Founder Suicides

First, if you are ever considering committing suicide, immediate reach out to someone and ask for help. Amy and I recommend the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline if you don’t know where to turn. The 800 number is  1-800-273-TALK (8255).

When I had my first clinical depression in my mid-20s, Amy and I set up a few rules around things. We specifically talked about suicide and I agreed that if I ever had a suicidal thought, I wouldn’t act on it. Instead, I would immediately stop what I was doing, tell Amy what I was thinking, and we’d discuss it. During this long depression, I only had one suicidal ideation, but it was while we were driving on a highway in Sedona (I was driving). I immediately pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the car, and told Amy what I was thinking. We switched seats – she drove the rest of the way, and then we had a long conversation that night. After the conversation, even though I was still very depressed, I felt immense relief and support.  When we got back to our home in Boston after that vacation, I started therapy, which was incredibly helpful.

Our society still has an incredible stigma associated with depression. Anyone who has been depressed knows that it is extremely hard to describe how it feels to someone who hasn’t ever been depressed. My favorite description of depression continues to be from Hyperbole and a Half. I’ve recently started describing it as an emotional pain that is significantly worse than almost all physical pains you could imagine, especially because it seems to go on forever. And sometimes this pain is so severe that it feels like ending it all by committing suicide is the only answer.

While this isn’t unique to entrepreneurs, the intensity of being an entrepreneur, especially when your company is failing, or you are failing at your role, can be overwhelming. I see it all the time and try to be a very empathetic listener whenever I encounter it. I’ve learned a huge amount from my friend Jerry Colonna about how to be helpful and know that I’ll continue to be on a journey around mental health and entrepreneurship.

It’s ok to fail. It’s ok to lose. It’s ok to be depressed.

- More Here

Quote of the Day

There were many at Bell Labs and MIT who compared Shannon’s insight to Ein- stein’s. Others found that comparison unfair—unfair to Shannon.

- William Poundstone,   Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street

Wisdom Of The Week

"You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.” 

— Anonymous

1. Be prepared - Make sure you know the essential points you want to make. Research the facts you need to convince your opponent.
2. When to argue, when to walk away - Think carefully before you start to argue: is this the time; is this the place?
3. What you say and how you say it - Spend time thinking about how to present your argument. Body language, choice of words and manner of speaking all affect how your argument will come across.
4. Listen and listen again - Listen carefully to what the other person is saying. Watch their body language, listen for the meaning behind their words.
5. Excel at responding to arguments - Think carefully about what arguments the other person will listen to. What are their preconceptions? Which kinds of arguments do they find convincing.
6. Watch out for crafty tricks - Arguments are not always as good as they first appear. Be wary of your opponent’s use of statistics. Keep alert for distraction techniques such as personal attacks and red herrings. Look out for concealed questions and false choices.
7. Develop the skills of arguing in public - Keep it simple and clear. Be brief and don’t rush.
8. Be able to argue in writing - Always choose clarity over pomposity. Be short, sharp, and to the point, using language that is easily understood.
9. Be great at resolving deadlock - Be creative in finding ways out of an argument that’s going nowhere. Is it time to look at the issue from another angle? Are there ways of putting pressure on so that the other person has to agree with you? Is a compromise possible?
10. Maintain relationships - This is absolutely key. What do you want from this argument? Humiliating, embarrassing or aggravating your opponent might make you feel good at the time, but you might have many lonely days to rue your mistake. Find a result that works for both of you. You need to move forward. Then you will be able to argue another day.

- The Ten Golden Rules of Argument, Farnam Street's review of the book How to Argue: Powerfully, Persuasively, Positively by Jonathan Herring

Quote of the Day

Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.

- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Penguin Classics)

FBI Turns Animal Cruelty Into Top-Tier Felony

Law enforcement agencies will have to report incidents and arrests in four areas: simple or gross neglect; intentional abuse and torture; organized abuse, including dogfighting and cockfighting; and animal sexual abuse, the FBI said in statement. The bureau didn't answer questions beyond a short statement.

"The immediate benefit is it will be in front of law enforcement every month when they have to do their crime reports," said John Thompson, interim executive director of the National Sheriffs' Association who worked to get the new animal cruelty category instituted. "That's something we have never seen."

