Not Boring by Packy McCormick

Nobody on the internet writes about all of the complexity involved in actually building things -- from homes to jet engines -- better than ⁠Brian Potter⁠, the author of ⁠Construction Physics⁠.I am a huge fan of Brian's writing. I use it as a reference for a lot of my pieces. I once tweeted, "Construction Physics is a national treasure and the president should give Brian Potter a medal or czar job or something." So I was thrilled to get the excuse to talk to him about a bunch of his essays by talking to him about this one specific one, ⁠50 Things I've Learned Writing Construction Physics⁠.Here's the one overarching theme he's discovered writing over 600,000 words in Construction Physics: "Things are always more complicated than they seem. Simple explanations very rarely exist." We discuss that and other lessons by digging into pre-fabbed and manufactured homes, jet engines, gas turbines, windmills, nuclear reactors, batteries, Nobel Prizes, skyscrapers, and even Titanium. Just reading that list, you can probably tell why I like Brian's writing so much. He writes in-depth about all of the topics I love, and I learn so much from him each time.What impressed me most is just how humble Brian is. He knows 1000x more about this stuff than I do, but when he's not entirely certain of an answer, he says so. That's probably in part due to his background as a structural engineer, and in part a response to the lesson that everything is more complicated than it seems. I hope you learn as much from our conversation as I did, and that you go back and read everything he's written. To get you started, here are some of the essays we discuss and that Brian recommends, both his stuff and others'.Potter Essays - How to Build 3,000 Airplanes in Five Years- ⁠Why It's So Hard to Build a Jet Engine⁠ - ⁠What Learning by Doing Looks Like⁠ - ⁠How California Turned Against Growth⁠ - ⁠Another Day in Katerradise⁠ - ⁠The Birth of the Grid⁠Recommended and Discussed Essays - ⁠Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail⁠ - John Salvatier - ⁠Timing Technology: Lessons From The Media Lab⁠ - Gwern - ⁠100 Tallest Completed Buildings⁠ - ⁠Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation⁠ - Byrne Hobart & Tobias HuberYou can find this and all of the articles we discuss on Hyperlegible in one place thanks to our sponsor, Readwise - Visit readwise.io/hyperlegible for a free trial and get all Hyperlegible articles automatically added to your account. Big thanks to Jim Portela for editing! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co

In this timely conversation, Conrad Bastable (https://x.com/ConradBastable) breaks down his epic essay "Forsaking Industrialism" and explores why the West has abandoned manufacturing while China built a world-beating industrial platform over decades. Read it here: https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/forsaking-industrialism-the-most-expensive-thing-you-didnt-buy We dive into how EU regulations inadvertently benefited Chinese manufacturing, why tariffs alone can't solve America's industrial challenges, and what it would take to rebuild America's manufacturing capabilities. Conrad explains the concept of "platform economies" that China has mastered, why capital markets naturally push against long-term industrial investments, and the uncomfortable trade-offs between principles and prosperity that nations must navigate. From electric dirt bikes to BMW's battery dilemma, this wide-ranging discussion offers a fresh perspective on the most urgent debate in America. Conrad's reading recommendations: - Alexander Hamilton's "Report on Manufactures" https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-10-02-0001-0007 Conrad's other essays: - "Full Stack of Society" https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-full-stack-of-society-can-you-make-a-whole-society-wealthier-full-version - "Escalation Theory" https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/escalation-theory-compliance-violence-and-overachievement-in-society - "Monetization & Monopolies" https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/monetization-amp-monopolies-how-the-internet-you-loved-died Sponsored by Readwise - Visit readwise.io/hyperlegible for a free trial and get all Hyperlegible articles automatically added to your account: https://readwise.io/reader/view/hyperlegible Big thanks to Jim Portela for editing! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co

Pseudonymous writer ⁠Parakeet⁠ joins me to discuss her viral essay "⁠Skittle Factory Dementia Monkey Titty Monetization⁠."I first heard about Parakeet a couple weeks ago when I saw half of my Twitter feed and half of my Substack Notes feed sharing her essay, including a bunch of people I wouldn't expect to share an essay with "Monkey Titty" in the title. I read it immediately, and saw why. Parakeet describes universally applicable ideas with the color turned up to 11 so they stick.We explore the "dementia personality" - how our core thought loops shape who we are and might one day define us. Parakeet shares insights from working at a dementia facility, explains her Skittle Factory metaphor for personality (and researching Skittle Factories), and reveals her unconventional productivity hack that's transformed her writing output. We talk about her writing process, gifs, why more people should read George Orwell's Politics and the English Language, and what she learned from her once-half-paralyzed dance teacher. Plus, hear the bizarre true story behind the "Monkey Titty" portion of the essay title and why Parakeet believes everyone should re-read Atlas Shrugged as an adult.Key moments:(5:35) Origins of the dementia personality concept(10:30) Can we change our core mental loops? (15:18) Skittle Factory Mass Extinction Events(21:50) Rewiring your brain through Luigi Jazz(30:05) Why this essay got shared by so many smart people(31:50) Using gifs(40:31) Parakeet's productivity hackReading Recs from Parakeet:Parakeet: ⁠YOUR EYES ARE LEAKING CORPORATE CUM™⁠Parakeet: ⁠ALGORITHMIC GROOMING OF YOUR INNER CHILD™⁠George Orwell: ⁠Politics and the English Language⁠Ayn Rand: ⁠Atlas Shrugged⁠Hyperlegible is sponsored by my friends at Readwise, who build software that helps you get the most out of your reading. If you want to give it a try, go to ⁠readwise.io/hyperlegible⁠ where you start a free trial and get all the articles discussed here on Hyperlegible automatically added to your account.Thanks to Jim Portela for editing and getting the parakeet animation to work! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co

