What I wrote last week
Goldman Sachs looks to divorce Apple – It won’t be quick
Square merchant credit card – Related thoughts on PayPal and Marqeta
Business
David Zaslav’s Hollywood Script: Fail Fast, Learn and Move On. If I were a Warner Bros Discovery stockholder, I would be concerned after reading this article. I understand the need to be decisive and cut costs to keep the lights on and pay off debt. However, the lack of understanding of even basic areas from top executives is alarming. Plus, I really don’t like the lack of by-example leadership. While workers are dismissed to save expenses, the Chief Executive Officer receives tremendous compensation and threw a lavish party for himself and his pals in Hollywood. How does that inspire workers? Is that the kind of leadership that will guide the company through crisis.
A really nice writeup on Floor & Decor. I’d prefer knowing why and how Floor & Decor is the only company in the flooring industry that sources directly from suppliers. This factor came up a few times in the writeup as one of the reasons why FND is competitive. So it’s important to unpack that.
Goodreads was the future of book reviews. Then Amazon bought it. What has happened to Goodreads is a pity and a disgrace. I have been using the site for at least 10 years. Yes, we can get reviews from other sites, even on Amazon.com. What those sites don’t have; however, are the people I am connected to on Goodreads. I like to see what my friends read and what they have to say about those books. Amazon bought a store of value and simply squandered it. The interesting thing here is that they can fix it tomorrow and it’s not too late. I still see activities on Goodreads. I still update my books there. So do my friends. So do a lot of readers.
Those 10,000 5-star reviews are fake. Now they’ll also be illegal. I appreciate the attention that the FTC brings to this issue. Fake reviews are a real problem and so is “review hijacking” (“That’s when a merchant takes a product listing page filled with legitimate reviews and swaps in a different product that those customers never actually used”). It is sensible enough that the FTC doesn’t think review sites such as Yelp or Google should be liable. I wonder how the agency will force the new rules.
The Concept That Explains Everything About Marketplaces. It’s a different way of looking which parts of the value chain a company brings and what competitive advantage it has.
Lessons From the Catastrophic Failure of the Metaverse. “The sheer scale of the hype inflation came to light in May. In the same article, Insider revealed that Decentraland, arguably the largest and most relevant Metaverse platform, had only 38 active daily users. The Guardian reported that the monetized content ecosystem in Meta’s flagship product Horizon Worldsproduced no more than $470 in revenue globally. Thirty-eight active users. Four hundred and seventy dollars. You’re not reading those numbers wrong. To say that the Metaverse is dead is an understatement. It was never alive.“
Other stuff I find interesting
Why the electric vehicle boom could put a major strain on the U.S. power grid. The US needs to modernize its infrastructure to ensure long-term competitive advantages and secure global moral leadership on issues like climate change. But the country has a real bottleneck: tribal partisanship!
Mineral-Rich Developing Nations Demand Bigger Piece of the EV Pie. Lawmakers of countries rich in minerals should come up with a strategy on how to leverage the gifts from Mother Nature to take their countries forward. Capitalism is ruthless. Once foreign companies get all they need and can from a country, they will not care what the future of such a country will be. Hence, host countries should try to extract as much as possible from foreign parties.
Kevin Kelly – Be Generous & Unique. Kevin Kelly’s latest book, Excellent Advice For Living – which is one of the three good books on life I mentioned recently, is choke-full of insights and great lessons. In this interview, he highlights some of his thinking and the best lessons he has to offer. Great interview. Great learnings.
Tesla’s new Mexico factory divides a city. Nobody can guarantee which strategy will catapult a city or region into the next economic growth level. It’s not often all citizens agree on one thing. I don’t know whether Tesla’s arrival will be a net benefit to Nuevo León, but the optic that a President, who is a Tesla fan, has the power to influence this kind of decision is not great.
Bitter rivals. Beloved friends. Survivors. Beautiful beautiful tribute to two of the greatest athletes and tennis players that we ever had: Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. Once bitter rivals, now beloved friends. “There are statues of Arthur Ashe at the U.S. Open, Fred Perry at Wimbledon, Rod Laver at the Australian Open and Rafael Nadal at the French Open. The blazers who run the major championships have not yet commissioned sculptures of these two women, who so unbound their sport and gave the gift of professional aspiration to so many. Yet who exemplify, perhaps more than any champions in the annals of their sport, the deep internal mutual grace called sportsmanship. But then, they don’t need bronzing. They have something much warmer than that. Each other.”
China Restricts Exports of Two Minerals Used in High-Performance Chips. “The minerals—gallium and germanium—and more than three dozen related metals and other materials will be subject to unspecified export controls starting Aug. 1, Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce said Monday. Both gallium and germanium appear among 50 minerals that the U.S. Geological Survey deems “critical,” meaning they are essential to the economic or national security of the U.S. and have a supply chain vulnerable to disruption. Neither gallium or germanium is traded in large quantities. Both nevertheless have uses important to particular industries, especially production of semiconductors that are often designed in and for use in the U.S. even if made in Taiwan and South Korea.”
Stats
As of April 2023, 5.3 million Americans have visited Aldi for the first time
Minh Quang Duong 
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