The Good Times: Tik Tok, Roman Concrete, Porsche Airstream Concept, and a Letter to Stella

Welcome to the Good Times, your stop for great writing, amusements, and fascinating stuff from the last few days (in 5 mins or less).

Yes, we're doing this to amuse America (and ourselves), but we also donate 10% of our revenue to education and affordable housing charities. So kick back and enjoy.

The Good Times Roundup

• People who think they're attractive are less likely to wear masks, a study shows (NPR) - Shared without comment.

• Tik Tok CEO to Testify before Congress Thursday (NBC) - Government support for reining in Tik Tok is growing. A bipartisan Senate bill allowing the President 'to respond to threats posed by Tik Tok'(+ others like it) is making its way through Congress, and this week, the Biden administration demanded Tik Tok sell its US interests or face a ban. Against that backdrop, Tik Tok’s CEO goes to the Hill Thursday to testify before Congress where he’ll share that the platform now has 150M ‘regular active users’ in the US (a 50% jump from three years ago when the Trump administration first threatened a ban). A forced sale or ban seems likely – the issue’s popular on both sides of the aisle and it's Presidential election season. Stay tuned.

• Roman concrete has self-healing properties (NPR) - Filed under amazing, researchers now think Roman concrete fixes itself. The ancient concrete is made of limestone, volcanic material, and water, and to create mortar, the Romans heated the lime and mixed it with water, producing a new substance called quicklime. Quicklime, it turns out, can re-chrystallize under rain and patch cracks in the concrete (or so we think). I'm no engineer but I'd like to refer some Romans to the California bullet train team who’ve completed ~10% of a project that kicked off 15 years ago and is now more than 300% over budget. Get some quicklime kids, maybe it’ll build itself.

• Why Children Need Nurturing Fathers (WSJ) – A soon-to-be-released Harvard survey shows that 14-18 year-olds are almost twice as likely to open up emotionally to their mothers vs. their fathers. Why does this matter? Because there’s ample evidence that emotionally-engaged fathers produce better balanced adults (better social competence, peer relationships, and boosted resilience and academic performance) – disengagement points to higher likelihood of anxiety, depression and behavioral problems. Worth remembering for the Dads out there.

• Lego Metaverse Details Expected Soon (Financial Times) - In April of last year, Lego and Epic Games announced a partnership to develop a kid-safe metaverse, and now 11 months later, the teams seem set to unveil some details (but none yet). This comes on the heels of Meta redirecting R&D resources to generative AI and presumably away from its metaverse initiatives. Thoughts from the cheap seats: there’s no real evidence that adults want to hang in a metaverse (let alone strap on a VR headset to do it), but kids? Different story (Roblox, Fortnite, etc.). The Legoverse will likely follow a Minecraft / Roblox experience with digital blocks (Legos!), centered around Lego’s vision to be a ‘global force for Learning-through-play.’ Take everything we know about engagement from Roblox, polish and sanitize it with Lego values and brand guidance, and let Epic execute technically - that’s a compelling pitch for parents. But will kids love it? We’ll see.

• Porsche & Airstream Concept Trailer Unveiled at SXSW (Motor Trend): Airstream went hipster a while ago, but now they’ve gone full tech bro too with this Porsche concept trailer (this thing looks pretty cool though, we concede).

• Things we can't believe: Restaurateur has no 'n' in it

• This week in Florida Man: A Florida man heard a bump at his door. It was an alligator – and it bit his leg.

How We Feelin

The University of Vermont has tracked 'happiness' on twitter through a word scan going back to 2008. Peak happiness? Christmas Day 2008 (score: 100). And total misery? May 31, 2020 during the George Floyd protests (score: 0). We aim to boost those numbers, current status:

With every newsletter we'll run a featured article on topics ranging from kids, dogs, news, sports, or anything in between. The goal's smiles on faces - or put another way, if Mark Twain were still alive, we'd desperately try to hire him.

Thanks for reading and without further delay...  

Today's Article: When asked 'how's your Japanese,' say it's fantastic, a Letter to Stella

This is a series of Letters to my toddler daughter.

A friend of mine recently started writing letters to his kids (ages 7 and 10). He publishes them on his Substack and they revolve around life lessons.

He’s been humble about it, saying only read and share if you’re so inclined, but I’ve found myself reading them quite often. He’s a good writer and he’s discerning, and I love the concept. So I’m invoking the Picasso principle (‘good artists borrow, great artists steal’) and copying him.

I also need to credit a favorite teacher from grad school and current Dean of Rice’s Business School, Peter Rodriguez, for this experiment. He delivered a ‘last lecture’ some years ago (not his actual last lecture, but a send-off style address in the mold of Randy Pausch’s immortal original). I’ve gone back to it a half dozen times – it’s fantastic and as you’ll see, one of my letters lifts a theme from his speech.

But beyond his speech’s message(s), the way he organized it stuck with me. He split it into themes, and told stories around each, and ever since, I’ve been thinking about what my life’s key lessons / themes would be - these letters are my effort to share them.

My hope’s that they spur the same curiosity about your life that Dean Rodriguez’s speech did for mine. So without further throat clearing, message one:

· When asked ‘how’s your Japanese,’ say it’s fantastic.

A few months ago I got dinner with a retired, very senior exec (we’ll call him John) who’d run a giant division in Asia at one of the world’s biggest media companies. It was a long dinner (in a good way), and after exhausting our initial conversation topics, he started telling stories.

John was an enthusiastic storyteller, and he began explaining how a white, DC native working in Atlanta got to Tokyo in the first place. Working for Pepsi in Atlanta in the early 90’s, things were going well for him, but his immediate prospects for advancement weren’t overly compelling and he got restless.

And as luck would have it, a phone call came in.

A new role at Pepsi had opened up in Tokyo, and the corporate recruiter in New York pulled his resume after spotting ‘speaks fluent Japanese’ at the bottom. The recruiter explained the gig and it sounded like an ideal next step in John's career, so when the recruiter asked ‘how’s your Japanese?,’ he said ‘well, it’s fantastic’ with a cheshire grin.

‘It was not fantastic,’ John flatly conceded. But that didn’t stop him. He got the job and spent the next two+ decades in Japan growing enormous businesses across the Asian continent.

The story reminds me of a meme I recently saw on Linkedin:

I laughed, but we do get cautious as we age. An older John may’ve answered ‘well… my Japanese is alright but I’m working on it,’ yada, yada, yada. No chance he gets the job with that answer.

But having confidence you can do things you haven’t done isn’t boastful or dishonest. Just think of bosses you've had (direct or several rungs up the ladder) and how quickly, after observing them on the job, you thought ‘I could do that.’ And you were probably right.

Humility’s vital, but so is confidence. You’ll never stretch yourself without it. So when a call comes in asking 'how’s your Japanese,' answer with the confidence of a 25-year-old life coach. And then go learn some Japanese.

Lastly, a Good Tune