Hi friends 👋, Happy Wednesday! After almost two years, Julian Lehr is BACK to writing.He wrote a piece called The case against conversational interfaces, arguing that we're not going to be talking to our computers instead of using graphical user interfaces. GUIs work pretty well!Instead, he thinks that conversational interfaces are going to be a complement to existing workflows. We'll talk to our AI while doing what we do now, to do things like tell other apps to start doing things while we stay in flow.Julian shares his writing process -- chat through a draft with AI, write ~60% of it by hand, and then pull it together in Figma, or sometimes, Google Docs. He said that like some people need a change of scenery to write, he needs a change of tools.So why did he come back after two years in the wilderness? Simply: too many people were too consistently wrong on the internet. After seeing one too many "we're all going to be chatting with our computers" takes, he had to write the other side. And he delivered.We cover a lot, from why he keeps coming back to Kevin Kwok’s Arc of Collaboration to how he uses his "thanks to" section to status signal. For this essay, he thanked Blake Robbins, Chris Paik, Jackson Dahl, Johannes Shickling, Jordan Singer, and Signulll -- an absurdly high signal roster.Conversations like this one - where I get to nerd out with the people I've read for so long - is exactly why I'm doing Hyperlegible. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.You can find this and all Hyperlegible episodes wherever you watch and listen: YouTubeSpotifyApple PodcastsHyperlegible is now sponsored by our friends at Readwise, which builds software that helps you get the most out of your reading. When you go to readwise.io/hyperlegible, you can find all of the essays that we discuss on Hyperlegible in one place. I want this to be the best place to go whenever you’re looking for something fresh and high-quality to read (and listen to). We’re getting serious over here. I’ve started working with an editor, Jim Portela, so if you notice that this episode is higher quality, that’s why. As always, I hope you enjoy, and please keep sending me your favorite essays!We’ll be back in your inbox on Friday with a Weekly Dose, and I will be back with a fresh Deep Dive next week. Thanks for listening,Packy This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co

Hi friends 👋, Happy Monday! Kicking off the week by sharing Episode 002 of Hyperlegible.This is a conversation with Utsav Mamoria on his excellent essay, How to live an intellectually rich life, which broke out of containment in India and raced across the globe to the tune of 1,100 likes at the time of recording. For good reason: Utsav combines philosophy, mathematics, biographies, personal experience, and hand-drawn sketches to create a map – quite literally – for living an intellectually rich life. He takes us on a journey through Moradoom, Igamor, and Evermore, before arriving at Luminspere, the Mountains of Knowledge with tools like the Axe of Satisfaction, Torch of Curiosity, and Oars of Consistency. Utsav weaves together so many ideas so beautifully that you just need to read it, and then listen. Or listen, and then read it. His one sentence takeaway: Consistency trumps everything.But there were a lot of good sentences. Here are a few of my favorites: "The way to live an intellectually rich life is to focus on two things: Put ideas above sensations, and try to have more diverse ideas than the ones you already have."On Epistemic Anxiety: "Accept that you don't know everything about everything and you don't need to have a point of view on everything... develop expertise in a few fields while trying to read as broadly as you can.""Building worlds in fiction is a given, but building worlds in non-fiction is done a lot less.""Write something which has meaning beyond the current moment. It has to go beyond the zeitgeist.""All learning requires us to suffer an injury to our self-esteem."You can find Utsav on X at @utsavmamoria and subscribe to Tumse Na Ho Paayega here.Going forward, I plan on releasing a few of these per week. This week, I have three killer interviews lined up, and just brought on an editor so we can increase both the quality and the cadence. North Star: when there’s something really great written on the internet, you can expect to find its author in the Hyperlegible feed within a few days. I likely won’t send you an email every time (still playing with that), but you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, and I may send a weekly roundup on Sundays with all of the conversations in one place. Subscribing helps you curate the internet, and helps us grow this thing to bring the good words to as many people as we can. Hyperlegible is now sponsored by our friends at Readwise, which builds software that helps you get the most out of your reading. I’ve been using Readwise for years to support my newsletter, my curiosity, and now, this podcast. I wanted to partner with Readwise specifically for a few reasons. One: I use it every day, multiple times a day. When I find an essay I love, I save it to Readwise, where I can highlight and annotate it to prep for either inclusion in essays or conversations on Hyperlegible. Two: I’m an investor in Readwise. Three: they partner with my favorite written-word-related podcasts, Founders and How I Write. And Four (and most importantly): when you go to readwise.io/hyperlegible, you can find all of the essays that we discuss on Hyperlegible in one place. I want this to be the best place to go whenever you’re looking for something fresh and high-quality to read. I am having a blast doing this podcast. It’s an excuse to talk to my favorite writers, and to share the fruits of their hours and hours wrestling with ideas with you. As always, I hope you enjoy, and please keep sending me your favorite essays! Thanks for listening, Packy This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co

For the first episode of Hyperlegible, I talked to my friend Tina He (@fkpxls on twitter) who writes the excellent Fakepixels, which she recently brought back to life after a four year hibernation and on which she’s dropped gems each week since. Last week, Tina wrote an essay called Jevons Paradox: A personal perspective about something surprising she’s noticed: AI is causing a lot of people to work more, not less. Since you can now do more with each hour, the opportunity cost of each hour not worked is higher! The treadmill spins faster and faster. Read it, and subscribe to Fakepixels while you’re there: https://fakepixels.substack.com/p/jevons-paradox-a-personal-perspective If you're wondering how (or whether) to compete in the age of AI, Tina's personal perspective will help. Please let us know what you think and share your favorite essays with me @packym on twitter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co

Ryan Delk, CEO of Primer and advocate for innovative education solutions, dives into the transformation of K-12 education and the shift from software to microschools. He discusses the urgent need for reform, overcoming regulatory hurdles, and the vast market opportunities in education. Delk emphasizes community involvement in launching new schools and the role of technology in enhancing learning outcomes. He also explores how the pandemic has reshaped educational perspectives, paving the way for diverse options that prioritize quality and accessibility.

