Category: Reading

Visiting friends, conversations, food, treasure hunts, some time for reading, and a little synthesis. [^1]

Daily Reads:

Ben Werdmuller AI is not a paradigm shift but it could be useful. This is an example of Dr. ChatGPT advice to cancer patients, and a technical paper of findings is here

Scott Eblin shares at least Three Benefits of Removing Toxic Leaders I’ve been observing the effects of toxic leadership for a few months. Apparently, the short-term benefits of turning a blind eye to ‘high-performing’ toxic people are very attractive, while leaders also espouse the pursuit of great culture. Sigh.

Jack Clark’s ImportAI newsletter 340 story is a stunner. No spoilers.

Manuel Moreale on small communities The biggest impact I’ve had has been through small communities. Small enough to know individuals by name. Small enough for greater impact than the much larger formal ‘initiatives’ set up for the same explicit purpose.

Ben Myers Statement on Generative AI resonates with me. While my work involves supporting the exploration of large language models, I’m also wary of this tech at peak hysteria. People who don’t know what analytics or machine learning is, are espousing the ‘transformative’ power of impressive sounding hallucinations, unable to separate the bullshit from the real.

[^1]: Despite my intentions, I recognise that I’ve made no attempt to summarise or synthesise what I’ve been reading, or why I’ve been sharing these links. I’ll try to do that this week.

QOTD:

I’ve been helping the older one figure out "how" to make notes, and a few approaches to learn. This has been a repeated plea.

“Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language.” — Richard Feynman, Physicist.

Music:

A repeat share – Leonard Cohen’s Anthem speaks the truth about kintsugi, the beauty in imperfection. As he writes, "There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in". I’ve needed this multiple times during this week.

Daily Reads:

JP Rangaswami on constraints and capacity. Whether in business or in personal life, there’s merit in thinking about constraints and capacity as a way to identify priorities and investing energy.

I before E…

Sam Enright’s Notes on South India made for a fun read. The phrase "low-trust economy" was particularly resonant.

I’ve said before that Ed Brenegar’s writing offers me a vocabulary I didn’t know existed, or that it was accessible to me. This, on "Recovering our Humanity Through Writing and Conversation" is no different, with specific ideas to implement in my own life. Writing groups, explicitly to get other people’s opinions on writing sounds terrifying, yet necessary, despite having a blog here that I’ve maintained for over 13 years now.

QOTD:

Death isn’t in the future. It’s happening now. It’s easy to see death as this thing that lies off in the distant future. It’s a fixed event that happens to us once…at the end. This is literally true but it’s also incorrect. “This is our big mistake,” as Seneca points out, “to think we look forward toward death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.”
– Ryan Holiday, quoting the Stoics

Music:

Carson McKee’s cover of John Prine’s Please Don’t Bury Me I want this played at my funeral.

Daily Reads:

Rewatched Jim Rohn’s masterclass in goal-setting. With 100 days to go to the end of 2023, I thought it was a good time to recast what the next few years of my life might be.

Jerry Seinfeld’s "All Awards Are Stupid" was entertaining, and perceptive view of not just Hollywood but of much corporate ‘awards’.

Alex Waterhouse-Hayward is still with us, writing, photographing, sharing. And I love the way he writes, this time about his writing mentors

QOTD:

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
– Stephen King

Music:

The Hot Sardines version of Bei Mir Bist du Schoen

A day spent in the big smoke, meeting people, having conversations. Very little reading, and a lot of food for thought, along with some food with company 🙂

Daily Reads:

Some practical instructions from Seth Godin on using ChatGPT4

Steven Pressfield is a friend, and fan, of Seth Godin too. "This might not work"

Sam Altman essay from 5 years ago on "how to be successful"

QOTD:

“It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin – music, sculpture, writing, painting – and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen.” -William S Burroughs.

Music:

Vivaldi: Complete Cello Concertos

Most of my reading today was from the Journals of Anais Nin. Her descriptions of the human frailty, of her relationships with June & Henry Miller, and the destruction they wrought on each other in the creative spirit is breathtaking. All other reading pales in comparison, I think 🙂

Daily Reads:

"Extreme determination on strategy, yoked together with extreme flexibility on the means and timing of action" is how Otto von Bismarck managed to get control of the Prussian Empire. Darius Foroux’s article Strategic Opportunism has a link to the book by Richard Koch titled Unreasonable Success.

