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:
- Great Wealth Doesn’t Need To Lead to Great Inequality – The Noosphere. “The common refrain in capitalism is that in order for risk-takers to take risks, we have to give them rewards. That makes sense, to a point, but the huge gulf between Billionaires and mortals has widened. ‘That’s just how it is,’ we shrug, and thank the tech gods for our smartphones. But according to this Noosphere piece, that’s not always the case. I’ve been spending a bunch of time lately trying to decide what comes after representative democracy, and realizing that some of the ‘rules’ of our society are just traditions that are a part of it.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Chechnya Bans Music That Isn’t Between 80 And 116 Beats Per Minute – Smithsonian Magazine. “Damn… that’s harsh.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Billy – Your Human Book Friend – Leigh Kinch-Pedrosa. “My pal Leigh has great taste in books, and just launched a book recommendation newsletter. ‘I started this newsletter to feel like a creative human and to put something human on the internet.’ You should subscribe.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Baby Reindeer In Court: The Two Words That Might Have Saved Netflix $170M Worth Of Grief – The Guardian. “This is such an interesting case: Netflix released a surprise phenomenon of a show, created, written and acted by Richard Gadd, and based on a more-or-less real story and more-or-less real people. Richard Gadd got rich (I hope) telling the story of his stalker, in the show she was called Martha. The real Martha (or rather, the real person the character Martha was based on) eventually emerged, and she’s suing Netflix to the tune of $175M for: ‘defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, gross negligence and violations of her right of publicity.’ It’s a complicated case. On the one hand, Netflix has profited off of a story about a woman without her consent, and it has caused real damage to the woman’s life. It seems fair – somehow – that she should be compensated? On the other hand, if every fictionalized version about a real person means that person is entitled to compensation, well that certainly creates a whole new and complex legal and financial universe for art.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- How To Do Great Work – Paul Graham. “I attended the Sagard and Diagram AGM this week in Montreal (I am an investor), and was fortunate to catch a fireside chat with David Senra. David is the host of an amazing podcast called, Founders. On this show, David reads a biography (every week!) of an entrepreneur and dispenses gems and insights from his learnings (it’’s always a great listen). During his presentation, he was very excited about this piece from Paul Graham. I know we’ve linked to Paul’s work before, but this is a spectacular (and in-depth) look at ideas, execution, perspiration and more. Success is an anomoly mostly because few are willing to do the sweat labor to find the ’there’. Here is one of the countless gems in this article: ‘The other thing you need is a willingness to break rules. Paradoxical as it sounds, if you want to fix your model of the world, it helps to be the sort of person who’s comfortable breaking rules. From the point of view of the old model, which everyone including you initially shares, the new model usually breaks at least implicit rules. Few understand the degree of rule-breaking required, because new ideas seem much more conservative once they succeed. They seem perfectly reasonable once you’re using the new model of the world they brought with them. But they didn’t at the time; it took the greater part of a century for the heliocentric model to be generally accepted, even among astronomers, because it felt so wrong.’ ” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Writing Changes How We Think About The World – Only Dead Fish. “I am big fan of the Only Dead Fish newsletter from Neil Perkins. It is always full of links to stories and data that I had not seen elsewhere. Neil points us to this lecture from Larry McEnerney from the University of Chicago’s writing program. Our job, as writers, is to help readers change the way they think about the world. If you were not sure about the importance of ‘rule breaking’ from the link above, try this one on for size. Following the rules of writing (or thinking about them too much) is probably not going to change much. I really loved this lecture as much as Neil because it’s a vivid reminder that the best work challenges the status quo and is still a part of the centuries of words that came before it. This is a must-watch”. (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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