Welcome to the 596 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since Monday! If you haven’t subscribed, join 125,666 smart, curious folks by subscribing here:Hi friends 👋 , Happy Thursday! This really will be the shortest Not Boring in history. You have a Memorial Day Weekend to get to. But since odds are you’ll be in a car for a couple hours at some point in the next few days, I thought it would be the perfect time to listen to my favorite episode of Not Boring Founders yet. Not Boring Founders is a twice-weekly podcast on which I talk to founders — often Not Boring Capital portfolio founders — about what the world looks like if they’re wildly successful, and how they’re making that version of the world a reality. Normally, the episodes are about 30 minutes. For this one, with Replit co-founder and CEO Amjad Masad, we went a full 1 hour 41 minutes, covering a wide range of topics:* Decentralized software creation* How the internet could have been built differently * The history and future of coding (aka when Wordcels rule the code)* Amjad’s story: from Jordan to Codecademy, Facebook, and Replit* Authenticity Alpha * Balancing theory and just doing things * Replit’s hiring spree and talent density* The software economy being built on Replit* Aggressiveness vs. caution in the current marketI hate listening to myself talk, and I listened to this one all the way through. Amjad has quickly become one of my favorite people in tech, and is someone who I genuinely believe will play a big role in shaping the future. I believed that when I wrote about Replit in December, and I believe it even more strongly after this conversation. You can listen to this episode right in this post — just press play above — or wherever you like to listen. All Not Boring Founders episodes are available on Spotify… Apple Podcasts… …or on the podcast player of your choice. If you liked this conversation, we’d really appreciate it if you subscribed and rated.Big thanks our friends at FTX US for sponsoring all of Season 2.For more Not Boring Founders — including links to all Season 2 Episodes with show notes and links — check out this fancy Notion page we made.That’s it! Told you, short and sweet. Not Boring will be off for Memorial Day. Have a great long weekend! Thanks for listening,Packy This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co

Welcome to the 1,912 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since last Thursday! Join 48,356 smart, curious folks by subscribing here:🎧 To get this essay straight in your ears: listen on Spotify or Apple PodcastsToday’s Not Boring is brought to you by … SecureframeSecureframe helps companies get enterprise ready by streamlining SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance. Secureframe allows companies to get compliant within weeks, rather than months and monitors 40+ services, including AWS, GCP, and Azure.Whether you’re an enterprise or a small startup, if you want to sell into enterprises, you’re going to need to be compliant. Secureframe makes the process faster and easier, saving their customers an average of 50% on audit costs and hundreds of hours of time.Secureframe’s team of compliance experts and auditors are happy to help answer any questions and give you an overview of SOC 2 or ISO 27001, even if you don't need it today. Schedule a demo and learn how:Hi friends 👋 ,Happy Thursday!There are a lot of things that confuse me, but maybe none more than prescription drug commercials. People eating ice cream while a voiceover talks about herpes. The Cialis couple in the bathtubs in a field (backstory revealed below). The long list of side effects that seem much worse than whatever disease the advertised drug claims to cure. I’ve been curious about why prescription drug commercials are the way they are forever; challenge was, I don’t know very much about healthcare. I haven’t been to the doctor in years. I’m not the guy to solve this mystery. But I know the guy. Nikhil Krishnan’s twitter profile says it all: “Thinkboi. Making healthcare understandable through memes, shitposts, and novelty products.” He writes the funniest healthcare newsletter out there, approachable for newbies (like me) and deep enough to be valuable to industry professionals. You should subscribe: He’s the perfect guy to explain something as simultaneously ludicrous and technical as prescription drug commercials. Mystery solved. Let’s get to it. Prescription Drug CommercialsA guest post by Nikhil KrishnanAs the Meghan/Harry + Oprah interview aired in March, Americans were shocked. How could the British Royal Family treat them that way?Meanwhile, people in the UK watching the interview were also shocked. At the fact that pharmaceutical companies were advertising during the interview. There are only two countries in the world that allow for direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising: the US and New Zealand. The only other thing these two countries share are people buying a lot of property in New Zealand. But why exactly do pharmaceutical companies advertise to us? Does it work or affect care? What’s the deal with the million side effects they list at the end? I’m here to talk to you about the world of pharma marketing and how it works. But I actually want to get into how pharma marketing is evolving with technology, look at whether consumer advertising is definitively bad, and suggest that we should actually be focusing our scrutiny on physician marketing.Why Do Pharma Companies Market to Consumers?The first question is an obvious one. It’s the one the Brits had. Why do pharma companies market to the consumers when the consumers need to go to the doctor, and the doctor’s going to decide anyway?Pharma advertising has largely two main goals. First is for undiagnosed patients. Increasing general awareness about a disease is going to make you more likely to see a doctor in the first place, which increases the chance of you getting the drug prescribed. For example if you hear a commercial that says, “If you suffer from insomnia, hot sweats, or are having nightmares that you have no idea where your social security card is,” you might suddenly realize that you have those issues and there might be something to fix them. You’ll especially see that for disease areas which are lifestyle hampering or easily self-diagnosed (sexual issues, skin and hair issues, pain, mental health, sleep issues, weight issues, stomach problems, and more). Below is some data on advertising spend by disease area.Fun fact, Claritin was really one of the first significant direct-to-consumer pharma campaigns with their “blue skies” campaign in the mid 1990s. Now allergy meds are all over-the-counter, so the spend has dropped like crazy.For already diagnosed patients, these ads are helpful for patients who are especially active in looking for different treatments for their diseases. This happens a lot in diseases for which there’s high variance