Perspectives

Daily Reads:

Richard Merrick: Noticing The artisan notices; the half smile, the new shoes, the developing patina, the change in raw materials, the level of laughter in the office, and all the other little things that data doesn’t record.

Bob Moesta often refers to one of his mentors, Dr. Genichi Taguchi’s Robust Design Method. While the core idea focused on improving engineering productivity, the concept can also be effectively used in discovery interviews. If you understand what the levers or the inputs are to a system, we can design an experiment that induces that variation.

Scott Galloway’s post from early 2022 merits another read. Tell me a story
Tools: Turn static SVG’s into interactive images with Flourish

In How to Become Wise, David Cain explains the reasons why meditation can help. What if there was a way you could train your whole mind-body system to gracefully handle the bumpy terrain of everyday life, regardless of what form it took: disappointment, elation, uncertainty, temptation, overexcitement, shame, expectation, tension, and everything in between? Imagine this training allowed you to cruise smoothly over all these familiar contours in a way that felt good, at least more of the time.

Steve Blank’s recent posts on history have been stunning reads. This is no different: Before there was Oppenheimer, there was Vannevar Bush. A document he refers to in this post is what Doug Engelbart credits with getting him interested in changing his life’s course.

Sketchplanations: I had no idea this had a name, or the story behind it! The Droste Effect is derived from a Dutch brand of cocoa powder where the advert was a picture of a nurse carrying a tray with a box of the cocoa powder.

Oh if I could attend these Unhurried Conversations! I recently connected with Johnnie Moore, & in the last fortnight have come across more of his work, like this reference from Gaping Void!

I’ve been drawn irresistibly to the writings of Alex Waterhouse-Hayward who is a photographer and is publicly mourning the death of his wife of 52 years, Rosemary. Death and the lottery

Rohit Krishnan on Rest, and a compilation of some of the comments on that post

QOTD:

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts. \ – Salman Rushdie.

Music:

Sharon Shannon Galway Girl

Daily Reads:

Hilariously self-loathing ads in the London Review of Books. I spent a lot of time on this

Bertrand Russell "In Praise of Idleness": what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two different bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of advertising.

Mathias Sundin: Three steps to become a fact-based optimist

Ed Brenegar: Where Leadership Starts For many their genuine contribution as leaders happens outside of their job. They, too, are invisible, except to those whose lives are changed by their acts of leadership initiative.

Automattic announced a 100-year hosting plan for $38,000. I wonder who is this actually for?

Catching up on Ben Werdmuller: AI in the newsroom: the hard sell was an article I had to share with several colleagues. Homesick was an article I had to share with my daughter.

Scott Eblin: How to be someone’s best boss ever

SK Ventures with more provocation: AI isn’t good enough is a startling headline, and the nuanced prediction is worth a read, particularly about the ‘so-so automation’ which I see aplenty at work.

Werner Herzog interviewing Michael Perry a week out from his execution.

QOTD:

You will see that the most powerful and highly placed men let drop remarks in which they long for leisure, acclaim it, and prefer it to all their blessings. They desire at times, if it could be with safety, to descend from their high pinnacle; for, though nothing from without should assail or shatter, Fortune of its very self comes crashing down. – Seneca

Music:

The Best of Baroque Music is keeping me company on my reading.

Daily Reads:

Asking for a friend 🙂

Om Malik says the day of reckoning is coming for camera makers because of how far they lag in the software department: The history of the server industry serves as a reminder that when scale, affordability, and connectivity converge, they can disrupt the established order. We’ve seen this with mobile phones, media, and taxi services.

Story from Japan: Now this is an interesting way for an experiential way to NOT drink drive!

I got wondering if there are 24 time zones in the world, and turns out there are 38 for a variety of reasons.

And more schemes that are showing up on LinkedIn lately – how to make $2500/mo selling ebooks

I enjoyed this conversation with Kieran Drew: The $100K Launch Masterclass with Danny Miranda.

QOTD:

We need to give our full attention to what matters most. – Gary Klein

Music:

Poco – Rose of Cimarron

Daily Reads:

Geoff Marlow: Mastering Creative Tension _The more powerfully we experience both a) what the future will be like when we achieve our aspiration, and b) our current reality, the greater the creative tension. But, importantly, The emotional tension only exists in my present-day current reality.

Ben Evans: Generative AI and intellectual property

Robin Hanson is eliciting interest in field observations of how often people initiate smiles. I have time, & might do an informal one on my walks.

Rohit K on Rest

Seth Godin: Create Value

QOTD:

At its heart, relevance is about living in the creative tension between evangelizing for the things you care about and listening with interest to what others care about. It’s about radiating the inside out and inviting the outside in. – Nina Simone

Music:

Arturo Sandoval – A night in Tunisia

Daily Reads:

Biomimicry: architecture inspired by nature – this from termites.

