How to hit a list

AOC's tips for burnout — the metaverse is back! — tech takes Manhattan

Slow Build is very much feeling this tweet this week, people:

Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg

One of the most important pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten was: “Life intercedes.”

Jenni Gritters @jenni_gritters

Your career (& life) will come in seasons: seasons of power, seasons of recovery, seasons of grief, seasons of hustle, seasons of rest. If you're in a season you don't love, hang in there. The seasons always, always change. And this one could be teaching you something powerful.

Anyway, let’s dive in.

Facebook is contemplating a rebranding. I maintain that no normal human person in the course of normal human conversation has ever called Google’s parent company “Alphabet.” It may be a good way to organize Facebook’s sprawling range of products. It is, however, a very good way to conquer a few news cycles.

—Those of us who were deep into the “Second Life” thing back in the day are enjoying the “metaverse” talk.

And still, critics forge on. DC’s AG is adding Mark Zuckerberg — personally — to the city’s consumer protection suit. CEO of TBD.

—Doing just that — taking action against people like Zuckerberg — is what some ‘antimonopoly’ folks see as the real end game.

The most important thing none of us will watch. The House Select Committee on Modernization is doing a hearing tomorrow on upgrading the congressional support agencies — so that’s the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Research Service. Those shops shape a lot of Washington conventional wisdom, so whether they have the sort of staff and tools they need to boost Congress’s intellectual capacity is a big deal. (Okay, a few of you will watch. Mazel.)

—Now you want to watch? That’ll be here at 9 a.m. ET.

In a new memoir, Huma Abedin recounts being told husband Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account had been hacked — she assured her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “that it was nothing and that Anthony’s team hoped to discover the perpetrator soon — before learning, um, not so much: “I felt something explode inside my chest, and suddenly it was hard to breathe.”

The editor of Bild, the flagship publication of the German publisher Axel Springer, is out after he got Ben Smith’d. Via its CEO, Axel Springer’s one of Facebook and Google’s biggest adversaries in Europe.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s people know how to use her email list, so expect a round of “tips for X” from every campaign in the country.

—And then a round of “it doesn’t work if it isn’t authentic!” from every digital campaign person on the country.

—Carole King’s still got it: “She's a multi platinum award winning artist and a top 10 performing email signer for us.”

Amazon’s talked to Starbucks about going cashierless. It’d be a coup for the cash-free-future.

Facebook’s outage was, in the U.S., a big deal. In Nigeria it was a big big big deal.

Tech’s money is remaking Manhattan. It’s a big change. Twenty years ago, “if you were having a cocktail party for all the people who worked in the internet in New York, you could fit them all in a bar.”

And some good news:

swissbusiness @swissbusiness

This bridge is made of old pieces from a concrete wall - Popular Science

dlvr.itThis Swiss bridge proves it’s possible to reuse concreteOld concrete blocks that would otherwise get discarded can get new life by being turned into entirely new structures, like this bridge.

‘Til Friday!