in physician recommendations. Areas like cancer or rare diseases want to arm you with information about a drug so you actually ask your doctor if the drug might make sense for your cancer type. As personalized advertising gets more targeted and the therapies themselves target smaller and smaller patient segments, ads for these drugs become a better investment. They have exploded accordingly. What Are the Rules Around Marketing to Consumers?As you can imagine, pharma marketing is murky and there are tons and tons of rules around what you can and can’t do. But I thought I’d just go into a few.Rule 1: The product name has to be memorable for consumers but cannot be even close to confused with any drug that’s already on the market.Quick game, which of these is a drug name and which are Lord of the Ring Characters? Galadriel, Horizant, Zestril, Elendil, Denethor, Afinitor. Be honest, you got less than 50% right.Drug companies want you to remember the name (feat Fort Minor) but also will 100% get sued for trademark issues by other drug companies if you even slightly seem to be riding the coattails of their brand success. Plus, the FDA obviously doesn’t want consumers to get two drugs confused; taking the wrong one can cause serious health issues. That’s why you have these very strange sounding, un-Googlable drug names, advertised directly to consumers.Rule 2: The advertisements need to say the name of the drug (brand and generic), at least one FDA-approved use for the drug, and the most significant risks of the drug.While there are some nuanced differences between print, television, radio, etc. the general gist is that drug manufacturers need to give a “fair and balanced” view of the drug. That means including the major side effects.This is usually the most jarring part of pharma advertising. When an ad airs, it sounds like the drug is just as likely to kill you as it is to help you, and the side effect listing will happen over some lovely couple running through a field of tulips or whatever so it doesn’t actually seem that bad. Non-US residents can see an example here.Rule 3: There are different rules between “product claim” advertisements, “reminder” advertisements, and “help seeking” ads.I was on the subway the other day and I saw what I thought was possibly the worst advertisement I’ve ever seen. Oh you wanna know what this product is? F*** you.This is an example of a “reminder” advertisement. It’s not actually making any claims about what the product does. It’s just reminding people who might already know about the product that it does in fact exist. Really high-risk products will still have to include a “boxed warning” on these ads. These are different from the “product claim” advertisements I’ve been talking about where the drug actually says what it treats and how well it works.So those are two types of pharma ads, but to make it even more confusing there’s a third called “help seeking” ads. These are ads that actually aren’t about a product at all, they’re just talking about symptoms of a condition generally and HAPPEN to have the logo of a drug company on it without talking about the drug itself, and will say things vaguely like, “There is help, ask your doctor today.” These kinds of ads actually fall under the FTC instead of the FDA.Pharma Marketing is EvolvingLike every part of healthcare, eVeRyThinG ChAngEd WiTH TeCh. Here are some examples.* Ads shifting to the point-of-care: Every ecommerce native company salivates at the thought of getting an ad as close to the checkout cart as possible. Pharma is no different. Wouldn’t it be great if they could advertise to you right when you’re about to talk to your doctor? Outcome Health installs TVs in physicians offices to display ads, Phreesia has sponsored content during the check-in process at a doctor’s visit and sends follow up messaging, and Semcasting would use Wi-Fi in physician offices to serve up information about pharma products. Even virtual waiting rooms for telemedicine are getting ads, in case you missed the experience of sadly sitting at a doctor’s office and reading the pamphlets. * Pharma site telemedicine plug-ins: One shift is to bring ads to the point of care, but another is to bring the point-of-care to pharma itself. This happens by adding buttons on the drug brand website that can link you out to a telemedicine consultation in one touch. A person looking at a drug’s website is pretty high intent, so the telemedicine buttons make it easy for you to connect with a doctor to get a prescription written if you want. The physicians are usually part of a separate company unaffiliated with the pharma company, but if you came from the website you’re probably going to request that brand of drug during the visit. * Shifting the marketing to D2C pharmacies: Why do the marketing yourself if you can work with a company that specializes in it? Companies like Ro are partnering with the generic divisions of pharma companies like Greenstone to supply medications to patients exclusively. Thirty Madison partnered with Biohaven to create the Cove brand for their migraine drug, Nurtec. The pharmacies build up the branding, spend on marketing, and acquire customers while the pharma company gets the distribution for their drug. * Patient influencers: Along with the rise of social media, influencers in different disease areas have risen to fame. They’ll typically talk about living with their disease and attract followers that tend to have the disease as well who are looking for tips and a community. Even everyday influencers like the Kardashians are getting in on the pharma action, with the FDA being less than pleased. These influencers are becoming ad channels for pharma companies, with companies like WeGo Health connecting pharma companies to the different influencers.* Memes: I cannot believe this, but pharma companies themselves have now discovered advertising with memes. Below are some examples I’ve seen. Imagine asking the compliance department if you can fire these off lmao. The Nurtec one isn’t even using the meme correctly! What’s doubly funny about this is that they’re still still trying to include the side effect profiles so they comply with the “fair and balanced” view, but as you can imagine, it’s super difficult to do that in 280 characters or an Instagram square format.So... Is Marketing to Consumers Bad?The popular stance to take is “pharma marketing bad”, and it’s frankly not super hard to argue. Why should pharma companies be spending money to induce consumer demand when they could instead take that money and reinvest it into R&D? Just for fun and my love of angry emails, I’ll play a little devil’s advocate.One question is whether these ads are a net negative societal cost. This means that the dollar cost going into these ads (and the value of where they could be otherwise invested) is higher than the benefits they provide. Here’s a paper that found prescriptions for statins, a very