Weeding-out sources of unhappiness can help sources of happiness become even more clear
In many ways, life is a process of elimination. We come across people we don’t like and get rid of them. We find jobs we don’t like and leave them. We make purchases we don’t like and never make them again.
This was something I didn’t realize until I read Matthew McConaughey’s book, “Greenlights,” and started thinking.
Throughout the book, McConaughey has a bunch of sticky notes posted with different wisdom. One of them is titled “process of elimination and identity,” which says:
The first step that leads to our identity in life is usually not I know who I am, but rather I know who I’m not. …
Vocal or not, Aaron will be remembered as one of the most important figures in American sports history
In 1948, Hank Aaron was a 14-year-old facing segregation and poverty in Mobile, Alabama when Jackie Robinson came to town. Hank, who everyone knew as Henry at the time (his birth name), was surrounded by other young Black children, idolizing the man that broke baseball’s color barrier a year prior.
Robinson spoke to that crowd, telling those kids they could be just like him one day. While Robinson did break through that massive barrier, he alone was not able to erase the sport’s prior segregation nor end the racism that would follow for decades to come.
Despite the freeing of the slaves, Blacks were still denied entrance into white baseball leagues after the Civil War ended in 1865. Black players were forced to create leagues of their own. The leagues were amateur up until 1920 when dominant pitcher Andrew “Rube” Foster created the professional Negro National League in 1920. More leagues were created throughout the East in the following years and were collectively referred to as the Negro Leagues. …
Chamath Palihapitiya was probably joking, but could he actually do it?
Chamath Palihapitiya is best known for being an early executive at Facebook, founding Social Capital, being a chairman for Virgin Galactic, and owning a minority stake in the Golden State Warriors. Soon, though, he may become better known for turning his Bitcoin fortune into something better.
In June of last year, Palihapitiya revealed that he bought one million Bitcoin back in 2010 when each coin was valued at about $80. At the time of that interview, his sum was worth $9 billion. At today’s current price, it is worth about $35 billion.
With the cryptocurrency’s latest jump from the low $20,000 range to over $40,000, many early Bitcoin investors have been feeling validated and, for lack of a better term, feeling themselves. …
Two non-IPO options allow companies to have their cake and eat it, too
When taking a company from private to public, most choose the route of the initial public offering (IPO) — where a company hires an underwriter to help offer shares to public investors.
While popular, the IPO is not the only way for a company to go public. Lately, another type of offering is becoming more common: the direct listing.
Before explaining what exactly a direct listing is, let’s go through what constitutes an initial public offering.
With an IPO, a company will seek out an underwriter that will take on the risks of going public by purchasing all the outstanding shares of the company. Before buying the shares of the company, the underwriter will consult with investment firms and banks to help determine what the IPO price should be. …
And saw a 40% return in two weeks
I was once a notorious Bitcoin hater. Well, not notorious. Nobody knows who I am. But I did think Bitcoin (and its investors) were dumb a few years back.
Three years later, the tech giant is now looking to make its own vehicle
When notes leaked that Apple was planning to begin production of an electric “iCar” by 2025, Elon Musk responded. At first, he questioned Apple’s tactics for producing safe and efficient batteries and whether they actually gave the company a competitive advantage over Tesla.
Then, he dropped this bomb:
In 2017, perhaps the time period in which Musk is referring, Tesla wasn’t far from death. On “Axios on HBO,” Musk said his company was “within single-digit weeks” of folding as they struggled to ramp-up Model 3 mass production.
Musk also said he “personally redesigned the whole battery pack production line and ran it for three weeks,” trying to paint the picture of how dire the company’s situation was. …
Once used as a way to shoo-off the poor and keep children at home, Christmas is now a corporation’s dream come true
Christian or not, Christmas is an internationally celebrated holiday. Even parents of no faith give their kids at least some gifts on the holiday. You can’t let your kids go to their friends with nothing to show for the holiday season.
After all, it’s impossible to avoid Christmas. Every single giant corporation in the world is looking to profit from this tradition. How exactly did that become the case, though?
While Christmas has a long-founded history of gift-giving, namely from the Three Wise Men giving gifts to the newly-born Jesus, today’s standard for purchasing began in 19th-century New York.
In “The Battle for Christmas,” historian Stephen Nissenbaum details how Christmas in early America was not a family-centric holiday, but a moment for the country’s lower-class to drunkenly roam the streets, beg for food and drink from elites, and potentially riot if employers failed to give them time off. …
For the first time in my life, I am happy being single
Seeking love is perhaps the most human thing we can do. Being in a relationship is fun and exciting, and you learn a lot about another person as well as yourself.
During my lifetime, I have chased many relationships and failed to attain most of them. During my high school years, I looked at pretty girls and wondered what a life with them would look like. During college, I did much of the same.
When you fail to attain a relationship year after year, it starts to weigh on you. You wonder if there is something wrong with you — if you’re not “relationship material.” …
Thanks to the work from home shift, companies have started moving to cheaper U.S. cities
Silicon Valley, the home of tech giants Facebook, Apple, Google, and more, located in San Francisco’s southern Bay Area, is undergoing a change from which it may never recover.
In August, the Wall Street Journal did a deep dive on the mass exodus of employees from Silicon Valley. With the global pandemic forcing employees to work from home and San Francisco hit particularly hard with government-enforced shutdowns, companies gave their workforce permission to skip on the area’s crazy-high cost of living and work from other places in the country.
Facebook and Google allowed employees to move away through the summer of 2021, allowing them to sign one-year leases elsewhere, before returning to their California HQs. This benefitted cities all over the country including Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Austin. …
An up-and-down year for Nikola is close to ending, but it's not done taking heat
With companies, the government, and consumers showing more and more acceptance of a future of alternative energy, some auto manufacturers have laid out aspirational plans for their vehicles. While Tesla still carries the electric vehicle torch, companies such as GM and Nio have shown major upside for the future.
Nikola caught similar buzz earlier in the year. As of late, however, the stock market and seemingly everyone else is throwing in the towel on the hopeful electric-hydrogen hybrid vehicle producer.
After a $34 IPO in early June, Nikola (ticker: NKLA) quickly jumped to just shy of $80 a share. It didn’t take long for the market to realize Nikola was nowhere near worth that valuation. And even now, at about $18 a share, Nikola may not be worth its current $6.77 …
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