🎙️ The Weekly Zeitgeist

"SBF's Media Strategy, FTX Culpability, ChatGPT, SaaS Slowdown & More" | All-In

Hosts: Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks & David Friedberg
Time Saved: 1 Hour 37 Minutes

Selected Quote:

[21:15] CP: "In society, we've confused a lot of people to think that the opposite of liberal is conservative or Republican. And I think that's the cycle that drives the mind virus inside the mainstream media. The problem is the opposite of liberal is illiberal. [...] And what illiberal means is to be narrow-minded and unenlightened. It means to be puritanical. It means to be fundamentalist."

"Why Twitter’s Former Safety Chief Left Elon Musk" | On with Kara Swisher

Guest: Yoel Roth | Former Head of Trust & Safety| Twitter
Time Saved: 1 Hour 4 Minutes

Selected Quote:

[23:32] YR: "Trust and Safety is an adaptive space. [...] You can't rest on your laurels [...] and that's why we have a trust and safety team. You can't use ML for all of it. You can't automate it. There is no set it and forget it when it comes to trust and safety. And I think Twitter's challenge going forward is not can the platform build machine learning? Sure they can. But are there enough people who understand the emergent malicious campaigns that happen on the service and understand it well enough to guide product strategy and policy direction? And I don't think that there are enough people left at the company who can do that work to keep pace with what's happening."

A Message from Lykeion:

How do interest rates, the war in Ukraine, and a prolonged period of inflation affect how you think about your investments?
Lykeion brings investment grade commentary to the newsletter world, covering the converging worlds of business, finance, and geopolitics - in an objective and practical way.

"A Breakout Year for Carbon Removal?" | The Carbon Copy

Guests: Julio Friedmann | Chief Scientist | Carbon Direct &
Rafael Broze | Carbon Removal Program Manager | Microsoft
Time Saved: 36 Minutes

Selected Quote:

[33:07] JF: "20 years ago, solar was a failed set of Department of Energy projects in the Mojave Desert that were ridiculously expensive and tiny. [...] And then things changed. [...] So it's impossible to guess how [the carbon market is] going to be [in 20 years]. But I think we are going to see a change of incumbents. I think we're going to see a whole new set of pathways for CO2 removal that we haven't even imagined yet, stuff like wood burial [...]. I think we will begin to see new laws and new protocols. [...] But mostly what we're going to see is a handful of really energetic young entrepreneurs today, ending their careers with success. They are going to say I spent my life working on this problem and it worked."

"Can We Eat Right and Still Save the Planet?" | Climavores

Guest: Dr. Marion Nestle | Nutrition & Food Studies Professor | NYU
Time Saved: 48 Minutes

Selected Quote:

[16:08] MN: "There's 4,000 calories available per capita in the food supply [in the US]. That's twice as much as what the country needs, on average. [...] Food companies are not social service agencies and they're not public health agencies. [...] The entire system is set up to get people to eat more food, not less. Because, eat food, not too much, mostly plants is terrible for business."

"The Twitter Files, How to Make Good Business Decisions, and [More]" | Pivot

Hosts: Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway
Time Saved: 1 Hour 13 Minutes

Selected Quote:

[37:20] SG: "The Morning Consult [did] a net favorability rating, where they say, do you have a favorable view of the brand and then they minus the number of people who have a not favorable view of the brand. And across all US adults, the Twitter brand has lost 5.5 percentage points, the Tesla brand 6 percentage points. Amongst Democrats [...] Tesla has lost net favorability of 20.3% just in 30 days, October to November. Across Republicans, it's up 3.9%. [...] Twitter, embracing right leaning ideology on a net basis is a really bad idea."