important cholesterol lowering drug, dropped when there were less statin ads due to the 2008 political campaign taking up all the ad space. And we want relevant people to take statins; it’s bad if they don’t! Another paper argues that a 10% increase in antidepressants ad spend demonstrated an 0.3% increase in antidepressant prescriptions followed by a decrease in workplace absenteeism (they estimate worth $770M).This is a very hard area to study but in general you can probably argue there are some beneficial effects of ads to get people to take useful drugs. On the flipside, a dollar invested into pharma R&D has gotten steadily much worse over time, dropping to 1.8% return on a dollar invested.So, is it possible that pharma ad investment might have a higher societal benefit than we think? I’m not going to say definitively yes, but I don’t think it’s as black and white as people say.Another question is whether pharma marketing is misleading patients or disrupting the physician visit where the prescription decision is made. The FDA themselves actually ran a survey in 2002 to understand this.* 73% of physicians indicated that their patient in this encounter asked thoughtful questions because of the direct-to-consumer ad exposure.* 91% of physicians reported that the particular patient they recalled did not attempt to influence their treatment in a manner that would have been harmful to the patient* 58% of physicians thought direct-to-consumer ads made patients more involved in their health (“somewhat” + “a great deal”).* On the flip side, 65% believe the ads confuse patients about the relative risks and benefits of prescription drugs and 22% of primary care physicians felt “somewhat” or “very” pressured to write a prescription.So I think there are pros and cons that are more reflective of healthcare in America as a whole, where our ethos is to give patients as much information as possible. This inevitably leads to some tensions with physicians. This is not dissimilar to the tensions that exist with physicians and patients Googling their symptoms before they come for a visit. Not saying either way is right, it’s just an ideological difference on whether we want consumers armed with information when talking to their doctor (even if their information might be biased). The final point I’ll argue is that at least we KNOW when we’re being advertised to if we see a TV commercial. Patients are pretty clear about the motivation of the company doing the advertising. However, in 2016, $20.3B was invested into advertising to physicians. That’s more than 2x the spend going directly to consumers. I would argue this is actually much worse, because consumers are less privy to the fact that their physicians are ALSO influenced by drug company marketing. A disproportionate amount of the conversation focuses on the direct-to-consumer advertising aspect, when physician marketing is more problematic (though tackling one doesn’t mean we can’t also be addressing the other).In Part 2 of this series I’ll talk about the more opaque world of pharma marketing to physicians and how that’s also changing as well. Sign up for Out-Of-Pocket to get it.Just to reiterate: I’m not some sort of pharma shill lol, but just wanted to surface some of the less common viewpoints on this issue. And hopefully you learned a bit more about why some of the ads you see are the way they are.Thinkboi out,Nikhil aka “pharma I’ll help you with your memes, call me”P.S. Everyone definitely remembers that Cialis commercial with two people sitting side-by-side in bathtubs. Turns out that was a decision made last minute on set and I guess they just had two bathtubs laying around??? Now they just roll with it because it’s so iconic.How did you like this week’s Not Boring? Your feedback helps me make this great.Loved | Great | Good | Meh | BadThanks for reading and see you on Monday,Packy This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co

Welcome to the 1,265 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since last Monday! Join 47,388 smart, curious folks by subscribing here:Today’s Not Boring is brought to you by… RowsIn March, I wrote that Excel Never Dies. I may have spoken too soon. Rows very much wants Excel to die. It has a shot: Rows is one of the most “Holy shit 🤯” new product experiences I’ve had in a long time.Rows is a spreadsheet powered by APIs, with built-in integrations that let you enrich mailing  lists, learn what’s in a company’s tech stack, find company data via Crunchbase, and much more, right in the spreadsheet. They even made me a template to monitor trending tweets on topics I’m writing about. Plus, the spreadsheets are always ready to share: beyond just collaborating with others, anyone can transform their spreadsheets into interactive web apps in one-click. Anyone can build forms, models, and internal tools out of a spreadsheet without having to code.Everything in Rows is formula-based. It’s kind of like if Excel, Airtable, and Zapier had a baby, plus access to databases that normally live behind paywalls.It’s really incredible already, and it’s still in beta. Rows wants Not Boring readers -- people who love finance & tech -- to be among the early adopters. You should just try it for yourself, on me:Hi friends 👋 ,Happy belated Mother’s Day to all the not boring moms! Most of the time at Not Boring, I write about companies, with facts and figures and histories and graphs. Occasionally, I’ll write about concepts and business models, like the Metaverse, DAOs, or APIs. Sometimes, I’ll let you into my brain to see what’s going on in there before an idea is fully baked, when its just a bunch of wisps starting to form a braid. Today is one of those pieces. It’s shorter. It’s meant to be interactive. Most of the fun will happen when you take the idea and try to apply it to your own work or life. To be clear, much of today’s essay is based on my own personal experience. I fully understand that not everyone has the luxury of having a roof over their head, food on the table, and an internet connection. Many people can’t afford the time to play the game. But if you take the hours it takes to read Not Boring, you’re probably already playing the Great Online Game to some degree. You read this because you want to know how the online economy works, and how you can play it better. But you can’t play to win unless you know you’re playing.Let’s get to it. The Great Online Game(Click this if you just want to jump to reading online)This didn’t start as a piece about games. I set out to answer this question: why are tech growth stocks sagging while crypto moons and value roars back? But I figured out how to explain that out in way fewer words: Crypto is just more fun. But crypto itself is not the game. It’s just the in-game currency for a much bigger game, played across the internet, that involves CEOs, influencers, artists, researchers, investors, and regular people, like you and me. That’s