Content I Consumed: The Agriculture Value Chain and Income and Wealth by Class
And watch The Last of Us, an anomalous successful video game adaptation
Happy Wednesday!
Climate + Outdoors
Topsoil is an excellent Substack that helps situate you to the agriculture industry. Concise with a high density of information. Ever want to know more about all the moving pieces of the agriculture supply chain? Get the lay of the land with the Ag Value Chain. Two surprising things: 1) Scale. 15 billion bushels of corn move through the US per year. It takes a lot of effort to feed the world. 2) Consolidation. Topsoil has an effective chart that shows how few players there are in each part of the supply chain.
I just read The Little Book of Bonsai: An Easy Guide to Caring for Your Bonsai Tree. When I start hobbies, I tend to dive into the deep end. Why get into house plants, when I could get into the incredibly time-consuming practice of caring for little trees? Getting into a new hobby can be overwhelming because there is so much new information. This book is a good primer on what getting into bonsai entails without a lot of fluff.
Health
Why Do Our Minds Wander? People’s minds wander a lot. Typically when perseverating about the past, your mood will be more negative than if your mind wanders about future opportunities. Mindfulness is helpful because it stops you from mind wandering about the past and helps you focus on the now.
Want to go down a rabbit hole on how to extend your life? Check out Blueprint, an initiative by Braintree’s founder to decrease his epigenetic age. He’s spending millions per year. He’s transparent and published his physical numbers, meal plans, and supplements. He claims he decreased his epigenetic age by 5.1 years in seven months. Vice has a comprehensive overview in The Most Measured Man in History.
Podcasts and Reading
In Episode 14 of the Search for Growth, we interview Pallavi Kuppa-Apte, COO @Charghound. We chat with her about joining a YC-backed company, pivoting to chargebacks, and how they got acquired at PayPal.
On the other hand, this opinion piece argues that podcasts aren’t that educational and shouldn’t be compared to reading. Our attention muscles have atrophied with smartphones. Sometimes we delude ourselves into thinking that listening to podcasts is just as educational as attending a lecture. But the passive nature of listening to episodes while accomplishing other tasks is starkly different from effortful learning. Podcasts aren’t as smart as you think.
Paul Graham essays distill important truths. I’ve learned a lot from them, and they helped me build Wavelength. The Need to Read stuck with me recently. Writing helps you clarify thought and come up with new ideas. And good writing comes from good reading. Part of the reason that I write this newsletter is to be a better consumer of content. This newsletter helps me retain information, communicate clearly, and have new ideas.
Misc.
A fascinating take on levels of wealth and what it takes to move between classes. I am not sure whether these numbers are accurate, but I haven’t read many articles with this precise level of wealth and income data. Going Through Levels of Wealth
The Alchian-Allen Effect is a paradox of microeconomics. The high cost of everything in expensive cities like San Francisco and New York makes over-the-top luxury relatively affordable. An example - to eat at 11 Madison Park (a Michelin-starred restaurant), a New York resident (median income $73k) has to give up a few NYC-priced meals. Meanwhile, a Madison, Florida resident (median income $18k) has to give up significantly more Madison, Florida-priced meals for the same experience.
I’m in the midst of the Last of Us, an HBO show based on a zombie apocalypse video game. So far it’s been successful, prestige TV, which is surprising given the historical failures of video game adaptations. Episode 3 with Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett stood out in particular. A Standout Episode of The Last of Us Does Something the Games Couldn’t [Spoilers].