Weekend Briefing No. 491

A Saturday morning briefing on innovation and society.

Welcome to the weekend.

Threads released this week (see the story below) and I’m trying an experiment where I post one longer-form thread to the platform every day. If you’re interested, or if you just want to be friends, click here to follow me on Threads.

Also, here’s my July playlist. Enjoy!

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Featured Comment

In response to last week’s story: Rick Rubin

Damn, that Rick Rubin piece was the BEST. -Brooks Jordan

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Prime Numbers

95 — TikTok commands eyeballs like no other in the U.S. Users spent an average of 95 minutes a day in the app in Q2 2022, significantly more than the 51 minutes per day for rival Instagram.

100,000 — The first drug fully generated by artificial intelligence (AI) entered clinical trials with human patients this week. It’s a treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic disease that causes scarring in the lungs, which currently affects about 100,000 people in the U.S. and can lead to death within two to five years if untreated.

4,000,000 — Snapchat has 4 million paid users.

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Expectations Debt

There’s a stoic saying: “Misfortune weighs most heavily on those who expect nothing but good fortune.” Maybe your portfolio surged during a bubble, your company hit a monster valuation or you negotiated a salary that exceeds your ability. It feels great at the time. But reality eventually catches up and demands repayment in equal proportion to your delusions — plus interest. Take Amazon as an example. What do you call the top-of-the-world status Amazon had in 2021? Was it a gift? A reward for hard work? The natural swings of capitalism? Yes, all of those. But there’s another way to look at it: An expectation debt. Expectations were so high in 2021 that investors and employees had to achieve extraordinary things just to break even. When the results were merely good, they felt terrible. Expectations are like a debt that must be repaid before you get any joy out of what you’re doing. Collab Fund (5 minutes)

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Where have you seen expectation debt play out in your life or business?

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Threads Unspooled

Meta has been very publicly teasing a Twitter competitor for months. But, the past week’s decision by Elon Musk to limit free users to viewing 600 posts a day — enough for maybe 20 minutes of scrolling, maybe less — has sent a fresh wave of Twitter users looking for alternatives. So, Meta pushed up its launch date. On Wednesday, Meta released the first version of its new app Threads. One interesting feature is that Threads is being built on a decentralized protocol. The company hopes to let you take your audience with you when you leave the app. That’s a level of freedom the users of Facebook or Instagram — or really any other big social app — have never had. It’s an almost unthinkable reversal from Meta’s extremely lucrative walled-garden strategy, which it has employed for its entire history as a company. But Adam Mosseri, head of Threads, believes that decentralization is the future of social networks — even if it means that someday a disgruntled Threads user will be able to take the following they build in the app to another network, never to return. “There definitely are trade-offs,” Mosseri said. “You're giving up some control. But there are benefits. I do think over time, it's going to be a more compelling value proposition that other apps are going to offer. And I think that should attract more creative talent over the long run.” What’s your first impression of Threads? The Platformer (13 minutes)

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This Asset’s Prices Outpaced the S&P by 136%

Over the last 27 years, through 10 corrections, four bear markets and four bull markets, contemporary art had 136% higher price appreciation than stocks. Now, one platform is offering everyday investors the opportunity to get access at just a fraction of the cost of an entire painting. It's called Masterworks, an award-winning platform for investing in blue-chip art, with a nearly $1 billion collection. Every one of Masterworks’ 13 sales has returned a profit to investors, with three recent sales delivering net annualized returns of 17.8%, 21.5% and 35%. How does it work? Simple, Masterworks does all of the heavy lifting, including finding the painting, buying it and storing it. It files each offering with the SEC so that nearly anyone can invest in highly coveted artworks. Shares of every offering are limited, but Weekend Briefing readers can skip the waitlist with this exclusive link. Masterworks (Sponsored)

