2023-10-06 Links

Daily Reads:

National Parks Service hilarious Insta post with words of inspirationconfusion

Events of the last week or so have permitted little time to read. I’m going to be claiming feedreader bankruptcy again this week. Doing it at the end of each week is also cathartic – I have not felt the obsessive need to ‘catch-up’ on reading online. The Art of Possibility, The Journals of Anais Nin, The Daily Stoic, Seneca’s "On the Shortness of Life" have all got a good workout.

QOTD:

It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.
– George H. Lorimer

Music:

Jordan Thomas covers Bob Dylan’s "Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright", performing on a 1943 Martin D-28 guitar.

2023-10-05 Links

Daily Reads:

I barely got any time to read today. Between phone calls and driving a young person to get urgent repair on a musical instrument, I’ve had neither the opportunity nor the energy to do it, besides these two quick ones.

Stop Mumbling 6 useful tips to stop mumbling. For a non-native English speaker like me, these are practical.

Jim Nielsen’s note about his Notes page made me happy.

QOTD:

You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.
-Ken Kesey, novelist

Music:

Violinist Csongor Korossy-Khayll & organist Xaver Varnus perform Schindler’s List in the largest synagogue in Budapest.

2023-10-04 Links

Daily Reads:

When no one was looking, he was at his best Marcus Aurelius explained.

Corporate Rebels The 8 Trends I wish they’d called it loose principles rather than trends of progressive teams and businesses.

Lenny Ratchisky has a wonderful podcast, and I love the way he engages with his guests. He also writes a Substack, with occasional guest authors, and this post by Ethan Evans, titled the Magic Loop, may be useful for someone looking to grow rapidly in their careers.

Lenny’s podcast episode with Bob Moesta on the Jobs To Be Done framework is without doubt a favourite. It’s a masterclass in discovery. Some gems I wrote down on my first pass, may make no sense until I explore this in more detail:

Nobody wants to change. So find out why people change. Therein lies the magic!
Unpeel the layers of language – pablum, fantasy, real-reasons. It takes a criminal investigator mindset to find out the real reasons.
When you arrive at the "edge of language" – where people can’t describe the moment of change, find contrasting and even incorrect ways of getting them to speak more.
What will people stop using when they start using your product?
There are no new jobs – how technology delivers the project

QOTD:

The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.
– Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th US president

Music:

This particular episode of Interpretations of Music Lessons for Life Masterclass was a tough one to watch. Ethan DePuy is a talented tenor, and clearly wants the world to know it, and to take him seriously. Yet, Zander shows him that he has a long way to go, and does it in a most beautiful way. He’s written about this episode in his Art of Possibility book too (pg 88) with some editorial changes I suppose.

2023-10-03 Links

Daily Reads:

Technically they were videos, rather than reads, but hey this is my blog 🙂

All these links were from going down the Tina Roth Eisenberg rabbit-hole. She calls herself an accidental businesswoman, and runs a bunch of companies that started as side projects. Swiss-Miss is her original blog, and is full of great links. Like me, she seems to be using it as a way to publicly share stuff she finds interesting. It was startling to see how many things we have in common – books, quotes, music, music sources, etc etc. A veritable gold-mine of insight from every one of her projects, starting with this 2013 Do lecture.

Trust Breeds Magic

Louis, the 90 year old gentleman on The Art of Letting Go was a heartwarming instagram video from

Carl Sagan on Books

Ever wondered what’s in a name? A school teacher explains 🙂

QOTD:

Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
-Thomas Wolfe

Music:

Sinead O’Connor & Willie Nelson’s rendition of Don’t Give Up gives me the chills every time. Sinead’s angelic voice blends perfectly with old man Willie’s well worn story-telling voice.

Don’t give up
‘Cause you have friends
Don’t give up
You’re not beaten yet
Don’t give up
I know you can make it good

2023-10-02 Links

Daily Reads:

Sequoia Capital says follow the GPU’s. What will all this AI capex capacity in the form of GPU’s be used for?

OMG, Ben Werdmuller eloquently puts into words the jumbled mess of ideas I have floating around in my head about this topic that every company is a community.

