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Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #483

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, 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:

Canada’s Impossible Acknowledgment – The New Yorker. “We run a lot of Canadian conferences, and have land acknowledgements at all of them. When I spoke in New Zealand a few years ago, I was really moved by how culture there has embraced Maori ancestry and society. We’re trying to do the same in Canada—but it’s complicated. How do you acknowledge land properly across more than 600 groups, each with their own claims, history, language, and treaties? And what horrors does the formal banality of a gathering sweep under the rug? Would it be better to say, ‘this is happening on lands we stole from you, or negotiated unfairly over, and now we all have to live here—but we recognize the darkness that got us to this point?’ Words matter, and if we want an acknowledgement to be more than a recital, we need to talk about taboos openly. An excellent article for anyone who cares about reconciliation.” (Alistair for Hugh).
The Man With The Golden Airline Ticket – Narratively. “Hey, Marketers—be careful with your promotions. You may just get what you wished for, and not like it at all. Told by his daughter, this is the story of a man who paid $400K at 39 years of age to travel an unlimited number of times with a companion. Anywhere. Accumulating miles as he did so. ANYWHERE. American Airlines‘ AAirpass debacle is so notorious, it made lists of the worst marketing campaigns of all time. And here’s what it looked like from the inside. This man became international travel. He turned a room into a packing area. He had travel down to a science. He planned to go to Sweden for a day to buy flowers when he was 70. But then they took it away. Or did they? Between May 2005 and December 2008, he booked 3,009 reservations, and cancelled or didn’t show up for 84% of them. Keep reading: This is a story about mental health, tragic loss, and what happens when our privilege becomes a superpower, then a part of our identity.” (Alistair for Mitch).
A Fire Lookout On What’s Lost In A Transition To Technology – NPR. “For the past three summers, I’ve spent a week or two in a tent with my wife and two young daughters (7 and 8), a wonderful way to completely disconnect from the stresses of the digital age. It’s also reacquainted me with the joys of simple things done with your hands, like chopping wood, hanging tarps and building tables with lumber and lashings. Technology is wonderful, but it is also terrible, and we always lose something when we gain a convenience from technology. Anyway, I’d kinda like to get a job as a fire spotter.” (Hugh for Alistair).
Why Kids Want Things – The Atlantic. “If you’ve got kids, perhaps you’ve heard, ‘Daddy/Mommy I want…’ more than you’d care to. To be fair, adults want things all the time. But here’s an article talking about the kinds of things we do or don’t do as parents that influences the way kids see buying *things*.” (Hugh for Mitch).
To Pay Attention, the Brain Uses Filters, Not a Spotlight – Quanta Magazine. “What does it take to get something through that thick skull of yours? 😉 Maybe it’s less about what we focus on, and much more related to how our brain suppresses information? It seems counter-intuitive. But, this is what some new science is looking into… and it looks promising. How we focus (and our attention) may be more about what we’re filtering out than what we’re taking in. Science for the win!” (Mitch for Alistair).
Penmanship – Quartz. “The lost art. I love notebooks. I love pens and paper. I love writing long-hand with a fountain pen into a good notebook. How do I feel about penmanship? I love it (but I don’t spend as much time thinking about it as I do thinking about pens and paper). I think it’s important. Kids today might disagree. Many aren’t even taught this skill in school (they’ll be texting, typing, thumbing, speaking… so why bother?). Here’s a great piece on one of the best technologies that we have… penmanship.” (Mitch for Hugh).