What I see in different shades of gray, from behind my reading glasses
Amidst the shitshow that is the OpenAI saga, I came across this TED talk called The Exciting Perilous Journey towards AGIgiven by Ilya Sutskever a few weeks ago.
Huberman podcast on writing to improve mental health
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
– George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans)
John Hartford/ Glen Campbell cover of Gentle on My Mind by Toni Lindgren & Reina del Cid
I’ve just started listening to Lenny’s podcast with Hari Srinivasan from LinkedIn after listening to Merrick & James a couple of times.
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.
– Voltaire
Ash Maurya shared a 3 step process for building better products at JustProduct2023. The ideas that Bob Moesta speaks about in his books Learning to Build and Demand Side Sales are both referenced in oblique ways. Prof. Clayton Christensen’s Jobs To Be Done Theory is an explicit callout.
I’ve been listening James Altucher’s conversation with Merrick Furst on repeat.
Between these three, I have enough insights and frameworks to work full time on the program that really was a side project for the last few months.
McKinsey’s advice to CFO’s on GenAI has this zinger: two-thirds of respondents reported that their functions were digitally connected and using data for the basics such as visualization in dashboards.
The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
– Athenians after annihilating the adult men on Melos
HT: Paul Orlando’s Unintended Consequences
Leonard Cohen: Come Healing offers a solace from the horrors of the world around me.
Sir Ken Robinson speaking at TED: Bring on the learning revolution
Alan Blackwell: Oops, we’ve automated bullshit
Ewan Macintosh: Brutal simplicity is brutally hard to achieve
Erika shares her Effective Annual Reflection Process
Danilo Campos: The average AI criticism has gotten lazy and that’s dangerous
Language is not just a medium of communication, but a means of constructing reality. Words do not simply describe the world, they create it. Our language shapes our thoughts, our perceptions, and our spirit. They provide us with the categories by which we think and the sounds we use to express our thoughts.
– Wade Davis, The Wayfinders
Morgan Wallen – This Bar
This is a really fun video about negotiation
Discovered these folks who run a ‘fractional business leaders‘ for hire business.
Charlie Stross on science fiction & technology bosses
James Somers in the New Yorker: A coder considers the waning days of the craft.
Merrick Furst in conversation with Cal Fussman and on the podcast with James Altucher have messed with my head. It’s fascinating because it’s a contrary point of view. Furst has a book out called "The Heart of Innovation"
It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
– Agatha Christie
Lev Weksler must have fingers of steel – Flight of the Bumblebee on the double-bass! It’s only a minute long but a breath-taking performance.
I’m claiming blog bankruptcy again this week. Physical books take precedence. I didn’t get home until early this morning, driving through a torrential storm took far longer than I expected.
I did watch a fantastic 40 minute video from the treasure that is Julian Treasure titled Audio Affects. His compelling claim is that audio is an underinvested marketing tool. His examples speak (pun intended) for themselves. Julian’s TED talk titled How to Speak So People Want To Listen is one of my favourite talks of all time. And come to think of it, TED has its own ‘earcon’ along with its ‘icon’.
Henrik Karlsson: Notes on energy and intelligence becoming cheaper The possibilities – or dystopia – that could be when renewables becomes the dominant, economic source of energy across the world (it already is happening) and AI is accessible to everyone! HK sees parallels to, and takes solace in, CS Lewis’ remarks about the atomic bomb. Great read.
Through others, we become ourselves.
– Lev Vygotsky, psychologist
Ricardo Buzzurro performs Indifference waltz. A different feeling with this one.
Began reading Bob Moesta’s Demand Side Sales, and continuing reading Presuasion.
Our cemeteries are full of people who prayed to live.
– Annie Laurie Gaylor
Donovan & Pete Seeger Colours
My reading today was restricted to Presuasion by Robert Cialdini. I spent time in conversation with the people I care deeply about and who do likewise. I also met a couple of new people, and learnt about their world.
I listened to another beautiful episode on the Hidden Brain podcast Life After Loss with resilience researcher Lucy Hone, who lost her 12 year old daughter in a road accident. I’ve shared a previous episode on changing your life by changing your story, but I don’t think I have listed the one that got me hooked: "How we live with contradictions" with Eliot Aronson, who was a protege of both Abraham Maslow and Leon Festinger, who also happened to hate each other 😆
To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.
– Auguste Rodin, sculptor
Lee Ritenour and friends: Papa was a rolling stone
Rishad Tobaccowala shares several thoughtful ideas on providing useful feedback in Soaring via Feedback
The vice-chairman of Blackstone’s private wealth solutions Byron Wein’s 20 Life Lessons:
Sahil Bloom shared a dozen conversation starters in his recent blog post "The Art & Science of Conversation"
“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
Verlon Thompson: The Guitar, a song he performed with Guy Clark.
Spent this evening watching concerts and contests at the local conservatorium of music, with some incredibly talented children performing on the bassoon, flute, double bass, guitar, vocals, piano, and a stellar performance on the violin by the last years winner of the scholarships.
Matt Mullenweg translates internalspeak into externalspeak about the leaked news about Automattic’s decision to wind back effort on Tumblr.
Humans feel, machines compute, and other truth bombs in this great conversation between Josh Bernoff and Rishad Tobaccowalla on his "What next" podcast
Ethan Mollick describes both the perils and the opportunities from the lates release from OpenAI in Almost an agent, what a GPT can do
John Durrant makes the point that ritual is significant in enhancing the essence of the experience resulting in greater connection in this post: Ritual and connection I got thinking about the rituals I’ve created for myself and the people I work with, and the strength of the resulting connections.
Mastery is the ritual practice of connection.
– John Durrant
Tribute to John Prine on NPR Tiny Desk