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 (Just Evil Enough, 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:
- There Is No Antimemetics Division – Episode 1 – SCP Horror Short Series – YouTube. “Okay, great – we can shoot an amazing film. But where do we get the story? I’ve been fascinated with the SCP Foundation. I guess the best way to explain it is: Imagine there was a warehouse where they put all the weird paranormal objects and characters from The X-Files, and there was a wiki documenting them. It describes itself (on one of the few pages in which it breaks character) as ‘a collaborative writing site based around the premise that… in essence, magic is real.’ It’s absolutely fascinating, and hundreds of collaborators have added incredibly creative content. With the cost of movie production falling precipitously, and distribution free, there’s now an SCP Universe. This one is a real mindbender, and I’d put it up there with any decent short sci-fi. (If you liked that, SCP Academy | Part 001 – The Containment Breach is another good one with serious production values).” (Alistair for Hugh).
- I Remade Star Wars VFX In 1 Week – ErikDoesVFX – YouTube. “One of the bees in my bonnet these days is about emergent, bottom-up, self-organizing systems versus top-down, hierarchical systems. Hollywood is a top-down system: We begin with thousands of scripts, winnowed to dozens of productions; we use storyboards to de-risk shots. It’s like the way we once used film cameras, each shot precious. Now we take a hundred films, and Photoshop the fixes. Producing films is changing in the same way. A YouTuber named ErikDoesVFX re-created expensive shots from films like Iron Man and Star Wars for a fraction of the cost. AI is changing this even further. The barriers to entry in filmmaking are vanishing, and the future of creative production is anyone’s guess.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- The Importance Of Curiosity As An Entrepreneur With Allen And Eva Lau – The Moment. “Allen Lau quietly grew Wattpad to a USD $650M exit out of Toronto. Wattpad is a self-publishing and reading platform, but it was all but ignored by the publishing industry. It was ugly and cheap looking in the early days (sorry Allen!), but became beloved by its users, despite things like pretty design. Because it was answering a need. Allen and his wife Eva, who also have a very successful VC fund in Canada, talk about the secrets of their success and failures in this podcast.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- The Five Stages Of AI Agent Evolution – Sarai Bronfeld – NFX. “It’s hard to keep up, isn’t it? Anyway, more on the direction of travel of AI and the companies using them. General idea is pretty soon we’ll have billion dollar companies run by three people and a bunch of AIs.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Wikinigma. “Another gem I grabbed from Patrick Tanguay’s fantastic Sentiers newsletter. A wiki of scientific, academic (and, maybe even philosophical) questions to which ’no-one, anywhere, has yet been able to provide a definitive answer.’ In fact, this is the place for over one thousand unanswerable questions. For example: We have no definitive idea how April Fools’ Day got started. Go dig and marvel at what we still can’t account for…” (Mitch for Alistair).
- The Tyranny Of Now – Nicholas Carr – The New Atlantis. “This is a beautiful piece of writing that most will (sadly) not spend any time with. Coming from the mind of Harold Adams Innis in 1947 and modernized by Nicholas Carr. Innis believed that ‘some media are particularly good at transporting information across space, while others are particularly good at transporting it through time. Some are space-biased while others are time-biased. Each medium’s temporal or spatial emphasis stems from its material qualities. Time-biased media tend to be heavy and durable. They last a long time, but they are not easy to move around. Think of a gravestone carved out of granite or marble. Its message can remain legible for centuries, but only those who visit the cemetery are able to read it. Space-biased media tend to be lightweight and portable. They’re easy to carry, but they decay or degrade quickly. Think of a newspaper printed on cheap, thin stock. It can be distributed in the morning to a large, widely dispersed readership, but by evening it’s in the trash.’ So where does this leave us, in modern times, with the kind of media and technology that we have? Well, it’s not looking good. The internet and social media constantly bombard us with new information, making it challenging to reflect and gain deeper understanding (have you thought of that from this perspective?). Sure, technology has many benefits, but we should be cautious about letting it control how we think and communicate… especially if it changing (in a weird way) how we think and communicate.” (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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