Hi friends,

The mission of Friday Finds is to provide a counterweight against the modern obsession with news and what's trending.

I can’t shake the feeling that the daily 24/7 news cycle makes people worse-off. In the name of “staying informed,” news junkies burn their precious attention on manufactured dramas and the endless merry-go-round of breaking news, only to ignore history’s most fruitful wisdom.

If there was ever a quote to underpin this newsletter and my philosophy of reading, it's this one from Albert Einstein who said: "Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.”

Today's Finds

​The Scorpion and the Frog: When people exhibit the same behavior repeatedly, chances are that they'll continue doing so (even if they say they're going to change). Such is the lesson of this fable. It goes like this: "A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: 'I am sorry, but I couldn't resist the urge. It's my character.'"

​Steve Jobs Speaks at MIT: In the spring of 1992, Steve Jobs spoke to the MIT School of Management. At the time, he was the CEO of NeXT. If you only watch one section, I recommend this one about consulting. From the level of the individual, he says that working as a consultant slows down learning because you only get a two-dimensional picture of what’s happening inside the company. The more you’re forced to take ownership over your decisions, the faster you’ll learn, and the more three-dimensional your understanding will be.

​Preference Falsification: One of my favorite ideas from Timur Kuran. It comes from a book called Public Truths, Private Lies (here’s a written summary and a podcast about it), where Kuran shows how people lie about their beliefs to look good in social situations. As Martin Luther King once said: “Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideas hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.” Once you learn about preference falsification, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.

​The Culture of Bali: Though Indonesia is almost 90% Muslim, the island of Bali has kept its Hindu stronghold, and today, roughly 83% of people on the island of Bali are Hindu. According to the video, the sacred tripartite division of Hinduism is reflected in the local temples. The outer courtyard represents the material world, the middle one represents the realm between the material world and the spiritual one, and the inner courtyard (the most sacred one) represents the divine and spiritual realm. This video also details the dances, festivals, and fire ceremonies that make Bali's culture so distinct.

​Texture in Nature, Texture on Walls: Plain walls are one reason why modern architecture feels so sterile. Nature is filled with texture. Leaves have texture, trees have texture, rocks have texture, water has texture... you get it. Texture was standard on walls until recently as well. Tiny fluctuations in color, shape, and shadow are one of the reasons why people adore brick walls so much. Then minimalism and scalability took over the world of interior design and walls became flat. Is there a use for featureless white walls? Sure, I guess. But the way they've become such a default choice is something to rebel against.

​How I Write: Morgan Housel​

​

Morgan might be the best non-fiction storyteller I know and sold 4 million copies of his book, The Psychology of Money. This is the conversation I've been wanting to have about his writing process and career since I started reading his work in 2015.

Here were some stand-out points:

1. Writing is an efficiency game. Whoever says the most stuff in the fewest words wins.
   ​
2. Make your writing concise. Concise does not mean short. It means a high density of value to words.
   ​
3. Everyone should write. Why? Because everyone is full of ideas they’re not aware of. This means they’re also unaware of the value of their ideas, and this value can only be unlocked via writing.

(Listen here: YouTube | Apple | Spotify)