This is the Monday Medley, a newsletter that goes out, you guessed it, every Monday. I republish it here for sharing and referencing, but if you'd like to sign up you can do so right here:
Happy Monday!
I'm putting this brief Medley together from Cancun. Our flights back to Austin have gotten canceled two days in a row now and it looks like we can't get back till Wednesday. Definitely turned out to be good timing for a trip, though I'm kinda sad to be missing this unusual snowstorm. Thank you to Jake for reminding me to get the Medley out... I might have missed the first one in almost five years otherwise!
I went on my friend Michael Cazayoux's podcast the other week to talk about a number of topics I don't often cover in interviews anymore.
I'm also excited to announce I'm going to be a guest speaker and mentor for the new cohort of the On Deck Course Creator Fellowship! I really love what they're doing at On Deck around professional education, and I'm looking forward to being a small part of it.
Alright, on to the Medley.
🏴☠️ Alex Danco shared a thought experiment related to the Reddit <> Wall Street confrontation. Can you solve it?
♟ It's an unintuitive demonstration of how someone with seemingly no power can command massive leverage over seemingly more powerful players, simply by understanding who their adversaries are.
🤔 I kinda wish he explained what he was getting at towards the end:
"I guess my advice for the little Reddit pirates is this: do not make this a game of “we can last longer than you can, we can be dumber than you can”, and all that. It won’t work. Make this a game of, “You’re more afraid of each other than you are of us. And we know that.”"
🐥 I shared a tweet earlier this week:
"I wonder how many of our mental and physical chronic diseases are attributable in part to spending way too much time inside."
☀️ I think lack of sun exposure is a common denominator in tons of modern health challenges, including COVID, and it shows up in some other unexpected ways too.
🤓 Pamela Hobart shared a link to this article on how important sunlight and time outside is for children not developing myopia.
🕵️ This is particularly fascinating to me since I wonder if Cosette and I (both Myopic) can give our kids better eyesight just by making sure they spend much more time outside than we did.
🍁 Good news! Cannabis may reduce blood pressure in older adults. It seems like the research keeps piling up for benefits to occasionally using cannabis, I can't believe it's even a discussion anymore about whether or not it should be legal.
💡 But if you do live in a state where cannabis is still illegal, you can actually get "Delta 8 THC," which is effectively the same experience as normal THC just half as strong. It's made by manipulating out the very specific illegal compound from normal weed and leaving all the rest. It's a brilliant creation.
😱 I rediscovered this old OkCupid blog post on how to get more people contacting you by being explicit about the things that make you less attractive to some people.
👨🏫 It's a great article for marketing, branding, any time you need to stand out. Don't hide your "flaws," feature them, because it will attract the people who like you for the things that make you stand out.
👏 Also can we take a moment and appreciate how great the OkCupid blog was, and how quickly it'd get cancelled today? Someone has to bring that back.
As always, if you're enjoying the Medley, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up. I try to make it one of the best emails you get each week, and I hope you're enjoying it.
And should you come across anything interesting this week, send it my way! I love finding new things to read through members of this newsletter.
Have a great week,
Nat