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Complete Honesty is the Access to Ultimate Power

Rebekah Campbell via the New York Times:

A study by the University of Massachusetts found that 60 percent of adults could not have a 10-minute conversation without lying at least once. The same study found that 40 percent of people lie on their résumés and a whopping 90 percent of those looking for a date online lie on their profiles. Teenage girls lie more than any other group, which is attributed to peer pressure and expectation. The study did not investigate the number of lies told by entrepreneurs looking for investment capital, but I fear we would top the chart.

Also:

Peter maintains that telling lies is the No. 1 reason entrepreneurs fail. Not because telling lies makes you a bad person but because the act of lying plucks you from the present, preventing you from facing what is really going on in your world. Every time you overreport a metric, underreport a cost, are less than honest with a client or a member of your team, you create a false reality and you start living in it.

Drink a cup of coffee before reading this one.

Time to Take Back Email

I’ve been mostly ignoring the hubbub about companies reading my email. I’ve always assumed that part of not paying for a service means that I’m indirectly paying for it in other ways, but the closing line of this CNN piece somehow put me over the edge.

In a move that might be deemed ironic, Microsoft will now add its own internal searches to its biannual transparency reports on government surveillance.

Marco has been pushing for FastMail for a long time – might be time.

Drift

As I’ve written about before, Saturday morning is sacred. In weeks full of meetings, travel, people, and other productive distractions, having four consecutive hours to actually think is precious time – it’s time for writing. As a nerd afflicted with a decent case of NADD, this time can be problematic. It’s hard for me to… More

Very Emotional Things, Coins

Jason Karaian in Quartz:

edge_new_1_pound_coin

For the numismatists, the new coin will mark Britain’s return to the dodecagonal fold. The design was inspired by the threepenny bit, which was used from 1937 to 1971. Polygonal coins in active circulation are relatively rare, phased out in the name of circular uniformity and found mostly as small-batch commemorative coins.

I couldn’t stop reading dodecagonal as dogecoin.

On Ethically Questionable Applications

Tim Fernholz in Quartz:

So if you’re an ardent believer in anonymity, be careful: If you reveal something important enough to be legally protected on one of these platforms, your anonymity might not be secure. The only secrets you can safely reveal on these platforms (and even then, only as long as they’re not crimes) are your own.

Elon Musk Talks with New Jersey

I appreciate when Elon Musk takes the time to explain the strategy of Tesla. It reminds me of the infrequent notes from Steve Jobs regarding Apple strategy:

The reason that we did not choose to do this is that the auto dealers have a fundamental conflict of interest between promoting gasoline cars, which constitute virtually all of their revenue, and electric cars, which constitute virtually none. Moreover, it is much harder to sell a new technology car from a new company when people are so used to the old. Inevitably, they revert to selling what’s easy and it is game over for the new company.