Trevor McKendrick - Optimism today, tomorrow, and forever

Hi all,

I hope you find something in today’s newsletter that you enjoy.

Make this an incredible week.

Trevor

Articles

Tyler Cowen modeling positive & negative contagion

“When people feel bad and act badly, if only in rhetoric, they make others around them worse as well.”

“If you can avoid being overwhelmed by the peer pressure of this negative dynamic, the private and social returns are high. You can just keep on going and build things.”

I’m coming to believe that the single most important thing everyone can do is to be more positive, more optimist, and less cynical.

We don’t do this because it’s just easier to be negative. You take no risk by being negative.

By offering hope & positivity you put yourself on the line. It’s like asking someone out: you can be rejected or look uncool.

So put yourself out there. Believe we can do it. Believe you can do it.

And tell people.

How I got tenure

“This is a post about how I got tenure despite being told I would fail.”

A takedown of Michael Lewis’ Jane Street intern story about Sam Bankman-Fried

“Something is funny about this story. I don’t believe that Sam’s managers chastised him for his inability to treat his fellow interns with dignity and didn’t also catch that he was doing reckless, negative expectancy trades. Sam heard what he wanted to hear, ignored the rest, and went away with exactly the wrong lessons. But what’s interesting is Michael Lewis’s indiscriminate reporting of a narrative that doesn’t pass the financial fundamentals smell test, and instead reads like a story constructed from a mishmash of trading tales and optimized to convey the vibes of the Jane Street internship trading floor (which it successfully does) at the expense of getting the details right.”

Bill Watterson writing 5 years after ending Calvin & Hobbes (article)

There’s the famous Picasso quote about terpentine:

“When art critics get together they talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”

This piece from Bill is full of turpentine.

If you want an idea for writing really good books, find world class people and get them to talk about their turpentine in as much detail as possible.

Ricki Heicklen’s eulogy of her grandfather (article)

“Zadie set us eulogy-writers up for success.”

Maybe a goal for one’s life should be to make it very easy for whoever writes your obituary.

”The Kidnapping I Can’t Escape”

Good writing on how some of life’s hardest moments never really leave you.

Instagram clip

The failure of the Museum of Pizza

Long clip as far as IG goes, but very funny.

Podcasts

The Red Queen Podcast

You should listen to every episode in this show.

Here’s how the 3 hosts describe it: “A podcast on the stories behind the world’s most innovative companies.”

So far they have done episodes on LEGO, NASA, Marriott, and are halfway through a 2-episode arc on GE.

The hosts are Eeke de Milliano, Tara Seshan, and Brie Wolfson, who’ve collectively worked at Stripe, Retool, Figma, and other places you’d recognize.

How the Smart Money teaches trading with Ricki Heicklen

Patrick McKenzie just started a podcast and this is his episode. It was excellent.

Ricki was a trader at Jane Street for 2.5 years. She’s also taught trading, both internally at Jane Street and as a consultant to other companies.

I loved hearing her descriptions of the thinking behind trading. I loved the 1st lesson she gives to groups their 1st day of training. I really liked her one line sentence when Patrick asked her if she could teach only 1 thing in 1 sentence what would it be.

I expect many more high-caliber episodes to come.

Joseph Stiglitz on Conversations with Tyler

Self-recommending

Tweets

Aella on choosing happiness:

“there was a distinct moment as a very young kid where i noticed that i liked being happy and didn't like being unhappy, so I just decided to be a happy person. I could just be thankful for things and look on the bright side, it seemed pretty easy. 1/

“Turns out I was correct. I was a really happy kid; my mom would call me 'Pollyanna', i remember her almost being exasperated at how cheerful i would be during stressful or disappointing situations. I think I've been meaningfully happier because of this for my whole life. 2/“

Mark Zuckerberg & Peter Thiel’s emails on the future of Meta

Peter’s email. Mark’s email.

I don’t think I’d ever seen such a detailed piece of “internal” writing by Peter Thiel at a company he’s involved with.

”Just the facts” thread summary of the SCOTUS opinion on Trump’s presidential immunity

“What does that mean for Trump's case specifically? Well, this may seem strange, but nothing really.”

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