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Yesterday Maru and I watched the latest Marvel film: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

In addition to being action-packed, hilarious, and a great watch, I loved Marvel and Disney’s embrace of Chinese culture.

Being half Chinese-Malaysian myself, it was so cool to see Marvel’s first asian superhero being brought to life on the big screen.

I loved the tasteful representation of Chinese culture and mythology, as well as the heavy presence of Mandarin throughout the film. I also thought Simu Liu did an awesome job in the lead role, and I can’t wait to see him in the upcoming Avengers.

What started with Black Panther, and continued with Captain Marvel, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and now the Eternals, is I hope the start of a long term trend of more diverse superheroes and lead stars. What a great example for young kids (and kids at heart) around the world.

Everything we buy, process we establish, plan we develop, line of code we write, debt we take on, all of it requires maintenance.

And maintenance is hard.

It’s hard to forecast the amount required. It’s easy to forget. And there always seems to be some other pressing priority begging for our attention.

But if we’re not careful, the cost of maintenance can grow and stifle us—leaving us less nimble, less bold, and less ambitious.

What things can we throw away? What processes can we remove? What plans can we simplify? What debt can we pay down?

How can we reduce the hidden cost of maintenance?

I’m fascinated by the New Zealand Government’s ambition to eliminate smoking, so that “anyone born after 2008 will not be able to buy cigarettes or tobacco products in their lifetime.”

The current data is shocking: 1 in 4 cancers diagnosed in New Zealand are caused by smoking, and 13% of the adult population currently smokes—which is higher than what I anticipated.

The new law will see the supply of cigarettes being severely restricted: there will be a 94% reduction in places where tobacco can be sold—in particular, supermarkets and convenience stores will no longer stock cigarettes. The goal is to reduce the national smoking rate to 5% by 2025, and ultimately to eliminate smoking altogether.

I’m fascinated by these kinds of policy decisions because they always sit within a broader, more complex, and deeply nuanced system. And in complex systems, second and third order consequences inevitably emerge.

I’m all for eliminating smoking, but I can understand why supermarkets and convenience stores are worried about revenue loss. I’m sure public health campaigns and increasing taxes on tobacco were also considered, but I’m not sure why they don’t feature more prominently alongside the ban. I’m also painfully aware that smoking correlates with many other sensitive variables, such as education levels and socioeconomic inequality. Not to mention the blackmarkets that may emerge to take advantage of the restriction in supply.

There are so many lenses through which you can look at this problem that it makes a blanket “ban” look simplistic.

A bunch of you are much more steeped in policy and systems changes than I am, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether you think this is a great idea, or perhaps well intentioned but missing a few pieces of the larger puzzle.

I’m really surprised by Twitter’s new org structure.

Some of you may have read that Twitter Co-Founder, Jack Dorsey, stepped down from the CEO role less than 2 weeks ago. He appointed Twitter veteran, Parag Agrawal, as his replacement.

Agrawal moved quickly. Within 8 days, he had reorganised the company into 3 divisions: Consumer, Revenue, and Core Tech; with a General Manager responsible for each one.

This is counter to the functional structure used by most technology companies, where there are functional organisations (e.g., product, engineering, design, research, etc.) and then the product teams are “matrixed” into the them.

People in functional structures report to someone outside their day-to-day product team. This means there is no manager responsible for “making the decisions”, resulting in team members having to use logic and data to convince each other when making decisions.

I personally love this approach to building products. I think it brings a richness of thought and debate to a team, and removes the risk that a manager stifles diversity of thought and opinion.

Which is also why I’m really surprised with Twitter’s restructuring. Agrawal’s bet is that by giving General Managers massive clarity of scope and responsibility, it will help the company move faster. I’m not saying that it can’t be done, or that it won’t work, but definitely keen to follow how things unfold.

For those that have been following the blog for a while, you may know the Mississippi River holds a special place in my heart.

I spent 6 months—along with some great friends—figuring out how to build a boat from recycled materials and travel it’s 3,000+ kilometre length.

Natchez was one of the towns where we got the warmest welcome. A local family gave us a room for a couple nights, hosted us for multiple meals, and the father—Greg, a manager at a local golf course—took us for a hit at his course.

A video of came up in my feed today of Greg sowing poppy seeds at the bank of the Mississippi River in Natchez. I then learned that every year in October he plants tens of thousands of poppies, weeds them all winter, and then lets the community enjoy them come April. Greg’s actions have been dubbed a sort of “random acts of floral largesse”.

Greg is such a bright character who is full of life, and I loved seeing him at it again: making people smile.

I enjoyed reading this article on the 5 most common jobs in a medieval city.

What’s cool about the work is the author uses tax records from 14th and 15th century Montpellier to get a picture of the distribution of work across the population.

Unsurprisingly, farming took the top spot with 16% of taxpayers—this job was mainly filled by peasants who resided outside the city walls. Carpenter was understandably 2nd, but at a much lower 6%. Interestingly, shoemaker was 4th on the list with 4%.

Due to the industrial revolution, the emergence of the limited liability company, vertical integration, and globalisation (I’m sure among many other factors), we now have large corporations who now fulfil our farming, carpentry, and shoe producing needs with a tiny fraction of the effort that was once required.

I couldn’t help but wonder what they would think about our jobs today; all these people scurrying off to monolithic, glass blocks in metropolitan cities to type away at keyboards, only to then head home 8 hours later.

In December 1985, Cray launched the world’s fastest “super computer” at a supposed cost of $15 million.

As a crazy point of comparison, today’s smart phones have more processing power.

This fact also makes me think about how little we know—and can predict— about what the world will look like after another 35 years.

