The CEO and publisher of left-leaning news publication The New Republic, Michael Caruso, stepped down from his role Thursday, according to an internal memo obtained by ADWEEK. (ADWEEK)Read More
When filmmaker Daniel Roher won an Academy Award last year for his feature documentary, Navalny, about Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, it signified a high note for CNN Films. The division had chosen to finance and release the damning chronicle of Russia’s attack on the country’s foremost critic when most of its peers would not. (NYT)Read More
Anusha Roy will join Denver ABC affiliate KMGH as a morning anchor in October. Roy most recently worked as a reporter and anchor at KUSA in Denver following stops in Washington, Idaho and Texas. She will first appear on air with Denver7 in late October. “I’ve always had just incredible respect for the Denver7 team….Read More
Comedy news outlet The Onion–reinvigorated by new ownership over this past year–is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. (WaPo)Read More
The bar was open. The ultraviolet lights were on. The New York Post’s annual holiday party was just heating up. It was Dec. 20, 2022, and the paper’s staff was gathered inside a section of Slate, a cavernous, 16,000-square-foot Chelsea nightclub that features a mini-bowling alley, oversize Jenga, karaoke, a 20-foot-long slide, and briefly, on…Read More
Some of the subjects of Alex Jones’ darkest and wildest conspiracy theories could end up taking over his iconic, unhinged InfoWars brand in less than two months. (Semafor)Read More
It was an iconic race in an Ichanic place. Last week ushered in the inaugural and first-of-its-kind women’s track event, Athlos, at legendary Icahn Stadium. Featuring the fastest women in the world, the largest purse in women’s track history, a giveback structure that rewards athletes more than ever before, and the kind of entertainment swagger…Read More
In 2020, after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, protests led by civil rights group Black Lives Matter galvanized corporate America to take action. In the months after, household-name brands, including Microsoft, Uber, Target, and Cisco, publicly pledged to create various internal programs to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI.) However, companies that once…Read More
Optimizing a device or system means squeezing every drop of productivity out of it. In the short-run, optimization works as long as the world stays the same.
We can optimize a device to work at capacity. However, something working at capacity blows up if you step on the gas when you need 5% more out of it. It’s brittle.
Smart leaders build for resilience instead. Power plants, transit systems, careers–they’re built to be sub-optimal some of the time, with slack built in, so they can thrive all the time.
And the paradox?
If you’re a competitive capital-driven market where little head starts can become bigger leads which can lead to lock in and monopoly, the obvious strategy is to optimize early and often.
Outperforming your more resilient competitors is possible in the short run.
And if you’re lucky a few times in a row, you get access to more capital or more customers and you can do it again, at a bigger scale, leaving your thoughtful, slack-enabled in the dust.
Until you crash.
And you always will. Because optimized systems cannot thrive in a changing world.
If you don’t want to crash, don’t compete in marketplaces where optimization is required.
PS Britain shut its last coal plant yesterday. 140 years ago, coal began its conquest of the world in Britain, and now it’s over. Change is possible.
The latest–and, for now, final debate–of the 2024 presidential election cycle takes place on Tuesday hosted by CBS News. The vice presidential candidates Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. J.D. Vance–respective running mates of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump–will face off in New York City as the sprint towards Election Day enters…Read More
