Stock Watch: Times Square

Icebreakers with… Insecure's Yvonne Orji

Courtesy of Yvonne Orji

It's unclear what people talked about in group chats before Insecure graced us with its hilarious plotlines, juicy drama, and, of course, Emmy-nominated Yvonne Orji. If you haven't finished the latest season, that's OK, because there are plenty of other places to find Orji: her HBO standup special from last summer, her new book Bamboozled By Jesus, or her upcoming show for Disney+, First Gen, that charts her experience growing up as a Nigerian immigrant in the US (her co-producer: Oprah).

We asked the actor, writer, comedian, and producer a few icebreakers.

Your character in Insecure, Molly, is so focused on her job that it interferes with her personal life. How do you, Yvonne, balance your personal life and career?

That's something that I'm just now starting to do. I'm where a lot of people want Molly to be, which is finding that balance. But self-care is my love language. I have standing massage appointments, therapy, all the things.

Is there anything you're looking forward to doing after wrapping up Insecure and releasing your book?

Girl, by the grace of God, I plan on being in Bali for a full month.

What's your pump-up song?

Before I went in to pitch my show for Oprah, back in 2015, my roommate was like, "Do you have a hype song?" I was so nervous. I was just trying to get my pitch down, but she was like, "No, no, no, you need to have a song." And so I played "I'm a Boss" by Meek Mill on constant rotation. That was and has been my hype song for a long time.

If you could write anything on a billboard, what would it be?

"Why not me?" I would love to be in my car, feeling down, and then look up and see a billboard that says "Why not me?" You're right! Why not me?

Have you ever had a "Why not me?" moment?

Oh man. I still have those moments. Seeing that books like The Purpose Driven Life or The Secret sold like a gazillion million copies before the internet...I was like, if this older white man and this older white woman can sell gazillions of books [by] pretty much talking about faith, why not me?

What's a reality show you think you could win?

Lip Sync Battle. God did not give me a singing voice.

Make It Work: Balancing Work and Life

Each week, Morning Brew's Head of People Ops Kate Noel answers reader-submitted questions about work in 2021. Today she's tag-teaming with Lily Mittman, our Director of Talent Acquisition.

Hi! I’m actively interviewing for an entry-level marketing role and have been asked about salary expectations in the final round. How should I answer this question without negotiating myself down accidentally?

Comp questions can be really hard to navigate! I prefer to have these conversations upfront, because I want candidates to know they're interviewing for a position that they'd be excited to accept an offer for. The safest bet is to provide a salary range that would work for you. Think about what number you'd be comfortable walking away from as your low, and your slam-dunk-signing-the-offer-on-the-spot number as your high. You can always add in those magic words, "negotiable!"

 —Lily 

I find I am constantly overworked and lack a proper work-life balance. Everyone at the company also works a lot. How do I find my work-life balance at this company? I don’t want to leave.

I feel you—work-life balance is something I struggle with also, but I’ve recently gotten better after this realization: “No one’s going to bite your head off if their email isn’t answered at 9pm.” You need to start setting expectations for yourself and for your coworkers that some parts of the day are off-limits for work matters. Once you decide what those are (for example, not opening your computer before 8:30am), you can use a variety of tools to broadcast to your coworkers that you’re actually living life, not pounding away at your keyboard. I use Slack away messages to tell folks that I’m not reachable, or I turn off Slack notifications at night.

I think it’s very important you bring your work-life balance into ~balance~ because even if you don’t want to leave your company now, you may want to leave in the future due to burnout. 

—Kate

Something bothering you at work? Ask Kate here.

The Boring Company Says "Open Sesame"

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Attendees at the World of Concrete convention in Las Vegas last week—the first major trade show since the pandemic began—made history in another way, too: They were among the first riders on the inaugural transportation system operated by The Boring Company, Elon Musk's grand vision for revolutionizing transit.

If you're envisioning futuristic pods that whisk travelers through high-tech underground tunnels at NASCAR speeds, as Elon Musk initially promised, the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop is not that. Human-driven Teslas shuttle visitors from one end of the vast complex to the other, reducing a 25-minute walk to a two-minute underground ride. 

In all, it was a rather, uh, boring debut for the Boring Company, a venture Musk created after he became fed up with LA gridlock. "Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging..." he tweeted in 2016.

So he did—or at least tried to. The Boring Company hatched plans in cities across the US to make traveling a lot less frustrating. It would do this by harnessing new tech to dig tunnels more efficiently and more cheaply than the status quo.

But most of the company's projects have been stiff-armed by regulators and angry local residents. Plans for the Chicago Express Loop, linking downtown Chicago with O'Hare Airport, and a loop connecting DC and Baltimore both sputtered. So has a tunnel system connecting an LA train station and Dodger Stadium.

Skeptics question why Musk is digging tunnels to shuttle people around...when we already have something for that: It's called a subway. And it can ferry a lot more people than the Boring Company's system currently can.

• The Boring Company's Loop in Las Vegas can transport up to 4,400 passengers per hour. A bus lane can move 8,000 people/hour and a subway line up to 100,000, per the National Association of Transportation Officials. 

Still, if we know anything about Musk, it's that he regards his critics as a minor inconvenience easily swatted away. And the now-operational Las Vegas Loop is proof that, at least to an extent, he is capable of turning stuck-in-traffic musings into reality, even if it is "basically just Teslas in tunnels at this point," as Musk himself admitted.

Looking ahead...the Boring Company hopes to expand the convention center system to other Vegas landmarks and use it as a case study to build tunnels in other cities, such as Austin and Fort Lauderdale. Because if Musk wants to realize even a slice of his grand ambitions, what happens in Vegas, can't stay in...you get it. 

Open House

Welcome to Open House, the only section of the newsletter that will make you say, “A tangerine tree in my backyard is what I've wanted all along.” We'll give you a few facts about a home listing and you try to guess the price.

Zillow

Today's house is located in Palm Springs, CA, and you could see the mountains from your backyard...if it weren't for the copious shrubs and trees surrounding the property. Step inside the 1,712 square-foot hedge house with a beachy interior and a lot of tile to find:

• 4 beds, 3 baths
• Floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room
• Stingray mosaics on the bottom of the pool
• A water bill that would bankrupt Warren Buffett

How much for your private desert oasis?

Just Click It

1. What really is cancel culture? (You're Wrong About)
2. The Chinese dream, denied. (NYT)
3. Did the CIA write the 1990 hit song, "Wind of Change"? Writer Patrick Radden Keefe chronicled his years-long journey to find out. (Wind of Change)
4. Downtown Josh Brown returned to Morning Brew's podcast to chat about the meme-stock market. (Business Casual)
5. What makes quantum computing so hard to explain? (Quanta Magazine)
6. How to upgrade your morning routine. (Morning Brew)
7. Gabriel Leydon on NFT billionaires, designing digital economies, and more. (Invest Like the Best)
8. The curious rise of Twitter power broker Yashar Ali. (LA Mag)
9. The ultimate hotel room coffee-making guide. (The Verge)
10. Why is populism so unpopular in Japan? (Al Jazeera)

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Meme Battle

Welcome back to Morning Brew's Meme Battle, where we crown a single memelord every Sunday.

Today's winner: Alberto in Turin, Italy. 

This week's challenge: You can find the new meme template here for next Sunday. Once you're done making your meme, submit it at this link. We'll pick a new memelord for next week's Sunday Edition and provide you with another meme template to meme-ify. 

$1.8 million