Tracy Durnell’s approach to writing her blog posts is awesome

QOTD:

Civilisation is the encouragement of differences.
– Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Music:

Richard Smith: The Entertainer

2023-10-01 Links

Daily Reads:

Tom Kerwin on why OKR’s don’t work. I found myself nodding in agreement. Recent events at my work have revealed similar if not identical phrasing, while the inexorable march towards mediocrity continues unabated.

Get your Mac Python from Python.org and other helpful advice which is, of course, too late for this particular user.

Asimov’s The Last Question was a breathtaking read. I remember some quotes from this but I hadn’t read the whole thing before.

Began re-reading The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data, Google’s 2009 article in the IEEE.

Richard Merrick’s weekly reflections are food for thought, and more importantly, action. His idea of type 2 fun and work resonates very strongly with me: Type two work as the long, hard slog of seven years to become a doctor in public practice, an artist grasping the means to convey a feeling or a business that has no desire to be a unicorn but rather a part of a community it serves and is respected in.

Nate Kadlac: Define your own visual style in 5 steps also has some practical tips for a collector of ideas like me 😉. The five steps are:

  1. Get personal: Connect to a favorite place or story to find inspiration for your visual style.
  2. Get curious: Create a visual research board to collect images, icons, and typography that resonate with your theme.
  3. Embrace frequency bias: Look for patterns and recurring elements to solidify your visual direction.
  4. Check yourself: Confirm your theme is personal and relevant to you.
  5. Create a definitive visual taste palette: Compile an edge-to-edge board filled with visuals, type, color, and shapes that expresses your unique visual style.

QOTD:

“Of all the strife in the world — strife of every imaginable variety, from conflict over crumb cake to conflict in the Middle East — a staggering amount of it arises from the clash of mutually incompatible, entirely unshakable feelings of rightness.”
– Kathryn Schulz

Music:

I loved this simple, clear explanation of the style of guitar playing I’m currently trying to learn. Introduction to Arpeggios and the Rest Stroke Picking The accompanying chords, backing tracks, and written explanations are here

2023-09-30 Links

Daily Reads:

I’m re-reading Ben & Rosamund Zander’s The Art of Possibility The set of books that were chosen for the AltMBA were all fantastic of course, but this one had the most immediate impact.

Occasionally I will stop to read a McKinsey article that is practical. This was one of them, on capability building for middle management A bonus practical use was the language used to describe skills 😅

Bob Ewing has some ideas for discovering logical fallacies in the wild, involving ChatGPT

I love Julia Evans’ explainer cartoons – like this one about how to get a cat via TCP
200

QOTD:

There are two possible outcomes: If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery.
-Enrico Fermi

Music:

Geoff Castelluci hits the lowest notes and reaches into the depths of your soul 🙂 I see fire – The Hobbit

2023-09-29 Links

Daily Reads:

Hadley Wickham’s dad died, and his moving tribute was the only thing I read today.

QOTD:

. "Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble." – R W Emerson

Music:

Precious Time: Tommy Emmanuel with Siera Hull

2023-09-28 Links

Daily Reads:

Seth Godin describes much of my lived corporate experience as The Jenga Situation I trained as a bean counter, and thankfully, learnt how not to be one for the next several years if I was to help build businesses. Unfortunately, I see many of my professional brethren continue to wreak havoc with the "it’s all about the money" perspective – the customer is always forgotten because most have NEVER had to engage directly with one.

Erik Dietrich on Performative content. The best way to create performative content is to a. not know who the content is for, b. not know how it will help them, and c. not knowing what we want them to do after reading it. Damn, it makes me question the value of my own writing in public all these years. I know the content I’ve posted is for myself, I know it helps me to broaden my areas of awareness (and sometimes knowledge). Epiphany: I don’t know what I want me to do after reading it.

LLM’s to find faucets? Drew Breunig using Simon Willison’s Datasette & CLIP tools to do this is an imaginative application of embeddings. Imagination is truly an underrated skill!

This is an interesting question from Anne H Petersen – on Community Roadblocks. Building community is hard, and so we often give up. One of the reasons it’s hard is because of roadblocks – space, time, energy, etc. The question AHP asks her readers to consider: What are my roadblocks? And how might I go about lifting them? as specifically as possible. I’m keen to know what people imagine.

