Hello from Albany, NY!

What we’ll talk about:

Restaurants, Magic, Zelda, Quibi, being a dad, and more.

Why you’re getting this:

The Connection is the newsletter I send to family, friends, and future friends I’ve connected with recently. For many of us, last week may have felt off the Richter scale in stress and anxiety. I hope it’s okay to continue sharing interesting things with one another.  

Thank you for reading. 

If you can't see the pictures, click "Display Images" above.

Offense vs. Defense 🛡

Tim Armstrong called this time “a Shackleton moment” for parents.

“Your family is frozen in time. You have to spend more time with each other. During this time, I’ve gotten to know my kids 25% better.”

I wrote that everything we do, we can frame as offense or defense. Especially parenthood. I think it’s natural to fall back to defense in times like today, especially when you never anticipated taking such an active role in childcare (like myself).

Childcare does not come natural to me. Work is my natural habitat. It’s where I’ve spent most of my time, Monday through Saturday, 6am - 8pm. Taking me out of that habitat is like dropping a panda in the Sahara. He might get on but it’s a sweaty, uncomfortable existence.

Sometimes defense is the only way I get through the day. If that means feeding my toddler french fries and a milkshake for dinner, cool. Stay up until 9pm, no problem. Open the whiskey at 5:30pm, why not? (To be perfectly clear: the whiskey is for me.)

But there are moments of offense, too.

Like taking every opportunity to help him connect the dots between the cars, fire engines, and planes from his books with those in real life.

Or showing him how to keep his balance on a skateboard, knees bent and butt down, arms stretched wide.

Or seeing the effect of YouTube kid videos on him (it’s a literal drug) and deciding he’s no longer watching those, even though it’s incredibly convenient for me.

Offense is hard. The hard makes it valuable.

 Random reads 📖

If there’s only one link you’re going to click in this email, make it this one 👇

Closing the Restaurant That Was My Life for 20 Years. After closing Prune, her East Village restaurant, Gabrielle Hamilton revisits the original dream behind her restaurant. This piece is an incredibly thoughtful journey through New York City’s restaurant scene that’s been changed forever, yet remains hopeful about what may emerge in the aftermath.

Too many quotables to list, but here’s one:

If you’d prefer to listen to this article, you can do so here (Spotify link).

• “We have to write off 2020. It’s already the year that didn’t happen.” Agency layoffs, productions shuttered, and tent-pole delays. This is what the future of movies could look like.

• My friend’s $3 million events business went to zero in 3 days. This is how they pivoted.

• Send this link to anyone who tells a food blogger to “just get to the recipe”.

• How much social media influencers actually make.

• How the virus transformed the way we spend our money. The winners: grocery stores, online grocery delivery services, meal kit companies, and alcohol (natch).

• The high stakes world of Magic: The Gathering’s secondary market. Sneakers may be the sexiest secondary market, but there’s real money being made in flipping Magic cards, too. Here’s how one player took a random pack of Magic cards and in 99 trades, traded for the Unlimited Mox Pearl (market value: $2,400 - $3,300).

• “I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus.” Jeffrey Katzenberg’s shares his perspective on what went wrong with the Quibi launch. For what it’s worth, I put the Quibi and TikTok app next to each other on my phone and haven’t touched the Quibi app since. Not knocking it, just an observation.

 Tools 🛠

• Otter.ai for free transcriptions

• Borsa Earnings Calls to listen to company earning calls

• Planta to keep your plants alive

• Blind to gossip about tech strategy, compensation, and culture

• Supernatural VR fitness looks amazing and I’m look forward to trying it

 Accelerate your career in tech 📊

The Reforge programs are now accepting early applications. You can apply here.

There are a lot of great testimonials on LinkedIn, but my fave is from the former CTO of The New York Times who put 150 employees through our program and said it “injected great thinking and practice into the org.”

If you’re interested in helping teach one of our programs, check out our Executive In Residence (EIR) program.

 You Should Watch 💻 

• The Half of It. “500 Days of Summer”-esque, but quieter. 96% RT, on Netflix.

• Uncut Gems. Frenetic and anxiety-inducing in the best way. 92% RT, on Netflix.

• Breath of the Wild is a Masterpiece. A 37-minute video game review you should watch, even if you don’t play video games, YouTube.

That is it 🙏

As always, thank you for reading the newsletter. All typos were on purpose.

Staying healthy and safe is priority number one. If there’s anything I can help out with, please let me know. Just reply to this email.

Chris Ming

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