Officers will start to see the data are facts and "not just somebody saying the 'Son of Sam' killed animals before he went to human victims and 70-some percent of the school shooters abused animals prior to doing their acts before people," said Thompson, a retired assistant sheriff from Prince George's County, Maryland.

FBI studies show that serial killers like Dahmer impaled the heads of dogs, frogs and cats on sticks; David Berkowitz, known as the "Son of Sam," poisoned his mother's parakeet; and Albert DeSalvo, aka the "Boston Strangler," trapped cats and dogs in wooden crates and killed them by shooting arrows through the boxes.

It will take time and money to update FBI and law enforcement databases nationwide, revise manuals and send out guidelines, Thompson said, so there won't be any data collected until January 2016. After that, it will take several months before there are numbers to analyze.

The new animal cruelty statistics will allow police and counselors to work with children who show early signs of trouble, so a preschooler hurting animals today isn't going to be hurting a person two years from now, Bernstein said.

- More Here

Quote of the Day

Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and the one nearest at hand.

- Michel de Montaigne

The Politics Behind China’s Ivory Carving Factories

The leverage here is that China is big business in Africa. China wants Africa’s natural resources, but China continues to allow a legal trade of ivory, and this legal operation is often a cover for the illegal ivory trade – all of which is driving Africa’s elephants towards extinction. Something has to give.

Right, so why don’t the African leaders ask China to shut down their carving factories?

“A few weeks ago President Obama hosted a meeting with five or six African heads of state, and the general feeling was that they were intimidated by the prospect of upsetting China – that it would be easier for the US to make a big deal of this,” explains Bergin.

“Well I think everybody needs to make a big deal of this. There has been a drumbeat of activity in the West, and I do think the US has shown leadership on the illegal wildlife trade, and then there was the conference in London in February, and I was talking to the UK Minister of Environment about this and, in my mind, the centre of gravity and influence now needs to move East. Why don’t we invite China to host the next big illegal wildlife trafficking symposium?”

- More Here

Quote of the Day

If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.

Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.

- Stephen Fry

The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes

Our financial regulatory system is obviously dysfunctional. But because the subject is so tedious, and the details so complicated, the public doesn't pay it much attention.

That may very well change today, for today -- Friday, Sept. 26 --- the radio program "This American Life" will air a jaw-dropping story about Wall Street regulation, and the public will have no trouble at all understanding it.

The reporter, Jake Bernstein, has obtained 46 hours of tape recordings, made secretly by a Federal Reserve employee, of conversations within the Fed, and between the Fed and Goldman Sachs. The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived.

[---]

In early 2012, Segarra was assigned to regulate Goldman Sachs, and so was installed inside Goldman. (The people who regulate banks for the Fed are physically stationed inside the banks.)

The job right from the start seems to have been different from what she had imagined: In meetings, Fed employees would defer to the Goldman people; if one of the Goldman people said something revealing or even alarming, the other Fed employees in the meeting would either ignore or downplay it. For instance, in one meeting a Goldman employee expressed the view that "once clients are wealthy enough certain consumer laws don't apply to them." After that meeting, Segarra turned to a fellow Fed regulator and said how surprised she was by that statement -- to which the regulator replied, "You didn't hear that."

This sort of thing occurred often enough -- Fed regulators denying what had been said in meetings, Fed managers asking her to alter minutes of meetings after the fact -- that Segarra decided she needed to record what actually had been said. So she went to the Spy Store and bought a tiny tape recorder, then began to record her meetings at Goldman Sachs, until she was fired.

- Mike Lewis

Quote of the Day

A skilled professional I know had to turn down an important freelance assignment because of a recurring commitment to chauffeur her son to a resumé-building “social action” assignment required by his high school. This involved driving the boy for 45 minutes to a community center, cooling her heels while he sorted used clothing for charity, and driving him back—forgoing income which, judiciously donated, could have fed, clothed, and inoculated an African village. The dubious “lessons” of this forced labor as an overqualified ragpicker are that children are entitled to treat their mothers’ time as worth nothing, that you can make the world a better place by destroying economic value, and that the moral worth of an action should be measured by the conspicuousness of the sacrifice rather than the gain to the beneficiary.

- Steven Pinker