KFCblog - June 2022

Life

Summer is on its way. The weather finally turned nice here in Chicago. The kids are out of school (except for Tommy, who's signed up for summer term at DePaul). Since I spent most of my time in May in Milan, I created a blog entry for the 24 gelato shops I visited during the month - the worst of them was pretty good! [Warning: you will be hungry after seeing all the photos]

Sports World

I had a good sports attendance month. I hit two new stadiums and two I hadn't visited since the 1900's! First up was Juventus Stadium in Turin, Italy to see Lyon topple Barca 4-1, in the Women's UEFA championship. The next day I was back in Milan at San Siro Stadium to watch Inter Milan topple Sampdorio, 3-0, in their final game of the season. I had two main observations on seeing these matches in-person: First, the women looked amazingly more athletic in-person than they do on TV; Second, the stadiums, while being great places to watch the sport, come off as almost prison-like due to the physical security controls stadiums have employed in Europe to prevent fan misbehavior.

From Italy, back home, I was attending my college reunion in Boston, catching a Red Sox game in the right field bleachers. I had not been at Fenway since my senior year of college. The Sox watched the Orioles score 10 runs in the 7th, 8th and 9th innings, losing 12-8. The next week, I found myself in LA attending my first Dodgers Stadium visit since 1990. The Dodgers allowed 5 runs in the 8th and 9th to lose to the Pirates, 8-4.

Rafa. 22. GOAT.

NBA and NHL Playoffs in full action. Warriors and Celts tied 1-1 in the NBA finals. Avs looking strong in the NHL Western Finals leading 3-0. Rangers looking tough (but squandered an opportunity in game 3) and lead 2-1.

Hello, World

I spent a good chunk of May in Milan working with Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026 (the organizing committee for the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics) working on technology and planning for the Games. While the Games are still far away (45 months away) the planning and setup is moving at speed.

As mentioned above, I also spent some time with LA28 last month, getting to know the fantastic team that will be bringing the Olympics to US soil for the first time since Salt Lake in 2002. The LA28 team is world class; watch for them to set a new standard for the Olympic Games just like the 1984 team did. If only McDonalds will come back as a sponsor and repeat "When the USA wins, you win" promotion!

Caught My Eye

The food at all 30 ballparks, ranked. [the Dodgers are 23, the Bosox 19 :()

Ten visualizations from Elloitt that describe business and success. My favorite is #3

A quick overview of GTD, something I have been aware of for years, but am just toying around now to see if it works for me long-term.

Fivethirtyeight with an analysis on why home runs are down this year (TL;DR they screwed with the baseball again)

I've always said I can't leave a ballgame until the chance of seeing a no-hitter live (on the sports bucket list). This article does the analysis of where in the progression no-hitters are lost and when the chances for it to happen become real.

Did you know the 1972 arcade classic video game Pong had no software?!?! It was done all in hardware. Take that Marc Andreessen!

Roger Angell passed away this past month. He was the GOAT, no doubt.

Ramez Naam, my favorite futurist not named Mike Bechtel, has a great interview with Noah Smith about the future of energy in the context of the changes happening around Russian oil and gas. BTW, Noah's blog has a great name - Noahpinion.

Eric Schmidt is paying top dollar for entry level techies to work at a non-profit.

Electrification of city bikeshares is changing the game of transportation in our big cities. CitiBike (in NY) has had usage triple since scaling the pedal-assist electric fleet. I've seen it first-hand in Milan which has 3 big electric bike brands around.

Have you ever wondered what happens to all those slightly used hotel bars of soap?

Do you want to see a list of today's hot young tech companies and get a peek at tomorrow's? Look no further than A16z's Marketplace 100

I Bought This: Portability is a game changer

Closing Quote

“If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done, You’ll Always Get What You’ve Always Got.” ~ Henry Ford