KFCblog - February 2024

Life

The year has started off great. I kicked of New Year's in Istanbul, then spent a few weeks in Milan and Paris. It was a great mixture of work and fun! Here's what I learned: Istanbul is awesome (can't beat meat on a stick!), the best time to go to the Louvre is Friday nights (the only night it is open past 6p), and the rooftop tour at the Duomo in Milano is a must-see touristy thing.

Punxsutawney Phil saw no shadow - early spring?

Sports World

Michigan dominated Washington, 34-13, winning the NCAA football championship (and coach Jim Harbaugh immediately bolted to the NFL. I hear the Taylor Swift team will be in the Super Bowl, playing against the San Francisco 49ers. Speaking of the Super Bowl, read some business history of the halftime show - we've come a long way since Up With People in 1982 to Usher this year. The 2024 Australian Open was NOT won by Novak Djokovic, but instead by Italian Jannik Sinner.

The French Alps is now the clear favorite to host the 2030 Winter Olympics - it is expected that Salt Lake City will get the award for 2034 at the same time. The Six Nations Rugby tournament kicked off this weekend. France and Ireland are the favorites.

Why do I write about sports? Because in the USA, 93 of the top 100 tv broadcasts last year were sports!

Hello, World

The photo above is me holding an Oscar and an Emmy at the headquarters of an incredible technology company called Magnopus. I was introduced to Magnopus by and old friend and colleague, Jeffrey R. Smith . I got to tour their office/hq/studio in Los Angeles last week. It is a video/VR/AR geek dreamscape. I am hoping to find an opportunity to intersect their technology into the world of sports.

Caught My Eye

Like every technology that has come before it, Artificial Intelligence can and will be used for both good and bad. I'm certainly a techno-optimist and agree with this great blog post from Andreessen-Horowitz Why AI Will Save the World.

I've been skiing since I was pretty young, but I can't imagine the levels that extreme skiers have taken it to. Yikes!

Do you feel younger in your head than the calendar shows? Me, too! This sensation pretty common amongst middle aged and older people.

Do you have a child getting ready for college? College application coaches now command fees up to $120,000!

What critical part of the global infrastructure still gets implemented the same way as 100+ years ago? Laying undersea cables!

You've probably read/heard of the dangers of ultra-processed foods. Maybe they are bad simply because they trigger us to eat more?

Good Will Hunting is in my top 10 movies of all time. Here's an interesting oral history of the movie.

Here's a very fun thing I discovered this month. Barilla has a Spotify playlist that has songs that match to the cook time of each pasta type.

How Google algorithms have dramatically influenced web design (which is adjacent to why Google search sucks due to advertising)

I'm a fan of Tim Ferriss's podcast so I was excited to see his new YouTube series where he learns something new. The first episode is him learning to play the drums (no prior experience) from none other than Steward Copeland! Four weeks after starting, he played live on stage with Foreigner!

If you still haven't had time to play with ChatGPT, here's a great starter guide.

A quick diversion - super simple and surprisingly fun one dimensional pac-man game called Paku Paku

I Bought This: Of course I did.

Closing Quote

"We're in the Pong stage of virtual reality. Basically, we hit photorealism in games almost 10 years ago. So in 35 years, we went from blocky quarter-inch pixels of Pong, to photorealism. It's only reasonable to assume that we can do the same thing with virtual reality." —Nolan Bushnell