The Sunday Digest: Caught in the Study Web

Happy Sunday!

Don't know about you, but we had quite a week over here. Fadeke Adegbuyi caught fire online once again, with everyone from Tyler Cowen to Anne Helen Petersen praising her incisive, empathetic look at how young people are handling academic stress online. Hot off the heels of his own viral moment, Evan Armstrong followed up his fiery take on startup culture with a return to explainers. On our members-only community Discord server, productivity supercharger Khe Hy led a workshop on the famous Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy.

And...someone decided our terms of service warranted Hacker News attention, so we're waiting for it to go viral. (It is, in fact, pretty good.)

There's plenty more to read and listen to from our writer collective below, so dig in and enjoy!

Caught in the Study Web

by Fadeke Adegbuyi in Cybernaut (26-minute read)

Fadeke avoids any trace of a "what-are-those-kids-up-to" tone in this deeply felt but keenly observed exploration of the constellation of digital spaces and online communities teens are using to communicate with and support one another under the ever-increasing pressure of today's academic world. From the uptick in Study Influencers, to the grim reasons behind their existence, Fadeke has once again magnified a chunk of the internet in order to tell us something about the world beyond it.

ITDA: The Gamification of Financial Statements

by Evan Armstrong in Napkin Math (11-minute read)

Evan returns to unpacking the income statement for this explainer on Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization—government-borne incentives meant to keep businesses in line, and which can offer a look at how canny the companies they are applied to can be. If you want the "metagame" of finance to be demystified just one more notch, this is your next ticket.

DeFriday 2: Polygon’s Surge & Ethereum’s Future

by Nat Eliason in Napkin Math (5-minute read)

Nat's DeFi newsletter has officially gone weekly, and its latest installment offers a primer on the sidechain Polygon—which, he writes, is only going to become more useful as the market dips, dives, and rises once again.

Cyberbits #3: A Certain Aesthetic, A Certain Facade

by Fadeke Adegbuyi in Cybernaut (5-minute read)

A perfect complement to the full essay, this week's Cyberbits collects some excellent resources from and examples of Study Web, including supplementary reading and memories from the phenomenon's earlier days.

What’s it like to be edited by someone who disagrees with you?

by Rachel Jepsen in The Long Conversation (45-minute podcast)

Want more from last week's back-and-forth on startup culture? Rachel got Adam and Nathan together to discuss their respective articles on a workplace they both have personal experience with. Touching on the importance of (respectful) disagreement from editors and other writers (or both at once, in this case!), the trio ultimately consider Every itself as an experiment in pluralism.

Community Calendar

What's going down in our Discord this week.

Monday, May 31st at 11am eastern/ 8am pacific: Focused writing time with Executive Editor Rachel Jepsen
Thursday, June 3rd at 1pm eastern / 10am pacific: Working at Startups—a conversation with Napkin Math's Evan Armstrong

Good news: because you're a subscriber, you get access! If you're not in already, here's a link to join.

Join the Discord