Josh Bersin writes about the HR Hackathon that PagerDuty hosted internally. The slides of ideas and a brief overview and winners is here The lessons are worthwhile for anyone considering running an internal hackathon.

A fun story about Douglas Adams’ taken hostage at a hotel to finish writing his book So Long and Thanks For The Fish.

QOTD:

And in the modern economy, think about customers in their social context. If you can move the needle on improving their social experience, you are in line for substantial rewards. – Roger Martin

Music:

Bei mir bist du schön-New Orleans Dixielandband

Daily Reads:

Colin Powell doesn’t waste a half-second to answer the question on the definition of good leadership.
Arlo Guthrie does a memorable homily in the midst of performing Amazing Grace. This doesn’t count as a today’s music, although it could be!

Weathering Software Winter is a talk from 2022 at Handmade Seattle. I like the thoughtfulness of this talk, particularly about how Devinie describes software we take for granted that was never designed to leave the West’s shores.

QOTD:

For people seeking to make a difference, it begins with helping other people make a difference.
– Seth Godin

Amen, brother.

Music:

Vivaldi Violin Concerto Opus 11 & 12

Daily Reads:

Ethan Mollick synthesises the findings of a new paper on the implications of AI augmentation by consultants in Centaurs and cybords on the jagged frontier. Falling asleep at the wheel is a major risk, and the levelling of skills is a massive upside.

In this 2013 opinion piece in the New York Times titled When Deviants Do Good, Tina Rosenberg explains an effective alternative to the seagull style of outside help for local problems.

QOTD:

No problem stays solved in a dynamic environment.
– Russell Ackoff

Music:

Australia is holding a referendum to change the constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia. Singer songwriter Paul Kelly has a new single If Not Now. I first learnt about Vincent Lingiari’s fight for his people from PK’s song "From Little Things Big Things Grow"

[! Warning]
This is my reading links from today. There may not be anything interesting for you 🙂

I learnt how to create a callout block and that there are 12 distinct callout types in Obsidian! Here, I’m using ‘Warning’. This may not render in WordPress.

Daily Reads:

Erik Schon has put together a collection of Wardley Maps for inspiration. It’s time to review how they are built, and to use them for a project I’m about to propose, the one that I watched today by random was this talk called "Saving Your Business" by Cory Foy This write up is a lot more interesting for practical application

A recommendation from John Naughton to read this New Yorker piece on "The Transformative, Alarming Power of Gene Editing" by Dana Goodyear

From Sahil Bloom’s newsletter: Reverse Engineering Your Ideal Life at 80! Dr. Peter Attiah describes the Centenarian Decathlon as “the ten most important physical tasks you will want to be able to do for the rest of your life.”

[!Quote]
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."
– Arthur Schopenhauer

Music:

Mark Knopfler Live at Madison Square Garden, 2019

Daily Reads:

I like how Dan Reich has explored the differences between a SaaS business and a Consumer Packaged Goods sector.

Amelia Wattenberger created an app that highlights sentences by how abstract or concrete they are. An interesting application of ChatGPT tokens.

Rob Walker always has thoughtful ideas on how to pay attention. I wish I had thought of this myself 😅 Make a short recording of a sound you would miss if you could never hear it again.

Roger Martin has sage advice on the stupid – and dangerous cost reduction projects

Seth Godin: The MVP and Fear. Why not think of the SVA (Smallest Viable Audience) that you can delight instead?

QOTD:

"Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is." – Ernest Hemingway

Music:

Isto covers Hank Williams’ Honky Tonkin’

Daily Reads:

Stowe Boyd argues that diversity has to begin right at the beginning of the recruitment process.

I’ve continued reading [[Furr – The Upside of Uncertainty]] & [[Seneca On the Shortness of Life]], and started the first skim through [[The Journals of Anais Nin]]. Digital reading will commence when I’m ready to stare at screens 🙂

QOTD:

We are going to the moon. That is not very far. Man has so much farther to go within himself. – Anais Nin

Music:

John Prine at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco, 2017