I have a few ideas for my next post, but non of them have matured enough in my mind, so I’ll keep you updated with the laziest type of post – a collection of what I’m reading, watching, listening, etc. You know the drill.

Reading:

• Meditations on Moloch

This is a cult essay on incentives and feedback systems from a few years ago. I’m late to the party in reading it, but it’s really good and has cemented my belief that designing incentives is possibly the most important problem to work on. It gets a bit too much towards the end with the implications of AI, but I highly recommend this to everyone.

• The Perils of Tech Partnerships (for Pre-Chasm Startups)

a16z has a lot of really useful business education content. I found this article interesting mostly because I’ve been involved in evaluating some tech partnership opportunities recently, but I recommend it to anyone who’s interested in general business education.

• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

I wanted to get back into reading fantasy more so after some research I settled on this book, for which the author won a Hugo award. I’ve just started reading it, and both the premise and the writing style are really curious, so I’m hooked. I’ll write about it more if I really like it.

Listening:

• Jon Hopkins – Singularity

This is great ambient techno/electronic music for doing just about anything during the day. I don’t listen to much of this type of music because I get bored of the genre
really easily, but this is stellar.

• Columbia Energy Exchange Podcast – The Global Energy Outlook
  

If you’re interested in global energy use and our ongoing battle to reduce GHG emissions you should listen to this podcast. It’s full of insights based on the latest data analyzed by the International Energy Agency. I have detailed notes on the podcast that I might publish separately.

Watching:

• The Handmaid’s Tale Season 2 – available on Hulu

The opening sequence of the season is insanely good, and it maintains the quality later on, even if it’s brutally slow at some points. Elizabeth Moss is just amazing in this show, I’d probably watch it just for her performance alone.

• Atlanta Season 2 – available on FX and (not sure) Hulu

Atlanta is probably my favorite discovery of the year. Equal parts funny, brutally real, and (in Season 2) spooky. Great acting, great characters, wonderfully shot. I love this.

So there you go, now you know what my media consumption has been like recently.

Stay cool,

Stefan