Six Ideas That Made Us Think

1. AI Is Your Summer Intern

Ethan Mollick makes a persuasive case for why – and how – you should think about AI not as software, but as your junior assistant:

Just like any new worker, you are going to have to learn its strengths and weaknesses; you are going to have to learn to train and work with it; and you are going to have to get a sense of where it is useful and where it is just annoying. The stakes for this are quite high. People using AI have 30-80% higher productivity in some writing and coding tasks, and often feel happier having offloaded their most annoying work. That is a big incentive to learn to work with your intern.

2. The Office’s Enduring Tool

In an age of “disruption” and “continuous improvement,” Sara Goldsmith finds one workplace item that has resisted change: the paperclip. Her article in Slate, illustrated with many early designs, is part ode, part industrial history:

Most everyday objects—like the key, or the book, or the phone—evolve over time in incremental ways, and the 20th century in particular revolutionized, streamlined, or technologized the vast majority of the things you hold in your hand over the course of an average day. But if you could step into an office in 1895—walking past horse-drawn buses and rows of wooden telephone switchboard cabinets—you might find a perfectly recognizable, shiny silver paper clip sitting on a desk. What was then a brand-new technology is now, well over a century later, likely to be in the same place, ready to perform the same tasks.

3. After the Debt Ceiling

Ray Dalio has nothing good to say about a congressional deal on the debt ceiling. Writing on LinkedIn, the celebrated macro-investor offers a matter-of-fact assessment of where we are – and what comes next:

When debt assets and liabilities reach the point that the amount of debt sold is greater than the amount of debt that buyers want to buy, central banks are faced with a choice: they either have to let interest rates rise to balance the supply and demand, which is crushing to debtors and the economy, or they have to print money and buy the debt, which is inflationary and encourages holders of the debt to sell the debt, which makes this debt imbalance worse. In either case that creates a debt crisis that is like the runs on the banks that we have been seeing, but with government bonds being what is sold and the run on the bank being a run on the central bank.

4. The Kingdom of Snap

Katherine Dee’s travel diary about her trip to Saudi Arabia is replete with busted myths and eye-opening experiences. But none more so than the Kingdom’s obsession with social media:

 It reminded me of the early days of Craigslist, back when people still used it to find DIY shows or parties. (Also like early Craigslist, there were a shocking number of ads for prostitutes, another story for another time.) As it turns out, Snapchat has a staggering 20 million active users in Saudi Arabia—57% of the population—and its imprint is everywhere. In any long line, any bus ride, any lull in a café or hotel lobby, you’ll see multiple people using it.  Saudis use Snapchat for dating, too, often preferring to swap Snapchat handles to exchanging phone numbers. Less commitment, with the added benefit that messages can disappear.

She also points out the Saudi fascination with anime culture: “The ‘weeaboo’ or ‘otaku’ community in Saudi Arabia is booming. On people’s shirts; on charms dangling from women’s purses or kids’ smartphones; pins and keychains on backpacks; in grocery store tchotchkes, anime is everywhere in Riyadh and Jeddah. You’ll even see the occasional cosplayer if you pay close attention.”

5. Shakespeare’s Authorship: A Tragicomedy

 “The theory that William Shakespeare might not have written the works published under his name,” writes Elizabeth Winkler, “is the most horrible, vexed, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature.” Yet the evidence has been mounting for a century, and the debate is, Winkler contends, perfectly Shakespearean:

 In 2023, questioning an expert’s authority feels exceedingly uncomfortable. It puts people in mind of COVID deniers and other bad actors who have weaponized “just asking questions.” We’re generally better off trusting experts. At the same time, it remains true that authorities aren’t always right…There is nothing dangerous or “immoral” in questioning Shakespeare. In fact, there is something delightfully Shakespearean about the Shakespeare authorship question. The plays themselves are full of mistaken identities, disguises, and appearances that are never quite what they seem. For those who are willing to forgo the comforts of certainty, this is the greatest drama the bard never wrote.

6. Build the Paywall

Joe Nocera is one of many veteran journalists writing I-told-you-so obituaries for BuzzFeed News. He argues they lost because they bet on clicks and eyeballs, not paywalls. He recalls a meeting a decade ago with Mark Thompson, then-CEO of the New York Times:

Thompson told us that the Times was dramatically changing direction—its journalism had enormous value and Times business executives were convinced that people would pay for it. The Timessoon set up a paywall system, and stressed subscriptions over traffic. That pivot has been enormously successful. In 2022, the New York Times Company had $2.1 billion in revenue. Of that, 67 percent came from subscriptions. The Times now has nearly 9 million of them.

Websites Worth Reading

Biggest Band Break Ups: Irresistible list of great bands with bad endings

Patrick Collison: Fast: List of achievements, done quickly

Skift: AI for travel questions

Feeds We Follow

@CocoGauff: American in Paris

@mchui: McKinsey research on technology

@LindsJR: Caregiving startup CEO