Kara Lawson inspires us to Handle Hard Better

Joshua Rudder How other languages tell the time

Alfred Hitchcock describes the difference between surprise & suspense

Bob Ewing: How to structure what you say

Matrix multiplications and vector transformations visualised, including the obligatory cat image transformed to 3D.

QOTD:

Hopemine: When you get a dopamine hit from the false first step of simply buying a product or watching a video that you hope will help you, but you stop at that point without ever taking action or applying anything new to your life. – Shawn Blanc

Music:

Chris White (Isto) performs Lydia The Tattooed Lady

Daily Reads:

Victoria aka vrk is learning stuff and made a cute website about it

Seth Godin: The Maverick and the status quo

Ness Labs: Yes, you have a sixth sense

QOTD:

I know men aren’t attracted to me by my mind. They’re attracted by what I don’t mind. – Gypsy Rose Lee

Music:

Angelo Debarre

Daily Reads:

What does it mean when ‘tech’ says no? Ben Evans suggests it’s actually 3 kinds of No

McKinsey: The Future of Generative AI in 15 charts. I appreciate the storytelling techniques that this mob uses while peering into the crystal ball that often gives confusing smoke signals.

QOTD:

It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it’s not, it’s a visa, and it runs out fast. – Julie Burchill

Music:

The Lute is a beautiful instrument

Daily Reads:

A friend put me on to Haile Selassie and it reminded me of Sr. A who lived in Ethiopia a long time ago. Hadn’t thought of her in forever.

The iMac launch event presentation was not as polished as the current ones, eh?

Stop fetishising mistakes. Not all mistakes are equal says this article

What the JBTD theory teaches us about Nigeria’s generator markets the (product) solution aligns with the priorities and realities of consumers. As explained by Jobs theory, the functional, social, and emotional elements that inform purchase decisions are present in the case of generators in terms of their affordability, availability, and accessibility.

Robin Hanson has an interesting argument: Shrinking economies don’t innovate Once we have entered into a shrinking world economy, we cannot put much hope on tech or innovation solutions. The most likely time to find such solutions is before the decline.
Yes, a shrinking economy could get some advantages from larger levels of prior accumulated capital. But its workforce is also older on average, with more retired folks to support.

Tyler Cowen has a bunch of questions on his mind, but this one in particular stood out for me: 9. When generative AI models become better and smarter, how many more people will be interested in incorporating them into their workflows?  Or will most of this happen through a complete turnover of companies and institutions, happening much more slowly over time?

Always useful to go back to Hans Rosling demonstrating with stats that The World is Getting Better video

Leber on Lucidty. "a lucid person is compelling, perceptive, and aware of life’s meta-games."

Sara Canaday: Go ahead leaders, let yourself off the hook Our current business environment is so intense that leaders today are forgetting they are actually…human.

QOTD:

Things are not asking to be judged by you. Remember, you always have the power to have no opinion. – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Music:

Anouar Brahem – C’est Allieurs

Daily Reads:

Vannevar Bush’s 1945 essay "As We May Think" was the impetus for Doug Englebart’s work over the next few decades.

AI is ineffective and potentially harmful at fact checking. A paper I think will be the canary in the coal-mine on this topic.

(not much reading done today given the conversations I’ve had all day long)

QOTD:

We need to give our full attention to what matters most. – Gary Klein

Music:

Daily Reads:

The big news in the economics world lately is China’s ‘recession’. Noah Smith tries his hand at explaining "Why China’s economy ran off the rails"

DFW: This is Water. Always remember.

Augmenting Human Intellect – 35 Years Later. This is a fantastic 2 hour long video of Doug Englebart’s contributions to the tools we take for granted today. Doug’s philosophy that led him to do all these wonderful things is inspiring.

Richard Ekwonye is a front-end designer/engineer whose explanation of the Bezier curves is awe-inspiring.

Elad Gil: Early Days of AI When many business people talk about “AI” today, they treat it as a continuum with past capabilities of the CNN/RNN/GAN world. In reality it is a step function in new capabilities and products enabled, and marks the dawn of a new era of tech.
It is almost like cars existed, and someone invented an airplane and said “an airplane is just another kind of car – but with wings” – instead of mentioning all the new use cases and impact to travel, logistics, defense, and other areas. The era of aviation would have kicked off, not the “era of even faster cars”.

Also, Elad Gill: High Growth Handbook

QOTD:

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” – Terry Pratchett

Music:

Django Reinhardt – Minor Swing