Every Friday I highlight the most interesting or entertaining items from my media diet from the past week. These weekly lists will include a variety of media—articles, blog posts, forum threads, podcasts and videos—from a range of sources. It’s a personal bookmark archive of sorts but if it's helpful to others, that’s great too.

Articles:

• Are Ad Blockers Doomed or Have We Already Won? A History Lesson (adguard.com): A company that provides ad blocking solutions takes a fun walk through the 25-year cat-and-mouse battle between digital advertising and the software used to block those advertisements.
• The Boss Who Put Everyone on 70k (bbc.com): In 2015, the founder and CEO of a Seattle company introduced a minimum salary for his company. Article looks at the impacts of that change five years later.
• The Consequences of Treating Electricity as a Right (marginalrevolution.com): An interesting case study on the effectiveness of government regulation vs. the private market in the efficient allocation of a scarce resource.
• Cryptocurrency Now Fully Legal in South Korea (thenews.asia): “One of the main caveats to the enactment of the amendment is that cryptocurrency exchanges will need to comply with reporting requirements.”
• Google’s Ambitious Push Into Gaming is Floundering (businessinsider.com): Google’s Stadia hasn’t made much of a splash since it’s Fall 2019 launch. Key problems: lack of developer support (no games) and lack of consumer interest (no games nor any compelling reason to jump ship from the competing platforms).
• How to Brainstorm a Great Business Idea (indiehackers.com): A good overview of how to think about business ideas: problem first, solution last.
• The Invisible City: How a Homeless Man Built a Life Underground (theguardian.com): Improbable story of an English handyman who built a secret underground bunker in one of London’s busiest public parks.
• The Most Crowded Categories in Apple Podcasts (February 2020 Edition) (pacific-content.com): Interesting stats about the relative distribution of podcasts by thematic category (e.g. religion, business, comedy, sports, etc.). Least crowded subcategory? Swimming (in the sports category).
• My Thoughts About the Coronavirus (linkedIn.com): Billionaire Ray Dalio outlines his thoughts on the the coronavirus with respect to the virus itself and the broader socioeconomic implications.
• Top Economists Study What Happens When You Stop Using Facebook (calnewport.com): A recent report titled “The Welfare Effects of Social Media” finds a number of positive repercussions in the wake of reduced Facebook use.
• Why Do Such Elderly People Run America? (theatlantic.com): This problem has bothered me too: nearly all the viable candidates up until Super Tuesday were over the age of 70, many are pushing 80.

Podcasts:

• Extremities Season 3: St Helena (sticher.com): Each season, this podcast focuses on a single, isolated location in the world. This season features St Helena (the island where Napoleon was exiled and died).
• The Journal: What Bernie Sanders’s Socialism Means (wsj.com): Eliza Collins and Jon Hilsenrath break down what the Democratic-party primary frontrunner’s brand of “democratic socialism” entails.
• Reply All: The Case of the Missing Hit (gimletmedia.com): The Reply All podcast team are some of the best storytellers out there. When they are “on”, they are on. This is a story about a man haunted by the memory of a song. Unfortunately the song has all but vanished from the internet. The podcast jumps into action to solve the mystery.