Weekend Briefing No. 595
Career Advice for a Crazy Person -- The Secrets of a Good Apology -- How Google Created the Single Best Business Model
Welcome to the weekend. Happy July 4th!
For those of you who missed my annual country music playlist last week and are looking for something to play at the BBQ this afternoon, you may want to check out Lake House 2025. This year's playlist is my most ambitious yet it has:
50 country songs from 2025
Top 10 tracks from each year (1990-2024)
375 total songs
22 hours and 24 minutes of music
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Prime Numbers
62 — A new federal study found that 62% of commercial honey bee colonies in the United States died off from June 2024 to January 2025, marking the highest die-off on record and surpassing last winter's 55% loss.
47 — A Cornell study found that 47% of U.S. grandchildren live within 19 miles of a grandparent, with 13% living within a mile.
7 — Global olive oil prices surged from $5,300 to $10,600 per metric ton between March and April due to heat-damaged harvests, significantly impacting Greece where olive oil accounts for 7% of the country's gross domestic product and 25%of its agriculture.
Career Advice for a Crazy Person
The secret to finding your ideal career isn't discovering your passion — it's unpacking the boring, mundane reality of what you'd actually do every Tuesday at 3:47 p.m. for the next 30 years. Most people fantasize about being coffee shop owners without considering where they'll source beans, or dream of becoming professors without realizing the job is just typing and talking to students all day. When you fully unpack any career, you'll discover that only a "crazy person" should do it — someone whose specific brand of weirdness perfectly matches the job's particular demands. The good news is that you are crazy in at least one way, and your task is finding the career that needs exactly your type of insanity, whether that's counting to 100,000 like Mr. Beast or collecting 20,000 found photographs like someone beautifully obsessed. Experimental History (7 minutes)
The Secrets of a Good Apology
The most powerful word in any apology isn't "sorry" — it's "I" as in "I take responsibility for this mess." Research reveals that effective apologies follow five Rs: regret, rationale, responsibility, repentance and repair, but most people get stuck on drive-by sorries that repair nothing. Taking responsibility ranks as the most crucial element because it signals you have the power to fix what went wrong while explaining why it happened (without making excuses) to show you understand how to prevent it from recurring. The best apology is always changed behavior, which means real repair involves over-delivering on solutions, implementing systematic changes and paradoxically giving people more autonomy after mistakes — because those who've failed often become the most vigilant guardians against future failures. Work Life Podcast (41 minutes)
4200%: The ROI of Newsletters
For every $1 spent on email marketing, companies generate $42. Email is (still) one of the highest ROI channels to reach your audience. Yet, it’s never been harder to stand out in the inbox. The companies that get the highest ROI don’t just sell products and promote themselves—they build long-term, human relationships with insightful editorial newsletters. With a few simple changes, you can turn your newsletter into an unfair advantage. See how your newsletter stacks up with this Newsletter Health Check: 10 proven ways to optimize your newsletter. Future Forest (Sponsored)
How Google Created the Single Best Business Model
The most profitable business model in history wasn't discovered through market research — it emerged when two Stanford grad students solved the wrong problem and accidentally built the internet's front door. Google's PageRank algorithm, originally designed to rank web annotations, created such superior search results that competitors like Excite literally couldn't adopt it without destroying their own revenue streams based on keeping users trapped on portal pages. The real magic happened when Google cracked advertising through "ad rank" — combining bid prices with click-through rates to create "the most magical economic transaction ever known to man," where better ads cost less and irrelevant ads disappear. This created "super scale economies" where growth didn't just reduce costs but actually increased revenue per search, enabling Google to outspend every competitor on distribution and build an unbreakable moat around the world's information. Acquired Briefing (14 minutes)
Ingredients for Brilliance
The secret to creative flow isn't mystical inspiration — it's boring repetition that rewires your brain's circuitry until skill becomes second nature. Neuroscience reveals that when experts practice their craft obsessively, movements migrate from effortful prefrontal systems into automatic procedural memory, freeing the mind to enter that coveted state where time dissolves and creativity explodes. Professional artists who seem to "just feel it" have actually programmed thousands of hours of technique into implicit neural pathways, creating what researchers call "pathway prompts" — sensory cues that trigger flow like switching on autopilot. The real genius isn't waiting for divine inspiration but building your personal flow-tool through deliberate practice, sensory cue-scapes and embracing the mundane repetition that transforms mechanical movements into pure expression. Aeon (10 minutes)
The Near Death of a Child
The most transformative parenting moment isn't a first word or step — it's watching your child nearly die and discovering that the person who returns isn't broken, just different. When 7-week-old Max suffered sudden cardiac arrest and oxygen deprivation, his father assumed their "real life" was ending, only to learn it was actually beginning. The journey from desperate resuscitation attempts to celebrating a potential first consonant reveals how catastrophe can strip away everything nonessential, leaving only what truly matters. Through feeding tubes, physiotherapy marathons and the brutal honesty of medical euphemisms, a family discovers that loving someone doesn't require them to be "fixable" — it requires accepting them exactly as they are, farting and magnificent. The Guardian (12 minutes)
Saharan Railway
The world's most extreme commute involves clinging to a 1.8-mile freight train crawling across the Sahara Desert for survival rather than convenience. This iron beast connects Mauritania's mining heartland to the Atlantic coast, serving as both the nation's economic lifeline and the only transportation option for desert communities who literally hop aboard moving cargo cars, where daytime temperatures often exceed 40°C and deaths from falls are common. The railway transforms from industrial necessity into human drama as passengers navigate sandstorms, scorching heat and precarious perches atop iron ore cars. What emerges is a stunning portrait of how infrastructure designed purely for commerce becomes a vital artery for human connection across one of Earth's most unforgiving landscapes. Watch National Geographic's short film This Sahara Railway Is One of the Most Extreme in the World to experience this incredible journey. National Geographic (13 minutes)
Should We Work Together?
Hi! I’m Kyle. This newsletter is my passion project. When I’m not writing, I run a law firm that helps startups move fast without breaking things. Most founders want a trusted legal partner, but they hate surprise legal bills. At Westaway, we take care of your startup’s legal needs for a flat, monthly fee so you can control your costs and focus on scaling your business. If you’re interested, let’s jump on a call to see if you’re a good fit for the firm. Click here to schedule a one-on-one call with me.
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Weekend Wisdom
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. - George Washington