How the left and liberal media force and form the public's opinion via fact-checking #FactCheckTheFactCheckers

1. I was walking in the woods yesterday and I had an epiphany. It wasn’t one I wanted to have. I was thinking about today’s class, where we are reading Kimmerer’s ‘Gathering Moss’. I’ve taught Braiding Sweetgrass in multiple classes every year since 2016. It’s eminently teachable

2. Both books are beautifully written. Students uniformly enjoy them as assigned reading. They do a great job communicating to non-Indigenous folks the contours of basic Indigenous relationships to more-than-human beings. They’re wildly popular with white readers.

3. I’ve found Braiding Sweetgrass to be a great entry point for non-Indigenous folks to Indigenous scholarship. But this is where yesterday’s epiphany comes in. Neither Braiding Sweetgrass or Gathering Moss tends to the deep deep lineages of Indigenous scholarship in Canada or US

4. As the popularity of ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ has soared, I’ve seen more and more white folks wax on about ‘braiding knowledge’. But they often don’t know any of the lineages of these concepts beyond what is presented in this one book. They confidently run with this.

5. Kimmerer does a commendable job of weaving in her own experiences, her family stories+nods to some very important knowledge keepers who deserve to be celebrated for their work. But Braiding Sweetgrass does not tend to the citational politics Sara Ahmed & others teach us about

💬 I often get Q’s like these:

How did you get your first customers for WIP? How did you grow BetaList’s traffic? Etc.

Makers are looking to reverse-engineer success. I see it everywhere.

I don’t think it works that way and the answers to those questions are mostly useless. 💥

I have built dozens of different products over the last couple of years. The vast majority failed. 😭

Surely if I know the answers to these questions, but still fail over and over again, these answers aren’t that useful. 🤷‍♀️

So what’s a better question to ask? 🤔

99.9% of the questions I receive are about the products that did well. In a way that makes sense, because we quickly forget about those that didn’t succeed.

🧠 This is known as survivorship bias.

Focusing on what survived, while ignoring what made it survive in the first place.

The real question, what you really want to know, is this:

What makes @WIP, @BetaList, and to some extent @AllStartupJobs succeed where my countless other attempts failed?

What separates a failed product 👎 from a successful product 👍?

Honestly, I don’t know. I wish I did.

It’s like Steve Jobs said “I’ll know it when I see it.” 👀

Same is true when we make products. We don’t know upfront what will work. But once we see an inkling of a product that does have potential, it’s not that hard to spot.

After 17 years and more than 300 races, it could be @alo_oficial's last F1 race on Sunday 😭 He's given us a lot over the years... including some superb GIFs!

Here we have a rare example of a GIF you can actually hear. TOMA. 💪

The Spanish Samurai

Never give up. 💪 #GraciasFernando

Winning is everything. #GraciasFernando

MAHARAANI TARARANI: THE QUEEN OF MARATHAS

Rani Tarabai was the brave daughter-in-law of Chhatrapati Shivaji and one of the greatest medieval Monarchs India ever had.
She was born in 1675 to one of the bravest commander-in-chiefs of Shivaji's Army named Hambir Rao Mohite.

Tarabai was just 8yrs old when she was married to Shivaji's younger son, Rajaram. Mughals and Marathas were constantly at war with each other. Shivaji was crowned the ruler of the Independent Maratha Swarajya in 1674 which was established by him.

However,the great leader died in 1680&the Maratha Samrajya went into a complete&total chaos.Marathas saw some very tough times ahead. In 1689,when Raigad Fort fell to the Mughal Army of over 15000,Shivaji's first wife Saibai and his elder son Sambhaji were captured&put to death.

Sambhaji's wife and son Shahu were taken prisoners to the Mughal court. During the same battle, Shivaji's second son Rajaram(Tarabai's husband) , who was the heir to the throne now, managed to escape using a disguise. He made his way to the Gingee Fort in Tamil Nadu.

Mughal General Zulfikar Khan, however, followed them to Gingee laying siege to the Gingee Fort. From 1690-1698,This was the longest siege by a Mughal Army of any Fort which stands testimony to the military and diplomatic credentials of Rani Tarabai.

1/ Thread: "A Silicon Valley Ponzi Scheme"

Thanks to @chamath for laying this out in Social Capital's 2018 annual letter.

I've always appreciated his outspokenness.

2/ The hardest thing for most startups today is the path to market: first finding product-market fit & a way to reach customers, then building a ruthless machine to acquire, monetize & retain them.

3/ Because of this, when the VC industry invests capital into fast growing startups today, the plurality (if not majority) of invested capital will go into user acquisition and ad spending, for better or worse— usually worse.

4/ Todays massive venture-backed advertising, sales, and user acquisition playbook has morphed into one that champions growth at any cost.

This is creating a big bill that will soon come due...

5/ Ad impressions and click-throughs are bid up to outrageous prices by startups flush with venture money, and prospective users demand more and more subsidized products to gain their initial attention.