Category: The City

but I like working with PMs who went into it through channels other than the official ones, and are motivated out of their passion for building things and solving problems. Not because they feel it’s something they’re supposed to do, or because they think it’s prestigious, or because it is the default path from whatever elite school they went to.

That is an excellent and very opinionated list of criteria of how to gauge a product organization. I’m not sure whether I’ve seen any that hit all or even many of these. If you know of one, let me know.

http://dangrover.com/blog/2020/01/20/a-sanity-test-for-large-groups-of-pms.html

“This is all to say that Paul Graham is an effective marketer and practitioner, but a profoundly unserious public intellectual. His attempts to grapple with the major issues of the present, especially as they intersect with his personal legacy, are so mired in intuition and incuriosity that they’re at best a distraction, and worst a real obstacle to understanding our paths forward.”

https://ideolalia.com/essays/thought-leaders-and-chicken-sexers.html

An utter and total indictment of Paul Graham who of course is impervious to such things.

A lovely interview about the magic bus and the hippie period in Istanbul revolving around the Lale Pudding Shop which is still in business.

Fuck Manhattan. This (Jackson Heights) is the real New York: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/27/arts/design/jackson-heights-queens-virtual-walk-tour.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

I think there was another study about psychopathy in high status car drivers but for now this is good enough.

The answers were unambiguous: self-centred men who are argumentative, stubborn, disagreeable and unempathetic are much more likely to own a high-status car such as an Audi, BMW or Mercedes.

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/nordic-welfare-news/the-fast-and-the-furious-research-shows-that-owners-of-high-status-cars-are-on-a-collision-course-with-traffic