Category: <span>Linked</span>

Scott Galloway on Elon Musk

By Jay Torres

Scott Galloway on the Pivot podcast on the lack of governance at Elon Musk’s companies:

I think the key issue here and what I would describe as the learning or the takeaway for young people, and that is the most important thing you can have in your life is people who love you and serve as guardrails. And to have people idolize you is different than having people who love you. And I think the guy has a lot of the former and not a lot of the latter, and as someone who has participated in interventions, they don’t invite powerful, important people to those interventions. They invite people who love you, and this is turning into a cautionary tale along the lines of Tony Hsieh, because you have a guy who, as far as I can tell, is living alone, doesn’t have a close relationship with a romantic partner or his children, and is, quite frankly, just fucking off the rails, and if, at the age of 52, You don’t have people in your life who can sit you down and you listen to, cause you know that it’s not that they got rich because of you. It’s not because they think you’re just so fucking awesome and can land rockets on two surfboards. It’s because they just full stop care about you. If you don’t have that, especially men, you literally can lose it all.

I’d keep an eye out for this Musk guy.

★

A Cultural Critique of the Tesla Cybertruck

By Jay Torres

Victoria Scott for Road and Track:

From all of these eras, certain models—from the exotic to the every day—seem to be perfect windows into our country’s ego and id; they show what it values, and what it fears, at the moment of its release. The ‘57 Chevy, with its vast expanses of gleaming chrome—and its ads full of perfectly-trad-beautiful gleaming white smiles and white faces—became shorthand for the rock n’ roll Fifties; the stainless-steel Delorean DMC-12 and the unreliability underneath its gleaming sci-fi exterior came to represent the hollow futurism of the Reagan Eighties.

Which neatly brings us to the Tesla Cybertruck and the fraught present.

Such a sharp piece on how we ended up with a car like the Cybertruck being an actual vehicle.

We saw one for the first time the other day. It is a big vehicle.

★

The Choice Is Yours

By Jay Torres

San Diego Padres owner Peter Seidler died this past Tuesday. From Joe Sheehan’s newsletter contrasting Seidler and Oakland A’s owner John Fisher.

Peter Seidler and John Fisher were both born on third base. One decided to steal home, and the other decided to just steal.

I don’t follow the Padres as close as the Chargers or the Warriors, but I admired what Seidler tried to do in San Diego.

★

New York’s Best (Fake) Steak House Opens Up

By Jay Torres

A week after the listing was posted in March 2022, Mr. Jalali, now 21, said, “A couple walked in like, ‘We’re here for the steak.’” The roommates turned them away, but their listed phone number rang off the hook. The friends toyed with the idea of opening a real restaurant, and Mr. Walz, also 21, built a website with a waiting list.

This sounds like something I would’ve done in my mid-twenties.

★

Inside the Most Expensive ZIP Code in America

By Jay Torres

The small coastal enclave of Newport Coast, Calif., and its 92657 ZIP Code, located in Newport Beach in Orange County, had the priciest median residential listing price in the U.S. in July 2023, according to data from Realtor.com. Situated between the Newport Beach community of Corona del Mar and the city of Laguna Beach, Newport Coast is roughly 3 miles wide and long, stretching from the Pacific Ocean northwest up into the hillside.

We live next to this town and visit Crystal Cove, the original “Shake Shack”, and I’ve been lucky to visit some of the homes in the neighborhood for my work.

★

Cooking with Gas

By Jay Torres

From Roman Mars’ podcast, 99% Invisible:

The level of emotion generated by this common household appliance was surprising. But it turns out there is a long and well-documented history that explains our current moment. The natural gas industry has spent the past hundred years selling Americans on the gas stove and trying to convince us that it’s superior to the electric alternative. That it’s classier, more functional, and that it just cooks our food better.

A truly fascinating look at how the natural gas industry (can we start calling it methane gas?) effectively brainwashed generations of Americans thinking that cooking with gas is better.

As far as other appliances that use gas, switching out the stove looks like to be the hardest one to convince the public to switching.

★

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav booed at Boston University commencement speech

By Jay Torres

Speaking of commencement speeches, Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav gave the commencement speech at Boston University.

BU students booed and turned their backs on David Zaslav, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, as he delivered the commencement address at Nickerson Field, the school stadium.

I’m also a fan of people speaking up for what they believe in.

★