It’s not the absolute change in processing power, but rather what it unlocks for humanity, that’s important.

I’m about a year late to the party, but I just finished watching The Queen’s Gambit and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I can now understand the reason for chess’ resurgence over the past year, and it also explains why multiple friends invited me to matches via mobile apps.

My timing to watch The Queen’s Gambit was also serendipitous, the World Chess Championship is currently happening. It’s a 14 game showdown between the world’s highest ranked chess player for the last 11 years—and widely considered to be the GOAT—Magnus Carlsen, and challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi.

Although they’re streamed live on YouTube, the games aren’t exactly easy watching: each game takes about 3-4 hours. So I usually skip to the end game.

The first 5 games all ended in a stalemate. But yesterday, in a 7 hour epic, Carlsen managed to push ahead. I came across this great video that shows the exciting last 15 minutes of the game.

I then went down a YouTube rabbit hole watching Carlsen beat 3 people blindfolded.

They say after 4 moves, there are over 3 billion different combinations available to players. But despite all the possibility, chess is a game where the stage is set, the pieces are known, and despite a slim advantage being given to the white pieces, it’s an insanely great game.

Today I came across the work of Jon Foreman, a UK land and sculpture artist.

In particular, his work using sand as his canvas impressed me!

I love the ephemeral nature of his work. What he creates will only exist for a few hours. Wind will rise, tides will wash away, and humans will trample. But in the few hours they exist, they’re magic.

He also works with a range of other materials in a range of other spaces.

Enjoy!

It’s really hard to understand the magnitude of a problem, or opportunity, when looking at numbers in a table.

Some people can do it, but the vast majority of us do better when looking at a chart or graph.

Being able to communicate data in a simple, clear, and quick way is important. The faster we can get people to understand with our recommendation, the more impact we can have.

Whenever we see a table with data, we should ask: could this message be clearer in a chart?

If individuals, teams, and companies asked this question each time they see a table with data, I think average impact per decision would increase across the board.

I love this twitter thread showing the back-and-forth emails between famed investors Paul Graham and Fred Wilson in 2009 about AirBnb.

What I love is Graham’s fierce conviction that AirBnb could become a massive marketplace that competes with hotels, and how persistent he is on selling the idea to Wilson.

I also chuckled when I saw Graham wrote, “There’s no reason this couldn’t be as big as Ebay.”

AirBnb is now worth 2.5 eBays, at $106b and $42b market cap respectively.

Finally, Wilson is known for making many good bets, but the thread also shows that even the best make mistakes.

P.S. I really enjoy reading Graham’s essays, and reading Wilson’s blog posts!

There was a puzzle game that I loved when I was a kid: Rush Hour.

It’s a board with a bunch of cars and trucks that can slide around. The goal is to get the red car to the exit by moving the other vehicles out of the way.

Little did I know that I’d eventually have a real life ‘Rush Hour’ experience at one of the Park & Fly services in Miami. Upon returning from Mexico, we were greeted with this sight.

Our car is the one in the middle with the trunk open.

It took more than half an hour for the staff at the Park & Fly to the find the keys for the other cars and to, one by one, move them out of the way so we could get out.

I had to laugh in the moment, but it got me thinking: if we’re going to do anything, we might as well do it well. A bit of upfront thinking and planning—or in this case, parking the cars in the order in which they’re going to be picked up—can save a lot of time.

I was completely blown away by this video today.

It’s a 2-min clip of Paul McCartney writing ‘Get Back’ as part of the recent Beatles documentary directed and produced by Peter Jackson.

What I love is that the first 30 seconds is objectively bad. It’s messy, lacking conviction, and basically sounds like the guy at the party who is poorly holding a tune on the acoustic guitar.

But this is part of the process.

Slowly, McCartney allows the song to emerge.

By 1:15, the verse melody arrives: the chugging guitar and rhythmic lyrics. And by 1:40 we hear the iconic chorus that is now famous around the world.

I highly recommend watching the whole clip.

Would we have ‘Get Back’ if McCartney was embarrassed to messily explore? And what could this mean for our own standards and expectations for creative exploration?

I’m really proud of my friends, Dan and Chris, for their work at Amber. Amber is a renewable energy retailer in Australia disrupting the incumbent business model.

For a $15 AUD membership fee, Amber customers get access to the wholesale price of energy and the Amber app, where they’re incentivised to shift their energy consumption to greener periods of the day.

Recently, one of their fellow renewable energy retailers, Powershop, sold to Shell. An ironic move considering the values Powershop were founded upon.

Dan and Chris pounced at the opportunity to buy a full page ad in The Age, writing an obituary of sorts to Powershop selling out. They’re also committing to donate $100 AUD to environmental charities for every Powershop customer that switches to Amber before Nov 30.

If you’re one of my Aussie readers, you should check Amber out! They’re awesome!

In high school I competed in Dragon Boat Racing. A team of 20 students paddle a long, wooden canoe over a distance of about 500 metres. Schools from around New Zealand come together each year to have their teams compete against one another.

One thing our coach taught us early on was that the size and strength of each individual is unimportant—no one person can carry a team to victory. But what is most important is paddling in unison. Complete synchronisation is a force multiplier.

One person sits at the front of the boat and beats a drum. The first two paddlers—who each sit at the front of a 10 person paddling line—time their strokes with the beat. Every subsequent paddler looks at the person diagonally in front of them and matches their stroke. If this is done perfectly, and all paddles hit the water at the exact same time, and each paddler has the exact same stroke length, the dragon boat flies.

Dragon Boating taught me a lesson: I’d much rather be in a great team, than in a team of greats.