The Mental Pivot Newsletter: No. 1
Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Mental Pivot Newsletter. I’ll be publishing new issues on Fridays. As this is my first attempt at a newsletter, I’ll be experimenting with the style and contents over the coming months in the hopes of delivering something useful to your inbox.
What’s New on the Blog
1. Book Notes: “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (2018)
I posted a new entry for my book notes series. This book examines the increasing hostility towards free speech on college campuses. This is not a conservative screed: Lukianoff (lawyer) is a self-described progressive and Haidt (social psychologist) is a centrist. Both are alarmed by rising intolerance, groupthink and ideological orthodoxy and what this means for rational discourse and the exchange of ideas moving forward.
For an abridged account, you can read an article they published in The Atlantic in 2015 or listen to this episode of the Psychology Podcast featuring an interview with Jonathan Haidt.
2. Articles and Podcasts of Note (Week of 09/07/2020)
This is my weekly roundup of interesting links and internet finds. You can read the complete post on the website, but here are the highlights:
Linguistics professor John McWhorter writes about the anxiety in academia vis a vis censorship and cancellation The Atlantic. Read the article
COVID-19’s impact on work-life is undeniable. Steve LeVine considers the impacts on business complements like air travel, hospitality, restaurants and retailing in city centers now devoid of white collar workers. Read the article
Tech companies are grappling with the realities of work-from-home and office resentment between parents and non-parent employees is escalating. Read the article
Blogger Jay Riverlong has some interesting ideas on remote work: “You can predict the 2020 remote work toolkit by looking at the 2010 gaming toolkit.” Read the article
Cedric Chin has an archive of insightful posts on effective reading on his CommonCog blog. This week he offers a defense for ambitious reading goals which places him firmly in the crosshairs of the quantity vs. quality debate. Read the article
The classic video game Civilization by Sid Meier turns 29 this month. Sam Leith writes “Sid Meier's creation invites us to think about how the world works — and warns it could be a lot worse.” Read the article
The team at iA Writer (a solid markdown app) question the popularity and efficacy of the subscription model for software. As someone who has programmed and sold mobile apps, I think subscriptions are a good idea for long-term sustainable app development. Read the article
A USC professor is under fire after using a Chinese word that students allege sounds like a racial slur in English. Real world example of the type of coddling in the Lukianoff and Haidt book cited above. Read the article
The rest of this week’s link roundup can be read here.
Odds & Ends
“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” Nice little aphorism I ran across in an obituary about Glenn Gould’s piano tuner. It didn’t originate with him, but it’s still a great line.
Speaking of good quotes, you can find a bucketful of them in this thread on Hacker News which asks the question: “What is your favorite motto?”
Morgan Housel’s new book “The Psychology of Money” has been added to my reading list after listening to the interview with Dave Perell (listed above). Really entertaining writer. He has a knack for explaining things in a simple but emphatic manner. Here’s the Amazon link for the book. You can also get a good sense of his book from an earlier article he wrote on the same topic.
Video-game legend Sid Meier releases his memoirs. I grew up playing Meier’s games which are classics: Pirates! Railroad Tycoon, Alpha Centauri, and of course, Civilization. I’m adding this one to my list. Here’s the Amazon link for the book.
Matt Ridley’s “How Innovation Works” is another recent book release that is on my “want to read” list. To whet your appetite, check out the recent interview with the author on the EconTalk podcast or take a look at Naval Ravikant’s 2-part interview (available as a podcast or written transcript).
Currently reading James Clavell’s “Shogun” for pleasure. It’s great fun but it also makes use of “head-hopping”—shifting of character perspective within a single scene—which can be disconcerting. The book was written in the 1970s, so maybe this style of writing was more common then. I read Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” earlier this year (1969), and I recall that book exhibiting similarly abrupt shifts in perspective.
Users of Bear App, a markdown editor and writing tool for Mac and iOS, will be pleased to know that an update was released this week. New features include expanded wiki link support, html export, and new themes. Read the article
Thank you for subscribing to the Mental Pivot Newsletter. Feedback, suggestions, and recommendations are always appreciated. You can contact me via my email form or the Substack commenting system.
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