✍ Writing & Words
✍️ Three Scenes in Hibino Brooklyn: bradley-andrews.com
🗞️ The latest dispatch from Mercury’s Playbook, my business/tech newsletter, is out now: mercurysplaybook.com
For this essay, I discuss the trend taking place in modern markets toward “winner-takes-all” conditions, why some AI superstars are being paid pro athlete money, and much more.
✏️ New Word Learned:
Shoobie: a slang term, mainly used in New Jersey, Delaware, and Southern California, for a tourist or day-tripper visiting a seashore area, often seen as an outsider or someone unfamiliar with local customs.
✍️ I don’t mean to sound haughty, but I think I just wrote the best breakdown of Peter Gabriel’s “And Through The Wire” you’ve ever read. Available now at bradley-andrews.com
(P.S. - it’s altogether possible that this is the only breakdown existing on the internet)
✍️ Still crafting some New Years Resolutions for 2026? How about you steal some of W.H. Auden’s timeless principles instead? Click the link to read my brief commentary on one of my favorite poems, Under Which Lyre: bradley-andrews.com
✍️ From a quick blog post of mine called Patience Is (Still) A Virtue:
I am convinced that humans are meant to live in reality, not fiction, and all spiritual health is predicated on the condition that we be faithful to the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be. An ounce of delusion costs a gallon of resilience—and rejecting what we know to be true will always be experienced by our spirit as a defeat.
Would love to know your thoughts!
✏️ New Word Learned:
Philately: the study of postage stamps and postal history
✍️ An original poem I needed to get out of my head (I am not a poet) // Read it here: bradley-andrews.com
✍️ Click here to read some of my thoughts on the new NBER paper regarding collusion and common leadership in Silicon Valley:
As an MBA student, the NBER paper reinforces something that I have discovered again and again; while capitalism will always be a very imperfect system, it’s best possible form is when it conforms closest to a game. Meaning, when it is allowed to be playful, highly competitive, and free from both arbitrary rules and bullies. I’ve said it before, but I will say it again: being pro-business requires that one also be anti-monopolist.
✏️ New Word Learned:
Salvo: a simultaneous discharge of two or more guns in military action or as a salute : the release all at one time of a rack of bombs or rockets.
✏️ New Word Learned:
Niveous: snowy or resembling snow
✍️ Seven Minute Drill #2: bradley-andrews.com
✏️ New Term Learned:
Lake Wobegon Effect: the human tendency to overestimate one’s capabilities and achievements in relation to others.
I’ve heard many names for this bias, but this name is fun since it comes from a book that describes a fictional town where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and the children are all above average.” 🤣
✍️ A Brief Note On Spotify Economics and The Cessation of the Penny: bradley-andrews.com
✏️ New Word Learned:
Therianthropic: combining human and animal form; esp. relating to religions in which the deities worshiped are partly human and partly animal
✏️ New Term Learned:
Caveat Emptor: a Latin phrase meaning “let the buyer beware”; the principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase is made
Should a business student like me have known what this meant before today? Probably… but here we are.
✏️ New Word Learned:
Polysemous: the capacity for a sign, symbol, word, or phrase to have multiple related meanings
✏️ New Term Learned:
Kufungisisa: a Shona idiom from Zimbabwe that translates to “thinking too much.” It is a cultural term used to describe a state of mental distress that causes other kinds of bodily ills.
🗞️ I just posted my first ever short story: A Grimm Night on Central Park South. In honor of Halloween, I center it around the spookiest thing imaginable: Big Tech. I would love if you checked out this little piece of dark fiction and gave feedback. Please read and tell me what you think! 🎃🐺🏙️👻
✏️ New Word Learned:
Hoi Polloi: the general populace ; MASSES