#71: Finance, and the medium is the message

💎 Word gems

Finance is Narrative Not Numbers (Napkin Math / Evan Armstrong)

The central thesis here - that “the game of business” is telling a story with numbers, feels obvious but equally illuminating.

Financial metrics exist for the purpose of telling the story of a group’s outcomes. It is business complexity abstracted into a standard set of numbers that allows for easy comparison. The thing that matters isn’t even what is currently on the spreadsheet, it’s how the current performance compares across time and similar businesses.

In other words, capitalism is the grand game that we are all engaged in. Our time and our energy are directed by the rules of this competition. Learning finance is learning the rulebook. Sure, you can play Monopoly without understanding all the rules, but if you want to win, you need to understand the underlying math.

I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message (New York Times / Ezra Klein)

Reading this took me back to when I studied communications at University, where Marshall McLuhan was the definitive voice.

McLuhan’s view is that mediums matter more than content; it’s the common rules that govern all creation and consumption across a medium that change people and society. Oral culture teaches us to think one way, written culture another. Television turned everything into entertainment, and social media taught us to think with the crowd.

All this happens beneath the level of content. CNN and Fox News and MSNBC are ideologically different. But cable news in all its forms carries a sameness: the look of the anchors, the gloss of the graphics, the aesthetics of urgency and threat, the speed, the immediacy, the conflict, the conflict, the conflict. I’ve spent a lot of time on cable news, as both a host and a guest, and I can attest to the forces that hold this sameness in place: There is a grammar and logic to the medium, enforced by internal culture and by ratings reports broken down by the quarter-hour. You can do better cable news or worse cable news, but you are always doing cable news.

💩 Cool shit

Marvel Cinematic Network - See how all the movies and characters are linked together across the MCU.

Hack this Shopping Cart - This is fascinating example of hacking tech. Play a sound from your phone speaker to lock/unlock the wheels on shopping carts.

Great Landing Page Copy - Examples of websites with great copy.

Gulls of Bangor - A whimsical text adventure story.

The Infinite Gallery - A generated 3D art gallery using r/Art, that feels a bit like moving around in Wolfenstein 3D.

Viral Post Generator - Generate the perfect LinkedIn post. I especially love the cringe level.

Fun Slider - This NY Times article has a slider to add more fun.

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