Alvin Chang has created a splendid visualisation about The invisible epidemic At the local community garden where my wife & I volunteer, I joke that we bring the average age down to 70. The reality for most is that they are lonely. It apparently gets worse as people age, but I’m seeing how young people are also lonely even when surrounded by peers.

QOTD:

There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be, because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring. -Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Music:

Carson McKee & Josh Turner cover Alicia Keys’ If I Ain’t Got You

2023-09-27 Links

Daily Reads:

I read, and wrote out, two chapters of Seneca’s meditations "on the shortness of life".

XII. I am often filled with wonder when I see some men demanding the time of others and those from whom they as it most indulgent. Both of them fix their eyes on the object of the request for time, neither of them on the time itself; just as if what is asked were nothing, what is given, nothing. Men trifle with the most precious thing in the world; but they are blind to it because it is an incorporeal thing, because it does not come beneath the sight of the eyes, and for this reason it is counted a very cheap thing – nay, of almost no value at all. Men set very great store by pensions and doles, and for these they hire out their labour or service or efort. But no one sets a value on time; all use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But see how these same people clasp the knees of physicians if they fall ill and the danger of death draws nearer, see how ready they are, if threatened with capital punishment, to spend all their possessions in order to live! So great is the inconsistency of their feelings. But if each one could have the number of his future years set before him as is possible in the case of the years that have passed, how alarmed those would be who saw only a few remaining, how sparing of them would they be! And yet it is easy to dispense an amount that is assured, no matter how small it may be; but that must be guarded more carefully which will fail you know not when.
Yet, there is no reasons for you to suppose that these people do not know how precious a thing time is; for to those whom they love most devotedly they have a habit of saying that they are ready to give them a part of their own years. And they do give it, without realising it; but the result of their giving is that they themselves suffer loss without adding to the years of their dear ones. But the very thing they do not know is whether they are suffering loss; therefore, the removal of something that is lost without being noticed they find is bearable. Yet no one will bring back the years, no one will bestow you once more on yourself. Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the applause of the populace. Just as it was started on its first day, so it will run; nowhere will it turn aside, nowhere will it delay. And what will be the result? You have been engrossed, life hastens by; meanwhile death will be at hand, for which, willy nilly, you must find leisure.

IX. Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people – I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter. The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends on the morrow and wastes to-day. You dispose of that which lies in the hands of Fortune, you let go thatt which lies in your own. Whither do you look? At what goal do you aim? All things that are still to come lie in uncertainty; live straightaway! See how the greatest of bards cries out, and, as if inspired with divine utterance, sings the saving strain:
The fairest day in hapless mortals’ life
Is ever first to flee.
"Why do you delay," says he, "Why are you idle? Unless you seize the day, it flees." Even though you seize it, it still will flee; therefore you must vie with time’s swiftness in the speed of using it, and, as from a torrent that rushes by and will not always flow, you must drink quickly. And, too, the utterance of the bard is most admirably worded to cast censure upon infinite delay, in that he says, not "the fairest age," but "the fairest day." Why, to whatever length your greed inclines, do you stretch before yourself months and years in long array, unconcertned and slow though time flies so fast? The poet speaks to you about the day, and about this very day that is flying. Is there, then, any doubt that for hapless mortals, that is, for men who are engrossed, the fairest day is ever the first to flee? Old age surprises them while their minds are still childish, and they come to it unprepared and unarmed, for they have made no provision for it; they have stumbled upon it suddenly and unexpectedly, they did not notice that it was drawing nearer day by day. Even as conversation or reading or deep meditation on some subject beguiles the traveller, and he finds that he has reached the end of his journey before he was aware that he was approaching it, just so with this unceasing and most swift journey of life, which we make at the same pace whether waking or sleeping; those who are engrossed become aware of it only at the end.

QOTD:

Authority without accountability is power and has no need to convince people or inspire trust, and reputation is of no real consequence when those wielding power are increasingly transient. – Richard Merrick

Music:

Reina del Cid (Elle), Tony Lindgren, & Travis Worth cover the Beatles Octopus’ Garden