The Sunday Digest: April Showers

Happy Sunday!

Is a stock market shift to monetizing online followings an exciting development, or a recipe for disaster? To what extent does social media police bodies, and whose? Can a Wharton professor teach you to predict the future more accurately? How in tarnation would a creator go about becoming an angel investor?

All these and more are the questions our writers helped answer—or wrestle with—this week. They say that when it rains, it pours...and it's supposed to rain a lot in April, at least according to that other saying. So consider this a deluge of great writing to kick off the year's fourth month.

See you for the next weekend forecast!

What We Published

This week’s output: 4 articles + 3 podcasts

📝 ARTICLES 📝

Human Speculation

by Nathan Baschez in Divinations

To Nathan, a "stock market for people" has become inevitable. Now, BitClout is here to accelerate our journey towards having one. The freshly-launched platform joins popular Twitter accounts and blockchains, allowing users to "invest" in creators they think are going to see serious online growth. But is BitClout really going to "decentralize social media" a la Bitcoin's effect on finance? Or does it just offer another harmful money-centric number for people to assign themselves—and compare endlessly to those of others? Laying out his fears and interests regarding BitClout, and the "human stock market" in general, Nathan doesn't reach a "good" or "bad" verdict. But he certainly paints a compelling picture of where crypto and the stock market may well be headed, like it or not.

Read 🔒 (7 minutes)

The Unwritten Rules of Social Media (A Survival Guide)

by Taylor Majewski in Glassy

How do you navigate social media's standards when "bodies are your business"? Taylor finds that the answer to that question depends mostly on what your business is. If you focus on women's health you'll often have a tough time navigating social without being blocked or banned—while companies and influencers that cater to men are often overlooked. But some scientists, doctors, and founders have discovered ways to work around unfair policies or get them changed—and Taylor reveals how they did it.

Read (15 minutes)

How to See the Future Like a Superforecaster

by Andre Plaut in The Prediction Game

Can you really be "good" at rock, paper, scissors? What about predicting a year in world events? Gamemaster Andre devotes this monthly dispatch from the world of the Prediction Game to the art of Superforecasting, as understood by Wharton Professor Dr. Philip Tetlock. To learn how you can "think like a Superoforecaster"—from toggling knowns and unknowns to inside and outside views—read Andre's analysis, and continue to the end for a real-world application of the strategy!

Read (14 minutes)

How Can Creators Become Successful Angel Investors?

by Li Jin & Nathan Baschez in Means of Creation

In this week's roundup of news from the Passion Economy, Li and Nathan set their sights on the increase in popular creators taking the angel investing route. But they don't stop at analysis—Li has some advice for anyone who's looking to get into the game.

Read 🔒 (11 minutes)

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

#66 - If the relationship works, the business works

#67 - What kind of thinking do we want to cultivate?

#68 - Going deeper on conflicts—and solutions

Talk Therapy with Dan Shipper & Nathan Baschez

Dan and Nathan released a trio of deep, unfiltered episodes this week, excavating the history and looking toward the future of their working relationship—and how it's been inextricable from personal dynamics since they started out as collaborators. From their bumpy initiation to each other as partners, to the Acceptance Therapy-inspired joys of heading up the company, to their continued efforts to figure out which of their tendencies to accept and which to change, this is Talk Therapy at its most blissfully raw.

Listen to 66 (19 minutes), #67 (17 minutes) & #68 (19 minutes)

What’s Going On

News you might have caught or missed this week.

Do newspapers have a doxxing problem?

The latest instance of an established media organization revealing the name of a popular online figure with a large following has unspooled over the past week. As a host of the years-old podcast QAnon Anonymous, Travis View dove into the dogma, theories, and violence of the group before they were dominating daily headlines. Naturally, View's work became fodder for theWashington Post, who ran articles that used him as a source and even gave View a byline—before deciding that View's use of a pseudonym had "complicated" View's and the show's "success story." Why? As Gizmodo's Tom McKay writes, "the Post apparently quoted Strain as an expert...without ever quite catching on they should have asked if that was his real name. The paper then seems to have scrambled to cover its ass." Nathan Baschez agreed on the Every Discord, writing that "the way traditional newspapers treat pseudo-anonymity is baffling to me." If newspapers are going to hold rigid standards while working with pseudonymous people, they may need to develop more rigorous procedures for identifying pseudonyms earlier on in those collaborations.

More News

• Substack is raising $65 million amid newsletter boom
• ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ to Have First Major Motion Picture NFT Art Release
• Unsplash being acquired by Getty Images
• Medium Raises $57M, Will Hold Event On October 7 To Announce New Features And Partnerships

What We’re Reading

Our favorite writing from beyond Every

The Rise of the Athlete Podcaster

Remember when Derek Jeter founded the Player's Tribune? Even if you're now an avid reader, you could be forgiven if the answer is "no." As The New Yorker's Hua Hsu writes, the Tribune has become anything but "a place for tight-lipped players to issue elegant press statements"—it's somewhere for them to speak their minds, "disrupting traditional flows of information" in a hyper-managed world like pro sports. Recently, audio has followed suit, with a spate of athlete-hosted podcasts dedicated to peeling back the sheen of fame to discuss pressing social issues, triumphs and traumas, and plenty else. For athletes with existing good will, or those whose "relationship with the media has curdled," Hsu writes, athletes of all ages and statuses "have found the greatest success as storytellers...in podcasting."

More Reads

• Hulu’s WeWork documentary gives us Adam Neumann and little else (The Verge)
• Inside BitClout, the Dystopian Social Network with Big Backers and Vocal Critics (Decrypt)
• A Shopper's Heaven (Real Life)

Time to Build Your Second Brain!

If you enjoyed our first round of essays from Tiago Forte's Praxis Fellows, then perhaps you'd be interested to know more about the place those fabulous writers were picked from. Now entering its 12th cohort, Tiago's online course Building a Second Brain teaches your to organize your digital life and improve your productivity...and, eventually, to push your ideas—and your own destiny—to their full potential. Enrollment for the month-long course opens in two weeks, so visit Tiago's website to hear more about the program (and how it ties into the hit TV show The Expanse) in his own words, and to start receiving dispatches about the BASB journey.

A Taste of Culture

Napkin Math's Evan Armstrong—who has even more for Every on the way—had a strong experience watching the Oscar-nominated documentary Collective (or Colectiv, in its native Romania) this week. "If 2020 taught me anything it was to not trust institutions to protect you," says Evan. "Collective is an incredible documentary about the corruption in the Romanian healthcare system following the national repercussions of a deadly fire in an overcrowded club. The directors had incredible access, impeccable artistic choices, and the film is just very, very good. 5/5 stars."

Tweet of the Week

Kyle Chayka@chaykak

what is a magazine if not a hype house of writers?

March 30th 2021, 10:58am EST

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