KFCblog - May 2022

Life

We are still waiting for spring here in Chicago. We've had a couple of nice days but nothing consistent. I think I'm going to take the risk and take the snow shovel and the ice melt off of the front porch and put them in the garage for the season.

Sports World

The NFL Draft had the Bears without a first-round pick (dealt to the Giants). They picked up some good secondary talent in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. They picked up a little WR help for Justin Fields in round 3 with speedy (but limited?) Velus Jones. The Georgia Bulldogs set a record by having 15 of their players drafted (including #1 Travon Walker).

My son showed me an awesome site this month (thanks Joey!) called NFL Scoragami. It is a visual representation of every final score in NFL history. What can you learn? 73 is the highest score ever; 51 is the highest losing score; only one team has ever scored exactly 4 points; 0-0 has happened 73 times - but not since 1943; the highest total score was 72-41. And my favorite thing I learned? It's possible to have a 6-1 final score!

Hello, World

As you might guess, I'm thoroughly enjoying the new role. I'm not a superstitious person, so I don't mind claiming that I think I have achieved Ikigai which is a Japanese concept that roughly translates to "a reason for being", at least in my professional life. It seems like the many roles I have been fortunate enough to have, combined with the many wonderful people I have worked with and for, combined with my passion for sport, and finally combined with having a real purpose-driven effort have allowed me to reach Ikigai. Below is a great diagram to explain Ikigai.

As I write this, I'm about to head to the airport to spend a couple of weeks in Milan working with the Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026 (a.k.a. MiCo) which is the organization responsible for Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2026. While the sponsorship announced last month begins immediately, much of the technology work we are doing won't be in place until the Milano-Cortina Games. Great times ahead!

Caught My Eye

Elon and Twitter have been a hot news story. Here's a great take from Stratechery on a possible future for Twitter that sounds pretty compelling to me.

But predicting the future of big tech is hard. Here's a retrospective story about Barron's 1999 article about the bankruptcy risk for Amazon - Amazon.bomb

We are all used to dealing with SPAM email, but there are some techniques to lessen the amount of physical email SPAM you get (I get 1-2 credit card offers every week. I stopped counting when United offered me their card one hundred times - and that was 10 years ago!). There's even a specialized service for reducing catalog mailings. Check it all out.

The great Kevin Kelly just turned 70 and released 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known.

Oldest Search gives you the oldest search result from Google for a given search query. For example, searching for Bill Gates gives you this 1997 article from the NYTimes about Microsoft's antitrust challenges. Or try this 2007 article about the Metaverse.

Here's my occasional somewhat geeky read about a guy in Switzerland who just upgraded to 25Gb/s bandwidth - to his home! Many of the internet "Speedtests" don't work for him as their connections to the internet are limited to 10Gb/s!

Hopefully, you got your taxes done in April. Unfortunately, as in most years, I had to file for an extension. If you trade in crypto and didn't get a lot of questions from your accountant, you might want to read why accountants are getting crushed by crypto.

Do you know who Mr. Beast is? You should. He made (grossed) $54M on YouTube in 2021.

Coming out of the last financial crisis, the Dodd Frank Act was passed. After that, came the Durbin Amendment. This article shows some of the unintended consequences of regulation in our complex, digital economy.

A recent investigation into the term "rule of thumb" and whether it had sexist origins (apparently not) led me to this small cornucopia of trivia: List of common misperceptions

Great data and visualization of every NFL final score ever. Which led to the rathole of this trivia question: What is the most unlikely NFL final score (with less than, say, 150 total points scored)? Answer: 10-1

I only recently learned about OKRs for managing team performance. It's logical and compelling.

Here's some AI that separates the voice track from the music track on existing MP3 files. Quite fun - check out Paint It Black.

OK, now some more cool AI form generated.photos that will create a generative photo of you based on a photo you upload. Here's one of (from?) me:

Some cool, random word trivia. Sample: Twyndyllyngs, twelve letters long, is the longest word in the English language without any of the five main vowels.

The latecomer's guide to crypto. Originally published in the NY Times in March 2022.

I Bought This: For my daughter's upcoming birthday.

Closing Quote

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. ” - Leo Buscaglia