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:
- Maybe It’s Good We Get This Attached – Everything Is Amazing. “I’ve been playing Valheim in my spare time lately. It’s an open-world roleplaying game, and I’m not very good. I keep losing my stuff when I die, making me a pitiable newbie once again. I loved this piece about attachment in another survival-focused game, The Long Dark, but also about teddybears. If you can get past the increasingly annoying Substack chaff, it’s worth a read.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- The Internet’s Biggest Mystery – New York Magazine. “How many people use the Internet? Because engagement is tied to eyeballs, and revenue is tied to engagement, online platforms play fast and loose with their user counts. But companies have gradually pulled ‘active users’ from their numbers in recent years. Feels like another part of the slide from ‘tech industry’ to ‘everything is tech now’ that is robbing many of the Internet behemoths of their immunity even as brick-and-mortar reality comes creeping back.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Disenshittify Or Die – Cory Doctorow. “One of the great coinages of the last few years is Cory Doctorow‘s name for what happens to web platforms as time goes on: ‘enshitification.’ My candidate for entry into the Oxford English Dictionary. Doctorow defines it as the inexorable path that big tech (see: X, Facebook, etc) platforms follow. Here’s a long update from Cory, and the full title is: ‘Disenshittify Or Die! – How Hackers Can Seize The Means Of Computation And Build A New, Good Internet That Is Hardened Against Our Asshole Bosses’ Insatiable Horniness For Enshittification’.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- NASA Says Astronauts Stuck In Space Will Not Return On Boeing Capsule, Will Wait For Spacex Craft – NBC News. “I would hate to work for Boeing‘s PR team: My newsfeed the past six months have had about one article a day about various pieces of Boeing planes falling off around the world. When I saw Boeing was sending a manned Starliner to the ISS, I thought: Well, they’ll be happy to have that news to distract the public from the rest of the Boeing debacle. Guess not.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- The Pez Outlaw. “I’m a sucker for documentaries. I’m a sucker for pop culture. I’m a sucker for nostalgia. I’m a sucker for collectibles. I’m a sucker for a good business story. This hit all of those feels. And, even if those things are not your jam, this is definitely a documentary worth checking out. Forget those true crime stories about drug smuggling, crooked executives and corrupt border guards… this is all of that and more… and… it’s about Pez! Yes… Pez candy… What an amazing and fun ride this movie is! Check it out… I watched it on Amazon Prime.” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Procedural Portraits (1): Decoding ‘Eno’s’ Generative Structure – Justin Pickard. “Let’s keep going on the topic of great documentaries. I’m also a sucker for music documentaries. It could be about a band, a solo artist, the making of album or even conversations about how music gets created (I don’t even have to know or like the band to love the documentary – weird… I know). Well, now we have two personal favorites coming together. Brian Eno is the subject of a new documentary called, Eno, which was created by Gary Hustwit (and if you have not seen his documentaries Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized, Rams, etc… can we still be friends?). I had the chance to see the premiere last week at the Mutek Festival in Montreal (and Gary was there to take questions). This film is unique in that every showing is a different version of the film. Confused? Don’t be. This is a new take on film and storytelling that they call ‘Generative’ based on custom software called Brain One (a clever anagram for ‘Brian Eno’). This is a great two-part article on the process, and if this doesn’t stoke the flame to get you interested in catching a viewing of Eno, I don’t know what will. Hat-tip to Sentiers for this article.” (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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