a much more fun topic to explore than which asset class is outperforming which. This is bigger, more permanent than day-to-day market fluctuations.We’re all playing a Great Online Game. How well we play determines the rewards we get, online and offline.The Great Online Game is played concurrently by billions of people, online, as themselves, with real-world consequences. Your financial and psychological wellbeing is at stake, but the downside is limited. The upside, on the other hand, is infinite.Social media is the clearest manifestation of this meta-game. Beginner-level Twitter feels weird, like a bunch of people exposing their personal thoughts to the world. Medium-level Twitter is Threads and engagement hacks. Twitter Mastery is indistinguishable from an ongoing game. This is also true for Reddit, Discord, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and other social networks. But social media is just one piece of an interconnected game that spans online and offline spaces. The way you play in one area unlocks opportunities in others. Sharing ideas on Twitter might get you invited to a Discord, your participation in that Discord might get you invited to work on a new project, and that new project might make you rich. Or it might bring you more followers on Twitter and more Discord invites and more project opportunities and new ideas that you want to explore which might kick off any number of new paths. We now live in a world in which, by typing things into your phone or your keyboard, or saying things into a microphone, or snapping pictures or videos, you can marshall resources, support, and opportunities. Crypto has the potential to take it up a notch by baking game mechanics -- points, rewards, skins, teams, and more -- right into the whole internet. The Great Online Game is free to play, and it starts simply: by realizing that you’re playing a game. Every tweet is a free lottery ticket. That’s a big unlock.Anyone can play. You can choose how to play given your resources and skills at the current moment. You can level up fast. Financial and social capital are no longer tied so tightly to where you went, who you know, or what your boss thinks of you. This game has different physics and wormholes through which to jump. It’s exponential instead of linear.To understand how the game works and how to play, we’ll work our way up: * What is a Video Game? * The Great Online Game * Meet the Players* How Crypto Supercharges the Game* How to Play the GameBy the end of this post, I hope I’ve convinced you to throw a couple coins in and start playing, but I think I might need to show you that we’re even playing a video game first.What is a Video Game? It’s Monday morning. You’re tired. You have to go to work. You have an assignment that you pushed off on Friday, because it’s practically Hot Vax Summer and you had plans, but now it’s Monday and damn. Now you need to do that thing. This does not seem fun. This does not seem like a game. So it might take me a minute to convince you that yes, it is, even for you. I’m going to start my argument like a shitty high school valedictorian: The Oxford English Dictionary defines a video game as, “A game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a television screen or other display screen.”If you’re working remotely from a computer, what you’re doing perfectly fits the definition of a video game. Nik Milanovic nailed it:Hit the right keys in the right order, make money. Work is just an often boring sub-game within the meta-game. But that’s still a little literal, and a lot reductive. Let’s go deeper. The best games, according to gaming entrepreneur turned top solo investor Josh Buckley, “are creating spaces that bring you into flow.” On Invest Like the Best, Buckley said:The biggest games today really take advantage of this, but you wouldn't actually think of them as a game. I look at Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as games and 3 billion people are playing them actively. They're essentially big layers on top of a slot machine.Buckley went on to lay out four elements of successful game design: * Frequent Feedback Loops* Variable Outcomes * Sense of Control* Connection to a Meta-GameAll four are present in the Great Online Game, none more importantly than the connection to the meta-game. The Great Online Game “The internet is incredible.” You’ll hear that a lot from people who’ve started to master the Game. As I typed that last sentence, Blake Robbins tweeted this: Getting good at the Great Online Game makes seemingly absurd things happen. Your business icon? In your DMs. That person whose videos you don’t miss? Just reached out for a collab. Your dream job? Reaching out to you to tell you why Company X might be a fit. Blake has successfully translated “hanging out on the edges of the internet” into a career as a venture capitalist at Ludlow Ventures. He’s a go-to source on creators, gaming, and future internet stuff more broadly for some of the smartest people in the world. Blake summarized his approach in another recent tweet: He’s playing an infinite game, going down rabbit holes, learning, helping people, meeting new ones, going down more rabbit holes, and so on. James Carse, who coined the term in his 1986 book Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, wrote:The infinite game - there is only one - includes any authentic interaction, from touching to culture, that changes rules, plays with boundaries and exists solely for the purpose of continuing the game. A finite player seeks power; the infinite one displays self-sufficient strength. Finite games are theatrical, necessitating an audience; infinite ones are dramatic, involving participants...The Great Online Game is an infinite video game that plays out constantly across the internet. It uses many of the mechanics of a video game, but removes the boundaries. You’re no longer playing as an avatar in Fortnite or Roblox; you’re playing as yourself across Twitter, YouTube, Discords, work, projects, and investments. People who play the Great Online Game rack up points, skills, and attributes that they can apply across their digital and physical lives. Some people even start pseudonymous and parlay their faceless brilliance into jobs and money. The Game rewards community and cooperation over individualism and competition. You get points for being curious, sharing, and helping with no expectation of reciprocation. By increasing your surface area, you’re opening yourself up to serendipity. For good actors, the Game has nearly unlimited upside, and practically no downside.You can jump into the Great Online Game at any point, whether as a total unknown or an accomplished person, and start building the world that you want to build. It can take you on any number of paths. We’ll explore a few. Meet The Players The inspiration for this essay was Elon Musk’s SNL appearance. No one plays this game better than Musk. The best way to