On this week’s episode of The Riff, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg discuss how the 2024 presidential election has changed, why Wikipedia’s partisanship problem is difficult to solve, and the strategy behind Amazon’s media business.

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Intro

(00:20) Case for a boring campaign

(01:49) Impact of Assassination Attempts

(05:20) Sam Altman OpenAI analogy

(06:24) Symbolism in the presidency

(10:17) Role of determination in leadership

(15:16) Presidents role

(18:10) Sponsors: Babbel | Beehiiv

(20:45) Vice presidential pick

(25:16) Algorithmic collusion in real estate

(29:48) David Gerard on Wikipedia

(38:23) The 4chan of Crypto

(42:14) Stable growth stocks

(47:02) Amazon's media business strategy

(53:16) Mission-driven vs. Vanity businesses

(57:00) Benefits of liquidity in American markets

(58:31) Outro

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LINKS:

Byrne’s writing: https://thediff.co

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X / TWITTER:

https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg (Erik)

https://twitter.com/ByrneHobart (Byrne)

https://twitter.com/TurpentineMedia (Turpentine)