Disruption Antidote

the first place to look for weaknesses is not in the supplier base or distribution or even regulation: it is with the end users. That is why it matters that Amazon is the most popular company in the United States, why Apple and Google continue to have 2 of the most respected brands, and why Facebook is right to be more concerned about the PR effect of its scandals than the regulatory ones. Owning the customer relationship by means of delivering a superior experience is how these companies became dominant, and, when they fall, it will be because consumers deserted them, either because the companies lost control of the user experience (a danger for Facebook and Google), or because a paradigm shift made new experiences matter more (a danger for Google and Apple). In the meantime, though, disruption has its antidote.

Looking for red

The world lacks a great all-around red. Always has. We’ve made do with alternatives that could be toxic or plain gross. The gladiators smeared their faces with mercury-based vermilion. Titian painted with an arsenic-based mineral called realgar. The British army’s red coats were infused with crushed cochineal beetles. For decades, red Lego bricks contained cadmium, a carcinogen. More than 200 natural and synthetic red pigments exist today, but each has issues with safety, stability, chromaticity, and/or opacity.

Starlink

SpaceX will make a massive network of 1000s of low earth orbit satellites to provide high-bandwidth, low-cost internet connection to every m2 of Earth. Gwynne Shotwell: We actually don’t chat very much about this particular project, not because we’re hiding anything, but this is probably one of the most challenging if not the most challenging project we’ve undertaken. No one has been successful deploying a huge constellation for internet broadband, or basically for satellite internet, and I don’t think physics is the difficulty here. I think we can come up with the right technology solution, but we need to make a business out of it, and it’ll cost the company about $10B or more to deploy this system. And so we’re marching steadily along but we’re certainly not claiming victory yet.

A roadmap:

Starlink 1.0 4K satellites 2021
Starlink 2.0 7K satellites 2023
Starlink 3.0 30K satellites 2027

and a look at the competition:

SpaceX Starlink satellites, Amazon new Kuiper and OneWeb are competing for the low latency low-earth satellite market. This market will be worth 10s of billions of $ per year.

Against Education

Some of Caplan’s ideas dovetail with the thoughts I’ve had myself since childhood on how to make the school experience less horrible—though I never framed my own thoughts as “against education.” Make middle and high schools more like universities, with freedom of movement and a wide range of offerings for students to choose from. Abolish hall passes and detentions for lateness: just like in college, the teacher is offering a resource to students, not imprisoning them in a dungeon. Don’t segregate by age; just offer a course or activity, and let kids of any age who are interested show up. And let kids learn at their own pace. Don’t force them to learn things they aren’t ready for: let them love Shakespeare because they came to him out of interest, rather than loathing him because he was forced down their throats. Never, ever try to prevent kids from learning material they are ready for: instead of telling an 11-year-old teaching herself calculus to go back to long division until she’s the right age (does that happen? ask how I know…), say: “OK hotshot, so you can differentiate a few functions, but can you handle these here books on linear algebra and group theory, like Terry Tao could have when he was your age?”

Swale

We’ve been tracking the movements of Swale, a forage-ready floating food forest around the New York City waterfront, for the last few years from the Bronx to Brooklyn Bridge Park and Governors Island. This year, Swale will dock from May to June at the Brooklyn Army Terminal and open on the weekends.

Mani in Pasta

East Village’s 5-month-old pizza restaurant Mani in Pasta from chef-owner Giuseppe Manco is apparently already a hit. Manco spent the first part of his career making Neapolitan-style pizzas in Italy and the US before switching to Roman-style pizzas, which he’s now considered a specialist in. Critics at Grub Street note that his pan pizzas are “terrific,” highlighting the margherita and carbonara versions in particular. The restaurant also serves up Roman pastas and pinsa, flatbreads made with the same dough as the pizzas but pressed thinner.

Trump Lawyers

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had consulted with one of his divorce lawyers, Jay Goldberg, who is also a former prosecutor, about the question of whether Cohen, who seems to be facing a raft of charges for financial crimes, might flip, and become a witness against him. The idea that Trump would consult someone who was also his divorce lawyer on this point is another sign of how much his concept of the law centers on him and his personal needs. Goldberg had advised Trump not to trust Cohen, or almost anyone facing a long jail sentence. The “attorney-client dynamic, to use Comey’s phrase, between Trump and Cohen may, for the President, turn out to be explosive. And Cohen isn’t the President’s only lawyer, or his only problem.