Interesting Finds: Issue #1

Conspiracy Theories, Social Capital vs Quarantine and Organizing your Fridge

Welcome to the inaugural issue of my “Interesting Finds” newsletter. I started this newsletter as a way to keep track of stuff that piqued my interest and to broadcast it to interested readers and followers. Like you, there’s a overwhelming amount of stuff happening these days, so it’s my small way to filtering a tiny subset of the internet for you. Here we go!

Social Capital vs Quarantine

All jokes aside, the COVID19 pandemic has brought on so many challenges in our lives, including how we now engage (or don’t) with our colleagues. Life just isn’t the same right now, with no end in sight for when things will “get back to normal”. @jrsinclair wrote an insightful article related to this about “social capital” and how remote work affects our relationships with our teammates.

When we’re working remotely, social capital starts to decay over time. We don’t have those accidental, incidental moments that help build trust and psychological safety.

On our team at Nike, we’ve been deliberate in setting up socially focused “meetings” to try to re-create some of our in-person dynamic. For example, every day at noon, a bunch of us get together over Zoom for a daily bodyweight workout for 10-15 mins which has included a multi-month effort at the Hundred Push-Up Challenge. In between sets, we get to exchange some hilarious banter and small talk. It’s not a silver bullet, but has definitely helped us stay more closely connected during these times.

What are you doing on your teams that has worked (or not worked)? Drop a comment here or shoot me a message on Twitter.

Call of Duty Warzone

To say I’ve been obsessed with Call of Duty Warzone lately would be an understatement. It’s taken the genre of Battle Royale games and merged it brilliantly with the first-person shooter dynamics of the traditional Call of Duty game. It hit 30M active players within 2 weeks of its launch, then 50M after that in April. My guess is its now up to 75-100M players which is staggering gives it’s been only 6 months, whereas Fornite launched in 2017 and is anywhere from 150-200M players depending on which sources you believe. The next installment of the franchise titled Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has been slowly teased for the past several weeks leading up to this amazing reveal and involvement of the community in the process.

Twitter and Conspiracy Theories

A friend sent me the above graphic about conspiracy theories which I adored and shared on Twitter. It clearly struck a chord because within the last 24 hours its become my most engaged content with 20k retweets and 55k likes. I initially didn’t know what the original source was, but thanks to some good sleuthing by @arielwaldman, the credit for the original work goes to @gapingvoid. There’s even a thread tracking its usage over time. What remains a mystery is who the author is of the iteration focusing it on conspiracy theories. If you know, please holler.

Deli Meats vs Fridge Organization

Our fridge regularly has various deli meats, salami, sausages and hotdogs. I’ve always despised how much plastic with use to deal with this (ziploc bags anyone?), and struggling with the terrible “re-sealable” store bought packaging. Recently picked up two of these awesome Prepwork mini storage containers which solved our woes. They are small, stackable, airtight and dishwasher safe. I just placed an order for one more in the same size, and one of their bigger ones.

My Favorite No Knead Sourdough Recipe

Like a whack of you, I’ve started making my own sourdough bread at home since we began quarantining several months ago. Being a busy parent of 2 kids while still working full time at home during the day, I’m always on the hunt for easy “no knead” recipes to both minimize my hands on time, but also so the bread making schedule fits our family’s eating schedule. My go to recipe has been this one on Food52, as I can consistently churn out a great loaf of bread that the entire family loves. Highly recommend it.