1. Tech is contributing to income inequality as it splits US workforce into two, dramatically changing social class structure.

2. The unfortunate reality where we have to hustle just to survive.

3. I didn’t know that there was one brand that sells “bizarre circular device sticking out of the back of phones” and what a great way to build a brand via word of mouth.

4. Should I celebrate or mourn the fact that “Facebook is where friendships go to never quite die?”

They live an extended half-life far beyond their natural life span, hobbling on, an inch from death, in the form of likes and invitations to multilevel-marketing groups and news-feed photos of children you’ve never met and don’t care about.

Half-lie of friendship is an interesting concept — and how should one go about measuring and calculating this?

Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist at the University of Oxford, is the most famous proponent of this theory, and his estimate of 150—known as “Dunbar’s number”—is often cited as the (approximate) number of casual friends a person can keep track of.

“Dunbar’s number” is higher than I expected and I certainly do not have friends in three digits.

Having many Facebook friends, then, is kind of like having a big old encyclopedia (in the days before the internet). Most of the time it’s just gathering dust on a shelf, taking up space, but you keep it around anyway, because one day you might need it.

Highly appropriate analogy to explain the benefit of “weaker ties” and how it can benefit us down the road. Although I don’t frequent Facebook as much, using Linkedin as a source of inspiration and news is proving to be useful for me, as I try to look for new opportunities.

“Friendships are environment-specific, and Facebook is its own environment,” says Michael Harris, the author of The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection.”

5. Stella Bugbee’s reaction to Adam Moss’ announcement made me reflect below.

…when Adam Moss announced he was going to step down from his post as editor-in-chief of New York, and he told the New York Times, “I want to see what it feels like to live with less ambition,” many people I spoke to picked that line out as a surprise favorite.

Will I ever experience what it will be like to live with less ambition and to be content with what I have? Why do I fear mediocracy, as if it were a bad thing? What is causing the fire in my stomach that results in my restless self, 24/7?

…because contrary to what they teach you in high school and college, life is not a graph on which the line goes up up up. During those hibernation periods, ambition was both a blessing and a curse. I suppose it always is…There’s nothing quite like stepping off the treadmill to teach you which direction you want to go.

I wonder when I’ll step off the treadmill to see what I’ve been missing out on while I was high on ambition.

6. An honest account of “self-made” money stories and how our parents impact our financial and professional success.

7. Cryptocurrency came and went to indifferent observers yet the impact of the hype still lingers for those who were financially impacted by it. Sadly, Korea’s “dirt spoons” felt that bit-coin was their only way out of their misery, putting them into greater debt.

View this collection on Medium.com

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash