Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #389

Posted by

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 InterestingTilt the WindmillHBS, chair of StrataStartupfestPandemonio, and ResolveTO, Author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto) 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: 

  • Postmortem: Every Frame a Painting – Tony Zhou – Medium. “The YouTube channel Every Frame A Painting has been doing visual storytelling for years now. And, with this post, they wrapped things up. ‘My name is Tony and my name is Taylor, and this concludes Every Frame a Painting.’ I hadn’t been following their story, but if you’re a creative type working today, this is a fascinating read — and I have a few hours of videos to catch up on.” (Alistair for Hugh).
  • I Made My Shed the Top Rated Restaurant On TripAdvisor – Vice. “If true, this is a scathing indictment of ratings sites. If not, it’s the best example of trolling I’ve seen on the Internet in recent years. Either way, you need to see this — if only for the behind-the-scenes photos of food staging.” (Alistair for Mitch).
  • Is There a Limit to Scientific Understanding? – The Atlantic. “Science is still pretty bad at describing real complexity, and still terrible at explaining our own brains. Maybe that’s a constraint of human consciousness, and a limit of our ability to truly understand the world around us.” (Hugh for Alistair).
  • Kick Against the Pricks – The New York Review of Books. Laura Kipnis pulls no punches in this snarky and wise overview of the spate of powerful men falling on their, er, swords. The article is more remarkable in its shading beyond black and white.” (Hugh for Mitch). 
  • Ambient AI Is About to Devour the Software Industry – Technology Review. Amazon. Oh, Amazon. When you mix artificial intelligence and machine learning into cloud platforms, something really big is/will happen. Not enough people get it, understand it or are ready for the ramifications. From this article: ‘This shift promises to be the biggest transition for the software world in decades. The easy availability of on-demand machine learning, combined with tools for automating the design and training of AI models, should, in fact, have an increasing impact on overall economic productivity, according to some economists.’ It’s not about new software. Not at all. As the article surmises: ‘…cloud-based machine learning is about to take the software industry by storm–and, by extension, to rewire the entire economy.’ Yes, the entire economy.” (Mitch for Alistair).
  • ‘Let the soul dangle’: how mind-wandering spurs creativity – Aeon. “If all you are ever doing is transitioning from deep work into a Facebook feed, into YouTube, into dinner, into Netflix and beyond, you are busy trying to fill your day. Being active is so important. No doubt. But what about just letting your mind wander? How about just giving yourself a beat… a long beat… a long walk… or just do nothing. Literally, nothing. Not even a meditation or mindfulness session. Nothing. Just put your mind out on a clothesline and do nothing until it dries. What could happen? Perhaps… maybe… a massive breakthrough?” (Mitch for Hugh). 

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.