explain his out-of-body run is that he’s playing a video game with cheat codes.He’s doing things that people didn’t think were physically possible -- see: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink -- while getting away with things that people didn’t think were legal -- see: pumping Dogecoin, $420 take-private tweet, getting high on Joe Rogan. He’s playing a postmodern game against modern rivals. He’s like Neo. He’s not trying to forcefully bend the spoon; he understands there is no spoon. He has more money points than all but two people in the world to show for it.Musk plays an advanced version of the Game in which he builds rocket ships and electric cars and internet satellites, but you don’t need to bend atoms or become the wealthiest person in the solar system to win. You don’t even have to reveal yourself as a real person. A couple weeks ago, Austin Rief and I had Bored Elon Musk on our weekly Twitter Spaces show, Spaces Cadets. Bored Elon is a pseudonymous account. He tweets ideas for inventions that Elon might have if he were bored, and 1.7 million people follow him on Twitter. A couple months ago, he started selling NFTs. He pulled in $1 million in less than a month. How about a non-Elon example?Take Alex Danco. Alex has literally built himself a world: Dancoland. In an excellent post on his journey, Alex drew an actual map of his journey through the Great Online Game. He started by writing about startups, moved on to bubbles and mania, passed through the Swamp of Scenes, and made it to the Humanities Mountain Range. While he wrote, he got to meet new people, test new ideas, and build up a reputation. It helped him find his next thing. “This newsletter was obviously part of a fishing expedition to find what I wanted to do next.” Next was a dream job at Shopify, thanks in part to the newsletter. Instead of claiming MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, though, he’s continuing to play the Great Online Game, expanding his world by branching into new communities. Specifically, he’s going to have a recurring segment on Jim O’Shaughnessy’s Infinite Loops podcast and become a more active participant in Anna Gat’s magical Interintellect. Those will no doubt lead to new opportunities and new worlds to explore.Or take Megan Leeds. Leeds parlayed YouTubes of herself literally playing video games -- The Sims -- into Roblox content into making games into a 1mm+ YouTube following, $8mm game studio, and a $1mm online store. Her quote in Rex Woodbury’s thread captures the Great Online Game beautifully:There’s nothing I’ve done that anybody else can’t do. It’s about learning—learning the code, learning how the game works, & creating. All you have to do is start.Start, follow your curiosity, build relationships, stay open to new opportunities, keep playing.How about Lil Nas X? Born Montero Hill after the Mitsubishi Montero, Lil Nas X started messing around on Facebook, Instagram, and finally, “hopped on Twitter ... where I really was a master. That was the first place where I could go viral.” He started making music in his closet, and in December 2018, he dropped Old Town Road, which he made with a $30 sample and $20 worth of studio time. The song was played over 2.5 billion times in 2019 alone. He came out on the last day of Pride Month in 2019, and has used his platform to represent the LGBTQ community as one of the very few out rappers. Earlier this year, he released Montero (Call Me By Your Name). He gives the Devil a lap dance in the music video. Montero to memes to music to Montero. Lil Nas X continues to use Twitter like a young memelord. He’s playing the Game. The Great Online Game overlaps with the Creator Economy -- Danco wrote a newsletter, Leeds had a YouTube channel, Lil Nas X makes music -- but it doesn’t necessarily mean living as a full-time creator. Danco has a full-time job, Leeds runs companies with employees. There are countless more examples, from Kim Kardashian to Donald Glover to Turner Novak to Andrea Hernandez to Harry Stebbings to AOC to Web Smith to DeepFuckingValue to Soulja Boy to the Extended Pompliano Universe. All these people seem like they’re having a blast while they’re “working.” And that’s just my corner of the internet. There are millions of people playing the Game well.Each one is internet-native, each plays the Game, and each has cashed out some internet points for things like TV shows, Grammy-winning records, venture funds, companies, and political victories. It’s less about a particular platform or outcome, and more about the idea that there are different ways of playing the game and new ways to acquire and grow new types of assets. Like cities. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez became a Twitter darling last year when he decided to embrace the tech community. Since responding “How can I help?” to Delian’s tweet in December, Suarez has pulled a ton of high-growth companies into his city. He’s become the go-to example of how to grow a city by playing the Great Online Game. Not surprisingly, he’s also embraced crypto. With crypto’s ascent, there are thousands of newly-minted millionaires, and dozens or hundreds of billionaires, who built their fortunes by hanging out in Discords, learning about and investing in new coins, playing with new protocols, and treating investing like a game. Millions of people are playing the Game just by hanging out and watching. I have multiple friends who, a couple months ago, had normal jobs at startups. Then they started hanging out in crypto Discords and Telegrams, trading, learning, meeting people, tweeting, and going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. I can’t imagine they’ll ever work in a non-crypto job from here on out. Crypto is an asset class that rewards participation in the Great Online Game. The fastest way to understand what’s legit and what’s not, and which coins people are going to buy and which they’re going to ignore, is to spend time participating and learning online. The right Discord or Twitter follow is a massive source of alpha. Plus, crypto is kind of the native token for the Great Online Game.How Crypto Supercharges the GamePeople in crypto seem to understand better than anyone that this is all a game. The right meme can send a random coin to the moon and make people legitimately rich. But beyond that, crypto is in-game money for the internet. It rewards participation directly. Early users, supporters, builders, stakers, validators, and community members get tokens. Until now, I didn’t fully understand social tokens. They seemed like another way for influencers to monetize with no clear value. But in the context of the Great Online Game, they’re points that reward good gameplay across the internet, and give followers an incentive to join and support a team anywhere it goes. It’s like a Super Follow for the whole internet, with financial rewards.Crypto also lets players exchange value directly. Recently, I