Recognizing the beginnings.
Eras of change can seem to be about endless endings, not boundless beginnings. The opening into an opportunity may be difficult to perceive, especially in cases where an ending is sudden or uncomfortable. Strategic thinking -- the use of facts, experience, collaboration, process, and structure -- enables a big-picture context for seeing things differently and finding the potency, not only the pain, within endings.
Roses and Lilies. Henri Fantin-Latour. 1888. Oil on canvas. The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 2001, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Why now is a special time for young founders
Eric Zhou and Zack Cohen: Y Combinator just launched its student-focused Summer Fellows Grants, and in the W24 batch, 30% of founders were college students or recent grads — up from just 10% two years ago. The rise of student-focused funds and organizations over the past few years (Prod, Neo, Contrary, Z Fellows, Dorm Room Fund), has further reinforced this trend, helping make young founders better networked and more knowledgeable. Piling on are universities, who have expanded their entrepreneurial course offerings for would-be founders — Stanford and Harvard, for instance, offer Lean Launchpad and Startup RAD, respectively, which function similarly to semester-long incubators. ... Founders needed firsthand exposure to a problem space in order to understand the status quo, identify gaps, and develop insights on the right initial features to build.
Taking in the good
Saga Briggs: Can you really rewire your brain this way — simply by changing your mind? That’s the idea behind neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganize in response to experience. Researchers investigate it through a combination of brain imaging and behavioral assessments.
New high-tech Titanic scans rewrite the story
Richard Whiddington: Uncovering these stories was the mission of Romeo and Juliet, a pair of remote-operated robots which over three weeks in 2022 descended 12,500 feet to capture the Titanic on the North Atlantic ocean floor. It’s the largest underwater scanning project ever attempted, comprising 715,000 still images and hours of 4K footage, equivalent to 1.5 million MP3 songs in terabyte data.
Spritz Bianco: The quiet classic of Venice
An American in Rome: The spritz was born in the 1800s when Austrian soldiers stationed in Veneto diluted local wines with water — “spritz” coming from the German word spritzen meaning “to spray.” It was a way to make the wine more palatable to foreign tastes – but also drag out the drinking for a long night ahead. Over time, the basic formula of wine + water evolved into a more defined ritual: a splash of local white wine, topped with soda water, and optionally, a local bitter liqueur.