo sharing and the lessons it may provide for Zoom:

When Snap launched, there were infinite way to share images, but Snap asked a bunch of weird questions that no-one had really asked before. Why do you have to press the camera button - why doesn’t the app open in the camera? Why are you saving your messages - isn’t that like saving all your phone calls? Fundamentally, Snap asked ‘why, exactly, are you sending a picture? What is the underlying social purpose?’ You’re not really sending someone a sheet of pixels - you’re communicating. That’s the question Zoom and all its competitors haven’t really asked.

2. Samurai Cops

The BBC investigates why the United States had 33,599 gun-related deaths in 2014, while Japan had only six. The most fascinating details describe how Japan's police training and protocol avoid violent confrontations:

Japanese police officers rarely use guns and put much greater emphasis on martial arts - all are expected to become a black belt in judo. They spend more time practicing kendo (fighting with bamboo swords) than learning how to use firearms…What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down.

3. Letter to American Teenagers

Just as American students are learning that their university experience may be a drab series of online lectures, venture capitalist and essayist Laura Deming offers sound advice to young people:

The most common way smart teenagers neuter their success is by becoming addicted to wunderkind fame. This phenomenon is at a fever pitch in the modern era of social networking. Being a TedXYouth speaker should not be your goal. Status is an infinite treadmill…The best people, teenagers or not, are somewhat embarrassed by anything successful that they do, and immediately refocus on the next goal out of a desire to not think about the achievements of the past.

4. Marc Andreessen’s Calendar

The Observer Effect launches its newsletter with an interview with Silicon Valley’s most influential thought leader, Marc Andreessen. During the conversation, Andreessen shares how he feels when he looks at his calendar every Monday morning:

I’m thinking “God, I’m organized! I have a plan!”. If I didn’t have this, I’d be in a panic the very first moment I wake up. The big thing is basically everything is on the calendar. Sleep is on the calendar, going to bed is in there and so is free time. Free time is critical because that's the release valve. You can work full tilt for a long time as long as you know you have actual time for yourself coming up. I find if you don't schedule enough free time, you get resentful of your own calendar

The interview includes a sample snapshot of Andreesen's weekly calendar.

5. Leading Athletes

US women’s soccer captain Megan Rapinoe talks to Harvard Business Review about how she leads a group where she is often the oldest person in the room:

I’m not best friends with every player on the team. I’m closer to some than to others, partly because of age: I’ve got a decade on a lot of them. But I understand each person. Do I need to tell them that what they’re doing isn’t good enough? Or, coming from me, will that crush them? What does the player need? Leadership isn’t about having one style; it’s about being shifty and giving everybody what will make them confident and comfortable so that they can do the thing they’re good at. 

6. Get Up, Stand Up

In Vogue, Corey Semour examines the history of protest songs and comes to an inescapable conclusion about which musician is most connected to the current moment:

In the recent protests I’ve witnessed and participated in around various parts of Brooklyn, while there’s been a huge variety in terms of things shouted, chanted, and spoken about—and a huge variety of people and times and places and intensities—there’s only one musical artist I heard played at each and every gathering: Bob Marley.

Websites Worth Reading

Money: Global currency organized by color

Kottke: Tracking the cholera epidemic of 1850

Visual Capitalist: How Americans are thinking about COVID-19’s end

Feeds We Follow

@ratemyskyperoom: Following COVID-19 super-spreader events

@BethanyAllenEbr: How China monitors your WeChat account

@LauraDeming: Longevity venture capitalist