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Dolly’s UBI

In November of 2016, a fire wiped out the town of Gatlinburg Tennessee. As the rubble was still smoking, Dolly Parton swung into action. She’d give every family that was affected by the fire $1,000 / month for six months. (Then, she surprised everybody by giving an additional $5,000 check on month six.) Dolly, unwittingly, set up an experiment in universal basic income called the My People Fund. So, what were the outcomes? Before the fires, 55% reported owning their homes, and a year after their hoses burning down, 48% had already moved from renting back to home ownership. And while half of Americans report they can’t come up with $500 for an emergency, My People Fund beneficiaries were somewhat better off. Almost 60% of them have savings now, and over 95% of those who have savings reported having over $1,000. Although My People Fund households received a no-strings-attached check every month for six months, they worked the exact same 40 hours each week before, during and after receiving the assistance. Ultimately, this study is one more datapoint to add to a large amount of existing research that shows cash assistance — whether conditional or unconditional — does not reduce the motivation to work. In The Mesh (11 minutes)

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Regulating AI

Here are six possible ways to regulate artificial intelligence. 1) A legally binding AI treaty. The Council of Europe, a human rights organization that counts 46 countries as its members, is finalizing a legally binding treaty for artificial intelligence. The treaty requires signatories to take steps to ensure that AI is designed, developed and applied in a way that protects human rights, democracy and the rule of law. 2) The OECD AI principles. In 2019, countries that belong to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) agreed to adopt a set of nonbinding principles laying out some values that should underpin AI development. 3) The Global Partnership on AI. The brainchild of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and French president Emmanuel Macron, the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) was founded in 2020 as an international body that could share research and information on AI, foster international research collaboration around responsible AI, and inform AI policies around the world. 4) The EU’s AI Act. The European Union is finalizing the AI Act, a sweeping regulation that aims to regulate the most “high-risk” usages of AI systems. 5) Technical industry standards. Technical standards from standard-setting bodies will play an increasingly crucial role in translating regulations into straightforward rules companies can follow. 6) The United Nations. The United Nations, which counts 193 countries as its members, wants to be the sort of international organization that could support and facilitate global coordination on AI. MIT Technology Review (6 minutes)

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Spreading Ideas

Why do some innovations spread so swiftly and others so slowly? Consider the very different trajectories of surgical anesthesia and antiseptics, both of which were discovered in the 19th century. Surgical anesthesia caught on much quicker than antiseptics. So what were the key differences? First, one combated a visible and immediate problem (pain); the other combatted an invisible problem (germs) whose effects wouldn’t manifest until well after the operation. Second, although both made life better for patients, only one made life better for doctors. Anesthesia changed surgery from a brutal, time-pressured assault on a shrieking patient to a quiet, considered procedure. Early antiseptic by contrast, required the operator to work in a shower of carbolic acid. Even low dilutions burned the surgeons’ hands. New Yorker (12 minutes)

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No

If you see a person who appears to have received a lot of “yes” responses, you can be sure they’ve also received plenty of “no” responses. A critical element in getting more of what we seek is enduring plenty of rejections along the way. In almost all real-world situations, “yes” matters more than “no,” and taking more chances generates more of each. While there’s a near-equal chance of getting told “no” in our endeavors, in virtually all cases, there is no penalty for that rejection beyond some brief discomfort or embarrassment. On the other hand, when you get a “yes,” there is likely a positive outcome on many fronts. Friday Forward (6 minutes)

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Should We Work Together?

Hi! I’m Kyle. This newsletter is my passion project. When I’m not writing, I run a law firm that helps startups move fast without breaking things. Most founders want a trusted legal partner, but they hate surprise legal bills. At Westaway, we take care of your startup’s legal needs for a flat, monthly fee so you can control your costs and focus on scaling your business. If you’re interested, let’s jump on a call to see if you’re a good fit for the firm. Click here to schedule a one-on-one call with me.

Check out Founder Fridays — A Friday morning briefing helping founders scale smarter.

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Weekend Wisdom

I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine. -Bruce Lee