#100: A Special Note for Our 100th Edition

Hi All!

We are pleased to welcome you to the 100th Edition(!) of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

When I started this in October of 2023, I had no idea what to write about.

I have perpetually found myself having a lot of interests, why not write about whatever I found interesting at the moment?

Tim Ferriss' '5-Bullet Friday' had been coming in my inbox for years, so I figured I would emulate that in my own special way.

I'm happy to say, the result has lead me to conversing with wonderful people, revisiting and understanding fascinating topics, and overall been a beautiful journey from where I was when I first started writing this.

I look forward to the next 100 editions, and the hundreds after that.

More than anything, I will always be grateful for you, taking the time to be here and for reading what I have to share.

Thank you.

Without further ado, let's take a look at this week's insights:

A Message to Garcia

​Lulu Cheng Meservey recently shared: "Everyone working at a startup should read A Message to Garcia". This intrigued me, I had never heard this story before. I then saw a quote tweet by Augustus Doricko, who added,"This is required reading for all hires at Rainmaker."

The story is about a young lieutenant named Rowan, who is asked to deliver a message to General Garcia in Cuba, without hesitation or complaints. The story praises doing your job with initiative and reliability instead of wasting time on excuses or endless questions. Its main lesson is to value people who take action and get things done when given a task.

These type of individuals are exceedingly rare, yet they are indispensable in every field of human endeavor. The future depends on those willing to act decisively and faithfully when entrusted with responsibility.

'Privacy is the last 1000x in crypto'

Two incredibly important pieces regarding crypto were just released by Arjun Khemani and Josh Swihart.

Swihart's article, 'The Magic Cup. Update on Zcash', is a beautiful exposition and reflection on his own life, where he illustrates pouring our time into two distinct cups.

One contains time spent on distractions, while the other is time spent on things that matter. One was eternally empty, while the other was of infinite depth. I noticed Naval had responded to this, simply stating, "Beautifully written." This made me not only interested in the prose, but the content. I had heard of Zcash, but wasn't the most versed in why it was growing in importance. Swihart's updates were interesting, but didn't tell me why I should care.

Khemani's article, 'Why Zcash Now', did the rest. The intro to the article perfectly tees up the rest of the content:

He goes on to answer the question, 'Why Zcash':

I look forward to research Zcash more, and understanding the next steps in its product roadmap.

An Honest Assessment of 'Abundance'

​Mike Solana recently wrote an op ed piece for The Atlantic, titled "The Abundance. Delusion". In it, he counters the 'abundance' idea recently proposed from center-left individuals.

On paper, it is an incredible proposal: the government should focus on building more of what people need, like housing and clean energy, by overcoming barriers that have caused artificial scarcity.

In practice, it's a much more difficult challenge. Solana's piece outlines what I wish was our future as well:

Now, I can live without the moon being a state. And clearly there are humorous aspects such the objectively hot statue, but beneath the tone, there is a serious truth: We are fundamentally and systemically limiting our growth.

We used to build, now we don't. How do we get back to our roots?

The article offers an honest assessment of the current limiting factors (about 14 million of them) which you’ll need to read the piece to fully understand.

Brunello Cucinelli's "Letter to my father"

Brunello Cucinelli is one of my favorite entrepreneurs. His website brunellocucinelli.ai has been a fascinating dive into many of his most intimate pieces of writing, ranging from the "Art of Repairing, "A universal letter to women", "a letter of gratitude to his workers", "A letter to a beautiful soul", and more.

The one that caught my eye, however, was "Letter to my father". It's about a 10-minute read where Brunello walks through the stages of his life, and the role his father played during each. You can tell from the tone of the writing, he truly loved him, and he writes about the evolution of the relationship in a way only Brunello can.

One of my favorite moments of the article is when Brunello talks about the moment where he tells his father he is going to work as a cashmere artisan:

His father was a simple man, but those lessons in being human translated to Brunello's innovative and revolutionary approach to humanistic capitalism. If you'd like to hear more about their beautiful relationship, all you have to do is listen to he first 10 minutes of this Founder's podcast covering Brunello's life.

A Dive into Children's Literature & Media

I believe there are deep fundamental truths hiding in what many would consider media for children. Why are some of the most memorable, powerful, and commercially successful films of the last century from Walt Disney? What is it about animation, that lead to it becoming a natural pairing with youth? How does this relate to other media we deem as being 'made for children', that actually has universal appeal?

As Howard Suber lays out in his book, The Power of Film, Disney at its best 'mastered and sustained...the art of telling stories that appeal to multiple constituencies'. He goes on to add that 'animated films are not made for children; they are made for parents and their children'. This is fairly obvious, but the less obvious point of consideration is dissecting the anatomy of how this appeal is created.

Animation, much like children's books, allows for a distinctive visual style to create a certain type of mood. I've become fascinated by the works of Robert McCloskey, Arnold Lobel, Ezra Jack Keats, and Jill Barklem. Much like Disney, these artists created a distinct voice and mood that allowed them to transport their audiences directly to where they wanted to take them. The stories they tell are not the most complex, but they hit upon another essential pairing that Suber believes is essential for being memorable: original and elegant.

Children's media can contain some of the most elegant forms of stories that exist in the world. I will always love it, and I am happy to have it be the final insight shared in this special edition of Undiscovered.

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Always wishing you the best,

J.B.