Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”
Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:
- This Video Has 72,025,162 Views – Tom Scott – YouTube. “Tom Scott recently retired from regular YouTube creation. A while back, he recorded an amazing homage to the open web, Yahoo! Pipes, open protocols, and myriad other things we took for granted at the start of the web, and abdicated to apps. I’m reminded of that crash each time I look at the economic incentives of AI, where only a few, large players can afford to do the training, and an announcement by a single vendor (in this case, OpenAI‘s GPT4o) can torpedo half of the startups created in the last year, simply because it’s a technology that does what you ask it to. Bonus: I literally cannot share the correct title of this video. Which is rather the point.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- “Hopeless And Broken” – Why The World’s Top Climate Scientists Are In Despair – The Guardian. “I’ve spoken to climate scientists and data experts over the last few years about our warming planet and tipping points. Those have been bleak; this feels like a distillation of what they’ve told me for years, in a single article that screams a warning. And yet, as I read it, at first I thought, ‘I shouldn’t share this with Mitch and Hugh… it’s too dark.’ Well, it is dark. The first chapter of Kim Stanley Robinson‘s Ministry For The Future is one of the darkest things I’ve every read, and that stuff is happening for real, right now. As Dorothy Fortenberry once said, urging screenwriters to paint a realistic vision of a future on a changed planet, ‘If climate isn’t in your story, it’s science fiction.’ So I figure I should share this link.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- How Dennis Lee Cooked Up Alligator Pie – The Walrus. “If you are a Canadian of my age, you probably had a copy of Alligator Pie sitting on your shelf as a child. The book was published in 1974 by author Dennis Lee, and illustrator by Frank Newfeld. It’s batshit crazy, with the poem ‘In Kamloops’ especially insane, about a guy who keeps promising to eat kids’ (the reader’s?) body parts: ‘In the Gatineaus, I’ll eat your toes,’ accompanied by an even more nutso psychedelic illustration of a wall filled with jars of severed body parts(!). The rest of the book is equal parts nonsense, and anti-heros, and it’s great, and every kid should read it.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- ‘People Think You’re An Idiot’: Death Metal Irish Baron Rewilds His Estate – The Guardian. “I love the concept of rewilding, where formerly cultivated (or vacant, or unused) land is left to grow wild. The effects are amazing: proliferation of wilflowers, grasses and trees; with them proliferation of bugs and frogs and birds and animals. There’s not enough wild in our lives.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Star Trek The Next Generation – 1950s Super Panavision 70 – YouTube. “It really did not take long for us to realize just how creative AI can be. Here’s another great example. Rafa Reels uses AI to create TV ads from the 1950s using a bunch of amazing pop culture super hits, like this one for Star Trek – The Next Generation. It’s nostalgia overload and they are all so fun and interesting to watch (check out his take on GTA 5, Seinfeld, Game of Thrones, etc). This level of creativity matched with AI’s creativity is a winning formula… and – as we know – this is just the beginning…” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Why Writing By Hand Beats Typing For Thinking And Learning – NPR. “I bought an iPad Pro thinking I would be done with writing note by hand. I was wrong. While this is a market of one, I find that writing notes by hand simply makes me smarter. I’m not sure where you stand on this. It also makes me wonder if I don’t have another case of ‘The Olds’. This article seems to back me up on the personal test I’ve been conducting: Writing by hand actually beats typing when it comes to thinking and learning. According to the science (and it feels true for me), when you write by hand, it lights up parts of your brain that typing just doesn’t touch. The tactile feel of pen on paper creates a sensory-rich experience that helps you remember and understand better (plus, I do love buying pens and notebooks… it’s a problem). Slowing down to handwrite means you’re giving your brain time to really soak in the info and connect the dots. Plus, studies show that students who take handwritten notes ace their exams more often than those who type. In our rush-rush digital age, picking up a pen can actually give your brain a much-needed boost (and break?). I’m not alone on this one… am I?” (Mitch for Hugh).
Feel free to share these links and add your picks on X, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.
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