experimented with selling an essay as an NFT, which Clint Kisker bought for 2.19 ETH. That’s a direct connection between two players in the Game. Even though I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, and even playing with, NFTs, though, it didn’t really click for me until I saw these slides from Mirror’s Patrick Rivera:The Great Online Game imitates video games. If people want to buy skins in Fortnite to express themselves, or clothes in meatspace to do the same, of course they’d want to buy NFTs to express themselves online. In an open world like the internet, the more you signal who you are and what you care about, the more you open yourself up to new possibilities. It’s an abundant game. NFTs are online art, cars, outfits, and houses. They’re the digital trappings of digital wealth. DAOs, too, are going to be important infrastructure for the Great Online Game. They make it easier for people to float in and out of projects at internet speed instead of committing to climb the ladder within a company, and allow for lightweight and temporary groupings when people want to combine their superpowers. Recently, PartyDAO formed to bring a bunch of smaller players together to compete against rich whales in NFT auctions. I suspect that many of the most successful web3 projects built in the coming years will serve to give the Great Online Game tools that were previously only available within the walled gardens of specific virtual or corporate worlds. I’m excited about and / or an investor in Crucible, Mirror, Seed Club, and Opolis to name a few. The Great Online Game is only going to get more compelling. We’re in the early innings. So how should you play? How to Play the GameOn Friday, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein joined us on Spaces Cadets. To close out the conversation, we asked him for his advice to potential entrepreneurs out there: That’s a key mental shift. The cost of failure is as close to zero as it’s ever been, and it will continue to fall. That’s true for entrepreneurship, and it’s even more true for the Great Online Game. Because entrepreneurs are trying to build a business; when you start to play the Great Online Game, you’re just building optionality. Anyone can play the Great Online Game. All you need is some knowledge and curiosity. A typical path into the Game starts out in one niche community -- maybe you start thoughtfully replying to a few people you respect in your field on Twitter, or hop into a crypto Discord and get a feel for things before asking questions and participating. Ask yourself: “What am I nerdiest about?” and then go find your fellow nerds. They’re out there. Over time, you go from consumer to creator. You write, make videos, lead discussions, build projects, collaborate on research, or just share your experience as a new player figuring it out. If you already have an offline reputation, maybe you skip the passive piece and jump right into activity. In either case, be yourself, but play with your character attributes. You can choose to be someone who’s a little good at a lot of things, or unbelievably good at one thing. Both work, and you can evolve your character over time. Play with the fearlessness of someone playing a game, because you are. These are internet strangers. At worst, they’ll ignore you, and you can keep workshopping and start over; at best, they’ll open up new doors. Once you’re in, the Game follows Buckley’s four elements of successful game design: * Feedback Loops. Once you jump into the conversation or start sharing, you’ll start getting feedback. Don’t expect it to be much. A like here, a “great point!” there, maybe some questions and conversations. Pay attention to what’s working and what’s not, but don’t be too calculated about it. People can smell it. Your metric may not be likes or views; a real conversation with one person you respect might be the best starting point. * Variable Outcomes. Some things will work, and some won’t. That’s OK. If you’re treating it like a game, that’s to be expected. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s experimentation. Play around, try new things; some will hit, some won’t. That’s part of the fun. It’ll keep you hungry. * Sense of Control. In traditional game design, this means that the more you practice, the better you get, and the better your outcomes. It’s not easy. You get out what you put in. That’s doubly true in the Great Online Game, because you’re not just playing, you’re designing the game you want to play. Pick the things that you love the most and go deep. Learn, interact, give value with no expectation of anything in return, keep learning. There’s no boss in the Great Online Game; your success or failure is a direct result of your skill and effort. * Connection to the Meta Game. I’m going to give this one its own non-bulleted paragraph. It’s important.  The Meta Game here is your life and your career. The more you evolve and level up, the more opportunities you’ll have. If you build up a following, meet the right people, and get involved with the right projects, you’ll have put yourself on an entirely new trajectory. The fun part is, if you do it right, it really can feel like a game. Don’t take it too seriously. Don’t wait for the perfect moment to jump in. The vast majority of people reading this won’t want to quit your job and make a living entirely online; that doesn’t mean you can’t play. Play on the side, learn some things, build some new hobbies and relationships. Give yourself an insurance plan if things don’t work out in your job, and a supercharger if they do. You never know when it might come in handy, or what new path you might discover. Important note: don’t be an asshole. It’s an easy way to get some followers early, and if you’re trying to game that metric, it might work, but it’s also the easiest way to lose your life in the Great Online Game. I didn’t set out to play the Great Online Game when I started writing Not Boring, but that’s accidentally what I did. Two years ago, bored at my job, I started spending more time on Twitter and writing a newsletter. I just wanted to meet smart people who were interested in the same things I was. I never in a million years thought that my job would become playing the Great Online Game. But that’s what it’s become. When people ask me my title, I don’t have a good answer. Writer? Founder? Investor? Some guy with a newsletter? They all fit, and I’m sure I’ll add more over time. Playing the Game is about having fun and opening doors that you didn’t even know existed. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun work, with exponential upside and compounding returns. Go play. Thanks to Dan, Dror, and Puja for editing!How did you like this week’s Not Boring? Your feedback helps me make this great.Loved | Great | Good | Meh | BadThanks for reading and see you on Monday,Packy This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co